Festival, parade celebrate strides GLBTTQ community has made over last quarter-century

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Chris Vogel and Rich North hold a picture of themselves circa 1974. Vogel is on the right.

Power in a union

North and Vogel's activism started in 1973 when they got involved in Gays for Equality, which evolved into today's Rainbow Resource Centre.

In 1974, the trailblazing couple were married in Winnipeg's Unitarian Church. Their unsuccessful fight to have the province recognize their union was the first legal case in Canada to challenge the exclusion of same-sex couples from civil marriage.

The pair helped organize a national gay conference in Winnipeg in 1974, which included the first-ever gay street march here. Vogel hosted a weekly cable TV show, Coming Out, from 1980 to 1994.

Both were involved in founding the non-profit society that opened Giovanni's Room (now Gio's) as a meeting place in 1982. Vogel was society president for most of the 1980s.

In 1982, Vogel, a land-use planner with the province who had been unable to obtain spousal benefits for North, launched a human-rights challenge. It took 13 years, but the court finally ruled that denying benefits to same-sex spouses was discriminatory.

The couple's long crusade to have sexual orientation included as a prohibited ground for discrimination in Manitoba law culminated in North going on a 59-day hunger strike in 1985. In 1987, legislation passed to amend the Human Rights Code.

In 2002, North and Vogel had the honour of hoisting the Pride flag when it was allowed to be raised for the first time at Winnipeg's city hall.

In 2004, along with two lesbian couples, they took the province to court in the case that resulted in the legalization of same-sex marriage in Manitoba. North and Vogel have never proceeded with a legal marriage because they've considered themselves wed since 1974, and have legal protection as common-law spouses.

Also in 2004, Vogel and North were honoured with the Manitoba Human Rights Commitment Award.

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At right, activists and husbands Chris Vogel (left) and Rich North today. (JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store

THEY'RE the elder statesmen of gay activism in Manitoba.

Spouses Chris Vogel and Richard (Rich) North haven't just had front-row seats to a 40-year rights revolution for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit and queer (GLBTTQ) community.

The outspoken couple haven't only marched, lobbied and led organizations. Vogel, 65, and North, 60, have waged landmark courtroom battles that changed Manitoba law.

In recognition of their work as leaders and rights champions, they'll be the grand marshals of Winnipeg's 25th anniversary Pride parade on June 3 -- the culmination of the 10-day Pride 25 festival that starts Friday.

"They've been an iconic pair," says festival committee chair Barb Burkowski. "It's quite an activist world right now, but at the time that they did it, it certainly wasn't.

"It was really brave and courageous for them to stand up and speak for equality. They've built our community in so many ways."

Leading the parade will be a great honour, says North, who is semi-retired, works as an LPN at a nursing home, and is still a provocateur. "Chris always says he doesn't care what people think," he says about his husband, "but I do care what people think. It means quite a lot to me."

Vogel praises the parade as a whole. "Pride is a wonderful thing," says the retired civil servant, originally from Regina. "The see-and-be-seen aspect is enormously valuable and therapeutic."

There's often disagreement in the GLBTTQ community as to whether raunchy parade costumes take flamboyance too far. North and Vogel may be seniors now, but they're firmly on the side of free, carnivalesque expression.

"You have to be inclusive," says Vogel. "And what you want is a spectacle. What brings the audience out is the spectacle."

It's still being finalized whether North and Vogel will ride in a car at the head of the parade, or walk. It sounds as if their outfits will marry the political and the personal. Vogel says he'll wear his Che Guevara cap. North, a more quirky and showy character, will be decked out in a rainbow jester's hat and shirt that says "Another Fool for Love."

The longtime Wolseley residents have been fools for each other, they say, since they met "one beautiful summer evening" in June 1972 at the old Mardi Gras restaurant, a gay meeting place on Portage Avenue. Homosexuality had only been decriminalized in 1969.

"I'd never met another homosexual before I went to the Mardi Gras when I was 20," says North, who grew up in Winnipeg's Woodhaven neighbourhood.

The pair, whose unlicensed wedding made international headlines in 1974, say they were lucky to have supportive families. "Our parents were liberal people," North says. "We probably had it way easier 40 years ago than kids who are brought up in strict religious homes in Manitoba today."

On Aug. 2, 1987, the first local Pride march was a celebration of newly passed legislation to include sexual orientation in the Manitoba Human Rights Code. North and Vogel were there, of course. To this day, they say visibility has been the key to mainstream acceptance of gay rights.

They had marched in the street with a handful of activists back in 1974. But the festive 1987 coming-out party of more than 250 people chanting, "We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!" was much bigger.

"The fact that we suddenly had human-rights protection, which had been a long time coming, just energized everybody," North recalls. "All of a sudden, there seemed to be this freedom to be open."

A lone protester carried a sign saying "Gays Are Perverts." The only photo from the event that ran in the Free Press was of him. There were a few marchers who were nervous enough about being "outed" that they wore paper bags over their heads.

While today's young GLBTTQ people enjoy legal protection, many are still bullied, shamed and ostracized, the pair say.

"If you're from the country, or the North, or from a conservative household, a religious household for example, there's still lots and lots of heartaches and problems and tragedies," Vogel says. "We've got the legal equality, but socially and culturally, there still needs to be understanding, growth and education."

The duo used to receive threatening phone calls at home, but say they never feared being physically attacked. Of their legal victories, they say the most significant was the right for same-sex Manitobans to marry. Many other rights, such as adoption and spousal benefits, are linked to acceptance of same-sex unions as family bonds.

"If you can get gay marriage, you're going to get everything else," says North. "As the family-values folks point out endlessly, the family is the foundation of society. Same-sex marriage is the huge issue when it comes to gay liberation. Gradually, it's going to spread around the world."

The wedding vow that North and Vogel took 38 years ago was to stay together "as long as love shall last."

North felt some pressure to make their much-publicized marriage work.

"When we got married, we were setting ourselves up as a model of a same-sex couple," he admits. "But if we hadn't been happy, we would have split."

Vogel's comment on still being together?

"Once I got my hands on Richard, I wasn't letting go."

alison.mayes@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 24, 2012 E12