It wasn’t all wine and roses at the ministry of fun, however. One of our agencies (damn agencies!) — Ontario Place — was chaired by Patti Starr, who became the centre of a fundraising scandal. (She made illegal campaign donations to the Liberal Party and its various candidates in her role as head of the Toronto section of the National Council of Jewish Women, a charity.) The story, and its various spinoffs (including Starr’s relationship with the development industry), was front-page news at the time, especially in the Globe and Mail, which was delivering almost daily scoops on it. One of my jobs was to get the Globe’s “bulldog” edition late at night at Yonge and Bloor to get an advance look at the latest instalment in the scandal. Starr eventually had to resign as chair of Ontario Place, but the scandal stuck with the Peterson government and helped to bring it down in 1990. Starr was eventually charged with fraud and breach of trust, convicted, and served time. Somewhere in my forty boxes of stuff, I have the original of her resignation letter.
O’Neil survived that upheaval but was moved in a subsequent cabinet shuffle from Tourism and Recreation to the Mines ministry. It was interpreted at the time as a demotion, but O’Neil didn’t see it that way — in part because eastern Ontario had a proud mining history. On his watch, the Mining Act was rewritten to open up more Crown land for prospecting. Also attached to the portfolio was an added bonus of foreign travel. At the urging of Hugh’s ex-colleague Pat Reid, a former Liberal MPP who had become head of the Ontario Mining Association, O’Neil went on a tour of nickel refineries in Norway and Wales, with a side trip to Finland to promote mining investment. To make the trip more palatable to the Premier’s Office, we were forced to take on the additional task of delivering the bid book for the 1996 Summer Olympics to an IOC representative in the Netherlands. It was my first trip to continental Europe, and I took full advantage of it. To this day, I remember Dutch gold medalist Anton Geesink (judo) touring us about Utrecht. First stop was a great beer hall, where I drank mine and Hughie’s too, and then came the harbourside, where I enjoyed the raw herring so well it earned me a second helping.
While we were attending a reception in Helsinki a few days later, a call came in from the Premier’s Office. Christine Hart (whose by-election win I had assisted on in 1986) had been dumped as minister of culture and communications over a possible conflict of interest with a telecommunications company that had donated to her campaign. The premier needed to hand her responsibilities off to someone — Hugh. So, in addition to being minister of mines, O’Neil now had the Ministry of Culture and Communications added to his portfolio. It was an incongruous pairing, but we made the most of it, and Hugh and his wife, Donna, were early and vigorous promoters of the arts scene in Quinte.
This situation didn’t last long, however, because Peterson was about to call a snap election, over the objections of some of his ministers (including O’Neil, although he was too loyal to say it out loud). The government was not due to face the electorate until 1991, but Peterson decided to go to the polls a year early, notwithstanding signs of growing voter discontent. Among other things, Peterson was one of the champions of the Meech Lake Accord, signed with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1987. The accord was unpopular on the ground in Ontario, for a variety of reasons. I had witnessed some of the backlash myself while advancing a bus tour for Peterson through O’Neil’s eastern Ontario backyard in the summer of 1989. I recall an event in Kingston — a breakfast in a tent that was ringed with protesters, many of them shouting anti-French slogans.
Peterson’s government was seen by many as being obsessed with Meech Lake and constitutional reform, to the detriment of everything else. And Peterson himself was seen as too closely linked to Mulroney (“Lyin’ Brian”). This image was magnified when Peterson, in a futile last-ditch effort to save the accord, offered to give up six of Ontario’s twenty-four Senate seats, to be redistributed among other provinces east and west to win their agreement to Meech Lake. It was a magnanimous gesture that helped to cement a deal at the bargaining table. But the deal fell apart, and Peterson was left holding a bag of nothing. It was tough for me because Trudeau the elder, who was my hero, and Peterson, who had given me my first full-time job in politics, were at such odds.
O’Neil took cabinet confidentiality seriously and kept his opinions close to his chest, but I knew that he had a foreboding sense that the 1990 election was not going to end well. As it turned out, the campaign didn’t start well, either. At Peterson’s kick-off press conference on July 30, his message was drowned out by a tape recorder protesting the government’s “failure to protect the environment.” (The tape recorder was placed on the podium by Gord Perks, a Greenpeace activist then, now a Toronto city councillor.)
A week later, I was tasked with organizing the nomination meeting for Peterson himself in his London Centre riding. It was a fiasco. The premier’s local team failed to produce a crowd, so the hall looked half-empty. And the event was crashed by John Clarke, an anti-poverty activist. “You’re the poverty premier,” Clarke shouted at Peterson.
“Someday you’re going to grow up and find a responsible job,” retorted the premier.
Clarke was ushered out of the hall by two large Liberal supporters, but the damage had been done. And my team was blamed for it. After that, we were banished to northern Ontario, where we organized campaign events for Peterson in Wawa, Kapuskasing, Hearst, and North Bay. I remember the event in North Bay well. It was a Friday night, and just before going to speak, Peterson was informed that, for the first time, tomorrow’s press would report that the NDP was ahead in the polls. His back to the wall, Peterson delivered a heckuva speech that night. But it was too late. Not even a proposed sales tax cut could turn the tide.
On election night, I was in Simcoe West riding where we had come within a hair of winning in 1987. The first results there showed the Liberal candidate running third and the NDP in front. In a rural area, that was unheard of. So we knew our goose was cooked. Elsewhere in Ontario, the results were equally poor, although O’Neil was re-elected in Quinte. Province-wide, the NDP won a majority and the Liberals fell from ninety-five seats to just thirty-six. Immediately afterward, I drove all the way from Stayner back to Queen’s Park for a midnight meeting with other political aides in O’Neil’s office. The meeting was more about commiserating than plotting our futures, but I felt the need to share the pain.
On September 6, 1990, the people of Ontario did not set out to put the NDP in power with Bob Rae as premier. Rather, the voters decided to give Peterson and the Liberals a bitch-slap. The slap’s unintended consequences included Peterson losing his own seat. He handled his defeat with dignity and humility, and he has since re-established himself as a statesman in the province and in the country. I hearkened back to this moment when I suffered my own humbling defeat in the 2010 Toronto mayoral election. More about that later.
* * *
The Peterson government has its critics. But there were many significant reforms during its five years in power, from blue boxes to the French Languages Services Act. One that stood out for me was Bill 7. It was a simple bill, adding sexual orientation as prohibited grounds for discrimination in Ontario. But it had a complex history.
The bill began under the outgoing Conservative government in 1985 as part of a package of legislation to bring Ontario’s laws into conformity with the Charter of Rights. It was considered non-controversial at the time. But as it wound through committee hearings, an amendment brought forward by Evelyn Gigantes, an NDP MPP, changed all that by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. With the stroke of a pen, Bill 7 was changed from a piece of housekeeping legislation to a lightning rod. Suddenly, the bill faced considerable opposition, including a group called the Coalition for Family Values and the Catholic Church. Vehemently critical letters and phone calls began flooding into MPPs’ offices. A counter campaign in favour of the amendment began in the gay community and drew support from some of the province’s key unions.
This all c
ame to a head in the Legislature on December 2, 1986. I was there, seated in the members’ gallery, as Premier Peterson rose to close the debate. I remember his words to this day:
Supposing that when one of my children was sixteen or eighteen he came to me and said, “Dad, I am a homosexual,” what would I do then? Would I give my child some of the speeches we have heard in this House in the past six days and throw him out the door? Obviously, I would be concerned. Obviously, there would be repercussions. Obviously, I would look at myself and ask, “What did I do wrong?”
My guess is that most of us, after we had got over the shock, would embrace that child and try to incorporate him into our own family. We would say we did not want anyone to discriminate against him in terms of his job or housing just because of a lifestyle that, for some reason unknown to any of us, he had adopted. If you could put it in the context of a loving parent for all the children of the province, that might make it a little easier for some of the people who have difficulty with this.
I am proud to support this amendment today. I do not believe we can put it off and off and off.*
With such strong backing from the premier, the amendment passed that day, by a vote of sixty-four to forty-five. I teared up and caught the eye of my colleague Pam Gutteridge. I wasn’t “out” by then, but I think she knew. Over the next few years, I would use the safe haven the premier created for me within the party and government to come out to various people at various times. One such early confession came after a painful by-election in London North. (The incumbent Liberal, Ron Van Horne, had quit the Legislature after being dumped from cabinet.) The by-election was won by Dianne Cunningham for the Conservatives. Pat Sorbara drove me home to Toronto on that night. I was totally drunk. I said something like: “I’m gay, but I think I am going to throw up, so please pull over.”
I didn’t reveal my sexual orientation to many people back then. For instance, I didn’t tell Hugh O’Neil. Nor was I sending out a lot of clues. Instead, I bit my tongue on more than one occasion when gay slurs (common back then) were uttered in my presence. For instance, I remember dining with O’Neil at Bigliardi’s, a steak house that happened to be situated in the heart of the Gay Village. (It’s now a high-end gay strip club.) This was at the time of one of the early Pride parades. The proprietor, George Bigliardi, approached our table and declared: “How dare they say they’re proud.” I nearly gagged. (Later, Bigliardi evolved, as so many others did. He became a regular customer of mine at my film shop, and I came to know him and his family well.)
But beyond the confines of my political life, I was exploring the boundaries. I can remember as if it were yesterday my first visit to a gay bar, Buddies, which was located down a laneway off Church at Gerrard. Little did I know that the guy sitting at the end of the bar was the owner of the place, none other than George Hislop, the unofficial mayor of the Gay Village. He was well known for his runs for elected office in 1980 (Toronto city council) and 1981 (Ontario Legislature). He was also charged — as a part-owner — in the infamous 1981 bath-house raids. I first heard his name spat out in disgust that a gay man would dare to be open about his sexuality, let alone seek elected office. It’s one of the great joys in my life that I came to know and love George, and I could only wish that I had known him longer.
Another time, I was inside Chaps bar on Isabella on Halloween. New to the scene, I was shocked to the core when I exited only to find that a massive throng of onlookers had gathered to watch the costumed set arrive. Looking into a camera, I said, “Hi, Mom,” while hoping like hell that it wasn’t rolling.
Occasionally, I would run into other Queen’s Parkers at the gay bars I attended. Ian Scott, then the attorney general, was a frequent visitor to Chaps, although he was not publicly “out” at that time. Indeed, when confronted on his sexuality by a Toronto Sun reporter, Scott replied, “Publish at your peril.” The Sun, perhaps surprisingly, never did. Nor did any of the other newspapers in the city, although their reporters knew full well that Scott was gay. It was as if the local media had adopted their own version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
One sympathetic ear for me in those days was Bill Yetman, a staffer in Lily Munro’s office, which was in the same building as O’Neil’s ministry. A gay man himself, Yetman was a key factor in drawing me out of my shell and enlarging my network. He would take me to Bemelmans on Bloor Street, a straight bar but one with a big mixed crowd after work on Friday nights.
So I was living the gay life and systematically bringing people into the loop on a need-to-know basis. When people ask me when I came out, I say: “I am always coming out.” But I suppose the signature moment for me was in 1994, when Lyn McLeod, then leader of the provincial Liberals, reversed herself in the vote on same-sex benefits in the Legislature. In response, Gordon Floyd (who had been a senior aide in Stuart Smith’s office) and I formed an organization called Liberals for Equality Rights. As a spokesperson for the group, which numbered dozens and dozens, I did a series of TV interviews on the day of the vote. I remember calling my mother to give her a heads-up. “If there is anyone you haven’t told already, now is the time.” She understood and, as was customary, expressed no dismay at the implication for herself.
* * *
In September 1990, however, that moment was long in the future. My mind was elsewhere in the days following the government’s defeat. In fact, I was in a bit of a daze. As a distraction, I attended some movies at the Toronto International Film Festival. (I got the tickets thanks to O’Neil’s position as the minister of culture.) At the opening screening of Bethune at the Eglinton theatre, I approached the premier-elect, Bob Rae. “I’m one of your victims,” I told him. I don’t recall his exact words in response, but his eyes clearly said “Fuck you, who cares!” as mine would have if our roles were reversed.
How could I be angry at him? So ill-prepared were the New Democrats to form a government that they asked for an extra week or two of transition. That gave all of us political staffers more paid time to practise “Would you like fries with that” as we joked about our coming employment at Swiss Chalet.
____________________
* One of the speakers just before Peterson that day was Nick Leluk, the Tory I had campaigned against in the 1981 and 1985 elections. He opposed the sexual orientation amendment, arguing that it would “legitimize an alternative lifestyle on the same level as the traditional family. Should we expect chronic drinkers and smokers to be added to the Human Rights Code as a group because their behaviour may adversely affect their chances of employment? Where does one draw the line? Should criminal behaviour also be enshrined in the code?”
CHAPTER THREE
1990s
I was adrift after the 1990 election, not immediately sure where to turn. I needed to find employment, that much was sure. But let’s just say that I had not won many competitions for a normal job by that point in my life. Small business was the future career path I had settled on, so I began a passive search for opportunities alongside my recently retired father. I spent the better part of the first year post-election involved in volunteer efforts while relying on my government severance to pay the rent.
Fortunately for me, I joined an organizing committee at the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT), where the annual From All Walks of Life fundraiser was being planned. For several years, I had made the walk my primary community activity, and until today I have made AIDS my voluntary and philanthropic priority. In those days, the public awareness of the disease saw crowds of more than ten thousand gather for the walk, raising $1 million or more.
In the 1990s, I was deeply touched by the public response to the AIDS crisis. And it was a real crisis. As an “out” person living in the Gay Village, it was impossible not to know people who succumbed, often rapidly, to AIDS. These people truly came from all walks of life, including work colleagues, political allies, lovers, and friends. A peaceful memorial in Barbara Hall Park, next to the 519 Community Centre in the village, honours their memory.
/> In this same period, my high-school friend Richard Maeda and I bought a film-processing shop in the Gay Village with some help from my father, who was both our partner and banker. The store was atop the “Steps,” an iconic location at the corner of Church and Wellesley that served as a magnet and safe haven for gay people across Canada. Our store was named Prints on Church. The shop was located directly beside the Second Cup coffee shop, which led the entire chain in sales thanks to a largely gay customer base. I would say that the biggest challenge our customers faced was making their way to our front door through a wonderful assortment of the gaybourhood’s finest.
The purchase of the store was partially financed by my father, who had sold his trucking business in 1989 and had begun investing some of the proceeds. Beyond providing financing, my father really got involved in the business. As was customary for my dad, he rolled up his sleeves to help refurbish the shop and install new equipment. We were just building up steam toward opening more kiosk stores that would feed film volume to our well-equipped shop when, on New Year’s Day in 1992, my father suffered a massive stroke. He hung on for another seven months at Brampton Peel Memorial, with the ability to only move his eyes. But he finally succumbed on August 5, 1992. He was just sixty-two years old; I was twenty-eight. His death hit me hard. We had not been estranged in previous years, but there is no question that our relationship had flourished with his involvement in the film-shop business. For once I had him free of the preoccupations that come with a business that involves several thousand rolling wheels. And then he was gone.
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