Gay Men’s Friendships: Cross-Generational Analyses of Two Age Cohorts in Montréal

This thesis offers a unique comparative analysis of two groups of gay men: the first comprised of participants to come of age in Québec and Montréal during the 1960s and 1970s and a second made up of gay youth in their 20s living in contemporary Montréal. The analysis of life-history narratives, throughout this thesis, allows for an exploration of how the older participants came to build not only safe space through the elaboration of an early gay community, but also how they individually came to develop a desired intimate milieu utilizing close bonds of friendship and meaning. Through this investigation, the reader is able to discover what these “spaces” and “milieus” offer for the individual, how they relate to traditional kinship, and how they have evolved over the life-course and ever-adapting social reality. The comparative approach allows me to then explore whether the same pressures and demands, as recounted by the older cohort, are still in place and experienced by gay youth today. Moreover, a deeper analysis of the younger participant’s life-history narratives allows for an investigation of what new challenges have appeared, and how gay youth are employing new liberties, diversity, and options in the experience and construction of new safe spaces and intimate milieu which correspond to the life and social-reality of the new homosexual living in a dynamic contemporary Montréal