Deadly Voyage

Doug Wilson (1950-1992) was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. He first gained prominence in September 1975 in a fight for gay rights at the University of Saskatchewan. The dean of the University's College of Education refused to allow Wilson, a postgraduate student in the Department of Educational Foundations, to go into the school system to supervise practice teachers because of his public involvement with the gay liberation movement. Although qualified to do the job, Wilson was disqualified solely on the basis of his sexual orientation. When the decision was upheld by the president of the University of Saskatchewan, the Committee to Support Doug Wilson was formed and generated much support for him across Canada. His appeal to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission was ultimately unsuccessful, and by 1976 Wilson and the Committee had abandoned the case.Wilson subsequently launched Stumblejumper Press in 1977, a small press publishing works by Canadian lesbians and gay men; served from 1978 to 1983 as executive director of the Saskatchewan Association on Human Rights; acted as an advisor in the Toronto Board of Education's Race Relations and Equal Opportunity Office; co-founded the Rites Collective, publishers of the newsmagazine Rites: For Lesbian and Gay Liberation, in 1984; and stood for Parliament as an NDP candidate for the Toronto riding of Rosedale.Wilson met American singer, songwriter, and writer Peter McGehee at an event in San Francisco in 1978 and became life-long partners. McGehee followed Wilson to Saskatchewan; the couple later settled in Toronto. Wilson spent the rest of his life as an indefatigable AIDS activist, co-founded AIDS Action Now! in 1988, and served as founding chairperson of the Canadian Network of Organizations for People Living With AIDS.McGehee was the author of Boys Like Us, a tragicomic novel tracing a group of gay male Toronto friends during the AIDS crisis; McGehee succumbed to the disease in 1991. During his own illness Wilson edited McGehee's posthumous novel Sweetheart (1992), and one month before his death completed his first novel (based on McGehee's notes), Labour of Love(1993), the third volume of the Boys Like Us trilogy.