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When barbara findlay was a young woman, she told a psychiatrist she was attracted to women. She was then involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility because she was queer. <\/p>\n
In the early 1970s, being gay in Canada was considered a mental illness.<\/p>\n
Before she was called to the bar, findlay was then required to produce a “sanity certificate” showing she was fit for the profession, according to her honorary degree citation from Simon Fraser University in 2023.<\/p>\n
She went on to advocate for human rights the rest of her life. <\/p>\n
As a lawyer, findlay worked on a number of “groundbreaking” cases, according to the SFU citation, particularly those involving 2SLGBTQ+ rights.<\/p>\n
She died this weekend at the age of 77 after a long illness. B.C.’s 2SLGBTQ+ community is mourning her loss.<\/p>\n
Fellow activist Shantel Ivits said findlay defied categorization.<\/p>\n
“She’s not the kind of person who could be squished into boxes,” Ivits said. “And in fact, I would say she spent her entire life kind of working to dismantle those systems that try to squish people into boxes that just don’t fit for them.”<\/p>\n
Ivits recalled a favourite memory of findlay: she always spelled her full name in lowercase letters.<\/p>\n
Findlay explained why on her website: when she was in law school, she got her own letterhead and the designer spelled it without capital letters. She liked it and stuck with it.<\/p>\n
“But what she didn’t anticipate was that there would be this sort of interesting backlash against the idea of spelling your name with lowercase letters,” Ivits said.<\/p>\n
A court rejected an order because her name wasn’t spelled properly. The local queer newspaper refused to spell her name without capitals. Findlay called it “an uproar.”<\/p>\n
“I realized that I had a perfect illustration of how we react when someone moves even a tiny bit away from a norm of behaviour, even with respect to something that has no impact on anyone else,” findlay wrote.<\/p>\n
She kept the lowercase spelling.<\/p>\n
And the spelling \u2014 along with her activisim \u2014 was eye-catching.<\/p>\n
“I knew barbara findlay even before I moved to Vancouver because she was in the Pride Guide; [she] spelled her name with lowercase letters,” remembered Lee Keple, a member of the Rainbow Veterans of Canada.<\/p>\n
“And I’m like, OK, that stands out.”<\/p>\n
Crucial court battles<\/p>\n
Everyone seemed to know findlay, Keple said.<\/p>\n
“She was part of the reason that we had the rights that we had in Vancouver in the early 2000s and were able to build upon them … she was truly a champion.”<\/p>\n
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A tenacious community advocate, barbara findlay is remembered as a ‘force of nature,’ according to those she mentored and volunteered with. (CBC News)<\/p>\n
She advocated for allowing registering the names of both lesbian co-parents on their child’s birth certificate, and for the accommodation of a transgender youth at a Catholic school.<\/p>\n
In 2001, findlay was designated as Queen’s Counsel, and in 2013, she was awarded a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. In 2020, the Canadian Bar Association of B.C. presented her with an award for distinguished service.<\/p>\n
She co-founded the advocacy group Lawyers Against Transphobia and frequently volunteered for Rainbow Refugee Committee, among many other community endeavours.<\/p>\n
A fierce believer in self-determination of all kinds, according to Ivits, findlay chose to die by medical assistance in dying.<\/p>\n
Ivits said findlay once told them that “she would be brought back as thunder and lightning.”<\/p>\n
“On the night that she died, we had the most spectacular display of thunder and lightning that I have ever seen in my life,” Ivits said.<\/p>\n
“And to me, that was just a reminder that barbara findlay is and always will be a force of nature.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 4 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1020383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[2147,50],"class_list":["post-1020382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-canada","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117148798966563720","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1020383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}