It is #PrideMonth and this is the story of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, a notorious gatekeeper for transgender people.
"The Clarke" opened in 1966 and anyone wanting gender-affirming surgery had to go there to be approved.
Approval was far from simple.
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The tests used by The Clarke were the same that were used on criminal sex offenders at the same location.
Most people who went in felt The Clarke staff were more interested in researching trans people than helping them.
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The Clarke only gave approval for gender-affirming surgery if the person had a job, was single, was heterosexual and had never been convicted of a crime.
It was their goal that the person "pass" as cisgender & conform to binary gender roles.
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Approval took upwards of two years and the applicants were required to live as their gender during that time without surgery.
They also had to change all their legal documents, which was very difficult due to backlogs in the system at the time.
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Due to the strict requirements of The Clarke, there were few approvals for gender-affirming surgery.
In 1982, Betty Steiner, the director of the clinic, stated that out of 600 applicants, only 75 were approved for surgery.
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In 2001, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was released.
It was the first feature film written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language.
Today, it is considered by many critics to be the greatest Canadian film ever made.
Let's learn more about it :)
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The film is set around 1000 CE and retells an Inuit legend that has been passed down through generations via oral tradition.
Director Zacharias Kunuk (pictured) and writer Paul Angilirq and production team members all heard the legend when they were young.
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The story tells of two brothers who are betrayed by their wives. As their rivals attempt to kill them, the fast runner escapes across the ice, naked and barefoot. After being rescued, he sets up his own ambush and kills those who tried to kill him.
While we tend to think of the K*K*K as something that only existed in the United States, there was a period of time in the 1920s when the group was very large, and politically powerful, in Western Canada.
Let's learn more about this dark time.
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Throughout this thread, I will refer to the group as K3 since the other name may get flagged.
When K3 sprang up in Canada, it was a bit different from the American version.
Rather than focusing on Blacks, it focused mostly on French-Canadians, immigrants and Catholics.
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The K3 began farther to the east in Canada at first in the early-1920s.
In 1926, dynamite was detonated in a catholic church in Barrie, Ontario.
The man caught said he was ordered to blow up the church by K3.
On this day in 1882, The Sherlock Holmes of Saskatchewan, Frances Gertrude McGill, was born.
She went on to influence the development of forensic pathology and solved several unsolved crimes.
Let's learn more about her :)
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Born in Minnedosa, Manitoba, both of her parents died from typhoid fever in 1900 after visiting a county fair and drinking contaminated water.
As an adult, McGill studied medicine at the University of Manitoba. She earned her degree in 1915 and worked in Winnipeg.
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In 1918, she joined the Saskatchewan Department of Health just as the Spanish Flu was raging across Canada.
Two years later, she became a provincial pathologist in Saskatchewan. In 1922, she became the director of the provincial laboratory.
Bluenose was such an icon of Canada that it now appears on our dime.
A champion schooner, she became the pride of Canada.
But then she was sold to work to work as a freighter, and left to rot on a reef near Haiti.
Let's learn more about her :)
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The story of Bluenose begins in 1920 when she was designed by William James Roue to both fish and race.
Initially, she was designed with a waterline length of 36.6 metres, which was 2.4 metres too long for competition. She was redesigned to fix that problem.
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Built of Nova Scotian pine, spruce, birch and oak, her masts were made from Douglas fir.
During the keel-laying ceremony, the Governor General, the Duke of Devonshire, drove a golden spike into the timber.
In all, she cost $35,000 to build.
Sometimes referred to as Main Street Ontario, Yonge Street is one of the most famous streets in Canada.
Running from the Holland River to Queens Quay, the street is 86 km long.
Let's learn more about its construction :)
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In 1793, during the War of the First Coalition, Upper Canada Lt. Governor John Simcoe worried that the United States would attack Canada in support of France. Wanting a more defensible capital, he established York, present-day Toronto.
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With the new settlement, Simcoe planned to construct two connected roads. One would run from York to Lake Simcoe, the other connecting Lake Simcoe with Georgian Bay.
The road from Lake Simcoe to York became known as Yonge Street.
In the mid-1500s, noblewoman Marguerite de La Rocque was marooned on the Isle of Demons in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by her relative who wanted her fortune.
She survived for years on her own before she was rescued.
Let's learn her story :)
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It is not known when or where Marguerite was born. It is believed she was born around 1515 somewhere in France.
Her relative (some sources say cousin, others brother or uncle) Jean-Francois de La Rocque de Roberval was made Lt. Governor of New France in 1541.
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On the voyage over to France with her relative, Marguerite became romantically involved with a man on the ship. Roberval was displeased at Marguerite, who was unmarried, and decided to leave her on the Isle of Demons in the St. Lawrence River as punishment.