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Please see below for a brief personal history of the
Bill 7 Award prepared by founding member Regan McClure.
Bill 7 Award 2009
In 2009, Bill 7 was once again pleased to be able to
present four Awards of $2000 each to four recipients,
Oneil McClure, (Transitional Year
Programme, University of Toronto), Mike Snider (Bachelor
Science – Human Nutrition, University of Guelph), Mariko
Reilly (Honours Neuroscience Co-op, Year 1, Brock
University, and Nazareth Harfoush (Arts and Science,
Queen’s University).
Bill 7 Award 2008
In 2008, Bill 7 in recognition of support from ExeQutive
presented four Awards of $2000 at ExeQutive’s meeting
on October 29th, 2008 at the Verity Club.
This year’s recipients were Felicia Byron (photography,
OCAD), Joey Leuw-kalalat Soehardjojo (Bachelor of
Commerce, McMaster University), Samantha Crow and
Thompson Jamal (University of Windsor).

Award recipients
Felicia Byron, Thomson Jamal and Joe Leuw-kalalat
Soehardjojo at the Verity Club.
The Bill 7 Award Trust was thrilled to receive a
donation in the amount of $1325 from ExeQutive (a
Toronto organization for LGBT executives and business
leaders) to support the Bill 7 Award Trust.

Bill 7 Award Trust Chair Carol Thames
accepts donation from ExeQutive chair John Clifford

ExeQutive member
and Bill 7 Award Trustee Greg Johns

Bill 7 Award
Trust Chair Carol Thames
Bill 7 Award 2007
This year’s recipients were a 3rd year Social Welfare
and Gender Equality Studies at Nipissing University, a
student in 1st year Political Science and Government at
York University, and a student at York University with a
double major in French Studies and Hispanic Studies. All
three recipients for 2007 asked to remain anonymous for
personal reasons which provided us with a clear
indication that there is still work to do to empower our
youth to be out in our community.
Bill 7 Award 2006
In 2006 for the first time the Award was able to
grant four Awards for $2000 each. This year’s
recipients were Caleb Nault (Brock
University), Kandace Texeira (Trent University), Andrew
Tardif (University of Ottawa) and Andrea Corte (George
Brown College).
Bill 7 Award 2005
In 2005, four Awards of $1000 each were presented to
Kenny Khoo (Biochemical and
Environmental Engineering program at the University of
Western Ontario), Nic Weststrate (4th year at University
of Toronto at Mississauaga, Psychology and Philosophy),
Tricia Lynn Larose (4th year at Laurentian University in
Sudbury, dual degrees in Liberal Science (Physics and
Chemistry) and Ethics). The fourth recipient of the
Award is a young woman who has asked to remain anonymous
due to homophobia ( 1st year student at the University
of Toronto).
Bill 7 Award 2004
In 2004, three Awards of $1000 each were presented to Ruban Lawrence (Computer Systems Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa), Jennifer Metherall (Mathematics, University of Guelph) and Javier Ortiz (Graphic Design, George Brown College, Toronto). The Awards were presented during the Out & Out Club (www.outandout.on.ca) annual general meeting at the Winchester Hotel in downtown Toronto. Special thanks to the members of Out & Out for their hospitality! The presentations were made by sustaining donor, Mark Prior, and Bill 7 Trust chair, Connie Bonello.

Carol Thames, Bill 7 Trustee (LGCA) at 2004 Award presentation

Jennifer Metherall, Ruban Lawrence & Javier Ortiz at 2004 Award presentation

Mark Prior (sustaining donor), Javier Ortiz (Award recipient) and Trust chair Connie Bonello at 2004 Award presentation
Bill 7 Award 2003
Presentations took place during BaBoom! - a fashion show extravaganza celebrating the diverse style of Toronto, on Saturday October 25th, at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre. BaBoom! was presented as part of HYSTERIA: A Festival of Women, co-produced by Nightwood Theatre and Buddies In Bad Times. Deepest thanks to the organizers of Hysteria and BaBoom! for their support and hospitality!
2003 Award winners each received a $1,000 educational bursary. Huda is enrolled in the Child & Youth Worker Program at George Brown College, and is also an active participant in SOY's various programs for LGBT youth. Calvin Lau is studying Journalism at Ryerson University.
Carol Thames, Calvin Lau (recipient), Connie Bonello and Clare Nobbs at the 2003 Award presentation
Bill 7 Award: Forte Concert Fundraiser 2003
On Saturday, June 7, 2003, Forte - The Toronto Men's Chorus (www.forte-chorus.com) presented Steam Heat a benefit concert for the Bill 7 Award. Steam Heat: a musical journey based on actual events that led to the recognition of the gay community as a legitimate part of the community, and the establishment of the annual Pride Celebrations in the City of Toronto. Our most sincere appreciation goes out to the board and members of Forte for their creativity and generosity!
Bill 7 Award 2002
Three Awards of $1000 each were presented as part of the Bent On Change conference at Jarvis Collegiate in November. The Awards were presented to Nathan Hauch (Humanities, Carleton University, Ottawa), Jennifer De Meis (Television Specialist, Loyalist College, Belleville), and a 24 year-old woman in Business Management at Ryerson University, who chose to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.

Trust chair Connie Bonello, Jennifer De Meis (recipient), and Trustee David Hazzan at the 2002 Award presentation
Bill 7 Award 2001
In 2001 we had two recipients of the Bill 7 Award who received $1,000 each. The official presentation of the awards were at the December Singing OUT concert.

Carol Thames, Bill 7 Trustee (LGCA) at 2004 Award presentation
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A brief
personal history of the Bill 7 Award
Regan McClure
July 16, 2008
I started the
award while I was still a student at the University of
Toronto in 1987. I had come out when I was 14 and still
in high school, and thought I would finally get a chance
to connect to a community when I was 17 and arrived at U
of T in 1984. There wasn’t much to see. I was underage
and so the bars were off limits to me. I haunted the
bookstore, a few social groups (where I was the youngest
person by decades) and the gay group at U of T where I
one of three or four lesbians in attendance. The men’s
community was deep in the chaos of trying to respond to
the AIDS crisis and all its energy seemed headed in that
direction. Women were largely subsumed in feminist
organizing where they remained a constant minority.
Looking for some
way to express myself, I cut my teeth on political
organizing in 1985 to establish the Women’s Centre at U
of T. Women’s centres and gay groups were popping up at
universities all across Canada, and they were the
gathering point for a great deal of political
organizing.
Creating public
spaces for the queer communities was a crucial step to
providing the venue to come together and start claiming
political clout. It was there that I heard about the
Coalition for Gay Rights in Ontario. The Women’s Centre
invited Chris Bearchell to speak about John Damien’s
case and the coming fight for inclusion in the Human
Rights Legislation. John Damien (who had been fired from
his job as a racetrack steward in 1975) was CGRO’s first
test case, and he was still fighting for his rights in
court in a case that was consuming his life, his
finances and finally his health. There were more and
more politically-focused and queer-specific groups
emerging up in every community, and there was increasing
dialogue about working together on a single issue that
would affect everyone. Getting included in the Human
Rights Legislation was that issue, and Chris told us
that the Bill 7 Campaign was the community response that
would make it happen.
That history is
recorded elsewhere; so I will only say that the Bill 7
Campaign was a big, grown-up action that inspired me to
name the award after it. I felt that as I had come of
age, so had the community in which I immersed myself. It
was the culmination of decades of hard work and
sacrifice that I was privileged to witness, even by
playing a bit role of ‘student idealist with placard’ at
rallies.
Coming down off
the high of winning the right to be myself in public, I
noticed that the casual discussions at the Women’s
Centre quickly focused on what would soon become the
next big thing – the future years of coming out and
identity politics. No one else working on the campaign
planned to put their experience on a resume, partners
who lost their lovers to AIDS went unrecognized and
unsupported and we all knew students who’d been cut off
from their parents’ financial support. Outside of the
courtroom it seemed like the fruits of the Bill 7
Campaign remained out of reach. People needed something
more immediate, some refuge from the storm that came
with living publicly as queer. Some money, perhaps… like
a scholarship for queer youth.
Once I had the
idea it was easy to organize. I typed out the
constitution on the new ‘good luck’ electric typewriter
in the back office at the Women’s Centre and rounded up
groups to oversee the administration of the Award. I
wanted balance on the board – enough large, funded
groups to give it legitimacy and stability, but enough
grassroots groups to give representation to new voices
and diversity. I especially wanted people of colour,
youth, people living in isolation in small communities
and working class groups to be represented on the board.
Since the Award was meant to soften the blows of
discrimination, it had to be accessible to those who
might face it most harshly. A group serving on the board
provided a volunteer for the meetings to select a
recipient, but the group itself also promoted the Award,
to find both donors and applicants.
I approached 6
groups to serve on the first Board of Directors and none
of them turned me down. I think, in many ways, it felt
good to have a meeting about something positive like
giving out an Award, instead of battling the growing
number of AIDS deaths or planning yet another protest in
response to discrimination. We had a meeting to
introduce the future board members to each other, and
they were a little awkward but enthusiastic about
meeting each other. How was it possible, everyone
marvelled, that the community seemed so small and yet
here were people we’d never met before? I could feel the
community stretching a little wider as we chatted. Then,
on November 12th 1987 I cycled around Toronto
getting signatures on the constitution that I would
submit to the process of becoming a charitable
organization. The initial groups on the Constitution
were the Black Women’s Collective, Zami, the Lesbian and
Gay Community Appeal, the Toronto Counselling Centre for
Lesbians and Gays, the Women’s Centre at the University
of Toronto and Lesbians of Colour.
We had been told
it was very difficult to get charitable status. I was
painstaking in my reading of the charities act, but it
was my first application to create a charity. I had
followed everything needed to qualify as a charity, and
also sent a letter of support from Svend Robinson.
However, I still received several phone calls from
mysterious offices in Ottawa asking me if this was
really an award for homosexuals, how would we propose to
find students willing to be labelled as such, how would
we find funding for this award and so on. There was very
clear direction in the charities act that it was
acceptable to establish a scholarship targeted at any
given group of people – third year engineering students,
Slavic students and so on. It was obvious that they were
struggling with the concept that we deserved to be
legitimized in the same way.
Perhaps it was
the name of the award itself, with the campaign fresh in
everyone’s mind, that made it possible. We were awarded
charitable status and started collecting donations. Jane
Rule was one of our first donors from all the way in
B.C. and she wrote a fundraising letter for us urging
others to donate.
Retrospectively,
the name hasn’t aged all that well. There have been many
other Bill 7s since then, and once a Bill becomes law it
gets renamed, but I had the Bill 7 Campaign itself in
mind when I made the name for the award… my community
that stood together and supported each other as we took
our place in the public world. |