Gay Alliance founder remembers when ‘there were no gay people in Halifax’ – CBC.ca

The Halifax Pride Festival is set to run from July 14 to 24, but when the Gay Alliance for Equality was established in May 1972, the quest for that kind of visibility was a radical undertaking.

Tom Burns, the organization’s first chairperson, said it was inspired by the Stonewall riots in the United States. The 1969 protests at the Stonewall Inn in New York City are regarded as a landmark event in the gay rights movement in North America. 

Burns spoke with CBC Mainstreet host Jeff Douglas about the need at that time address to discrimination against gay people and to increase their visibility. 

This is a condensed version of their conversation that has been edited for clarity and length.

In Rebecca Rose’s book Before the Parade she has a newsletter from November of 1972 and it begins, “This letter is to inform you that Halifax has now stepped into the ever-expanding movement for gay liberation.” How acutely did the community here feel the need for that liberation?

In those days most of us were invisible and I think that’s why it started. Invisibility was a good thing and it was a bad thing, but we said gay people are here and we do exist.

We knew there was discrimination against gay people and we wanted to bring to the forefront exactly what was going on. For me personally, it was a movement to help other gay people come out. Not to have the trouble that I had coming out. 

Tom, can you describe that?

Nobody believed gay people were around in those days. While gay people existed maybe in Montreal and Toronto, they didn’t exist in Halifax. There were no gay people in Halifax in those days, apparently.

So we said, we know that there are gay people. We met them, we talked to them.

So we said, well, why not organize to help them come out and to try to end discrimination?

What do you remember about how you came to be chosen to be the first chairperson of the Gay Alliance for Equality? 

Basically because nobody else wanted the job.

I’m in for a dime, I’m in for a dollar. I’ve got to do something so I chose to be the first chairperson.

Why don’t we talk a bit about why why no one wanted that job?

They were afraid to come out publicly; fear that they may appear on radio or television. I did a radio interview a year or so after, and I appeared on television talking about the gay [phone] line.

Plus, we spoke openly at Dalhousie. We spoke at Saint Mary’s University.

A few brave souls came along with me at Dalhousie. By the time we got to Saint Mary’s, nobody want to come. They  all volunteered and then before event, they all bowed out. 

I ended up going by myself.

You mentioned the phone line. Can you tell us what it was like and who it was for?

A few of us had worked at the general helpline on people phoning in to discuss their problems and so forth.

We knew it was important to have a gay line for people because, as now, there was a lot of suicide or attempted suicide. So we knew it was important to have a gay line.

Unfortunately, we operated in the hours of 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. We’d like to have offered it longer, but we didn’t have enough to man the lines.

I hope that we saved some people’s lives. To let people know that they weren’t alone. To know not everybody hated them, including God. That was an important thing, that they were not alone.

I understand the alliance also in the early days was fighting to have sexual orientation encoded in the human rights code?

Yes. And having the human rights commission tell us that, “Oh you people are not discriminated against. Nobody discriminates against you.”

Do you still celebrate Pride?

I go to the parade when there is one. I’m very proud of it.

I think we’ve come a long way, there’s still a long way to go, but still we came a long way.

I never thought I’d live long enough to see a Pride parade.

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