Tickets are limited to 144 players and are at a bargain cost of $150.00 per person.  This includes: 18 Holes of Golf, Cart rental (for 2), Lunch, Dinner, and some great entertainment.  There will be fun had by all!

If you would like to reserve your spot, please email: info@qhalloffame.ca

Vancouver, BC -  On February 19th, 2010, Canada’s LGBT Human Rights Hall of Fame, Q Hall of Fame, is proud to officially launch their website and the public nomination process as promised at the inaugural event in 2009.

“This is the natural progression of a dream that started in 2009 and now the community can actively participate in that dream,” commented Paul Therien, Founder and Chair of the Q Hall of Fame.  “We made a commitment to the community that our inductees would come from a public nomination process, and we can now proudly say that is happening.”

Inductees are chosen via a ‘blind’ selection committee who review the nominations based strictly on the merits of their contribution as opposed to who the nominee is.

“We mandated that the Hall of Fame would be unbiased and non partisan.  Although that can be challenging, we will endeavor to adhere to that as best we can,” Therien stated.  “Our goal is that all inductees are entered into the Hall of Fame based strictly on the work they have done for the community.”

Therien encourages all members of the community, no matter where they are located in the nation, to participate.

“We want to hear from all across Canada, not just people in the major centers.  That is why we decided to go with a simplified online nomination process – it needs to be accessible to everyone.”

Inductees are role models. not just for members of the LGBT community, but for all Canadians. The Q Hall of Fame inductees are a true source of pride, admiration, and dignity for us all. It is through the vision and accomplishments of such pioneers that future generations may better understand and embrace our community and culture.

Over the years, inductees have become persons of great achievement in the LGBT community making significant efforts to ensure our collective freedoms. Their extensive work with human rights and charitable organizations has garnered the widespread public support of fellow citizens and tremendous admiration by their peers.

Q Ball, the official induction ceremony and black tie event will be held Sunday August 01, 2010 Westin Bayshore Resort and Marina in Vancouver.

Tickets are $100 in advance and scheduled to be released in in the spring.

For more info and to nominate your hero, please visit www.qhalloffame.ca
ABOUT THE Q HALL OF FAME:

The QHall of Fame is a national resource headquartered in Vancouver to house and commemorate the diverse history of the LGBT community. The Hall of Fame is about both honouring those who have pioneered the rights of the LGBT community and documenting and remembering the accomplishments and lives of these amazing people. Inductees are selected by an independent committee from nominations received from people across the country.
www.qhalloffame.ca

ABOUT Q BALL:
Q BALL is the annual fundraising event and Q Hall of Fame induction ceremony.  Although it is being hosted in Vancouver in its first two years, it is the goal of the Hall of Fame that Q BALL travel across Canada.

As Q Ball travels across the country, its goal is to raise much needed funds for local community groups in the host city.

FERNANDO CARNEIRO – METRO VANCOUVER

September 04, 2009 5:48 a.m.

Vancouver will be home to the first Canadian Queer Hall of Fame next month.

Julia Mackay, one of the organizers of Q Hall of Fame, said it’ll be housed at Qmunity, a resource centre for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people at Bute and Davie streets.

“A lot of questions are starting to be asked about where the community came from. Last year (the movie) Milk came out and (afterwards) there was a huge outpouring of where do our roots begin in Canada?” Mackay said.

“This was our solution, to not only honour Canadians who made significant contributions, but also to provide a history that we can pass on to future generations.”

A charity fundraiser, Q Ball, will be held on Sept. 19, 2009 at the Westin Bayshore Resort and Marina in Vancouver to raise funds for the hall of fame and to officially announce the inaugural five inductees.

First inductees

• Pierre Elliot Trudeau: Key figure in the decriminalization of homosexuality who said, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”
• Mark Tewksbury: Olympic Gold Medal swimmer and world record holder.
• Robert Kaiser (Joan-E): The longtime AIDS and HIV volunteer and philanthropist is the first drag queen to receive the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal.
• Janine Fuller: Author, owner of the Little Sister’s bookstore and activist for freedom of speech and equality.
• ted northe: Founder of the Canadian Court System and the Dogwood Monarchy Society.

By Denise Ryan, Vancouver Sun September 12, 2009

Vancouver opens the doors to Canada’s national Queer Hall of Fame next week with Q Ball, a black-tie gala event that promises to be as celebratory — and glamorous — as it is historic.

“Forty years ago it was still a jailable offence to be gay in Canada,” said Paul Therien, chairman of the CIBC Pride network and founder of the Q Hall of Fame.

Therien said former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who declared that the state had no business in the bedrooms of the nation and whose government decriminalized homosexuality in 1969, is one of the first Q Hall of Fame honorees.

His son, Justin Trudeau, expressed appreciation of the honour on behalf of his family in a recent letter to the Q Hall of Fame, Therien said.

Trudeau is one of five inaugural inductees along with activist Janine Fuller, Canadian Court System — a gay organization — founder Ted Northe, Olympian Mark Tewksbury, and Vancouver entertainer and philanthropist Joan E. (Robert Kaiser).

“We want to archive the lives and histories of those that have contributed and been active in bringing about changes in human rights,” Therien said.

The Q Ball will be a voluptuous 1930s lounge-themed event with “white leather diva benches, black, pink and white lighting, a dance floor and a gourmet tapas dinner,” he said.

“There are not a lot of black-tie events in the LGBT community. Lets face it, we like to dress up.

“Most importantly, the hall of fame is about education, honouring and remembering,” Therien said. “The Hall of Fame will be housed in Qmunity, an LGBT resource centre on Davie Street.

For more information and tickets, visit www.qhalloffame.ca

Therien struck an organizing committee to give birth to the annual Queer Hall of Fame and QBall Awards. Support for the undertaking became infectious, and it came to fruition within an unbelievable four months. The “caretaker” for operations is
Vancouver’s Qmunity (formerly the Centre), a natural choice as Vancouver’s central hub for queer outreach and services.
“For this first year, the organizing committee made the decisions on inductees,” notes Therien, who is busy planning public
nominations and an independent selection process for the future. “This year, we started by looking at inductees in 10-, 20-, 30-, 40-, and 50-year time spans. We’re now building the website, likely for November, where the public can truly get involved. Fortunately, some of this year’s inductees have offered to be on the selection committee.” September’s first black-tie QBall, held at Vancouver’s stunning Westin Bayshore Hotel, cut the proverbial “Q” ribbon before 2009’s first-ever recipients. They include none other than Pierre Elliott Trudeau, athlete and author Mark Tewksbury, and three powerful BC pioneers that made waves well beyond Canada’s West: Janine Fuller, ted northe and Joan-E. The fundraising ceremony drummed up what Therien estimates at around $25,000 for Qmunity.

While Vancouver politician and Trudeaubuddy Heddy Fry accepted the award for our former Prime Minister, Trudeau’s son and
Liberal hopeful Justin expressed his pride from the other side of the country. “I know that the decriminalization of homosexuality 40 years ago was something that my father was very proud of,” Trudeau addressed in a statement. “He’d be touched.” Canada’s Empress, ted northe, who founded the Imperial Empire of Canada and the Dogwood Monarchist Society, set aside his own acts of bravado in the 1950s and 1960s to pay respect to Trudeau, having known the “gentleman’s gentleman” personally on Trudeau’s Youth Committee, long before Trudeau declared the bedroom as sacred boudoir. northe, whose courts have raised over $10 million for charity to date, equally expressed his honour in being inducted alongside gold medalist Mark Tewksbury. “When he [Tewksbury] came out, he knew his career was finished in sports,” northe stressed. Entertainer and philanthropist Joan-E, already an award recipient of the [real] Queen’s Golden Jubilee Award of Merit and a US State Congressional Award, couldn’t agree more. “Let’s consider Tewksbury’s bravery for a minute,” Joan-E remarks. “A three-time gold medalist—imagine how much money he turned down in his career by simply speaking up?” Janine Fuller, now Canada’s ambassador for anti-censorship, is just as steadfast in her activism today as she was in the early 1990s when she walked into Little Sister’s Bookstore and took on Canada Customs’ book seizures, one publication at a time. “For me, it was the visceral reality of that Customs’ tape across the box,” reflects Fuller, “and how absolutely insidious it all was, knowing how important these publications really were to us. In some cases, a book went out of print by the time the battle was won. Now, any time we have a court case—and we’ve had one off and on forever—it cuts down on the number of seizures we face later.”

If there is a common thread to 2009’s set of highly diverse inductees, Therien mentions it’s bravery—and not just the kind we now call “one small act.” “These inductees have a phenomenal amount of courage,” Therien observes, “to stand up and say ‘I’m different but I’m not.’ ted put on a dress 50 years ago because it was the only way to get people to pay attention to him. Mark stood up in front of the world after winning a gold medal and said ‘this is not acceptable.’ They’ve all been highly public, and they still don’t back down. That wall that they go up against every day is unmovable, and while many of us rest on our laurels, they’re able to move it, even just a bit, from their own sheer will.” Both Joan-E and Fuller comment that, beyond courage, it takes the power of a community to make a stand for our queer rights and freedoms. “Culturally, the smaller a minority in Canada the more the family unit seems to be there,” says Joan-E. “Ours is the one minority in Canada which is not supported as a family unit. We create our own, we take care of our own, and people just naturally step up. There are enough of us now, over the years, who
have thought about the community as something far more than porn, bars and bathhouses.” “You need visibility,” adds Fuller, “and strength in the friendship and bonds of a community. It’s also all about being vigilant and not getting complacent or thinking that other people are doing it, even on the days you are tired.”

Now that the QBall is on the table, Therien is examing the possibilities for moving the award ceremony to other cities. Using a blind public process for nominating annual recipients (the selection committee will make choices based on merits of individuals only), Therien is keeping the gaze on cities—urban and remote—in all regions for 2010. That’s not always an easy feat when politics, egos and sponsorship dollar signs can often dictate how and where support and participation should thrive. “We are looking for regional representatives now,” says Therien, “and if it’s all in another locale, there is the possibility that a fundraiser could happen for that locale too. But it’s going to take national-level sponsors to move the QBall ceremony across this country, and while that may not happen right away, it’s a short-term goal.” Both Therien and all of 2009’s inductees stress the fundamental importance in
examining and recognizing our Canadian queer heroes: today’s youth. “There are so many gay Canadians out there who are really
not aware of Trudeau’s influence,” northe comments. “Down the road, we could be facing many of the same issues over again,” warns Fuller. “Today’s youth can truly remove any stigma associated with being gay,” Therien pipes in. Joan-E, who feels conflicted about her award, knowing how many Canadians deserve one, has much more to say on the subject. “That little guy in his pink hairdo and short shorts should know why he got where he did. For so many youth today, ‘gay’ is something solved, like you’ve taken some pills and it’s gone away. They didn’t go to all those funerals we went to before the ‘weddings’ began. I would love to say that the new generation has it wonderful, with sunshine and lollipops and Lady Gaga videos. But there are huge problems with homelessness, drugs, alcoholism, safety and bullying, to name a few. There’s always something lurking around that corner.” For more info on the Queer Hall of Fame, visit www.qhalloffame.ca.

The late Pierre Trudeau, Dogwood Monarchy Society founder ted northe, Little Sister’s manager Janine Fuller, Olympic gold medal swimmer and Outgames co-founder Mark Tewksbury and longtime volunteer and philanthropist Robert Kaiser (Joan-E) will be honoured at the Q Ball for their contributions to gay rights.

The Q Hall of Fame is the brainchild of CIBC’s Pride Network president Paul Therien, evolving out of a desire to raise funds for Qmunity (formerly The Centre).

Qmunity will house the hall of fame’s physical aspects, such as inductee biographies and photographs, and receive a portion of the proceeds of this year’s ball as a caretaker’s donation in return.

Therien stresses, however, that the Q Hall of Fame is independent of Qmunity and CIBC, the event’s presenting sponsor this year.

“It’s going to be its own separate entity; it will be registered nonprofit federally,” he says.

“We want it to be national,” Therien adds, “because in every region, in very province, in every city, there are outstanding members of our community who’ve done great things but they don’t get that national recognition.

“When we get the final logistics set up, we’ll have it headquartered here in Vancouver, and then we would like to have regional boards so that we have national representation,” he elaborates.

It’s time for gay Canadians to pay more attention to their own community’s history, he says, as opposed to events such as Stonewall that have happened around the world.

“The community in Canada, we tend to forget our own history,” he says, “so we wanted to do something that would recognize that and would be a permanent place of recognition.”

A hall of fame would help break down the barriers both within and outside of the queer community, Therien believes.

“We’ve got lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people and although the community is always lumped as LGBT, it’s not always so,” he observes. “We’re all in our own little niches and there isn’t something that binds them together. There isn’t something that shows that unified history that we have.

“The hope of the Hall of Fame is that it will achieve that — help bind us together.”

He says the Q Hall of Fame could also honour those who are not members of the queer community.

“We’d be looking at people from all walks of life who’ve done things either directly or indirectly that impact or that has had an impact on the human rights movement for the LGBT community,” Therien notes.

“Qmunity would be honoured to house the Q Hall of Fame,” says co-chair Craig Maynard.

“The legal equality struggle of queers in Canada is well-documented,” Maynard notes, but “the significance of the hall of fame is to say that even with legal foundations and protections in place, the personal trials of significant people in our community need to be acknowledged.

“What the Q Hall of Fame attempts to do is point out people, significant faces in our community, that have stepped forward [to fight for] equality.”

Maynard also sees the hall of fame in educational terms.

“Striving for equality is not meant to be kept within the domains of a courtroom, classroom or legislature. It’s meant to be — as we see with some of the inductees — on the stage, in the swimming pool, in whatever walks of life, and by doing this we’re saying that we make it most relevant to queers everywhere.”

Q Ball keynote speakers will be Canadian Museum of Human Rights’ chief operating officer Patrick O’Reilly, Qmunity’s executive director Jennifer Breakspear and Therien. The evening’s emcee is drag artist Symone.

Joan-E hosts “Bingo for Life” which has raised over a quarter of a million dollars for “Friends for Life”, a charity committed to assisting those who live with life-threatening illnesses. She continues to host “Feather Boa Sundays” which has become the longest running drag show in Vancouver.

Joan-E’s film and television appearances include Connie and Carla, Fetching Cody, Davinci’s Inquest and The Collector, which earned her a Leo Award nomination. For her incredible work in the LGBT and Greater Vancouver community, Joan-E has been awarded Citizen of the Year, Drag Queen of the Year (WE magazine), Hero Award (XTRA West), Friend Indeed Award, U.S. State Congressional Award and the Golden Jubilee Award of Merit from Queen Elizabeth II.

Photo Courtesy of: Shona Dion, Sweet Earth Photographic.

Today Mark is a recognized as a leader of social change. Author of three books, including Inside Out: Straight Talk from a Gay Jock, Tewksbury is one of the few openly gay Olympic champions in the world. With other leading Canadian advocates and athletes, Mark co-founded OATH to take a difficult but necessary step to hold the International Olympic Committee accountable to its own ideals. In 2006, he was the president of the 1st World Outgames held in Montreal, was recognized as one of OUT Magazine’s top 100 people, and in 2007 was named Fondation Emergence’s person of the year for his fight against homophobia. For his active humanitarianism and ethical leadership Mark was awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws from the University of Western Ontario.

Photo Courtesy of: Shona Dion, Sweet Earth Photographic.