Martine is a union activist and a trans activist. Martine has been on the National Pink Triangle Committee at CUPE for the last ten years. Her human rights case brought back public funding for Gender Reassignment Surgery in Ontario. The group she helped form; The Trans Health Lobby Group successfully lobbied for trans people’s right to change the gender on official identification documents without surgery. CUPE supported Martine in a number of ways throughout her human rights case (7 years). Martine and the Trans Lobby Group are now lobbying for Bill C279 for gender identity to be included in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Rock on Martine.
Martine’s story is one of a series of stories collected at the Moving Trans* History Forward Conference, put on by the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria in March of 2014. The MTHF conference provided onmyplanet.ca with a space to record stories on site during the conferences of 2014, 2016 and 2018.