The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Is Pride Still a Protest?

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

With Pride month underway, The Agenda looks back at how conversations around 2SLGBTQIA issues have changed since the show first began in 2006. Has Canada become a more tolerant or more accepting place for Queer communities? Callie Metler, Executive Director of Capital Pride Ottawa; Derrick Biso, Director of Education and Operations at Trans Wellness Ontario; Maurice Tomlinson, activist and consultant with HIV Legal Network; Cheri DiNovo, retired minister at Trinity-St. Paul Centre For Faith, Justice and the Arts and former NDP MPP for Parkdale-High Park joins host Jeyan Jeganathan to discuss.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ontario's very first Pride Picnic was held at Hanlin's Point on the Toronto Islands in 1971. And since then, the 2SLGBTQIA community has experienced struggle and success on the road to acceptance. From the bathhouse raids of the 1980s to the legalization of same-sex marriage in the 2000s, to the addition of gender identity and expression to Ontario's Human Rights Code in the 2010s. Here now to talk about the progress made and the challenges that remain we welcome in the nation's capital Kali Metler, Executive Director of Capital Pride Ottawa. In Windsor Ontario, Derek Bezot, Director of Education and Operations at Trans Wellness Ontario. In Kingston Ontario, Maurice Tomlinson,

an activist and consultant with HIV Legal Network, and with us in studio, Sherry DeNovo, retired minister at Trinity St. Paul Centre for Faith, Justice and the Arts, and former NDP MPP for Parkdale High Park. Welcome Sherry in our studio. The pleasure, thank you. And welcome to the three for joining us online.

Callie, I'm going to come to you. Your work is ramping up, of course, for the preparation of Ottawa's Pride festivities in August. What can we expect this year? Yeah, we can expect the festival to be bigger and better than ever. Our audience numbers definitely grow year over year, and we are expecting absolutely no change this year especially with news coming out of the states. We're looking forward to welcoming more visitors to our festival in our nation's capital and yeah really just making this year sparkle for all of those who celebrate pride. All right and Derek, help us understand a little bit about the work

that you do. What is Trans Wellness Ontario and sort of the work that you day to day? So we are a social service agency trying to enhance and sustain the health and wellness through individual services like counseling and peer support and group programming and drop in events and things like that. And my role in education is really to do the education efforts of going out into the community of offering education services and consultation services to enhance capacity to serve and affirm and to include. And as well as I am a drag queen who fundraises for the organization to help sustain our efforts

as an organization that relies on grants and donations. A lot of my work is really just trying to sustain ourselves during this economic hardship that we're all facing. All right. I have to ask, what is your drag name? So I am Remedy from the House of Cures. From House of Cures. Oh, I like this.

Very nice. Yeah, your friendly neighborhood drag queen. Okay. Maurice, you wear many hats. We've just learned that, you know, you're a nurse, but, you know, you've always been advocating for gay rights, both in this country and out of this country for a long time. I'm curious, how has your work changed, if at all?

So it's been an interesting journey. I initially started my work with LGBTQ activism in an HIV AIDS hospice back home in Jamaica. Then when I realized I couldn't do much there because I didn't have any medical training, I then became a lawyer and I started challenging anti-gay laws, which I continue to do across the region with the support of the HIV legal network. But my interest has remained healthcare focused. So, you know, we recently heard that the FDA has approved this wonderful twice yearly drug that will prevent HIV in those who are on it. We have bimonthly Cabanua. We have wonderful advances. We're working toward the core, but there's a lot of

impediments that remain structural, legal, societal impediments that remain to access these legal, societal impediments that remain, to access these wonderful innovations. So that's where my work and the work of the HIV legal network continues to be. Now I am a nurse. I'm happy to combine my role both as a lawyer, challenging anti-gay laws, and as a nurse providing care for those who are infected, affected by for those who are infected, affected by multiple life-threatening illnesses, including HIV, which still is a chronic disease

which needs access for medications and care. So that's where everything I suspect will come to an end. We need to maintain access to people for all treatments, regardless of you know any difference or gender or any of those things. All right you're here we are going to obviously talk about some of the successes and challenges but I want to get a better idea of what pride was like when you were you know in your in your younger days. So Sherry I'm coming to you. We have a photo. This was 1971.

Tell us what we're looking at there. There you are. We've outlined you in a red box there. I was aged into blonde. I was aged into blonde, yes. Beautifully. Yeah, I was 21 with my then girlfriend. And Toronto Gay Action, you know,

it was a celebration, the first Pride. And there's a plaque on Hanlon's Point because it was a cruising area way before we started in 1971. So from going back to the 50s and even before, it's always been a queer positive space. But that same summer was the summer of We Demand. So the same group that I was part of, Toronto Gay Action, went to Parliament Hill.

It was the first, quote,quote, gay demonstration on Parliament Hill. And I was the only woman to sign on to it. First legalized same-sex marriage, I was honoured to do, and that was 2001, between two women of colour. I always try to correct history on that. But I mean, after that, the feds picked it up. So we start things in Ontario and the rest of the country carries on.

It's wonderful. All right. With that photo, I want to show another photo. This was 53 years later. You joined Toronto mayor, Olivia Chow at the unveiling of a plaque celebrating queer history right back at Hanlon's Point. Full circle moment.

You know, you talk about sort of being the trailblazers in this but what was it like to be there but also to know what it was like you know 50 plus years before that. Of course well first of all it's an honor and I do wear my collar when I talk about queer things because we know that you know fundamentalist religion is behind a lot of hate so I like to present that you know we're not all like that but yeah the plaque is up but two things I mean the first pride was celebration which pride is always and should always be but it was also demonstration which pride was and should always be so So it was both two-pronged. So we celebrated what we hadn't quite accomplished then.

But then we went on to demonstrate for what we needed. Because it was in the same group, same summer, same continuous kind of action. And I think that's really important to emphasize with Pride Now. And you heard the backlash is real. it's coming, it's here. It's not just in the States. It's Alberta and Saskatchewan taking away health care from the most vulnerable, most at-risk children.

So it's here, it's now, it's everywhere. So it's really important to keep those two components. Yes, we celebrate what we've accomplished It's phenomenal. It's a lot and there are legions of people behind every one of those bills but you know, we also have to keep what we've won and Progress we need more as you heard Maurice talking about yeah with that Maurice. I'm curious. Do you remember your first pride? What was that like? Oh Boy Maurice, I'm curious, do you remember your first pride? What was that like? Oh, boy. So you want to know my first pride here in Canada or

my first pride back home? Pride in Jamaica is a little different. I must point that out. So we don't do it as visibly as you do, obviously, it's still illegal to have same sex intimacy. You can go to prison for 10 years for even holding hands in the privacy of your bedroom. And so we have to do things a little differently. So we organize Pride with a lot of secrecy. You know, you have to go online and register, we vet your email and all of that.

And it's a lot of privacy around Pride. Then we go out and do a little public demonstration which only we know is gonna happen, nobody else, no crowds, no spectacle. Then I come to Canada and I'm in Toronto Pride and I was honored to be one of the International Grand Marshals at Capital Pride. It's a very different scenario where you have the,

well then, not now, police and fire and all the other agencies that we would even dream of supporting our efforts back home because they are the ones that are persecuting us. So it's a very different thing, I think, to come from, you know, the, I don't want to use developing world, but the other worlds to Canada. And to experience Pride in those two contexts, it's mind-blowing. And I'm really proud to say that I have marched in quite a few Prides, Kingston Pride, Toronto Pride, Capital Pride. They all have their uniqueness about them.

And the one thing I love is the fact that in Canada, we can express ourselves in this way, but we can't rest on our laurels because we can see those rights are being taken back now. All right, Callie, I am curious, you know, as Sherry was talking about, you know, Ontario being sort of this, you know, trailblazer and stuff, very different probably experiences in terms

of your first pride I am just curious what was that experience like for you yeah my first pride was Toronto Pride I couldn't even put a date on it now but it's got to be landing somewhere in the 2012 or 2013 so about you know 13 years or so ago. I was pretty doe-eyed at that time in my life. I had just come out, had my first girlfriend, had talked to my family about my lifestyle choices and all of those complicated conversations. I think that what I can say that that first Pride experience offered me was a lot of confirmation

that I was on the right path. It was also the first time I'd seen a drag performer and had never even heard of such a thing before, right? And now here I am with a list of 150 performers I hire every year, which is just a very fun and cool place to find myself in, especially when it comes to reflecting on, you know, personal experiences and how we grow and change as people. Derek. Oh, so my first experience actually is outside Ontario,

it's Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where I'm from. And I would have been 16 years old and I was in drag on a float with my fellow like Youth Can Do drama group and my mom was there with my grandma and it was incredible. PEI and Inchartland have an incredible Pride festival and great parade and a great history there. And then here would be Windsor Essex when I moved here 10 years ago. 2017 would have been my first Pride festival and it's incredible. We had a downtown then and right onto the Festival Square overlooking

the Detroit River and seeing Detroit right across. A lot of hot pavement though and they've moved it to Lansbury Park since then and I live for this. It's all down Ottawa Street and all these businesses come out and support and we land in a park for three days and you can sit in the shade, you can listen to entertainers, you can visit vendors. I live there for three days basically. I go home to sleep but I do come back the next day and I stay all day. And I'm just so proud. It's grown. And similar to what Callie had said, like here in Windsor-Essex, what we just had announced

was this year there is more funding from organizations and kind of corporate sponsors locally than there is in the years past. It's grown as well as attendance. And so there's struggles still, and I can speak to that, but we also have so many allies and progressive supporters in Windsor Essex in particular. And we're seeing that community support continue. And I'm very proud to be able to say that and share that, you know, in face of what is a lot of challenges

and struggle. All right, Callie, as we mentioned, you know, pride hasn't always been a celebratory. I want to talk to you about some of the darker parts of history. Let's talk about the LGBT Purge. What exactly is that, and walk us through why that was an important part of our history. Yeah, absolutely.

The LGBT Purge is a time period in Canada that is kind of captured from 1950 to 1990, where civil servants, members of the RCMP and folks in the military were removed, demoted, or taken off upward trajectories at their workplaces because they were thought to be a threat to the Canadian government and privacy. And all of this kind of fear around privacy and national security really came out of the red scare, the fear of communism, and that of course was learned in some ways too from the American context and our neighbors to the South.

So there's a lot of similarities, if you've heard of the lavender scare in the United States, that were, you know, manifesting between the 50s and the 90s in Canada. And yeah, now we call that time as the purge, because people were being purged out of their places of work in Canadian government. So we did see an apology for this practice, which was, I'll mention too, quite intensive. People were followed, they were surveilled, they were made to report on the activities of their friends and confidants to, you know, in order to maybe save their own position, you had to report on others'

activities outside of the workplace. So there was a lot of distrust, a lot of, you know, kind of quiet, secretive conversations about, you know, what it meant to be gay and be at work during that time. So as I was saying, we did see an apology from Prime Minister Trudeau in 2017 directly, you know, citing these kinds of trials and tribulations. And I think that the other kind of thing I'll point out about all of this is that, you know, Michelle Douglas as an individual is often seen as the case that really set the precedent for the end of the purge and why it ended. So yeah, just as a final note, Michelle was kind of, as people say, the last to be purged.

But the important thing to note is that there was a, she did take it to court and say this is not right. And there was a decision by the federal court in her favor saying, yeah, her being removed from her position is actually not aligned with human rights protections in Canada, which was a very monumental moment in Canadian history and to really cap off this period of purging.

Derek, I do want to talk about another stain in Ontario's history, bathhouse rates of 1981. Talk to us about this moment and sort of the aftermath. I think a lot of people think that That this was kind of centered in sort of the urban areas But from what I understand there are some connections to other parts of this province as well to Windsor's well Yeah I will just say very quickly that if anyone wants to learn more about the purge the Canadian human rights museum

Just put out this new exhibition and Walter Cassie is a local historian here in Windsor I was in a role to help build that. It's called Love in a Dangerous Time. And if you can see the exhibition at the Canadian Community Rights Museum, you can. Or online. They have some incredible education materials and teacher guides and a lot of information there that is a lot pulled from the archives, which is another great resource to learn more. But just to say, you know, here in Windsor, Essex, we did have the Edna bathhouse was raided.

There was a few bathhouse that have been raided. There's a lot of police repression in this area. We did have quite a big scene because of just the population and what is an urban center, but also because of Detroit, right? And the crossover people being able to have a lot more anonymity coming here. And before I moved here and before 9-11, really, the of people was was really just like fish and water in some ways and there was much more ease to be able to cross and to be a part of that community as well as to be a part of this community and so because of that we did have a lot more

here that then was also repressed and state interaction right to shut down those places of community gathering and to close out those opportunities to be with each other. Sherry, what was it like to be, you know, we're kind of going through history there, but you were living it. I was living it and just because of Maurice's activism, which I've seen firsthand over the years, I just wanted to mention that, but sadly, you know, a number of sponsors have pulled out of Toronto Pride particularly big multinationals and so when I said that the first pride was both celebration and demonstration I think that one of the things that we might ask just suggesting of our big corporate sponsors is that that they fly Pride flags here and that they're very

out in their support here. That's great and I think we should love that. But what are they doing in other countries? We do have Canadian multinationals that operate, for example, in Jamaica and other places where it's illegal. Are they showing pride there? Are they flying the flags there? Are they?

And that, and down down there they have way more influence too because of their money on governments. So again this is not just me speaking here, this is a general feeling I think among you know pride not and pride organizers as well as pride you know participants is that maybe we should be hoping or expecting more from those who march with us the other 363 days of the year as well as on the day. So celebrate, you know, celebration, demonstration. Do something with it. Action. Great point. I do want to bring Maurice back into the conversation because I do want to talk about something that Sherry had mentioned. It's been 20 years since same-sex marriage was legalized in Canada and of course, because we talked about Ontario, 22 years in Ontario.

It seems like a long time ago, but as we know other countries are still struggling to keep that up. How has the conversation around same-sex marriage changed over the years, Maurice? conversation around same-sex marriage changed over the years, Maurice? Oh boy. The reality is that same-sex marriage galvanized the fundamentalists to challenge LGBT human rights even more so than HIV. I was shocked because I've seen both the influx of fundamentalists when HIV was killing people. And they were using that as a justification to ban LGBT human rights. Then marriage equality. And it's just redoubled their efforts because they hate love. That's the bottom line. They hate love. And they are so vehement now that they're in Jamaica, for example example they've entrenched a ban in our

Constitution on any form of same-gender relationship not even domestic partnerships or anything and that's directly related to a Canadian who went to Jamaica to argue that they shouldn't adopt the loose human rights charter that we have in Canada in Jamaica because it would lead to the horrors of gay marriage. And, you know, this is the influence that these fundamentalists, not only in the States, also in Canada, are having around the world. They're going all over Tanzania, you name it, to say we cannot allow any form of same gender relationships to be recognized, not even domestic partnerships, because it's going to lead to marriage equality. And that's going to lead to things which we have yet to see

happen, but in their mind, the corruption of children, all of that. So it's great that we've had it in Canada. It's not progressing in other parts of the world. It's actually being used as a hammer or a sledgehammer to prevent the growth of any form of human rights for LGBT people All right. I want to show a clip From the agenda from 2011. This is with former Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynn. Have a listen The mums in that family shouldn't have to go into the school and read the riot act to the principal and say, okay, my kid's coming to your school, they're two mothers, if she's ever harassed, you know, you're going to hear from me. She shouldn't have to do that. Right now, she may still have to do

that. You know, in the province, she may still have to go into the principal and say, look, this is the situation you need to let the teachers know. But four-year-old kids... How often is that happening, though? It's happening. Alright Sherry, I'm coming to you. Are we still at a point in time where anything other than the nuclear family still has to be explained? Well, and nice to see Kathleen.

I consider her a friend now. We worked across the aisle on bills together. You know, just to say, I was the keynote for the AGM of Ontario English Catholic teachers, almost a thousand teachers in that room. They all applauded. I wore my collar. I do a slide of 50 years of queer activism, now 54. But anyway, and so I think it's really, really important that we keep,

often it's the boards for the Catholic keep, often it's the boards, for the Catholic teachers, often it's the bishops and the boards, but for all of our teachers who are supportive and inclusive, and most of the teachers unions, I'd say all of the teachers unions are really, we need to support those that support us in the schools, as well as our children, of course. But those teachers that are on the front lines, particularly in Alberta, Saskatchewan,

where they're being asked to do, I think, make terrible moves in terms of the children's safety, don't rat them out. Stand up for your children. Be there. And I've spoken in schools where there are, and remember, we all share people in the book, Muslims, Jews, and remember we all share, you know, people in the book, Muslims, Jews, Christians, we all share the same passages.

Like it's really important so that the kids have, I call it spiritual armor, the teachers have it too, so that they don't get sidelined by using religion as you heard Maurice talking about, as a weapon. That is not in any of our scripture in any of the world religions I can argue that another show but I mean the reality is like we need to support our teachers and supporting our children and we Need to support our children and that's going to be ongoing. It's going to be always it's always been always But now again know your rights the laws on your side at

least here. All right Derek I want to obviously get your take on this with your involvement in the Windsor school system but also your proximity to another country that is having some pretty intense conversations that you know we may say that you know that border protects us but unfortunately conversations are coming north of the border with it Yeah, and we're probably one of the most American of Canadian cities, right? And same with Sarnia and some of these other border towns. But just to say that I do think to share what Sherry DeNovo just said, like, absolutely, we need to support our champions and champion our champions. And we have a very good relationship with our local Greater Essex County District School Board,

and we have a decent relationship with our other school boards as well, the Catholic and French Catholic. And we've gone to do PD days and be involved in education efforts. And we have Run for Rocky that does amazing fundraising, support the GSAs in our region and our community organizations. And that relationship with really encouraging those teachers and giving them boxes of supplies and really trying to bolster their spirits and keep morale high. Like that's one of the major reasons I do the drag shows as fundraisers is keep morale high, keep the doors open and also talk about what are the issues affecting us and to really engage in a lot of advocacy

with our local politicians. But just to say the influence is felt, it's not only that we talk in Fahrenheit here, it is also that a lot of those values, a lot of that stigma, a lot of that bias is here. There's a lot of extremism. There's a lot of religious fanaticism, particularly in our county areas. And so it's an issue that we're currently working with, right? Like I was walking down the street the other day and, you know, slurs were yelled at me as I'm just walking with my pink, shiny cowboy boots. And that's the danger of right now

there's so much tension and people are very close, I think, to engaging in further violence, right? And I agree exactly with Sherry said about keeping our kids safe because I support teens and some of them are quite young, just coming of age into teenagehood and they know themselves or figuring out at least, like they have a sense and getting to see, because I have like 30 to 40 of them hanging out on Wednesday nights, the way that they gather and the sense of self that emerges. And a lot of these kids are isolated in their schools. They're the only queer kid they know in their school who's open and they're being bullied

every day. And the teachers and administrators are not doing enough to protect them. And that's the fear that I have is that right now we're in a moment where we could very quickly lose a lot of gains. And certainly the gains we have are not culturally embedded within our localized culture of relationships. And so there's a lot of work that I'm doing of just trying to get us all on board to be an allyship in solidarity with each other. Because like we're all struggling right now.

And then certainly these human rights that are trying to actually protect all of us, like everyone's gender identity is protected, everyone's sexual orientation is protected, right? These ways of being are being protected. And it's important because it is giving us so much beauty, diversity, and culture as we're more free to be ourselves and to see how love emerges in the human population. Right? So I really appreciate being here today and just getting to say a few words, but certainly

like I feel like we're on the vanguard. I want to go back down memory lane and look at a clip from 2013 where author Andrew Solomon talks about the move from tolerance to acceptance. Have a listen. I see that the experience of gay people is so radically different now from what it used to be. I'm involved with the gay and lesbian studies program at Yale where I studied. The person who founded the program is Larry Kramer, leading gay activist now in his 70s. When he talks about what it was like to be gay at Yale in the 1950s, I listen to him and

I think I can't imagine how anyone could have survived that. And I'm so grateful that I was gay at Yale in the 1980s. But then I look at the students who are there now, and I see the experience they're having as they imagine marriage and family and stability and wide acceptance by their families and by everyone else around them. And I'm deeply jealous of the experience they have. And my hope is that when they come back, when they're approaching 50,

they'll have the same feeling of jealousy for the next generation. A beautiful clip there. Maurice, over a decade later, is Andrew right? So, personal story. My son came out to me at 19. He had not had the courage to tell me he had been kept away from me for years because family dynamics etc etc. Anyway, and I was so happy that one, he came out to me in Canada where he's now a permanent resident working on his citizenship

very slowly. But I'm happy that he's here because like the speaker one just said, I'm jealous. I'm jealous that he doesn't have to endure half the, pardon my French, shite that I had to endure growing up in Jamaica. He shows me way too many revealing photos of himself at raves and I'm telling him, don't do it anymore, can't take it. But he goes to raves, you know, he's going to all the Pride parades, he's having the best time he can possibly have. Me? My experience of pride, as I said, was secrecy. There was only a glimmer of hope when we would be able to go out on the street briefly. Him? Oh no.

There's very little left to the imagination, both me and his mother. Me and his mother are worried about that. But anyway, the point is I am so jealous, but at the same time so happy, so proud, and that's what gives me the energy to keep working for liberation here and there. Because we are gays of a certain age. You young people are lucky. But us gays of a certain age, we have to keep the fight going so that our legacy is maintained. Because as we've seen in the States, it is not as a lawyer can start to say it is not etched in stone. No human rights is permanent. You have to fight it,

fight to keep it every single day. Kali, I want to get your take as someone who is younger. You know, what just that clip, but also what Maurice had to say. Yeah. I think there's definitely publicly a view that Pride is a celebration. But to kind of go back to the driving question of the show, is Pride still a protest? Like, certainly advocacy is still

a major part of our festival. We try not to be too downtrodden all the time. So we do say, you know, this nine day period is our time to celebrate our joy and celebrate all of the hard work that we've done throughout the year. All of that advocacy that, you know, Maurice and Sherry talks about that we see evidenced in the black and white photos. We are sharing the legacy of that activism. That's certainly something that's being taken up by the younger generation, if I can put myself into that category. Without too much offense here, yeah,

definitely worth it being taken up and is being held with very much care and sensitivity to the very hard work that's come before us. So certainly I feel pride is a place to celebrate all of this advocacy, but also a place to plan for future advocacy. All right. I only got 30 seconds left, but I do want to come to Derek and Sherry.

Derek, I'm going to come to you first. What changes should be made today to make sure the conversation a decade from now is where you expect it to be? I think if there's a answer to the call from the Enchanté Network to make sure there's funding available for organizations across the country that serve our community to have dedicated funding to ensure that they don't disappear. We've lost a few organizations already in the last six months to a year and I'm certainly in a precarious situation with Trans Wellness Ontario and our local festivals so it's really wanting to make sure that we

have the support we need to exist. We will always exist as our current funding campaign will always exist. Make sure our trans wellness still exists as well. All right, Sherry, you got the last one. Tenth anniversary of banning conversion therapy was my bill first in Canada again, based on the stories of survivors. It's not being enforced. It's still happening.

Our children are still being subjected to it. It just calls something different. We have to enforce our laws. There are laws out here. And we have to require of those people that participate in Pride that those laws are extended to everywhere. And it's easy to be brave when you're surrounded by a million people in a Pride parade.

It's harder for people like Maurice and others who have to deal with other countries. We need to make Pride international. And we need to require of our multinationals that they do that. So, yeah, let's all about the children, keep our children safe. All right, we're going to leave it there. I would like to mention that our documentary, Parade Queer Acts of Love and Resistance, will premiere June 22nd at 9 p.m. on TVO

and on our website, tvo.org, and our YouTube channel. I want to thank you all so much, Kali, Maurice, Derek, Sherry. Thank you so much for joining us and for your insights and your stories and your inspiration and for the work that you do. Thank you so much. Thank you.