Newspaper clipping from Mom: “A GAY JOCK TAKES OFF THE MASK”

It was on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen’s March 17 “Saturday Observer”  section. The paper sat on a table beside Mom’s comfy chair, where she keeps anything she wants to pass along to me.  She knows that, like Jamie Hubley, whose passing touched me so deeply, hockey stories wouldn’t normally need to be on [...]

So three lawyers walk into the Ontario Legislature…

…but this is no joke! There’s a friendly exercise each morning that the Ontario Legislature sits when Members have the opportunity to introduce guests seated in the gallery – family members of one of the high school student pages, perhaps a visiting township reeve, or dignitaries representing other governments, be they in Canada or elsewhere. [...]

Rest in Peace, Jamie Hubley

“I’m tired of life, really. It’s so hard, I’m sorry, I can’t take it anymore.” “I don’t want my parents to think this is their fault, either. I love my mom and dad. It’s just too hard. I don’t want to wait three more years, this hurts too much.” As carefully as he worded his [...]

Not pictured

View Full Album I am mindful, on this Father’s Day, that I do not have many photographs of Thomas Arnold (“Arnie”) Chaplin.  (The additional ones I do have are wedding party shots with people who might not wish to be published.)  However my memory informs me of many more, in safe-keeping with Mom, from the [...]

June 18 proclaimed as Pride Day in the Town of Perth, Ontario!

Imagine my delight, and yes pride, to learn that LGBT Lanark County had won its bid for a Pride Day proclamation in Perth for June 18. (This was also the first I’d heard of LGBT Lanark County. Their web site is pretty impressive!) The Perth Courier, and an advertiser-householder known locally as the EMC, both [...]

Unpacking (more) personal baggage

Pardon me for the humourless dissecting of my neuroses Have I mentioned before having used, for many years, the esteem-busting mantra “If anyone deserves AIDS, I do!”  (Looking at it now I feel like each word should be italicized for emphasis, rather than just one or two.) What a message: If anyone deserves AIDS, I [...]

30 years “out” – February 5 (when Toronto cops swept through the baths)

If ever I’ve had a “But for the grace of God, there go I” occasion (even though I have problems with that expression) it would have to have been February 5, 1981 – thirty years ago today. At 11 p.m. that night, more than 150 police carried out simultaneous raids on four of Toronto’s most [...]

“It Gets Better” tops 2010 list

Dan Savage and husband Terry Miller started something in 2010 that Mark Kelley and the CBC Connect crew put at the top of Connect 10: A  Countdown of the most popular stories online in 2010. Responding to highly-publicized cases of bullying and suicides of gays and lesbians, the “It Gets Better” project was launched with [...]

World AIDS Day 2010 – Stories – 2 – “This friend living with AIDS who gave me so much…” by Dominique Gauvreau

Each author in this series has generously given me permission to post their work. The views and experiences shared are their own. Where applicable, links will also be provided at the end of the piece. This is the World AIDS Day, 2010 entry in Dominique Gauvreau’s blog Rencontre sous le Chêne de Mamré (Meeting under [...]

Ever-developing story – Clint “I-like-it-when-gays-die” McCance speaks to CNN’s Anderson Cooper: brain farts maybe?

I’m keeping this post open to add more developments.  Suffice to say, to begin, that Clint McCance’s so-called apology on CNN’s AC 360 is not going over very well.  (As I wrote at the time it seemed like Anderson had to pull out the nature of his wrongs.  They weren’t forthcoming from McCance himself.) David [...]

Clint McCance is a man who should be run out of Arkansas

This idiot’s 15 minutes (I don’t expect he’d know what that means) will, hopefully, soon be over but surely not before he loses his elected job on the Midland, Arkansas school board. Anderson Cooper set the story up this way last evening and then had a couple of great guests, including the whistle-blower: A screen-shot of [...]

Sticks and Stones…

I’d imagine it must be painful for a parent to have to impart to their children those familiar words, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” I was certainly skeptical. Long before summoning the courage to come out to my parents at age 21, I had known that I [...]

Perhaps my most difficult topic yet (for Tyler Clementi)

Let’s talk about suicide! The single-most read entry of this blog – ever – is seeing an up-tick in hits as the one year anniversary of this local tragedy looms large. Today, with the recovery of his body, social media are decrying the suicide, and circumstances behind it, of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, a [...]

Unholy hubris

Crooks & Liars blogger karoli got it so right when she wrote, “If you have had the misfortune of being one of those kids who was sexually victimized by an adult, the one thing you know is the script. You know it by heart, and even after years of therapy and recovery and acceptance that [...]

A streetcar stop reunion brings back memories

The other night, my arms heavy with groceries, I heard my name being called at the corner of Yonge and Carlton. That’s a very busy corner so this is definitely a ‘small world’ story. He told me, as I didn’t immediately recognize him, that he was Pete Bailey from The Standard (in St. Catharines) and [...]