George Hislop, RIP

George Hislop died because he was old. On Oct. 8 at 78 years, in Toronto's Grace Hospital after suffering at least five heart attacks in two years and finally succumbing to esophageal cancer. It's a joy to be able to say it. Not that he's gone, not that he was constantly in and out of his sick bed, but that he was old. That he lived a long life.

There are few gay seniors. So many died during the vicious heyday of the AIDS epidemic 10 and 20 years ago that multiple generations of men lost a legion of would-be oldsters and mentors. George was a proud gay activist who was also damned promiscuous, and made no apologies for it. He talked about sex and had it. As an old geezer, too.

He was said to have preferred oral to the riskier fucking, and his fetish, he'd been heard to joke, saved his life.

For many, being gay is just a small part of existence, an add-on to a busy schedule. George made gayness central; he wouldn't allow anyone to forget the integral contribution sex and sexuality made to his identity. As Dick Hardon -- yeah baby -- he reviewed porno flicks for a long-defunct gay Toronto mag. As the part-owner of the Barracks, he was charged in the aftermath of 1981's infamous Toronto bathhouse raids with conspiring to keep a common bawdy house (and got off -- the rap, that is -- when everything got dropped).

Later, in a lawsuit challenging the city of Toronto's refusal to grant a business license to a proposed new men's spa, a judge accepted George as an expert witness, calling him "a habitué of gay bathhouses for the past four and a half decades." When the Spa on Maitland finally opened its doors in 1990, George was presented with his own five-by-seven cubicle. After his beloved dog Fudger died, George rarely went home to his Avenue Rd. apartment. If you wanted to talk to George, you'd call his office -- at the tubs.

Long-time friend and activist Peter Bochove, now a part-owner of Spa Excess, says George was lonely in those days. Ron Shearer, George's lover of 28 years, had a stroke after heart bypass surgery and died in 1986, and the survivor never quite recovered. The bathhouse gave him companionship and community.

To list George's contributions to Toronto and to the gay community would leave you slack-jawed. In 1970, the year after gay sex was finally legalized, George founded the Community Homophile Association Of Toronto (CHAT), and he gutsily became a regular in the then-unsympathetic media. Name a homophobic practice in Toronto, and George fought it. Name a bigoted journalist, and George courteously but firmly told them they were really quite in error. He even organized dances to bring the homos together, and was the first out gay to run for Toronto city council (in 1980, and he lost; ditto when he ran for the provincial legislature). He was president of Church Street's Hassle Free Clinic from its 1973 founding to his death. George gave a lifetime of service to his community that cannot be adequately revealed in this small space.

For all this, he was rewarded with the malnutrition and poverty that comes of being a senior citizen in this country.

Ronnie worked so that George could volunteer to change the world. And when Ron died, George had almost nothing. In gratitude for his years of activism, Peter Bochove says few Church St. businesses would accept George's money. City Councillor Kyle Rae threw his weight around and got George an apartment below market value once the Spa on Maitland shut down in 2004. And Bochove and his landlord, John Conforzi, regularly sent George money.

George finally won a class action lawsuit against the federal government demanding Canada Pension Plan benefits for unmarried same-sex widows. But the feds kept appealing, although the bad publicity of skin-and-bones seniors led them to send out cheques earlier this year. The money came with the proviso that, depending on the Supreme Court of Canada, it might have to be repaid.

Despite it all, George was known as a cheerful charmer. A celebration of George Hislop's life will be held at Woody's (465 Church St. in Toronto) on Sun., Nov. 6, from 5 pm to 8 pm. Anybody caught crying, says Peter Bochove, will be thrown out. George's orders.