Chris Morrissey and Governor-General Mary Simon
Chris Morrissey is a dedicated activist who makes change happen; she’s kind and cares about people. She lives justly, loves tenderly and walks humbly, just as she wanted. Doing that, she achieves greatly. Her Order of Canada was a result of her advocacy on behalf of LGBTQ+ immigrants and refugees. In the 1990s, because they were a lesbian couple, Morrissey’s Canadian citizenship was not sufficient to enable her partner Bridget’s immigration to Canada. Morrissey mounted a constitutional challenge to Canadian immigration law, successfully paving the way for same-gender couples to receive equal protection under the law in Canada.
Also in the 1990s, Morrissey and others founded the Lesbian and Gay Immigration Taskforce (LEGIT) in Vancouver to help same-sex couples of different nationalities find legal loopholes to enable their cohabitation within Canada. In 2000, Chris and Rob Hughes founded Rainbow Refugee to promote safe, equitable migration and communities of belonging for people fleeing persecution based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or HIV status.
Chris said to me that she and Bridget, as nuns, learned in Chile to challenge the oppressive social order and bring about social change, allied with the workers. That experience taught by liberation theology and feminism in Chile helped Chris be able to work for change here. There she learned the skills and attitude she needed to affect change, and all LGBTQ2S+ folk in Canada have benefitted from Chris’s work here.
In particular, every Quirk-e member, past and present, owes a debt of gratitude to Chris, as she started Quirk-e in 2006 by hiring Claire Robson to teach a four session writer’s group which became the Queer Imaging and Riting Kollective for Elders, because we weren’t willing to stop at four sessions! Chris and Bridget were members from the start, and Quirk-e has grown and flourished in the past seventeen years. Bridget’s eventual dementia and death were an enormous loss to us. True to form, when Bridget was diagnosed, Chris went to the Alzheimer’s society and they started an LGBTQ group — it’s now on line. Individuals have power and can make sparks that start things changing, and Chris is definitely one of those individuals. We’re very lucky to be part of her life.
