2SLGBTQIA+ History and Identities in Canada

When I was released, like many other people who were released for being gay, we were told that we were not veterans, that we would never qualify for veteran services, and not even to attempt it. We left in a place of shame not knowing, sort of, that we would ever belong to the veteran community going forward.

When Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister, he’d made an announcement in a remark to a reporter, I believe, that he was going to do an apology for Everett Klippert, who was an individual who was incarcerated in the late 60s just because he was gay. A group of people through Egale Canada, and Douglas Elliott, who is a lawyer who ended up becoming the lead lawyer in the class-action suit, when they saw the opportunity of the Prime Minister saying that he was going to make this apology, they got together and said: “Well, if he’s going to make an apology on this, there are a few things that we should include. So, let’s put together a report and make a recommendation.”

So, a report was quickly put together called the Just Society Report. I was then asked by Egale and Douglas Elliott, I had been involved with Egale and I’d known Douglas for a number of years, if I would speak at the launch of that report. I came up and I spoke publicly for the first time about my experience with the military. So, this was still May of 2016. By August of 2016, we were a little bit unsure of the timeline when the apology was going to happen and if everything from this report would be included. So that was when we started talking about doing a class-action lawsuit. I know through the class-action lawsuit that we went into, there were a huge number of people who did not come forward, who did not yet feel the comfort of being able to disclose that they were kicked out of the military for being gay.

On the eve of the apology, on November 27, 2017, we had a reception here in Ottawa and it was the first time that many of us had met each other. That experience, meeting other people who had gone through similar experiences within the military, was just such an incredible opportunity to understand that we weren’t alone, and many people in the room remarked of the power of us being together, and just to have that support.

It really took the apology from a Prime Minister, and to be to be involved with the class-action lawsuit, that I started to feel like a veteran. As the class-action went on, we ended up starting a Rainbow Veterans of Canada organization so that we could support each other, and we could do advocacy and education work. I give credit that that apology and the settlement of the class-action brought us together as a community.