23-05-2025
The harrowing human rights battle of Barry Deeprose
In early July 1981, Barry Deeprose stopped to read a New York Times article pinned to a bulletin board at the Gays of Ottawa centre, where he volunteered as a peer counsellor.
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The article described a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer diagnosed in 41 homosexual men, mostly in New York City and San Francisco.
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'The cancer often causes swollen lymph glands, and then kills by spreading throughout the body,' the newspaper reported. 'Doctors investigating the outbreak believe that many cases have gone undetected because of the rarity of the condition and the difficulty even dermatologists may have in diagnosing it.'
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Investigators did not know whether an unidentified virus or environmental factors were behind the outbreak.
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'This was the first announcement of the AIDS epidemic, but we didn't have a name for it then,' he said.
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It would be another year before the mystery disease would come to be described as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, AIDS. The following year, in May 1983, French researchers reported the disease was caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV.
Deeprose was then a federal public servant, a human resources expert within the Department of National Defence.
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He also volunteered two nights a week as a peer counsellor with Gayline, a phone service offered by Gays of Ottawa, which formed in 1971 following the landmark 'We Demand' rally on Parliament Hill, the country's first large-scale gay rights demonstration.
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Deeprose answered phones three hours a night on Gayline. Most of the calls – about two-thirds – were from pre-Internet trolls who spewed invective and threats. The other callers were young men seeking advice about how to come out of the closet, or how to connect with Ottawa's gay community.
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Deeprose found the work rewarding since it affirmed his own experience. But as the spectre of AIDS loomed, he began to worry about the advice he was offering – and the potential peril to which he was exposing callers by directing them to the city's hook-up spots.
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'What bothered me is that people were calling us, and we were telling them where the saunas were, where the bars were, and if they were sophisticated enough, then where the outside cruising areas were,' he said. 'And my concern was that we were putting people at risk without any information.'
