There is a certain irony to the “Catch Our Pride” slogan that Calgary Transit has used these past few years. How exactly is this ironic you might ask? To see it, we would have to go back over forty years to Calgary during the early 1960’s where a middle-aged man named George Klippert was employed as a bus driver for City Transit. Still no connection? Well Klippert, after leaving Calgary for the Northwest Territories, would go on to become the last person ever charged and convicted for committing homosexual acts with another man. Klippert was then labeled a dangerous offender and was sentenced to life in prison - a sentence held up by the pre-charter supreme court of Canada. Who would have thought his story would give a generation the impetus to create a community steeped in pride.
The plight of George Klippert did not go unnoticed. Instead it would provoke the then Justice Minister, Pierre Trudeau, to create the Omni-Bus bill C-150, thereby decriminalizing homosexual practices among adult men. The ramifications of the bill were widespread and not isolated to the gay community; Canadian society as a whole would change forever. This change would be explicitly be marked by Trudeau uttering Martin O’Malley’s famous phrase, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”
The decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada is but one part of Canadian gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender (GLBT) history, a history that will be remembered throughout October during queer history month. GLBT history is a bit of an enigma. On the one hand it precedes Christianity but it has also endured the dark ages, the renaissance, the industrial revolution, and both world wars. On the other hand it was not until the modern era that it has been formally established as a “community”. GLBT history is also inclusive of so many different and diverse sub communities it is difficult to say just how gays, lesbians, bi-sexual and transgender people sit under the same umbrella. The common factor in bringing the community together is the shared experience of being the “other” in society; it is this shared experience from which the queer rights movement was hatched and where it continues to flourish today.
When looking at GLBT history in Canada it is hard to avoid the spheres of politics and the judiciary, as they are the two primary areas in which gay rights, and subsequently history, have been forged. In 1971 a small group of people from the GLBT community in Toronto came together for what became The Body Politic. The publication would be the first of its kind in Canada, putting queer issues front and center. The Body Politic helped to mobilize the community in such a fashion that it could gain a momentum in the upward battle for equality rights.
The efforts of The Body Politic would not prove fruitless. In fact, it is perhaps a tad serendipitous that such a publication existed in 1981. Sprawled across the march 1981 edition of The Body Politic was the word RAGE in bold red print. The cover was alluding to the simultaneous raids of four bathhouses in Toronto by the Toronto police department. The event galvanized the Toronto gay community and effectivity created the first gay pride event in the country. Meanwhile The Body Politic was present, formally documenting and creating this emerging GLBT History.
Not long after the Toronto bathhouse raids, the GLBT community came face to face with an adversary that it could not protest in the streets. HIV/AIDS would devastate gay communities across North America and Europe throughout the eighties. The impact of the virus on the community would be, and remains, far-reaching. With respect to history, the breakout of HIV/AIDS in the eighties would have two primary effects on the GLBT community. Firstly, the virus forced the community to become introspective. By looking inward and seeing just how this virus spread, the queer community established a collective consciousness toward the practices of safer sex. Subsequently, a culture of safe sex shaped the development of the GLBT community. The second effect the virus had on the community was that it created the tradition of a shared philanthropy between the GBLT and straight communities. In Calgary this philanthropy endeavor was initiated by the ever-talented Sandy St. Peters, one of a few people to be remembered in the Vancouver HIV/AIDS memorial, but who was not infected with the virus.
With the initial panic of HIV/AIDS subsiding in the nineties, due to the “cocktail”, efforts to achieve equality rights would continue in Canada. By this time The Body Politic would cease to be in publication. Lobby groups like that of Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (EGALE), would step in and take the equality movement to the courts. EGALE took advantage of our adolescent Charter of Rights and Freedoms and began to build GLBT equality rights case by case.
With respect to the courts, Alberta would again be connected to another historical moment. Fired from his Job as a college professor because he was homosexual, Delwin Vriend sought job protection from the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The commission declined such protection. A court case ensued. In Vriend vs Alberta, the Supreme Court of Canada Ruled that Alberta’s Individual’s Rights Protection Act (IRPA) was delinquent in that is did not include sexual orientation. As such, the court ordered that the wording of “sexual orientation” be read into Alberta’s IRPA. History had been made. Following Vriend the GLBT community would achieve many more feats in the courts, most notably being the legalization of gay marriage in Canada.
The further the GLBT community moves forward together, the more expansive our history becomes. However, there already exists a rich history that is full of stories of people like George Klippert, Sandy St. Peters and Delwin Vriend. This existing history is a resource that should never be underestimated; the more we know about our history the more able we will be to weather the uncertainties of the future. It is like what philosopher George Satayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”
Some places to find out about GLBT history:
Supreme Court of Canada decisions - http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/
Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives - www.clga.ca
