The Last Best Place: Lost in the Heart of Nova Scotia

Christine Hughes is a policy analyst at the Ontario Native Affairs
Secretariat.

Jim Egan is probably best known to the general public as the man who
fought, right up to the Supreme Court, the process whereby same-sex
couples are excluded from receiving pension benefits. To historians of
Gay Canada, however, he is known as the first Canadian gay activist.
Beginning in 1949, Egan challenged the popular view of homosexuality. At
one point, he even attempted to harness the tabloid press to get his
message out.

In 1987, Egan and his partner took their battle for equal rights to the
courts. Although the Supreme Court ultimately did not support their
request for pension benefits, it did acknowledge that the current
definition of “spouse” was discriminatory and that “sexual
orientation” had to be “read into” the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms as a ground of discrimination. This 1995 decision, Egan and
Nesbit v. Canada, paved the way for subsequent legal decisions that
forced the governments across Canada to recognize gay rights.

This work, which is based on a series of taped interviews conducted by
Don McLeod over a 10-year period, includes a preface and afterword,
extensive and meticulous notes, and several helpful appendixes. For
future biographers of Canada’s pioneering gay activist, this book
provides the essential groundwork.