New exhibit explores past LGBTQ discrimination within Canadian government

When Michelle Douglas joined the Canadian military in 1986, she thought she'd be spending her whole career in the service as a military police officer. Instead, less than three years later, she was unceremoniously kicked out for being gay.

Three years after that, Douglas was the public face of the pushback against that discrimination. She had successfully sued the government over her dismissal, formally ending the practice across the entire military in October 1992.

"I know a lot of survivors of that time we now call the LGBTQ purge and the impacts of trauma that they experienced," said Douglas.

"Some were institutionalized, assaulted, arrested, and definitely harassed and never really, in some cases, lived their full life potential as they wanted it to."

Douglas was one of at least 9,000 public service members who lost their job as a consequence of the Canadian government's "gay purges," which devoted significant resources to rooting out and firing LGBTQ workers.

Under policies that took root in the 1950s and continued into the early '90s, federal agencies investigated, sanctioned and sometimes fired lesbian and gay members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP and the public service because they were deemed unsuitable.

The campaign was driven by the misguided notion that the "character weakness" of gay people made them vulnerable to blackmail by Russian intelligence agents in the anxious geopolitical climate of the era.

Before her dismissal, Douglas found herself working in the military's Special Investigation Unit, which investigated criminal behaviour in the ranks including suspected homosexuality. She kept her personal life a secret, but began being investigated in May 1988.

In July of that year she was interrogated in a hotel room about her sexual orientation for two days by male military officers, demanding she take a polygraph test. 

Though she never took the test, she admitted to her sexuality. She was honourably discharged in June 1989.

"On the way out of the military, they said, 'you know, you could be a risk to national security, so you have to come out to your parents,'" she recounted. 

"I was barely figuring out who I was. But they said if you don't do it, we'll send the police to do it for you in 24 hours."

New exhibition opening

Now Douglas' story, along with many others, is being told in a new traveling exhibit at the RCMP Heritage Centre in Regina.

The museum is hosting the Love In a Dangerous Time: Canada's LGBT Purge exhibition until the end of May. It details the entire history of the Canadian government's discriminatory policies against its LGBTQ employees, and the legal battles fought to remove them.

The RCMP Heritage Centre was opened in 2007. While it showcases the history of the RCMP, it isn't owned, funded or operated by it. Its revenue is self-generated through admissions, gift shop sales and other sources.

Sam Karikas, the museum's CEO, says that the exhibit is important because it reminds visitors not to whitewash Canada's past record on LGBTQ rights.

"We do have a good reputation and I think we feel good about the progress that we have and the way we treat each other," she said. "However, the reality is there are also some very painful, very complex chapters in our history that need to be known."

"Human rights conversations are important at all times, not just when there is a pressure of or a risk of losing human rights, but whenever there is a new generation learning about the history of Canada."