Interviewer: So how was your experience with the consciousness raising group?

Betsy: Fabulous. (Yeah?) Yeah, really fabulous. And uhm, yeah, really good. Like, y'know it's almost like a therapy group. People just start talking about such important things to them, and we'd sort of do a theme. Y'know, every, every week there would be some topic that we would generate, and just talk about it. It was really, really good.

Interviewer: Do those still exist, would you say? That's a normal thing? Or is that pretty unique to that time?

Betsy: I think it's pretty unique to that time, but I think the way you do it is similar. Like, in

Interviewer: Any of the conferences, the lesbian conferences, did you ever go to any of those?

Betsy: Oh yeah. Oh god, it was just heaven. It was a hundred-percent heaven. I guess that's the first time that I was in a place, where there really was nothing but lesbians. Y'know, the Women's Centre, it was mainly straight women. And I loved them, they're all my friends and good people and all that. And I was certainly comfortable with them. But being with an entire conference full of lesbians - and they, I would say probably everybody was a feminist as well - lesbian feminists was amazing. So, what the things that I remember from there, in 1974 was the lesbian conference in Montreal. And apparently there was a previous, and I was tryna research what year the lesbian conference in Montreal was, and apparently there was one, I think in '73, in Toronto, that was the first lesbian conference ever in Canada or something. But I always was, but it wasn't. It was really well organized. There was food for us there, we were billeted, there was a dance. I think one of the, my, one of the most fun parts of it was, I think we had the Chicago Liberation Women's Band. I'm pretty sure that they were the ones. See there was this feminist music that was out there. And lesbian feminist music, that was there. So there was this cultural aspect to it, too. And they performed at the conference. So we had this dance at night that was just fabulous. And, uhm, workshops. I remember really interesting workshops that were organized during the day. And, uh, and packed. Y'know, people were really craving it.

Interviewer: So it wasn't just people showing up just for the dances, people were participating in the workshops?

Betsy: Oh no. No, it was political.