A present for the past

George Hislop, the first lady of this country's gay movement, will never receive an Order of Canada, our highest honour. It can't be awarded posthumously.

George was supposedly nominated a year or so ago, for his lifetime of activism and community work, but the Nameless Ones who decide on these things "met in the fall of 2004 and decided the George was not an ideal candidate for the Order at the time (their words, not mine)," wrote Don Kearney, a member of Egale's board directors, in an e-mail sent to a group of friends and activists. "He was re-nominated in 2005 and the OoC Committee was supposed to review it again at their fall meeting but George passed away before they could meet... I asked [a person in the Governor-General's office] about him being nominated before he died, but they have to have accepted the nomination before passing away."

So no Order of Canada. I wish I could confirm the shameful federal refusal to give George Hislop the award back when, but there's no way to do so. "All nominations are confidential, so I can't really discuss any of these details that you were asking for," the Honours Information Officer intoned onto my answering machine. "I do not even have access to this kind of information. The deliberations of the advisory council are also confidential. This is to protect people's personal information."

You know, the personal information of dead people, who no longer need "privacy rights." Along the way, anybody with any actual say in the matter never has to answer for their stupid decisions.

George Hislop's friends are now working on something else: a Meritorious Service Medal or Cross. "This is a more specific award based on one achievement and not a series of lifetime achievements such as the Order of Canada," said Don Kearney. "In recent times, George's focus has been the old age pension issue and I think that will resonate more clearly... than if we tried to get an award for his work with the bathhouse raids in the '80s (too much time has elapsed); same with Gay Day [it later became Toronto Pride], [that] he started a couple of decades ago. It is hard to pick just one thing, but since the papers focused on the pension issue lately, including in his obituary, it is probably our best bet."

Kearney is collecting letters of recommendation (mail them to 1903-40 Pleasant Blvd., Toronto, ON, M4T 1J9; for more information, e-mail him at donk@egale.ca). He suggests "some points about some of the achievements George has accomplished in the past (as part of an introduction), but the bulk of it should focus on his fight for old age pension benefits, the court decisions in his favour, the basic level of poverty he lived in because of the discrimination due to opposite-sex pension requirements pre-1998, and the fact that the government quasi-capitulated and gave him a cheque this summer... The more personal the letter, the better the chances."

There's no better time than now. Write a letter.