Civil Rights Archives — onmyplanet.ca

Velvet

Velvet is an activist and an early pioneer in getting the BC Medical Services Plan (MSP) to pay for transition (corrective) surgeries. She is a fetish sex worker in Vancouver, and has been an activist for sex workers for years (esp. prior to the investigation of the Picton murders) in BC and across Canada. She was a founder of Westenders Against Violence Everywhere (WEAV) in Vancouver and lobbied extensively to challenge the prostitution laws in Canada.
You can find Velvet online at: velvetsteele.com/

Velvet’s story is one of a series of stories collected at the Moving Trans History Forward Symposium, put on by the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria in March of 2016.The MTHF conference provided onmyplanet.ca with a space to record stories on site during the conferences of 2014, 2016 and 2018.

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Maria

Maria has been a pioneering trans activist in Sweden and around the world for many years. She talks about some of her more challenging moments growing up and going on to spearhead some of the ground breaking shifts in human rights for trans people.

Maria’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 2016. The MTHF conference provided onmyplanet.ca with a space to record stories on site during the conferences of 2014, 2016 and 2018.

(Early in the video Maria likens a Swedish psychologist that she saw as a child to prominent Canadian psychologist Ken Zuker (Psychologist-in-Chief, and Head of the Gender Identity Service at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health for many years) who was of the opinion that gender non-conforming children should wait till the age of 18 to make a decision about their gender – forcing them to live as their assigned gender until then.)

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Mac

Mac was a gay man originally from the southern United States and moved to Canada in the late 1960s. At the time of this video, Mac was a Unitarian Minister and would have been thrilled to perform your same sex wedding.
Sadly, Mac died in 2016. You can see a tribute write up for Mac here.

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