by MATTHEW HAYS

It was with tremendous sadness that I received the news that one of Montreal’s most prominent gay and AIDS activists, Douglas Buckley-Couvrette, had died last Wedesday. It’s been a while since I’ve experienced an AIDS-related death. I hadn’t missed the sensation.

For those of you who didn’t know much about Douglas—and regular readers of this paper for the past decade would know—he was basically one of the most media saturated gay activists during some very trying times in this city. After a particularly harsh ’90 raid on a late-night gay party—later to become legendary for the party’s title, Sex Garage—Buckley-Couvrette and a number of the city’s other activists became galvanized in battle with the cops.

Things only grew worse when a series of bizarre murders plagued the city’s gay community in the early and mid-’90s. There were rumours of a serial killer stalking the Village (as it turned out, two of the murders did end up linked to one man years later), and gays felt they couldn’t rely on police, who didn’t seem to be taking the crimes very seriously.

Douglas was a loud proponent for the community, always vigilant and critical. Ironically enough, he would end up running for city council (his third attempt) on former police chief Jacques Duchesneau’s ’98 candidate slate. Looking back on Douglas’s life and achievements, you get a sense of just how far gay liberation has come—he was a big part of prodding that social movement forward. Though many in the media will undoubtedly count his specific achievements, they all led quite clearly to larger ones: his lobbying, along with activist peers Michael Hendricks, Elizabeth Neve and Roger LeClerc, led to the term “sexual orientation” being included in Canada’s landmark hate-crimes law.

Lest this become an obituary blinded by hazy nostalgia, let me say that Douglas could often be a bit of a pill. As a journalist, I interviewed him countless times throughout those years of murder and mayhem, and the man could be difficult. But he was a proud fighter, an activist from a now clearly-bygone era of exhilarating resistance and defiance. He will be sorely missed. :