WESTLOCK – Edmonton-Centre MP Randy Boissonnault knows all-too well the struggles of being gay in rural Alberta.
Growing up in Morinville, the soon-to-be 53-year-old minister of tourism and associate minister of finance in the Liberal government, says “it was hard as a young person” and he was “afraid to be who I really was well into my late 20s.”
“So, I can’t begin to share with you what kind of a difference it would have meant to me to see a Pride crosswalk at G.H. Primeau School or at the town office in Morinville. It would have changed my life,” said Boissonnault. “And it would have changed the lives of a lot of us who simply left the community because we thought we’d never be welcomed.”
Boissonnault was the first person to speak in support of the Rainbow crosswalk at the Town of Westlock’s June 12 meeting and called it “a powerful message of inclusion” that demonstrates the community is “welcoming, accepting and caring” and shows “what forward leaning, forward thinking, modern Alberta looks like.” See more coverage on the crosswalk here and here.
“I know your community well and spent a lot of time in and around the area and celebrating diversity within our community is one of the great joys of being an Albertan and being a Canadian,” said Boissonnault.
“When we celebrate or send well wishes to a neighbour or friend when we mark a holiday, when we share a land acknowledgement like we did at this council meeting to begin, all of these experiences add richness to our lives and the same is true for celebrating Pride season.”
Boissonnault said that when he was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford in England, he was “so deeply in the closet” that when the LGBT group would meet there he was “about as far away as I could get because I didn’t want to face who I really was.”
Decades later, as an elected official and a special advisor to the prime minister on LGBTQIA2S+ issues, he returned to Oxford to present at a conference and had brunch with a friend and her two young children. Boissonnault recalled that her children had asked her what the Pride flag meant and she had spent 20 minutes explaining it to them. She then asked her son to “tell uncle Randy what the Rainbow flag means to you” and his answer was succinct.
“He looked at me with his big, brown beautiful eyes and said, ‘All the peoples.’ So, look if a four year old can get it, I’m pretty sure the rest of us can,” said Boissonnault. “Two-spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans people are not some strange other. We aren’t wrong, we aren’t bad. We’re your neighbours, your co-workers, your cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings and children. And we are here in this community and we always have been and we always will be.”
Boissonnault also addressed what he called “vile lies on social media and elsewhere about a so-called gay agenda.”
“The truth is my friend I can tell you what the gay agenda is, it’s to get the lawn done and to take out the garbage and to make sure the ‘honey-do’ list actually gets filled before I go back to Ottawa,” he continued. “We have the same agenda as everyone else. Have a good life, contribute to the community and make it better than how we found it.”
Why did Boissonnault attend?
Mayor Ralph Leriger said it was his idea to invite Boissonnault to speak, having first worked with him about six years ago as part of the Westlock-based Rainbow to the Future initiative that has built schools and water projects in Ethiopia, in addition to purchasing medical equipment and supplies for people there.
He says local Rotarians like himself, Dwight Brown, Albert and Florence Miller and Laura Morie, as well as Rainbow founder Leo Seguin, were well aware of “the fantastic work Randy had done as a Rotarian on a project called Literacy Without Borders.”
“And he arranged for a delegation from Rainbow to the Future to come to Parliament in Ottawa and present directly to the federal minister and a group of MPs. Randy made it a non-partisan event and we invited our local MP Arnold Viersen and he came also and spoke,” said Leriger. “Sometimes there are issues so important that they require bi-partisan action.”
Leriger says in the lead up to Monday’s council meeting he was trying to think of a positive role model “for the kids” in an effort to show them “they could achieve great things in their lives” and to “lift them up and not hold them down” and Boissonnault graciously accepted.
As for unfounded social-media claims the town is receiving money from the federal government or any other special-interest groups for supporting the Pride crosswalk, Leriger laughed it off and noted that the R.F. Staples School Thunder Alliance are the ones paying for the paint and brushes. He also made it clear that he “won’t buy into anyone who’s trying to drag us into the toxic tribalism that exists in the U.S.”
“Municipalities are non-partisan and we work with whoever is elected to the provincial and federal governments and quite frankly, I think we do that quite effectively,” said Leriger. “For me, I look to work with well-intentioned people who produce results and Randy Boissonnault is one of those people.”
