During the dramatic and hopeful period of political and social change from 1975 to 1980, many women stayed at the house on Lorne Avenue in Ottawa—some for days or weeks, some dropping in, and others living there. Affectionately called Lorne, the house embodied a revolutionary spirit and served as a place of community and connection for lesbian women.

Author Donna Sharkey’s Nights and Days on Lorne Ave. is a biography of this house as a space of resistance, learning, and laughter—a hub for the lesbian feminist movement and a site where political analyses and new ideas about sexuality, gender, music, art, community, and life itself were born and honed.

Drawing from her own connection to the house, Sharkey pieces together the recollections of twenty women who were part of Lorne’s history. A love story to the community spawned by this collective home, the legacy of Lorne continues to resonate today.