Douglas Wilson (activist), Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetDouglas Wilson (activist)
Canadian politician
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Meadow Lake, Canada
About Douglas Wilson (activist)
- Douglas Wilson (1950–1992) was a Canadian gay activist, graduate student, publisher and writer born in Saskatchewan.
- In 1975, he gained prominence in a fight for gay rights with the University of Saskatchewan.
- The university's dean of the College of Education refused to allow Wilson into the school system to supervise practice teachers because of his public involvement with the gay liberation movement.
- Wilson was vice-president of the Gay Community Centre Saskatoon and had been trying to start a gay academic union at the university.
- The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission failed to protect Wilson and his case was unsuccessful.Wilson spent most of his life fighting for human rights issues, activism and AIDS organizations.
- In 1977 he founded Stubblejumper Press, a small publishing house dedicated to works by Canadian lesbians and gay men.
- The company's first title was Wilson's own poetry collection The Myth of the Boy.
- He served as executive director of the Saskatchewan Association on Human Rights from 1978 to 1983.
- In 1983 Wilson moved to Toronto to work for the Toronto Board of Education as an advisor to the Race Relations and Equal Opportunity Office.
- In 1984 he became one of the founding publishers of Rites: for lesbian and gay liberation. Wilson was the first openly gay candidate to be nominated by a major political party to stand for Parliament, as a candidate of the New Democratic Party in the Toronto riding of Rosedale in the 1988 election.
- During the campaign he was diagnosed with AIDS.
- He spent the rest of his life as an AIDS activist, helping to found AIDS Action Now! and founding chairperson of the Canadian Network of Organizations for People Living With AIDS.
- Wilson published his partner Peter McGehee's novels, Boys Like Us (1991) and Sweetheart (1992).
- One month before his death, he completed McGehee's notes of his third novel, Labour of Love (1993).
- Wilson died on September 24, 1992 at the age of 42.In 1995 the University of Saskatchewan's gay organization (Gays and Lesbians at the U of S, GLUS) established the Doug Wilson Award, given annually to honour those individuals who have shown leadership and courage in advancing the rights of gays & lesbians at the University of Saskatchewan.
- The University of Saskatchewan Students' Union (USSU) has presented the award since 2001, after GLUS folded following the establishment of the USSU-run Pride Centre.In March 2009, Stubblejumper, a film about Doug Wilson was screened in venues across Saskatchewan.
- It was directed by Saskatchewan filmmaker David Geiss.In honour of his role as a significant builder of LGBT culture and history in Canada, a portrait of Wilson by artist Alfred Ng is held in the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives' National Portrait Collection.
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