In the mid 1960s before I came to Toronto people warned me, “People are cold there.”
I said, “I will warm them up.”
They said, “You can’t talk to you.”
I have been thinking about that a lot as the media tells me this is a racist country.
The folks saying that seem determined to tar and feather the nation.
I am not denying there are people here who have attitudes they’d be better without.
Nor am I denying past mistakes.
Tar and feathering certainly appeals to the mob.
It also helps to sell papers.
Today as an older white male I am seeing fear on the streets.
Fear of what?
Fear of me.
LGBTQ couples I see look at me ready for me to fault them. Little do they know how proud I am when I see them.
I was out before it was safe to be out.
Why?
We don’t change the world for the better by lying.
Black people and Asians look at me with wary eyes.
Why?
The media is telling them 1/3 of this nation is racist, 1/3 of this nation hates them.
2/3rds does not.
I see Moslem families pass by my house when I am sitting on my front porch ready for abuse to fall from my lips.
When I came to Toronto in the mid 1960s the oppression of LGBTQ people was at its peak.
It took courage to be out then.
I had great role models like John Herbert, author of FORTUNE AND MEN’S EYES who became a friend and mentor.
Yes, I got anonymous hate mail and anonymous phone calls threatening my life. Still do.
I had accepted that as the price of speaking truthfully.
I also got a lot of love. I got and get a helluva lot of love.
For decades I have born attacks from a man who says he is a Christian.
I know from his attacks he is not.
Those attacks have included thousands of slanderous posters put up all over the city. They have included anonymous threats on the phone. The flyers I post for my programs are routinely destroyed. In the operation of his street poster business he makes a mockery of the freedom of speech Canada’s Supreme Court defended.
Sometimes people walk by my house raging at myself or the people I live with.
I am actually grateful for that.
Why?
Because I know what it is to endure the hate that led to the murder of a family in London, Ontario because they were Moslems.
I also know that one person has a lot more power to change the world for the better than the media would have us believe.
Margaret Meade said, “Never underestimate the power of one person to change the world for the better. All too often that is all that does it.”
When this city was flooded with posters designed to incite violence upon me people in the media who knew me stayed silent.
One man new to Toronto, Oliver More, called. He said, “I want to do a story on this. I know the attacks are bogus.”
I said, “Only if you include the other people who have been and are being attacked.”
He said, “I will.” He did.
Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, “Worse than the deeds of our enemies is the silence of our friends.”
I know that silence.
I am not silent.
Canada is a great country.
I am here to make it greater.
I understand why people are frightened of old white guys like me.
They are frightened for the same reason people were frightened of LBGTQ people when I first came to this city.
They are frightened because the stories they hear and read in the media cause them to be frightened.
Mass media manipulation is the disease of our time.
Cut the strings.
When hatred reared its ugly head against LGBTQ people in India part of the fight against it was waged from my home in Toronto. Aditya Shanker, head of SAATHI, was then living here.
It is only right the fight against hatred in Canada be fought from here was well.
–Reg Hartt (Old white guy)
Aditya Shanker, above, fought intolerance in India from his Toronto home with me.
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