UNERASING LGBTQ HISTORY AND IDENTITIES PODCAST SEASON 6 EPISODE 5

Published June 26, 2025

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TRANSCRIPT

Deb Fowler: Hello, and welcome to UnErasing LGBTQ History and Identities: A Podcast. I’m Deb Fowler, co-founder of History UnErased. 

In this episode, we journey into the past with artist, author - and super sleuth - Lynette Richards, whose graphic novel Call Me Bill resurrects a secret life from the wreck of the SS Atlantic—a ship lost off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1873.  

Lynette joins our host, Kathleen Barker, to discuss how two mass graves, a scrap of historical evidence, and a chance archival discovery led to a years-long investigation—and ultimately, a poignant, beautifully illustrated graphic novel. 

Take it away, Kathleen! 

Kathleen Barker: Hi, Lynette. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Lynette Richards: Hi, Kathleen. Thank you.

KB: Well, we are here today to talk a little bit about you and your book, Call Me Bill. So to start, could you tell us a little more about Bill? Who are they, and how did you first become interested in their story?

LR: Sure, absolutely. So I moved to Nova Scotia about 13 years ago, and it's a little coastal village called Lower Prospect. And soon after moving here, I found there were two mass graves with 500 victims in it from the sinking of the SS Atlantic Steamship. And although everybody has heard of the Titanic, not many have heard of the SS Atlantic, but it's the very same white star line that launched the ship. And it was also an immigrant ship that was crossing from Liverpool and Ireland to New York, filled with lots of poorer people in the hold and a few people up top. And just like the Titanic, this ship, well this one got pulled off course by the tides of the Bay of Fundy and it crashed headlong into the rocks of lower prospect where I live. So, when the dead were being buried after a heroic rescue, I should say there were 500 dead bodies that the community had to bury. And while they were burying them, they discovered that one of the sailors from the ship had all along been a woman, and that is written into the Halifax Morning Chronicle of April 5th, 1873. And that is how I found my protagonist and the story that launched me into this process.

KB: Well, it's such a fascinating story and such a both great and terrible example of how certain narratives like the Titanic get promoted over and over again, but other stories don't.

LR: Exactly.

KB: Amazing. So you found this newspaper article. Where else did you go to research your story?

LR: Well, I joined the Board of Directors of a small museum at the end of the road that has artifacts from the wreck. And there was a man there who was also writing a book and doing a lot of research to try and sift through truths and half-truths and folklore to try and declare what he believed to be fact. So a lot was coming forward at that time in my history there. And so I said to him, I said Bob, is this true? I've just found this reference to a female sailor in the 1873 newspapers, which is, of course, how gender would've been referred to at the time. We don't know if Bill would've identified as a female sailor or not. And Bob, he kind of shook his head and said, "Well, there's really not enough evidence to say." So I decided I would go down and read the actual inquiry of the wreck and all the newspaper articles, and that I would also seek out other references to this person.

I wrote to the Liverpool Archives, and they produced an article about just such a person being found out in Aberdeen, and they sent that to me. And then another historian from a village just down the road who, he's a historian and a genealogist, he found me another article from the Wilmington Morning Star and they corroborated! The dates and everything corroborated. So I felt like I had, not only that, that article was written essentially in the first person by then Maggie Armstrong being sent against her will back to the United States, and this reporter interviewing her, and that provided a really good skeleton to a story.

KB: This is just such a fascinating international tale. I love it. What would you say was your maybe favorite or most interesting discovery as you were doing all of this research?

LR: Well, I was able to research 1872, and my protagonist is from New Jersey. And around that time, there was a pretty active feminist movement going on, including Seneca Falls, and there was Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and in fact, a woman ran for President that year. So I was imagining what the context might've been for this person in New Jersey who wasn't fitting the confined restrictions of women, and whether they were inspired by some of this feminism. I didn't know. I could only imagine. But the other thing that was really exciting for me to find out was more about the reporter who interviewed them on the ship coming across because it turns out this reporter's name is Ralph Keeler, and he was a contemporary of Mark Twain and some of the other American authors at the time. And he himself was actually a gay out man. He wrote a book called Vagabond Adventures, where he describes his own life. It's an autobiography. And so then I was imagining what it must've been like on board the ship where a gay man recognizes this person with a little bit of notoriety, and they come together to tell a story. So I loved that.

KB: There are so many interesting threads in this particular story. You mentioned Victoria Woodhull running for president in 1872, and she was definitely a great promoter of gender equality, racial equality, and it's interesting how it kind of plays out in your story. So, as you were doing all of this research, is there something still today that you'd really like to know about Bill that you didn't discover or you're still looking for?

LR: Certainly. Obviously, there are the big questions around gender, which I chose not to draw any conclusions about. I think that was the best thing to do, considering that I was unable to ask them. But you know, when I set out to make this book, I knew I was telling a story that was potentially a queer story, and I felt that was really, really important. It almost made the burial site a pilgrimage site for me. But at the beginning of the writing process, I didn't know how I was going to end the book because I knew from the outset that it was a tragedy. And I also knew that I wanted it to be for young people, and I wanted it to be a hopeful story somehow, and not a tragic story. And so I would've loved to have known the emotional constitution of my character and how they handled some of the things that this stuff is just not written into the historical record. So I hope you like the ending of the book.

KB: Well, I will not give it away. I will let our listeners read it for themselves. And we should mention, too, that you tell the story in a graphic novel format. So why did you decide on that particular format to tell Bill's story?

LR: Well, I am an avid reader, but I'm also first and foremost a visual artist. So I have been drawing since my first memories. It's what I have always done best. And I really think that graphic novels soak into the reader or the viewer in a way that inspires emotions differently than a book. I think there are different parts of the brain activated, and I think that you can stay with a picture and sort of experience it differently than being led just by words. And a lot of people don't choose to read long-form writing, but they can stay with a picture. So I love graphic novels. I love imagery. In fact, I love fewer words in a graphic novel, though I do read long-form books as well. But yeah, so I do actually really hope that people will read through the book and then go back and stay with the pictures and see that there are resonances built in with images at the front that again, repeat it in the back. And there are other layers to the story.

KB: Well, and graphic novels are such great teaching tools too, as you say, they can be accessible to all sorts of students, and it's really a great opportunity for some visual analysis too, to really help readers think about what those images mean. So I agree, it's a wonderful way to tell the story and Bill's story in particular.

LR: Yeah, and I have had five-year-olds, five years old, read that book, and 80-year-olds, so it really can be approached by everybody.

KB: LR, can you describe the process of how you create the images for the graphic novel?

LR: Sure. So I start with a skeleton that is essentially a nine-patch page, and I block in with pencil where I think things might go. And, luckily for me, I'm able to do this in coffee shops because it makes my brain work differently and better. And then I go back to my studio and I put that piece of paper down on a little light box and overlay it with a piece of watercolor paper. And I'm able to see the pencil drawings through, which then I can choose which lines to reinforce with ink. And then I go into that with black and white and gray water wash. And part of why I use the gray is about the shadow and light. That's what I've been working with my entire career. And it does represent non-binary. It has all the colors of gray, all the tones of gray, I suppose, in it, and reminds people that life isn't black and white.

So that's that process. And then for the words, some people like graphic novelists get together and we say, gosh, how do you do it? And it's not the same one to the next. Some people will write an entire book before they begin illustrating, and then they just go and they illustrate their words. And I don't do that at all. In fact, I make pictures and then I try and figure out how the story weaves into that. And eventually, I hit a point where I have enough out of my head onto the paper that I can look at it and say, I need to build some bridges between here and there. And then I go back and forth words to pictures, words to pictures until it's done.

KB: Wow. That is amazing. As someone who does not have a lot of artistic talent, has never really practiced. You make it sound so easy, but the results are amazing.

LR: It’s not easy.

KB: It's a lot of hard work, clearly. But I do want our listeners to know that you have another amazing story related to art because you are a stained glass artist. Can you tell us a little bit more about when or how you became interested in glass as a medium to tell stories?

LR: Yeah. So I am an architectural stained glass professional, which means that I do large-scale. I can do small-scale too, but I can also do large-scale scale massive stained glass windows that are installed into buildings. And those are paintings. And I got into this for a couple of reasons. One is that I love light passing through barriers, such as a window, and in stained glass. What I end up doing to make the pictures on stained glass is I paint shadows onto light. And for me, that was a metaphor for sort of being mortal and having joy and sorrow in all different blends for anything that is essentially non-binary. We have to have both in order to experience, in the case of stained glass, in order to experience sun or light or to be able to look at the picture at all, you have to have some of the light blocked with shadow, just like we have joy and sorrow in mixture.

So that was the aspect that allowed me to choose my medium, but I have also been cartooning my whole life. And so the oldest stained glass windows on the planet tell stories in sequential narration. So you can look at the massive stained glass windows in the cathedrals of Europe and follow the stories of the Old Testament or the New Testament in pictures with some words. And so they're essentially early graphic novels. And I chose that medium too, because I was, in the early 1990s, the printing industry changed, and I didn't want to work at a computer, and I had been in the printing industry, so I had to find a new career. And I ended up choosing stained glass for these reasons because I would be able to draw and because I could tell stories, such as women's stories, in a material that was considered sacred.

KB: So, tell us a little bit more about some of the stories you like to tell through your work.

LR: Well, I think I've done a few important series for art galleries in my career, and one of them is called the Luminous Shadow, which sort of is about shadow and light as I just described. And so there was a period of time when I had three little kids, and I got extremely depressed for a full year, and I just didn't know what to do. So I did a lot of self-portraits where I ended up sort of looking at myself in the mirror and saying, "Who are you, and what's important to you?" And through a process of this projection and reflection and feeling the weight of sadness, after a year, I realized I was coming out and I had to leave my marriage and alter my family structure entirely. And so it made me realize that the darkness is also gestation and things are happening that you don't always know, you can't know, but you'll find out, wait. So anyway, I tell stories. The Luminous Shadow is just a series of collages and stained glass that describe my process of despair and looking for hope. And then I guess another one I did was when Canada legalized gay marriage, and I did a series based on the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, which is about forbidden love in a closed garden between, in the case of the Bible, it was between Black and a Caucasian person. And I just thought it was about time to tell a similar story about gay people having been enclosed and closeted and now being free.

KB: Love it. You explore some really profound issues in your art, which I so appreciate, and I think so many of our listeners can relate to some of the feelings and ideas that you're trying to express through your art. Is there any place that we can go to see your work, or any place that you would recommend that we go to visit your work?

LR: Well, I do have a website. It is so far a professional website, but it'll have more art on it. I will say that, well, a lot of my work, of course, is in public buildings in Canada, so if you're ever up touring around Nova Scotia or Ontario, you'll see some. But I've just installed or designed and installed two massive granite boulders that commemorate the rescuers of the SS Atlantic. And the two villages responded, Upper Prospect and Lower Prospect, and they didn't have any memorials in them until about four months ago, after a one-year process where I and a steering committee made these 9,000-pound carvings. So you can see those on the SS Atlantic site or my site, or come up to Nova Scotia and say hi.

KB: I would love to come up to Nova Scotia. So there was no memorial of any kind to the rescuers?

LR: No, no. I mean, there was another story of injustice built into this, and that is that the rescuers were of Irish extraction, and in 1873, the Irish were not welcome in North America, essentially. It was a period of racism. And you can even see the scorn built into the little leprechauns that you see on the St. Patrick's Day cards. You look at them and they are in patched Edwardian clothes, sometimes drunk, sometimes with a bully club, and that's the stereotype from that era. And so those Irish Catholic people that did the rescue were disenfranchised from the story by the British Protestants who had the power and the press and the media. And so yeah, there was no marker in the villages where it happened. And so people would come to the grave site in the Anglican cemetery and look out over the sea and say, oh my God, I can't believe this is where it happened. Well, it isn't where it happened. So we've now marked actually where it happened and who were the rescuers.

KB: We absolutely appreciate that you have created these memorials to actually help illuminate the true story of the rescuers and all of the work they did. And I hope some of our listeners are able to come and visit you in Nova Scotia and see all of this work that you've done. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about Bill or your work?

LR: Well, I've got my second novel graphic novel, almost completed, and it similarly deals with some injustices and it similarly deals with LGBTQ issues. So it's set in the First World War, and it's going to be about nurses, one in Flanders and one in Halifax. And in 1917, Halifax Harbor blew up. There was an explosion and it decimated the cities, both Dartmouth and Halifax, on both sides. And so my book is set in that exact moment where the bomb blows up and the people are separated and don't know if they're okay. There's more.

KB: That was going to say– that was a great teaser. Well, thank you. Now we have to be on the lookout for your next book, but in the meantime, I hope everyone will grab a copy of “Call Me Bill” and enjoy the story.

LR: Yes, thank you very much.

KB: Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Lynette, for joining us.

LR: Pleasure.

DF: KB Barker is History UnErased’s program director, library and information specialist, and public historian with over 20 years of experience as a museum and library educator. This podcast is funded by the New York City Council. It was developed by History UnErased and produced and edited by Dinah Mack, our podcaster and youth equity program director.  

And special thanks to LR Richards for talking with us about the inspiration for Call Me Bill - and how storytelling can honor hidden lives and reshape how we remember the past.

Please rate this podcast and share!  

I’m Deb Fowler. Thanks for listening. And visit UnErased.org to learn how we are putting LGBTQ history in its rightful place - the classroom.

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