Our Mission

The Montreal Gay and Lesbian Community Centre (CCGLM) takes action to improve members' lives and our communities by promoting a dialogue of efforts and by stimulating both individuals and organisations to handle and sustain social and community development.

The CCGLM: Our Main Components

In keeping with its mission, the CCGLM sets up technical and administrative support services vital to the functioning and development of Montreal-based organistions offering services and activities to gy, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and transgender people. We provide bulletin boards, display cases, and spaces for various-size meetings, as well as services for telephoning (in/out calls), mail boxes, voice-mail boxes and faxing. Not only do we offer help services and expertise to groups that are starting off and wish to become incorporated but we also give advice on how to reach our communities to suggest their own services. In addition, the CCGLM plays an active part in many committees, with various partners, in order to represent its members and service users. All this is accomplished through a community organisation approach.

As of May 26, 2004, the CCGLM offers the local GLBT community a free and confidential Legal Information Centre (LIC) one night per week. (see Legal Info above) The LIC's mission consists in helping people in their search for relevant information. Under the volunteer supervision of two (2) lawyers, a bilingual team of law student volunteers takes queries over the phone or via e-mail. They do the necessary research, give people information on legal measures pertaining to their query, and can make a few suggestions.

Offered by the CCGLM and open to the public, the Open Book Library is one of the very few documentation centres on homosexuality in Canada and one of the largest in the French-speaking world.(see Library above) Establised in 1991, the Library houses a collection of monographs (over 6 000 books) that either are written by gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and transgender authors or deal with issues that affect our communities. Likewise, there are several thousand documents (articles, studies, theses, etc.) and periodicals (magazines, newspapers, bulletins) that round off the collection.

The CCGLM has acquired over the years an indisputable credibility among both its users and its partners. At the same time, it has also been able to stand true with GLBT groups and, above all, members of the GLBT communities. And in may fields, it acts not only as a catalyst but also as an pioneer.