Edmonton Queer History: How a yearbook quote made national news back in 1985

Ian Paterson wanted to pen down a simple dream in his yearbook quote, to "eventually settle down in a quiet suburb with a tall, rich, hunky man with a bushy moustache."

It seems simple now, but in 1985, when 2SLGBTQ+ rights were not what they are today and AIDS hysteria was at its peak, this statement from a high school student was so controversial that it made the news.

38 years later, the story — printed in a small segment of a newspaper — is discovered by Remi Baker, a research assistant with the Edmonton Queer History Project while digging through the City of Edmonton Archives.

"The story really piqued my interest," Baker told CBC's Edmonton AM on Monday.

"So I made sure to grab a picture and then I brought it to Kris (Wells) and was like, 'We need to find out more about this. This is awesome.'"

The Edmonton Queer History Project launched in 2015 is a community collaboration project with MacEwan University to find and document queer stories in Edmonton over the past 50-plus years.

LISTEN | A yearbook quote that made history

Kristopher Wells, Canada research chair for the public understanding of sexual and gender minority youth at MacEwan University, said they reached out to Harry Ainlay High School, the school Paterson had attended and discovered the story of an openly-gay boy and his will to be himself.

"What struck me was just the immense courage he had," Wells said.

"This was a time long before gay-straight alliances were even a dream in schools, you know, it was quite incredible."

A clipping of the Edmonton Sun newspaper shows the article about Ian Paterson's petition to allow him to keep his original quote about him wanting a future with a man. (Edmonton City Archives)

Paterson had come out to his entire school in a poem he published in the school's literary magazine.

After his quote was rejected for the yearbook, he launched a petition that garnered from than 300 signatures to reinstate his original quote and called out the school for its discrimination. The story made the news in the form of newspaper articles and a segment on CTV's current affairs and documentary show, W5.

Wells said while many students supported him, there were many who didn't want Paterson at the school.

"It was a real controversy at the time," he said.

Wells said it was stories like Paterson's that give people hope that queer people have always existed.

"When people try to censor our stories or our lives, we persist," he said.

But the quote never made it into the yearbook. The school ended up publishing "tall, rich companion"' instead of "man with the moustache," Baker said.

To find more information on Paterson, they created a TikTok video asking for people who knew him to reach out. People replied the same day

People who knew Paterson in high school did reach out and told them that he had moved to Vancouver after graduating high school and passed away a few years ago. They described Paterson as "outgoing, flamboyant, and unapologetically Ian."

"The friend did say that eventually he did find his hunky man with a bushy moustache," Baker said.