Introduction: Part B

The other part of this introduction is about me, the blogger. I was born in North Vancouver and at a young age our family moved to Toronto. After a few years in a city, my parents decided that a family with four boys would do better in a rural environment. When I was 8, our family moved to a small farming community north of Toronto; there, I grew up until I was 18. My first love has always been theatre and the make-believe worlds I could escape to when life became too overwhelming. You see, in a town of 1200 in the 1960s and 1970s, I was someone always coming to understand my gay identity and life - completely on my own. In 1979 I achieved part of my dream when I graduated high school, to move on to the University of Windsor to study theatre. However, at the age of 19, I didn't really have a lot of financial resources to see this dream to completion and my parents made it clear they were not interested in helping. So, I went into the world they wanted me to head toward - business. I was pretty good at it too! My area of business was human resources and training (something at least performative!). I studied human resources, training, accounting and even did a degree in Business. My parents were more open to supporting my efforts because after all this was their world and they saw the practicality of it (and this was an area far more familiar, after all!). But then the 1980s revealed HIV/AIDS and there was a irrational fear in business of all things gay. And the company I was working in was a travel services company - all businesses within this area had large numbers of gay men and they were dying at increasing numbers. Insurance companies were buying back employee plans to make things harder for gay men, so that insurance companies could remain profitable. In my function within human resources I did what I could to protect gay employees by warning all gay men that at the first sign of HIV, they needed to go on disability. Several heeded my advice and were protected before they were fired. All of them died, but did so with dignity. A small victory.

Being gay, I knew my days were numbered. One Monday, I was laid off without warning, as were several other gay men. Of course the corporation denied they didn't like gays; however, actions speak louder than words. And so I was left with wondering what was next for me.

I decided to go back to university and graduate school. I was refused entry at the University of Toronto's OISE, but was accepted at the University of British Columbia. So, for the next 13 years I graduated with a Diploma in Adult Education, my Masters of Arts in Adult Education and my Ph.D. in Educational Studies (Sociology). The students I met there were phenomenal and were from around the world. I grew and evolved in so many ways - personally, philosophically, politically, socially. I found several of the faculty were oppressive, hypocritical, arrogant and elitist - most notably my own supervisor who did much to try and undermine my graduate success. My committee members were amazing in safeguarding my interests. I was lucky to have those committee members who saw my vision for working with marginalized adults and youth as something worthwhile. And this is where my heart continues to reside: within marginalized communities. And I was able to reconnect with my theatre background doing community development work, through theatre, in marginalized communities. Some of the groups I've worked with are: senior citizens, youth addicted to crystal meth, homeless women living with HIV/Hep C, addictions and children on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and in the Surrey Central areas, sexual minorites, people wth disabilities, adults with psychiatric disorders, immigrant women and Aboriginal adults and youth. My partner and I lived on a reserve for several years as teachers. My time living in BC were the best years of my life. Now we live in Ottawa, which is a living hell.

I live with my partner - 14 years this August - whom I met on the Internet. I was living in Vancouver and he was living in Brantford Ontario (though he was born on Cape Breton Island). Through email exchanges and a program that was the precursor to MS Messenger, we chatted online for several months before he packed up everything and moved to live with me, sight unseen, in Vancouver. We've been together ever since. He did a lot of searching and finding his way with regard to work over the years, but is now working as an ESL teacher and loves it.

We moved to Ottawa, in part, for me to take a teaching job at the University of Ottawa, in the Faculty of Education, there - and also as part of our future goal to move to the East Coast, where people are friendlier and the quality of life far better than in a city. Both coasts seems to have the best quality of life, though BC is far more expensive!  So, we are in the nation's capital (very depressing that THIS is the best we can do for presenting 'a face' to the world!). This is a city that is very hard to 'break into' because of the political nature of the place and people are very cliquish, rude (it's been labelled the rudest city in Canada by Readers' Digest), 'entitled' and inward looking. Very cold and unwelcoming for newcomers. The added discomfort is the English/French character of the city. The population is made up of about 15% francophones, 5% other languages and 80% anglophone, yet bilingualism is enforced so that one must be able to speak both English and French to get most jobs. The University of Ottawa likes to say it's a bilingual university, yet it is French first and often communications are French only. Interestingly, many of the faculty are anglophones (with some being bilingual) while almost all administrative staff are francophones (most being bilingual and French first). When someone is unemployed and anglophone in this city, finding a job is next to impossible. Most francophones are bilingual because job opportunities are in the English world rather than the French world, so it's more lucrative to enter the English job market; far less attractive to enter the French job market. Bilingualism is the ticket in, but once in French is rarely used in many jobs. The bilingualism policy has many wrinkles all in the favour of francophone bilingual speakers.

For three years I worked at the University of Ottawa, experiencing much success there as a replacement prof. Then the Dean decided that she wanted to cut my salary by 25% and cut all my benefits while continuing to teach in an overload situation. I filed a grievance. The Dean responded by renegging on the contract we had agreed to, locked me out of my office, leaving me to face unemployment. I ultimately won my grievance because of the illegal contract the Dean was trying to force on me, but was never to get my job back. So, now, I'm unemployed and have been looking for work for a year, but because of the bilingualism policies here many jobs I would be qualified for elsewhere are out of reach here. Over the past year I have applied for 200+ active openings; I've been asked to one interview. And that opening, obviously, I didn't land. I applied for 23 assistant professor openings across the eastern half of Canada; I was not asked to a single interview. My employment insurnace benefits run out in September, so I thought while my world is burning I would spend some time writing a blog. I'm entering a make-believe world, once again, when life becomes overwhelming.

And this make-believe world is the surreal and absurd one being created by the Harper Conservatives. So, hopefully, given my background, what I end  up writing makes sense and perhaps resonates and sparks discussion in worlds I may never know....