Introduction (a work in progress)

I started my homepage here in 1996. Besides having a section containing my biography, I have never written why the page is about what it is. Or anything about my journey to this point in my life except for the homogenized (no pun intended!) version on my bio page.

I am constantly updating sections, such as the HIV/AIDS and men's health section, mainly because AIDS has been an intimate part of my life for almost two decades now, and a battle with cancer that has passed the one decade tide mark. Besides slapping up my viral load or CD4 count, I've never talked outside of discussion groups about that part of my life which hovers very close to the surface of my consciousness 24/7. It has impacted every aspect of my life, from relationships to work. I'll get into that later.

The other sections I probably put more time into are the human rights and queer resource sections. I use the term queer as a word I've liberated and empowered. And I've been queer 24/7 for most of my life.

hate crimes........

Tonight, March 16th. 2002 I watched the movie 'The Matthew Shepard Story'. I had followed the story on the Internet from pretty well the moment Matthew was found tied to the fence. I'd followed similar stories since my teens, but I guess Matthew's story struck a certain resonance in people. Or maybe Matthew's untimely death came at a moment when people had had enough mindless violence.

So here I sit, with a need to write, not struck by my muse, but by a simple line in the movie where Matthew's character said after he was raped in Morocco.......'why did they take my shoes?'

I think that every gay and lesbian that is 'out' anywhere has been affected by violence, if not first hand, then to someone in their immediate circle of friends or extended family.

Like Matthew, no, like almost all gay people, there is a draw to the bright lights/big city. Just like all maritime people are drawn back to the sea, like they are Atlanteans re-incarnated, queer folk are drawn to the nearest Oz. I had to escape from small Mount Allison University where I was taunted and driven out of Trueman House Residence. Vancouver was my Oz, From sea to shining sea.

On a bright warm autumn evening in Vancouver's West End (1977), my friend Sean and I walked home from a private gay club named 'Faces'. We had met for a cocktail after I had got off work and he from rehearsal for the Vancouver Youth Symphony. We walked up Davie Street, which was then, and now, the 'heart' of Vancouver's 'gay ghetto'.

As we were directly across from my craft shop on the 1100 block, we were both grabbed by the neck and shoved into an alley. The last thing I remember, besides a scuffed, pointed-toed brown cowboy boot I had a ground level view of, was someone saying 'that's enough', and the reply, 'I ain't finished with them yet' .

I don't have any recollection until the next day. We were found and saved that evening by two angels in the guise of drag queens. That block on Davie was where the transvestites 'worked'.

Someone at St. Paul's Hospital (2 blocks from the beating) telephoned the police who came the next day to interview me. Sean was still in a coma. I felt more like a criminal than a victim because of their questions. "Did you taunt them; did you provoke them?" This was years before the 'gay panic' defense. I told the officers I never even saw them. I only saw boots. They asked me if I'd been robbed and I asked them to get my pants out of the closet, which were soiled and bloodied. My wallet and money were still there.

That's when the realization hit me; that I wasn't mugged for money. I was walking on Davie, so I was presumed to be gay. And I was left for dead for that alone. I told the policemen that I couldn't believe I hadn't been robbed. It would have made me feel better, I guess, if I had been. As things looked, Sean and I had been hunted for sport.

The police didn't push for me to do anything, for to them, there wasn't really a crime. And I had a distrust of the police. During that time, they were known to hid a wagon near a popular gay bar called the 'Gandydancer', which was on Hamilton Street, and in the 70s, quite alone because it was situated in a warehouse district. They'd drag men into the back of the wagon and beat them. But we still went down to that area, even with the 'known danger'. One of those things that you hear about, but never seem to know anyone personally that this has happened to.

Sean never recovered. After his release from the hospital, he went to his parents home in the Okanagan Valley to live, and never played the Viola again because of the brain damage he suffered.

Until I left Vancouver in the mid 1990s, I knew many people who were bashing and several who died. Young males would come into the West End in groups, and go out bashing. Baseball bats were their weapons of choice, and on some occassions, they found more damage could be inflicted if you wrapped the bat with cattle (barb) wire. They would do their hunting around he Aquatic Centre at Sunset Beach, near the Public Changing Rooms at English Bay and in Stanley Park along the trails. It was in the latter locale, on the trails of the park where Aaron Webster was found naked and dying on November 17th of last year. Like in the Matthew Shepard case, the arrested men used the 'homosexual panic' defense. Aaron Webster 'came on' to them. Therefore, Aaron had to die.

One of the factors that helped me decide to return to my homeland was an attack on me by five teenagers in 1994. I was unlocking the back door to my apartment building on Nelson and Cardero Streets when I was hit over the head with a wrought iron lawn chair....for starters. after I climbed out of the trash in the dumpster where I'd been tossed when they were finished, I got to my apartment and dialed 9-1-1. The nice operator told me that I was the '5'th young man' to say they'd been beaten up by a group of boys in my neighbourhood that night. The police didn't arrive for 2 days.

Several weeks later, I recognized two of the boys in a photo in the 'West End Courier' of a sports team from King George High School. I telephoned the police but again, nothing was done. Nothing done by the police, but some friends decided to 'fight fire with fire'. I didn't condone it, but I was more disturbed by the authorities dismissing it too readily because the people attacked were gay. That we were inferior.

Today in the middle east, men are beheaded or have stone walls pushed over onto them for the simple fact that they are, or presumed to be, homosexual. People with a moral conscience need to bear witness to crimes of bodily or psychological attack.

......working with kids

Before I moved to Lunenburg from Halifax, my powers that be had pointed me south, to work with street kids that were targeted by police death squads in Bogota, Columbia. I even had had my shots and innoculations, but, one of those strange twists of life came along (in the form of a cute guy, who ended up being a disappointment, but we won't go there...) The organization I would have worked is the 'Children of the Andes Foundation'. Ergo, my interest in my pages for Casa Alianza's in Honduras' work, which I've done some fundraising for. Last year, I stated compiling their news releases and appeals every couple of months. Ironically, their director, Bruce Harris, was a member of 'Up With People' the same year I was, '74-5. I still find it almost incomprehensible that in this day and age they shoot children, street kids, simply because they're 'bad for tourism'.

My best and dearest friend, George Munroe, lived in Lunenburg before I did, and through him, I was introduced to 'Youth Support', where he was an addictions counsellor to teens. I joined the Foundation, which funds all extra-curricular activities, and have been the Chairman for 4 years now. So, I get to work with problem and troubled youth, just not in Latin America! I've gotten to know some great kids and it's a good feeling when some of them graduate high school and go on to better things, leaving their shaky teen years behind. In 1998, with the use of land owned by my good friends, the Wentzell family, I started 'the farm project' in Crousetown, near Bridgetown. I saw the opportunity and benefits of having an ongoing preoject for the kids. Sort of work as rehabilitation and fun at the same time. This will be it's 5th season, and we've all learned from it. The first year we plowed with a team of oxen, learned how to make soil blocks and companion plant. Since then we've built a 60' greenhouse, a 400' log fence, made preserves, pickles fom what we've grown , dried herbs, marketed, made log furniture and mentored to pre-teens. Each year approximately 30 odd teens are involved and become a forrm of family. We have Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners there. Starting in 2000, I've been running self-esteem and bullying workshops for the Foundation.

.........that aids thang.....

...was something I hadn't planned for. Even though I worked for a doctor with a predominantly gay clientele at Hycroft Medical, we had only seen one case that we knew of. We had heard rumblings, but it was from south of the border. I took sick on October 24th, 1984, and was diagnosed with PCP (pneumocystic carinii pneumonia) and was quickly put into quarantine. It was an efficient way to learn who your friends really are. My partner Donald and his mother, and my ex David were the only people to visit, besides the medical staff. Don immediately went into denial, and even after I did AIDS-related work for the next 14 years, Don would not get tested for several years. I don't ruminate on if this hastened his death or not. It was rarely talked about in our home. We did enter a double-blind drug trial together, but when Don and seceral others became quite anemic, the study was abandoned.

I became an activist, and Don turned to the gym and an obsession to weight-training and macrobiotic diets. We found we had become pariahs (Don through association) and we decided to move to Calgary, where he had been born, and I opened an art gallery in the northeast part of the city.

.....to be continued.

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