Page:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu/125

112 Mado Lamotte: La reine du Québec

That very same summer of 2017 I found myself considering Québébcois LGBTQ+ cultural icons, particularly Drag Queens. In a world before Rita Baga—a finalist in the 2020 Canada’s Drag Race—the most wellknown Drag Queens from Québec were Mado Lamotte and Michel Dorion. Lamotte and Dorion helped bring drag culture to mainstream Québécois culture. They both own Drag Queen cabarets, Le Cabaret Mado and Le Bar le Cocktail, respectively, that offer a performing stage to Montréal’s Drag Queens.

Lamotte is a household name in Québec society via her appearances on many Québec television programs and is also known internationally, notably in Francophone Europe. Lamotte has produced large public shows such as Mado’s Got Talent at the Festvial Juste pour rire/ Just for Laughs Festival and what was reported to be the world’s largest outdoor Drag Queen show, Mascara, at the Festival Divers/Cité (Montreal Gazette, 2014). Dorion is well known thanks to her personi cations of Célion Dion, her organization of the Illusions drag show at Fierté Montréal, and thanks to her numerous appearances in Québec media.

Despite the wide notoriety of these people, locations, and events in Québec, Lamotte was the only one with a Wikipedia page on WikipédiaFR in August 2017. Michel Dorion was absent, as was Rita Baga and Barbada de Barbades the Drag Queen who brought Drag Story hour to Québec public libraries (Simard, 2019). Learning of these absences moved the author to get involved with Wikipedia to help contribute to addressing this culture gap.

Catégorie:LGBT par pays > LGBT au Canada > LGBT au Québec

The first step in the project was to identify how many LGBTQ+ articles already existed in WikipediaFR. Thankfully, the WikipédiaFR’s Catégorie classification system already had established categories in this area. The WikipediaFR Catégorie system finds itself somewhere between the ultraconservative Library of Congress Classification System and the