Greg Bourgeois 1951-2024

Greg Bourgeois was born and raised in Winnipeg and while still in his late teens joined a volunteer group called the Campus Gay Club. It was located at the University of Manitoba and eventually changed its name to Gays for Equality. You could say that Greg and the group took their first baby steps together. In 1974, he moved to Toronto to work in marketing research, eventually settling at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. As for gay lib—as it was called at the time—he wasn’t a member of any specific queer group in Toronto but he was a regular and faithful attendee at marches and demonstrations, including the famous 1981 bathhouse raid protest. Greg quit the advertising job eventually. He was creative but lacked the killer instinct necessary for the business.

Returning to Winnipeg in the 1980s, he earned a Bachelor of Social Work degree, and helped found Winnipeg’s AIDS clinic. He moved to Vancouver in 1989 as he and his siblings wanted to live near their parents in order to support them in their senior years. The warmer winter weather might also have had something to do with it. In Vancouver he worked in the downtown eastside as a mental health worker for the Lookout Emergency Aid Society, and later on for the Progressive Housing Society in Burnaby. He took early retirement due to ill health. Late in life Greg discovered an interest in 20th century history, including queer history. He views setting down his memories for Quirke as an opportunity to make a tiny contribution to the body of knowledge on this subject.