KYLE WAS BORN IN 1987 IN OAKVILLE, ONTARIO. His dad was a police officer there, but he didn’t want to raise kids in the city, so he moved them to a farm in the Fergus-Arthur area. Growing up in Arthur was challenging. Kyle remembers, from an early age, people telling him he was gay, because he was a little feminine as a child. He was also very sensitive. He got teased a lot. His parents, doing what they thought was best for him, pushed him to be involved in heteronormative things like sports. Kyle always knew he was different.
One memory that sticks out to him is being seven, eight, nine years old and being forced to play hockey. He was good at it, but there was pressure: you’re a boy, you play hockey. He remembers crying to his parents one night when he was a small kid. He’d always been pretty self-aware in telling his dad that he wanted to do things like ballet, things that were more transgressive. His parents are great now, but at the time they said, “Boys don’t do that. You’re not a fag.” He remembers getting into an argument with his dad and his dad dropped the word “cocksucker.” That was the point Kyle shifted inwards, and realized that he had to do everything he could to get out of Arthur, so that he could be himself.
Arthur is a town of about roughly 2,000 people. It’s an intersection, really. His high school had about 200 people. His classes were about ten to twelve students. Everybody was heavily invested in each other’s lives. The town was very white and Christian. Kyle’s neighbours were Mennonites. The kids didn’t go to school past grade eight. Girls swam with their dresses on.
Kyle grew up Catholic. His dad is Catholic, and he baptized his kids so that they could go to the Catholic school, because he thought it would provide a better education. Kyle stopped going to Catholic school after grade nine because he no longer believed in the tenets. Sex education, in his generation, was incredibly lacking and offensive. He remembers his eighth grade teacher telling him that the only reason for any sexual activity was for procreation. He remembers thinking that any act other than vaginal-penile intercourse was wrong, because it wasn’t for procreation, and that’s what God says.
Kyle wasn’t the best student growing up, but as soon as he got to grade nine, he started to focus on academics. Gay-bashing was still tolerated when he was in high school, so in order to get out, Kyle knew he had to excel.
Kyle was seventeen when he moved out of his parents’ house. He never went back to live there, after moving to London, Ontario, for university. London was still pretty small, in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, when he was young, he always knew that he would probably end up in one of three cities: Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver. Kyle looks at young gay people who are coming out of small towns, and he looks at his circle of friends, and the common thread seems to be that getting to the city provides some sort of anonymity, and some sort of security blanket, and the opportunity to meet other queer people.
Kyle’s plan was to focus on school, to the detriment of other things, like socializing. He likes to say that he’s thirty now, but because of everything he went through, he’s probably mentally only about twenty, in terms of actual development. From the time Kyle was seventeen to the time he was about twenty-four, he battled exclusively with the question of his sexuality in his head. He didn’t do well in school. He didn’t connect well socially. He hopes that kids today have a period during high school where they can act out and explore themselves. Kyle never had that. He didn’t have any queer or gay role models in his life. He wanted to make sure he could support himself financially before coming out. Kyle had heard horror stories. So it took him quite a while. He came out when was twenty-six or twenty-seven. It stunted a lot of his growth. And here he is at thirty-two, feeling like he’s just starting his life for the first time.
If you’d asked Kyle a year or two ago if he felt confident walking down the streets of Arthur holding his partner’s hand, he would have said yes. But now he can’t tell you the last time, since Doug Ford was elected premier of Ontario in 2018, that he’s felt comfortable enough, even in Toronto, to hold his partner’s hand. People feel emboldened to comment on things or insert themselves into conversations where they have no place. The Fords are populist, and the lowest common denominator is the religious right. He would be scared now to go back to his hometown with his partner.
Kyle thinks that if he were a young person today, and he were gay, and he had the ability to at least explore or question his identity as a ten-, twelve-, thirteen-year-old, then things might have turned out a lot different for him. He had a lot of wasted potential, a lot of wasted years. He hopes the current political climate doesn’t stop young people from coming out, from being themselves. He hopes it doesn’t scare young people, but it does scare him. It’s not just that rolling back sex education can hurt people, it’s that it gives people the authority to hurt themselves, or reach out and hurt others.
There were so many years where, instead of hating himself, he could have been hating the conservative government, and really helping move the needle forward. He’s met so many people his age, his generation, who fell into substance abuse issues, self-harm, depression. So many of his friends that he’s seen going to the bars now, for the last five years, roughly, since he’s been out, do the same thing, just over and over and over again, like it’s Groundhog Day. Some of them are trying to grow up, even in their thirties. But it requires making a very conscious decision that you’re going to grow up, because the process of growing up in the eighties and nineties was not “normal” for queer youth, and it’s therefore easier to get stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence. Many of his friends have been making the shift towards trying to build a healthier life, but many of them have also not been able to dig themselves out of the hole. As for Kyle himself, to this day he knows he can’t take a drink without wanting to drink the entire bottle. Although he doesn’t abuse liquor now, if he does drink it, he has to be very cautious about his intake.
Kyle’s dad was a police officer and his mom was a dispatcher. That’s how they met in Toronto. And then they continued similar jobs out in the country. Kyle believes strongly in the power of public service. Becoming a law enforcement officer was the route he wanted to go. And as he was moving towards self-acceptance, he wanted to be a role model for that kid in grade eight, who’s watching the Pride parade and sees a cop marching in it.
For Kyle, becoming a police officer was also a matter of breaking barriers. He faced very strong resistance within the Toronto police. Not necessarily always explicit, which there was, but even the implicit things, where people would be invited out after work for a beer, and suddenly the gay guys weren’t invited. He wanted to challenge heteronormative stereotypes, in a very straight environment, or at least, an environment that wasn’t very open to gay men. He used his time at the Toronto police to be a disrupter, to engage in positive social change. He walked in the parade for a few years with his partner. He went down to New York City and represented Toronto in the Pride parade there. He used that opportunity, that uniform he was given, to make a statement. It was definitely challenging in that environment, but Kyle’s glad he was able to work on anti-bullying while he was part of the force, as well as walk in the parade.