PTS (community centre)

PTS - Pink Triangle Services

Motto	The Centre for the Celebration of Sexual and Gender Diversity.
Formation	1984
Type	community centre
Purpose	LGBT community
Location	251 Bank St. Suite 301 Ottawa, ON  K2P 1X3
Region served	National Capital Region (Canada)
Executive director	Claudia Van Den Heuvel
Staff	4
Volunteers	130
Website	PinkTriangle.org

PTS, formerly known as Pink Triangle Services, was an LGBT community centre located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. They were the oldest registered LGBT-specific charity in Canada, becoming registered in 1984.^[1] The organization served gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, Two-Spirit and queer people within the National Capital Region.^[2] They provided a number of services including support groups, education, research, advocacy and community space for other community groups.

Organization history

One of the founding members of PTS, Barry Deeprose in 2002 wrote a history of the organization. The forwards starts off as:

"In 1984 a group of directors from the Board of Gays of Ottawa set out to create a non-profit organization with charitable status called Pink Triangle Services in the hopes that such recognition would enable an organization to more-easily raise funds. In the spring of that year the corporation was founded and was granted charitable status under the Income Tax Act, a first for Canada. In the ensuing fifteen years Pink Triangle Services (or PTS as it quickly became known) has flourished and grown, in many ways fulfilling the vision of the founding members.

Those fifteen years also brought tremendous changes to the gay and lesbian community. AIDS decimated a generation of gay men, while at the same time in Canada gays and lesbians won legal rights of which an earlier generation scarcely dreamed.I have had the privilege of being associated with PTS from the beginning and it remains close to my heart. There is no doubt in my mind that it continues to provide much-needed services to the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community."^[3]

Until the 2000s PTS was run by a working Board of Directors and was funded primarily by individual donations from those communities.^[4] Starting in the 2000s the organizational structure changed to become a policy and governance Board of Directors while the first agency Executive Director was hired.

Another major change that occurred in the 2000s was more focus was attributed to less served members of the community including bisexuals, trans people and those who solely identify as queer. This was also influenced by the decrease of stigma towards gays and lesbians in the broader community that lead to a court ruling making same-sex marriage in Ontario legal in 2003.^[5] A bisexual women's group started at PTS which evolved into BiAmore for bisexuals of all genders years later. And in 2004 Trans Youth Ottawa started a group for transgender and transsexual youth and young adults which ran until 2009 and Gender Quest a group for all trans adults started in 2005 and still operates today. In 2005 the board of directors added trans, two-spirit and queer^[6] to the letters patent to state their official commitment to those communities.

Programs and services

The programs of PTS were broken up into three prime categories: support programs, education programs and resource programs.

Support programs

Historically one of the flagship programs of PTS was based on peer support groups. Over the years PTS has seen many groups come and go based upon need. Over time the programs being more education and social focused including guest speakers and workshop topics. The first group to undergo this change was Pink Triangle Youth (PTY) in 2003.^[7] Current support groups include:

• Pink Triangle Youth (PTY): a group for all queer youth ages 13–24.
• BiAmore: a group for bi, bi-curious and questioning people who are 18+.
• Gender Quest: a peer support group for trans-people who wish to explore their gender identity and gender expression.
• Women's Night: a group for all queer-identified women 18+.
• The Men's Group: a group for all gay, bi, trans and queer-identified men 18+.

Educational programs

PTS did education and advocacy work since its outset as an organization. After 2009, a new focus upon educational outreach programs which provided workshops became a new priority. The three programs included:

• Creating Safer Spaces: An initiative to educate on the use of inclusive language related to queer communities and how to create safer spaces in regards to homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. The program was funded under special projects by the City of Ottawa in 2010.^[8] Though the program works in all spaces it is focused on youth spaces including schools and not-for-profits which serve youth.
• TransAction: A program to do education and advocacy and around the needs of trans people (including transgender, transsexual and genderqueer people). The initial program received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation for the initial process started in 2011.^[9]
• Queer Women's Health and Sexuality: This was a program dedicated to advocating and providing education on the needs of queer women. It encouraged a dialogue about the unique needs of queer women's health that may not be addressed in general discourse.

Resource programs

There were plans to expand the resource programs at PTS to include a community calendar and to make an updated user-friendly version of their resource directory which can be found on their website.^[10] The prime resource was the Dr. Kelly McGinnis Library, which was the largest queer-specific library in Canada.^[11]

References