Canadian Lawyer

w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8 31 "I always awaited arrest and expulsion with certain humiliation, even if not disgrace," says Fox. Resolving to fight such polices, he went to law school. Soon after graduating, Fox says, he basically came out to his com- manding officer. He'd also applied for and was offered a job in the Judge Advocate General's office. But the bottom fell out when he received a call that his superior officer had told the JAG he was gay and would therefore be investigated. "I had no real choice but to resign from the reserve and withdraw my application." Fox went on to have a meaningful and lengthy career as a Crown attorney in Hamilton, Ont., where he still works. Yet, even after all this time, he finds those events tremendously difficult to discuss. Discrimination was not so blatant for former DoJ lawyer Mark Berlin. While he had "some great jobs," he says, "in my mind . . . I still believed for many years, and indeed to this day, that there were certain opportunities and positions that were not provided to me simply because I was gay." He remembers one fateful day in 1988 that changed his life. Berlin was ministerial liaison counsel between the Justice department and Justice minister's office, where as a five-year call, he wrote speeches, among other duties, for then-minister Ray Hnatyshyn. He went across the street to the old Citadel hotel to play squash with his boss at lunch. After the game, his boss remarked somewhat off-the-cuff that their assistant deputy minister had asked him if he thought Berlin was gay. He scoffed at the idea and told the ADM that, of course, Berlin wasn't gay. The ADM then added if he was gay, they'd have to fire him. "Thirty something years later, I could tell you, I remember where I stood and the words that were said to me." Now retired from the DoJ after a 32-year career and speaking publicly about this with Canadian Lawyer for the first time, Berlin remembers "getting dressed and going back to the office and having this explosion of 1,000 things going on in my head: 'Do I admit it? Am I going to get fired when they find out?' It is certainly what led to the spiral down." That day was the beginning of a double life where he had to be one person at work and another in his "real" life. It left him fighting emotional and psychological demons for years. Both Berlin and Fox are members of the class. Change is forced upon the military T he national security campaign against LGBT members of the civil service waned by the mid 1980s, but the injustices continued in the military for another decade. Transformation of the military's policies eventually came in the form of Michelle Douglas, a promising young air force lieutenant and only the second woman to join the Military Police unit that ironically conducted the purge investigations. Suspected of being homosexual, Douglas, like others, was taken to a non-military location for interroga- tion by two SIU officers. In 1989, after days of intensive questions and polygraph tests, she admitted she was a lesbian, was stripped of her security clearance and forced to leave the military for being "not advantageously employable." With the help of Robinson and lawyer Clayton Ruby, she sued the military for violating her Char- ter rights. The case first went to the independent Security Intelli- gence Review Committee, which blasted the SIU for "deplorable" conduct and ruled the military's bar on employing homosexuals unconstitutional. It ordered Douglas' reinstatement. The govern- ment appealed. On the eve of the trial in Federal Court, the government settled with Douglas for $100,000. Faced with the lawsuit, the military finally revoked CFAO 19-20, its policy banning homo- sexuals. Several similar suits were quietly settled in the following year. The government never apologized to them or offered any kind of restitution. And while, by 1992, gays and lesbians were no longer banned from serving (a few years before changes were made so LGBT soldiers could not be forced out but also would not be eligible for training or promotions if they stayed), it would still be years before LGBT service members would feel comfort- able being open about their sexuality. Road to an apology — and more S tarting around that same time, professors Gary Kins- man and Patrizia Gentile did extensive research on national security campaigns against lesbian and gay men. Their 2010 book The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation chronicled the official and personal stories of Canadians affected by the purge. In 1997, scholars Carmen Poulin and Lynne Gouliquer, who had resigned from the military, began interviewing current and former lesbian service members and their partners. One of the women they interviewed was Pitre, who later connected them with MP Peter Stoffer, who in 2009 was one of the first MPs to seek an apology for purge victims from then-defence minister Peter MacKay. Stof- fer was roundly rebuffed. Diane Pitre

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