Kevin Bourassa & Joe Varnell are reluctant human rights heroes.
10 years ago today, they were the first same-sex couple to be legally married in North America. The couple married in Toronto at Riverdale’s Metropolitan Community Church on Jan. 14, 2001. The couples will renew their vows in a 10th anniversary celebration today.
While neither marriage was officially recognized by the Ontario government until the courts deemed them legal in 2003, the 2001 ceremony still represents a major milestone in gay civil rights.
The ceremony was a mix of terror and love. It took place under heavy police guard and Reverend Brent Hawkes performed the service wearing a bulletproof vest. The day before their marriage, fearing their lives could be in danger for the vows they were about to exchange, the couple said farewell to their families & to each other.
Bourassa: “Our constitution made the marriage possible, Pierre Trudeau is a hero still to us & we were married with red roses. We said goodbye to people, we told them we loved them. We were told we were under threat. The last words police officers said to us as we went down the aisle was, ‘If you hear a shot don’t move, somebody will move you, just stand still.’ We were told if a shot was going to come it would most likely be when we signed the papers because they’d try to stop us from signing.”
The couple were driven to the service by bodyguards who used a different route to get to the church. Dozens of police officers attended.
Bourassa: “Marriage is the ultimate right. With marriage comes everything else: the right to work, to adopt children, to visit people in hospital. This really has changed things & it has shifted the conversation away from just who you can have sex with to who you can love. The public responds to that.”
Bourassa gave up a successful banking career to work full time on Marriage Equality & has become an advocate & in demand public speaker on the issue: “If I knew then what I know now, I would have said, ‘No, are you crazy? No bloody way,’ Joe would have. He would have done this. He is my better half. But this changed me to become a better person… involuntarily. For this, I am glad, but it came at great personal cost.”
To this day, Varnell & Bourassa still can’t fly into the USA. Homeland Security won’t let them in because they declare themselves a family.
Immediately following the ceremony came the court challenges after Ontario refused to acknowledge the nuptials.
The first win came from the Ontario divisional court in 2002. The court said the law denying same-sex couples the right to marry was unconstitutional but the court did give the government 2 years to consider alternatives.
The government appealed the ruling but in June 2003, the Court of Appeal refused the delay & Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said he would not challenge it. Federal Attorney General Martin Cauchon went a step further & extend same-sex marriage across Canada.
More than 7,000 same-sex couples have married in Canada since, changing social norms along the way. Before Canadian law was changed, gay couples wanting to marry were often the target of vicious attacks.
Compared to the stress of the wedding, Bourassa & Varnell claim that renewing their vows is a lot less stressful.
My partner of 25 years became my Husband on our 25th anniversary of being a couple- October 9th, 2004, in Vancouver British Columbia, one of the most beautiful planet on the planet. Our marriage is not recognized in the USA.
We love Canada: Loonies, Catherine O’Hara, Kim Cattrall, Matthew Perry, Bruce Cockburn, Joni Mitchell, Scott Thompson, k.d.lang, Rick Moranis, Norma Shearer, Ryan Gossling, Victor Garber, Holly Cole, Leonard Cohen, Martin Short, Jim Carrey, Raymond Burr, Kurt Browning, David Cronenberg, John Candy, Crash Test Dummies, Yvonne DeCarlo, Colleen Dewhurst, Deanna Durbin, Vanouver, Brendan Frasier, Michael J. Fox, Glenn Ford, Glenn Gould, Robert Goulet, Phil Hartman, Norman Jewison, Peter Jennings, Montreal, Jack Kerouak, Margot Kidder, Gordon Lightfoot, Toronto, Quebec City, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Daniel Lanois, Anne Murray, Leslie Nielson, Michael Ontkean, Anna Paquin, Banff, Mary Pickford, Jason Priestly, Christopher Plummer, Keifer Sutherland, Paul Schaffer, Jennifer Tilly, Alex Trebek, my good close friend- Fay Wray… & Canada’s National Treasure- Celine Dion.
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