10242 106 Street — the former Club 70, Cha Cha Club, Boots N’ Saddle, Boots, and The Junction

The Rainbow Story Hub Foundation has submitted an application to the City of Edmonton to recognize 10242 106 Street NW as a historic place — the first step toward preserving the longest-serving gathering place in Edmonton’s 2SLGBTQ+ history. You can help move it forward, and it takes about five minutes.

Why this place matters

From 1970 to 2012 — more than four decades — this one address was the continuous heart of our community: Club 70 (Edmonton’s first gay bar), the Cha Cha Club, Boots N’ Saddle, Boots, and The Junction. In the same building, an Indigenous artists’ cooperative operated in 1970 under Tony Belcourt, who became founding president of the Native Council of Canada. Several of Edmonton’s other early 2SLGBTQ+ sites still stand, but each has passed beyond reach as community heritage — one is now a condominium, another a federal facility, and others are held by owners unlikely to preserve them. This building is the last that can still be secured as a home for our community’s history.

Our vision

We hope to operate this building as a publicly accessible archive, interpretive centre, and research facility for Edmonton’s 2SLGBTQ+ history — run by the Rainbow Story Hub Foundation, in the very building where that history happened. Our goal is for the City to secure the building and lease it to the Foundation to run, on the same model cities like Calgary, Victoria, and Winnipeg already use to keep heritage in community hands.

This is the City’s own commitment, too

Edmonton has just adopted two plans that call for exactly this kind of work:

• The Heritage Places Strategy (passed September 8, 2026) prioritizes place-based, community-led heritage of 2SLGBTQIA+ and other underrepresented communities (Direction 3.3), and its Inclusive principle commits the City to reflect our histories.
• Beyond Belonging: The 2SLGBTQIA+ Safe Spaces Action Plan commits the City’s Heritage units to preserve and promote our history and add to the City’s heritage collection (subaction 6.04), and to “align visible support with concrete municipal actions” (Action 3). A building is a concrete action.

Supporting this application is simply asking the City to deliver on its own promises.

• 1. Email the City’s Heritage Planning team: [email protected]
• 2. Email a City Councillor — and the Mayor. The building is in O-day’min Ward, Councillor Anne Stevenson ([email protected]). Please also write your own ward councillor (find yours here) and Mayor Andrew Knack ([email protected]).

Tell them, in your own words, that you support adding 10242 106 Street to Edmonton’s Inventory of Historic Resources and preserving it as a home for our community’s history. A personal note — one sentence about why this matters to you — carries far more weight than a form letter.

A message you can adapt:

Spread the word

Share this with anyone who cares about Edmonton’s 2SLGBTQ+ history — community groups, friends, allies. Every voice the City hears helps move this forward. Thank you.

Rainbow Story Hub Foundation · yegqueerhistory.ca · [email protected]