# data[].attributes.body
Tomlinson eventually met his partner who worked in Toronto, Canada and after getting married move to Toronto. Maurice has been one of the first lawyers to try fight the homophobic Sodomy
Law in Jamaica. He also served as a legal advisor on the board of Jamaica’s AIDS Support for
Life. After a serious of violent transphobia and homophobia attacked, Tomlinson saw the need and became a founding member of Dwayne’s House, Jamaica’s first charity which focuses on food and services for LGBTQ+ folks experiencing homelessness. In 2011 Tomlinson received
the “David Kato Vision and Voice Award which was created to honour slain Ugandan LGBTQ+ activist David Kato.

# data[].attributes.body
Kim Katrin is an internationally acclaimed award winning educator, writer, artist &amp; consultant.
Recognized stateside as one of The Root; Young Feminists to Watch, celebrated in Canada as
2016’s National Youth Role Model and nationally as one of the 50 Most Loved Gay Canadians. Katrin is an owner and member of board for the Glad Day Book Shop, the oldest LGBTQ+ bookstore in the world. Katrin is a passionate speaker and educator touching on all intersections of sexuality, gender, race, class, ability and much more. She’s hosted a number of community
dialogues and practical strategies around Sexuality; Consent, Queer and Trans Allyship and Antiracism and Equity. She has spoken at a number of different Universities across Canada and the United States to thousands of students, educators and communities.

# data[].attributes.body
Daniel Joseph Levy (born August 9, 1983) is a Canadian actor, writer, producer, and television personality. He is the son of comedian and actor Eugene Levy and screenwriter Deborah Divine Levy. Dan Levy hosted an aftershow for The Hills that aired on MTV Canada for several seasons.[1]
He currently stars as David Rose in Schitt's Creek, a scripted comedy series that he co-created with his father.[2] For his work on the series, he has won several Canadian Screen Awards, among other accolades.[3]

# data[].attributes.body
Lilly Singh is a Canadian YouTuber, comedian, talk show host, author, and actress. She was born on September 26, 1988 in Scarborough, Ontario. Lily is the only openly LGBTQ+ person as well as the first person of Indian descent hosting an American major broadcast network late-night talk show named A Little Late with Lilly Singh in the NBC.

# data[].attributes.body
Cassils is a visual artist, body builder, and personal trainer from Montreal, Quebec currently based in Los Angeles, California, United
States. Although born as Heather Cassils, the artist prefers gender
neutral pronouns and a single name of Cassils. Cassils works in live performance, film, sound, sculpture and photography industry and uses the body in sculptural fashions, integrating feminism, body art, and gay male aesthetics. Cassils, through their work and body
building challenge any notion of binary gender. In their 2012 project “Becoming an Image” Cassils built a 2000 lb clay sculpture and then attacked the
sculpture in dark for 20 minutes to represent senseless acts of violence against trans
and queer bodies.

# data[].attributes.body
Ellen DeGeneres is a famous TV host born in January 26,
1958. She is an American comedian, show host, actress,
and writer. Her stand-up career started in the early 1980s.
She hosted her first own sitcom show “The Ellen Show”
from 2001 to 2002. The sitcom was not very successful, yet
she got a break to have her own daytime television variety
comedy talk show “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” in 2003.
The show has been on going since.

# data[].attributes.body
Anderson pursued journalism with no formal journalistic education. His first independent
correspondence work was aired in Channel One in the early 1990s and it featured
students fighting against the Burmese military government. His next big stories were
from a variety of war-torn regions, including Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Over times
Anderson hosted many news cast programs and reality shows before landing his own
news talk-show program called Anderson Cooper 360 with CNN in 2003.

# data[].attributes.body
Antoni Porowski was born in March 14, 1984 in Montreal, Quebec. He is a
Polish-Canadian television personality, actor, chef and model. He speaks
Polish, English and French fluently. He holds a degree in Creative Arts
from Concordia University, Canada and in Acting from the Neighborhood
Playhouse School of the Theatre, New York. Since 2008 he has performed
various characters in television and web series and participated in music
videos. However, he became famous through his appearance as a food and
wine expert in Netflix series Queer Eye. On September 10, 2018, Porowski along with co-hosts of Queer
Eye received an Emmy for Outstanding Structured Reality Program.

# data[].attributes.body
Christine and the Queens or just Chris, is the professional name of a French singer, songwriter and producer named Héloïse Adelaïde Letissier. She was born on June 1,1988 in Nantes, France. Her debut album Chaleur Humaine in 2014 was named one of the best albums of the year by The Guardian, The Independent, Mojo, and New Musical Express. Her second album, Chris, was released in September 2018 and
it was also named Album of the Year by The Guardian. The first single of this album;Girlfriend; was ranked Song of the Year by the Time magazine.

# data[].attributes.body
Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay was born in July 27, 1990 in La Malbaie,
Quebec. She is a Canadian actress and writer. She has been writing since
she was10 years old. Her first poetry collection “Le ventre des volcans”
was published in French language in 2015. In 2018 she published her
second poetry collection in English named “The Secrets of origami”.
She is currently working on her third poetry book and self-fiction novel.

# data[].attributes.body
Bilal Hassani is a French singer, songwriter and YouTube star, born 9 September
1999 in Paris to French-Moroccan parents. Bilal rose to fame in France in 2015
when he was 15 years old after participating in the second season of The Voice
Kids. Although he did not win the contest, but he showed his talent through his
voice and singing style. Since then he released various songs and became social
media star. In 2018, a popular French men’s magazine Têtu considered him as one of the “30 LGBT+
[people] who move France” and described him as &quot;an icon for French LGBT+ youth”.

# data[].attributes.body
Raised in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec,
Cara Tierney is an interdisciplinary cultural
producer whose work hovers around visual art, social activism and education. Their
artistic practice foregrounds issues of language, gender, desire and materiality and
uses the body as a point of departure to question the structures that mediate our
identities. Cara holds a BA from Mount Allison University, moved to Ottawa in 2002, completed an MA in Canadian Art History at Carleton University in 2004, and began rigorously performing the deconstruction of their identity shortly thereafter.

# data[].attributes.body
As both an activist and an educator, their areas of expertise include anti-oppressive framework, community outreach strategies for queer and trans people of
colour, intersectional analysis, Black Lives Matter activism, and contemporary anti- assimilationist queer activism.

# data[].attributes.body
born Lucie Renee Mathilde Schwob, was a French photographer, sculptor and writer. Schwob adopted the gender-ambiguous name Claude Cahun in 1917 and is best known for self-portraits, in
which they assumed a variety of personae. Cahuns work was both political and personal, and
often undermined traditional concepts of static gender
roles. In their autobiography, Disavowals, they explained, “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the
situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits
me.” During WWII, Cahun was also active as a resistance
worker and propagandist.

# data[].attributes.body
Yves Saint Laurent was an openly gay man, who has a long-time art collector partner Pierre
Bergé. Laurent is particularly noteworthy as one of the first high fashion designed to feminize
traditionally masculine garments including his world famous tuxedos for women. Also worth
mentioning, Laurent was among the first designers to hire non-europeans to walk his shows.

# data[].attributes.body
Joe Rose founded Etcetera, this is the Dawson Colleges first LGBT association in 1985. Aside
from founding the first LGBT association, Rose also founded Montreals first chapter of ACT UP.
ACT UP was close to Rose, as he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDs.

# data[].attributes.body
Diana King (born 8 November 1970) is a Jamaican singer-songwriter who performs a
mixture and fusion of reggae, reggae fusion and dancehall. She was born to an Indo-Jamaican mother and an Afro Jamaican father. She is best known for her hit 1995
single "Shy Guy" and her remake of "I Say a Little Prayer" which was featured on the
soundtrack to My Best Friend's Wedding. After making an appearance on The Notorious
B.I.G.'s 1994 song "Respect", from his album Ready to Die, she signed a recording
contract with Sony Music. Her first release was a remake of the track "Stir It Up" (#53
R&B) for the Cool Runnings soundtrack that same year. In June 2012, King came out
as lesbian via Facebook, stating: "I answer now, not because it's anyone's business but because it feels right with my soul and I believe by not answering or hiding it all these years somehow makes it appear as if I am ashamed of it or that I believe it is wrong."She
has 15 siblings, but due to her coming out, she is now only close to one. She came out to herself in her 20s, but it took a decade for her to be comfortable with it publicly, for any backlash towards her daughter and son. She was honored for her bravery on 16
December 2012 and was presented with the prestigious "Vanguard Award" at the Out
Music Awards in Las Vegas, NV. King is the first Jamaican artist to ever publicly come out.

# data[].attributes.body
Jane Vance Rule, CM, OBC (28 March 1931 – 27 November 2007) was a Canadian writer
of lesbian-themed novels and non-fiction. In 1964, Rule published Desert of the Heart, after
22 rejections from publishers. The novel featured two women who fall in love with each
other and caused Rule to receive a flood of letters from "very unhappy, even desperate"
women who felt they were alone and would be miserable.[1] The novel caused her to be
sought out by Canadian media, and Rule later wrote, "I became, for the media, the only
lesbian in Canada. A role I gradually and very reluctantly accepted and used to educate
people as I could."[1] In 1976, she moved to Galiano Island and remained there until the end
of her life. Rule's novel was later made into a movie by Donna Deitch, released as Desert
Hearts (1985). The Globe and Mail said of it, "the film is one of the first and most highly
regarded works in which a lesbian relationship is depicted favourably.” Rule served on the
executive of the Writers' Union of Canada. She was an outspoken advocate of both free
speech and gay rights, included in the various controversies surrounding the gay
magazine The Body Politic.

# data[].attributes.body
Journalist based in Toronto. Rabid political/foreign policy
nerd. Reports and editorializes mostly on human rights
issues/policy.

# data[].attributes.body
Vivek Shraya is a Toronto-based artist whose body of work includes several albums, films,
and books. Her first book of poetry, even this page is white, won a 2017 Publisher Triangle
Award and was longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads. Her debut novel, She of the Mountains,
was named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books, and her first children’s picture book,
The Boy & the Bindi, was featured on the National Post Bestseller List. Vivek has read and performed internationally at shows, festivals and post-secondary institutions, including
sharing the stage with Tegan & Sara. She is one half of the music duo Too Attached.

# data[].attributes.body
Akio Maroon is a dedicated Single Mother, an Educator, and an International Human Rights Advocate who identifies as a
queer, gender-fluid Black Womxn. Akio has spent just over 11 years employed in the field of Occupation Health & Safety and 14yrs in Human Rights advocacy.

# data[].attributes.body
K is a Canadian, non-binary, genderqueer, peoplequeer, mentally ill, critical feminist robot. They have a background in linguistics, information,
privacy, and categorization, and human-centric design. They are the artist and writer for Robot Hugs, a twice-weekly webcomic about (among other
things) gender, identity, feminism, mental health, and cats. In their spare
time, they provide peer education and workshops on negotiation,
consent, and identity. In their spare-spare time, their hobbies include worrying about things they can’t control and knitting.

# data[].attributes.body
Rae Spoon is a Canadian musician and writer. Their musical style has varied
from country to electronic-influenced indie rock and folk punk. Spoon grew up as
a transgender person in Calgary, Alberta. They were raised in a Pentecostal
household to a paranoid-schizophrenic father. Their father’s religious beliefs
caused anxiousness to a teenage Rae. Spoon now lives in Montreal, Quebec.

# data[].attributes.body
Sophie Labelle (born circa 1987) is a trans author,
cartoonist, and public speaker from Montreal,[2][3]known
for her webcomic Assigned Male. She is active in
the transgender rights movement and speaks on the
subjects of trans history and transfeminism.

# data[].attributes.body
Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina (born 18 January 1971) is a Kenyan author, journalist and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual TIME 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World. In January 2007, Wainaina was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader" – an award given to people for "their potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world." Wainaina's satirical essay
"How to Write About Africa" attracted wide attention. In 2003, he was given an award by the Kenya Publisher's Association, in recognition of his services to Kenyan literature. He subsequently declined the award. On December 1 2016, World Aids Day, Wainaina announced on
his Twitter profile that he has HIV

# data[].attributes.body
CeCe McDonald (/ˌsiːˈsiː/; born 1989) is an African American bi-trans
woman and LGBTQ activist from Minneapolis, Minnesota.[2][3][4] She came to national
attention in June 2012 for accepting a plea bargain of 41 months for
second-degree manslaughter of a man she stabbed after McDonald and her friends were
assaulted outside a bar near closing time.[5][6][7][8] The attack, a year prior, was widely seen
as racist and transphobic, and became physical when McDonald was struck in the face by
the man's friend with "an alcoholic drink" glass causing a bleeding gash that
needed stitches.[9] According to Mother Jones, when McDonald was getting away from the
bar the man came after her, she "took a pair of scissors out of her purse and turned around
to face [him]; he was stabbed in the chest and died from the wound."[10] McDonald said she
saw how her case was progressing so took the plea bargain rather than face trial and risk a
possible 20-year term.[11](p6) According to the Bay Area Reporter her conviction "sparked
outrage, and was viewed by many as an act of transphobia and racism against a woman who
defended herself."[12] Although she is a woman McDonald was housed in two men's
prisons.[13] An online petition "led to the state department of corrections administering the
full regimen of hormones she needed.

# data[].attributes.body
Alec Butler is a Canadian playwright and filmmaker. Butler was born in
1959 in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and was assigned female at
birth but was intersex. He identified as a butch lesbian before
pursuing gender reassignment in 1999, and currently identifies as
a Two-Spirit trans man. Prior to his gender reassignment, his work was
published under the name Audrey Butler.

# data[].attributes.body
Rupert Raj is a Canadian Eurasian, trans* activist and transsexual man. His work since his own gender transition in 1971 has been recognized by several awards, as well as his inclusion in the National Portrait Gallery of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives Created a zine for FTM in 1990’s. Worked at Sherbourne Health Centre before retiring.

# data[].attributes.body
Lynn Ann Conway is an American computer scientist,
electrical engineer, inventor, and transgender activist.

# data[].attributes.body
Susan Gapka transitioned on September 28, 1999 to fulfill her lifelong dream of
living as a woman while working as a George Brown College student placement at
Toronto City Hall. Ms. Gapka quickly became a trans activist joining the Board of
Egale Canada, and helped develop their trans portfolio. In December 2004 Ms.
Gapka was recognised for her work empowering transsexual and transgender
communities when the City of Toronto awarded her the Pride Award. In 2001,
Ms. Gapka helped found the Rainbow Health Network (RHN). She also founded
and is Chair of the Trans Lobby Group, a former committee of RHN, which was
formed to advocate for public funding of Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS). The
Lobby Group was recently recognised as Pride Toronto's 2011 Honoured Dyke
Group. Ms. Gapka graduated with Honours from the Community Worker
Programme at George Brown in Spring 2000. Since then she has been studying
Public Policy and Administration at York University and graduated June 2009 with
a degree in Political Science.

# data[].attributes.body
Carole Ann Pope is a British-born Canadian rock
singer-songwriter, whose provocative blend of
hard-edged new wave rock with explicit homoerotic and
BDSM-themed lyrics made her one of the first openly
lesbian entertainers to achieve mainstream fame.

# data[].attributes.body
Pierre et Gilles, Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard, are
French artists and romantic partners. They have been producing
works together since 1976, creating a world where painting and photography meet. Their art is peopled by their friends and family, anonymous and famous, who appear in sophisticated life-size sets the artists build in their studio. They meticulously apply paint to the photographs once printed on canvas. Accomplished image creators,
Pierre and Gilles have built up an extraordinary contemporary
iconography on the frontier between art history and popular
culture.

# data[].attributes.body
Ann-Marie MacDonald (born October 29, 1958) is a Canadian
playwright, novelist, actress and broadcast host who lives
in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The daughter of a member of
Canada's military, she was born at an air force
base near Baden-Baden, West Germany. She is of Lebanese descent
through her mother.[1]

# data[].attributes.body
From 1974 to 1986 Tim McCaskell was a member of
the collective that ran The Body Politic, Canada’s iconic
gay liberation journal. He was a founding member of
AIDS ACTION NOW!, and a spokesperson for Queers
Against Israeli Apartheid. He is the author of Race to
Equity: Disrupting Educational Inequality.

# data[].attributes.body
Schuyler Lee (Sky) Gilbert, Jr. (born December 20, 1952) is
a Canadian writer, actor, academic and drag performer. Born in Norwich, Connecticut, he studied theatre at York
University in Toronto, Ontario, and at the University of Toronto,
before becoming the co-founder and artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times, a Toronto theatre company dedicated to LGBT drama. Gilbert's drag name is Jane. Sky also teaches a course on Playwrighting at the University of Guelph.

# data[].attributes.body
An activist, researcher, and front-line worker, Scanlon worked with agencies like
the 519 and Sherbourne Health Centre to develop programs to address the needs of Toronto’s trans community, and gave generously of his time, energy, and expertise in assisting trans people with issues of employment, housing, sexual
health, and acceptance within the larger community.

# data[].attributes.body
Bayard Rustin (/ˈbaɪərd/; March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987) was an American leader
in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. He was born and
raised in Pennsylvania, where his family was involved in civil rights work. In 1936, he moved
to Harlem, New York City, where he earned a living as a nightclub and stage singer. He
continued activism for civil rights.

# data[].attributes.body
Arthur Russell (born Charles Arthur Russell, Jr.; May 21, 1951 – April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, producer, singer, and musician whose work spanned a disparate range of styles. Trained in contemporary experimental composition and Indian classical music, Russell found success in downtown New York's avant-garde and disco scenes in the 1970s and 1980s, during which time he was associated with minimalism and the experimental music venue The Kitchen.

# data[].attributes.body
Beginning in 1949, Egan was a regular writer of letters to publications, criticizing inaccurate portrayals of lesbian and gay people, and to politicians, advocating for fairer treatment of lesbians and gays under the law. His letters appeared in daily and weekly newspapers, and
in magazines such as Saturday Night and Time.

# data[].attributes.body
El-Farouk Khaki (born October 26, 1963) is a Canadian refugee
and immigration lawyer, and human rights activist on issues
including gender equality, sexual orientation, and progressive Islam. He was the New Democratic Party's candidate for the House of
Commons in the riding of Toronto Centre in a March 17,
2008 by-election. Khaki came in second with 13.8% of the vote. He deals with immigration for Queer and Trans people and is a Muslim immigrant himself.

# data[].attributes.body
Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was
an American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s by expressing concepts of birth, death, sexuality, and war.

# data[].attributes.body
The Cockettes were an avant garde psychedelic hippie theater
group founded by Hibiscus (George Edgerly Harris II) in the fall of 1969. The troupe was formed out of a group of hippie artists, men and women, who were living in Kaliflower, one of the many communes in Haight-Ashbury, a neighborhood of San
Francisco, California. Hibiscus came to live with them because of their preference for dressing outrageously and proposed the idea of putting their lifestyle on the stage.

# data[].attributes.body
Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (18 March 1928 – 30 April 2002) was the founder of
the Gründerzeit Museum (a museum of everyday items) in Berlin-Mahlsdorf. With the fall of
the Third Reich, Lothar was released. She worked as a second-hand goods dealer and
dressed in a more feminine way. "Lothar" became "Lottchen". She loved older men and
became a well-known figure in the city as von Mahlsdorf. She began collecting household
items, thus saving historical every-day items from bombed-out houses. She was also able to take advantage of the clearance of the households of people who left for West Germany.

# data[].attributes.body
Sylvester James, Jr. (September 6, 1947 – December 16, 1988), who used the stage name
of Sylvester, was an American singer-songwriter. Primarily active in the genres of disco, rhythm and
blues, and soul, he was known for his flamboyant and androgynous appearance, falsetto singing voice, and
hit disco singles in the late 1970s.

# data[].attributes.body
Mercury was born of Parsi descent in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and grew up there and in
India until his mid-teens, before moving with his family to Middlesex, England — ultimately
forming the band Queen in 1970 with Brian May and Roger Taylor. Mercury died in 1991 at
age 45 due to complications from AIDS, having confirmed the day before his death that he
had contracted the disease.

# data[].attributes.body
Kent Monkman (born 1965) is a Canadian First Nations artist
of Cree and Irish ancestry. He is a member of the Fish River band situated in Northern Manitoba. He is both a visual as well as performance artist, working in
a variety of mediums such as painting, film/video, and installation. He has had
many solo exhibitions at museums and galleries in Canada, the US, and
Europe. He has achieved international recognition for his colourful and richly detailed combining of disparate genre conventions and also for his clever recasting of historical narrative. He is the grand marshal of Toronto pride 2017.

# data[].attributes.body
RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960), known professionally by
the mononym RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, television personality, and
singer/songwriter. Since 2009, he has produced and hosted the reality competition
series RuPaul's Drag Race, for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award in 2016.

# data[].attributes.body
Vaginal Davis is an
American intersex-born, genderqueer performing artist,
painter, independent curator, composer, and writer. Born
and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Davis gained
notoriety in New York during the 1980s, where she inspired the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn's prevalent drag scene. She currently resides in Berlin, Germany

# data[].attributes.body
Harris Glenn Milstead, better known by his stage name Divine (October 19, 1945 –
March 7, 1988), was an American actor, singer and drag queen. Closely associated with the independent filmmaker John Waters, Divine was a character actor, usually performing
female roles in cinematic and theatrical appearances, and adopted a female drag persona for his music career.

# data[].attributes.body
John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an
American film director, screenwriter, author, actor, stand-up comedian, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films.

# data[].attributes.body
Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to
be elected to public office in California, when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around
the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.

# data[].attributes.body
John Cameron Mitchell (born April 21, 1963) is an
American actor, writer and director, best known for
originating the title role in the musical Hedwig and the
Angry Inch, and reprising it in the 2001 film
adaptation directed by him, as well as for directing the
films Shortbus (2006) and Rabbit Hole (2010).

# data[].attributes.body
Bruce LaBruce (born January 3, 1964)[1] is
a Canadian actor, writer, filmmaker, photographer and
underground adult director based in Toronto, Ontario. His
films explore themes of sexual and
interpersonal transgression against cultural norms, frequently
blending the artistic and production techniques
of independent film with gay pornography.[2]

# data[].attributes.body
G. B. Jones is a Canadian artist, filmmaker, musician,
and publisher of zines based in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada. Her art work has been featured
at galleries around the world,[1] and her films screened at
numerous film festivals, both in Canada and
abroad.[2] Her most recent musical project is Opera
Arcana.

# data[].attributes.body
Merrill Beth Nisker (born 11 November 1966), better known by her stage
name Peaches, is a Canadian electronic musician and performance artist. Her
songs are noted for disregarding traditional gender norms, and for their use of
sexually explicit lyrics.

# data[].attributes.body
a Brooklyn-based, Americanphotographer and artist. His
photographs focus heavily on the relationship between
artist and subject, often exploring the nude and the
relationship and intimacy of studio photography. It is
queer and erotic. Curator and critic Hilton Als,
associated Sepuya philosophically and spiritually as one of
writer, James Baldwin's "living children.”

# data[].attributes.body
Jocelyn "JD" Samson (born August 4, 1978) is an
American musician, producer, songwriter and DJ best
known as a member of the bands Le Tigre and MEN.

# data[].attributes.body
Geena Rocero is a Filipino American supermodel, TED
speaker, and transgender advocate based in New York
City. She is from a working class background and
founded Gender Proud an advocacy and aid organization.

# data[].attributes.body
Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), best known by his
pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist known for his stylized highly
masculinized homoerotic fetish art, and his influence on late twentieth century gay
culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic
images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade.[1] Over the course of four decades,
he produced some 3500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with
exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed
clothing.

# data[].attributes.body
AA Bronson, OC, (born Michael
Tims in Vancouver in 1946)[1] is
an artist, magazine publisher and curator who co-founded
the artists' group General Idea, was President of Printed
Matter, Inc., and started the NY Art Book Fair.

# data[].attributes.body
General Idea was a collective of three Canadian artists, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA
Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994.[1] As pioneers of early conceptual and
media-based art, their collaboration became a model for artist-initiated activities and
continues to be a prominent influence on subsequent generations of artists.[2]

# data[].attributes.body
Janet Mock is an American writer, TV host, transgender
rights activist, author of the New York Times bestseller
Redefining Realness, contributing editor for Marie Claire,
and former staff editor of People magazine's website.

# data[].attributes.body
Susan Sontag was an American writer, film-maker, teacher, and
political activist. She published her first major work, the essay
"Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964.

# data[].attributes.body
Will Munro was a Toronto artist, club promoter (Vaseline, Peroxide, Moustache) and restaurateur (The
Beaver) known for his work as a community builder among disparate Toronto groups. Born in Australia,
Munro grew up mostly in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, and moved to nearby Toronto to study at
the Ontario College of Art, graduating in 2000. Influenced by such artists as General Idea and
the queercore movement, he received critical attention for his work with men's underwear, a medium
he used eventually to create collages of colourful performers he admired such as Klaus Nomi and Leigh
Bowery. He created silkscreen posters to advertise Vazaleen—his monthly nightclub party that was
unusual for being a queer event where punk and other rock music was prominently played, and for being
one of the first to exist beyond the confines of the gay ghetto. The party was known for attracting a
diverse crowd, and at its peak brought in such performers as Nina Hagen; international "best-of"
nightclub lists took notice.

# data[].attributes.body
Xavier Dolan (born 20 March 1989), sometimes credited as Xavier
Dolan-Tadros, is a French Canadian actor, director, screenwriter,
editor, costume designer, and voice actor from Quebec. He began his
career as a child actor in commercials before directing
several arthouse feature films. He first received international acclaim in
2009 for his debut feature I Killed My Mother (J’ai tué ma mère), which
premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Director's Fortnight.[1]

# data[].attributes.body
Andy Warhol was an American artist, director and producer
who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as
pop art.

# data[].attributes.body
Laura Jane Grace is an American musician who is Trans
identified and best known as the founder, lead singer,
songwriter and guitarist of the punk rock band Against
Me!.

# data[].attributes.body
Laverne Cox is an American actress, reality television
star, television producer, and LGBT advocate.

# data[].attributes.body
Accessibility, inclusivity and visibility -- what Monica Forrester strives to attain for
the trans community in her work, she says. The Toronto-native is an engagement
coordinator with Maggie's, a sex workers' advocacy group. "I've worked with
other trans people to bring more visibility, awareness around some of the
systematic issues, some of the work issues," Forrester told CBC News
Community. "We do have a large community that does sex work, so to bring
more accessible services for them, around harm reduction, around working with
the police, around safety."

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Mirha-Soleil Ross is a transsexual videographer, performance
artist, sex worker and activist. Her work since the early
1990s in Montreal and Toronto has focused on transsexual
rights, access to resources, advocacy for sex workers and
animal rights.

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Holly Woodlawn was a Puerto Rican, Trans actress and
Warhol superstar who appeared in his movies Trash and
Women in Revolt. She was probably best known as the Holly
in Lou Reed's hit pop song "Walk on the Wild Side".

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William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer. Burroughs
was a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major
postmodernist author whose influence is considered to have
affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Wrote
about queer people and queer relationships. Was once addicted to
heroin.

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Larry Kramer is an American playwright (The Normal Heart) author, public health
advocate, and LGBT rights activist. He began his career rewriting scripts while working for
Columbia Pictures, which led him to London where he worked with United Artists. He
co-founded the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), which has become the world's largest
private organization assisting people living with AIDS. His political activism continued with
the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) in 1987, an
influential direct action protest organization with the aim of gaining more public action to
fight the AIDS crisis. ACT UP has been widely credited with changing public health policy
and the perception of people living with AIDS

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Quentin Crisp was an English writer and raconteur. From a
conventional suburban background, Crisp enjoyed wearing make-up
and painting his nails, and worked as a rent-boy in his teens.

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On a new career adventure, I perform as a Stage Hypnotist (clubs, fundraisers,
private shows, etc; www.BrandonTheHypnotist.com), as well as maintain a private
practice in downtown Toronto as a Certified Consulting Hypnotist and
Hypnotherapist (in short, I use hypnosis to help people overcome everyday
problems.) Between August 1993 and January 2016, I worked with Pink Triangle
Press (publisher of this website) as Publisher & Editor-in-chief and Director of
Publishing. I joined PTP in August 1993 to establish the Ottawa operation and
launch (then called) Capital Xtra, later rebranded to Xtra Ottawa. During my 22.5
year tenure with PTP, I lived and worked in Ottawa, Vancouver, and since 2001,
Toronto. At some point, I served as Publisher & Editor-in-chief of every print
product PTP published.

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“My activism evolved into my livelihood as a gay bookseller. Given
the prejudices of the time as well as the dynamics of my class and
family background, and what seemed to me to be the obvious need
to initiate various gay projects, the path seemed a logical one.
Cameras gave me a way of recording the history of the Movement
that I felt I was part of, even though these efforts were never really
appreciated at the time. ”

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An American Trans woman, sex worker, and gay liberation activist.
A veteran of the Stonewall riots, Johnson was born in Elizabeth,
New Jersey, and was a popular figure in New York City's gay and
art scene from the 1960s to the 1990s. Later in life Johnson
became an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

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Michelle DuBarry is the stage name of Russell Alldread, a
Toronto drag queen, who was awarded the title of
World's Oldest Performing Drag Queen by the Guinness
Book of World Records in 2015. She continues to
perform at age 85.

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Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an
American political activist, academic, and author. She
emerged as a prominent counterculture activist and
radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party
USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther
Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights
Movement.

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Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. Basquiat first achieved fame as part
of SAMO©, an informal graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic epigrams in the cultural
hotbed of the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Identified as bisexual. Paintings were
very political focused on power structures, race, and class.

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James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American novelist,
essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native
Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions
in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America.[1] Some of Baldwin's
essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the
Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976). An unfinished manuscript, Remember This
House, was expanded upon and adapted for cinema as the Academy
Award-nominated documentary film I Am Not Your Negro.