In addition to the book event, my Montreal sojourn was marked by another bit of rainbow-related news.

I came to Montreal with marriage on the brain: my youngest sister down in Southern California had gotten hitched recently – the last of my three siblings to tie the knot. At a barbecue hosted in one of my other sisters’ sprawling backyard, I learned this wasn’t the only marriage to be celebrated – and in this case officialized – retroactively.

My mother’s business partner, a realtor in Montreal, has been coupled for twenty-five years. Ron and Don (yes, those are their real names) had held a wedding ceremony some two decades back, long before gay marriage was even a glimmer of legislation practically anywhere. As with gay couples in America today, they drew up a lengthy, complex patchwork of documents that mostly – but still incompletely – acted as rough equivalent to what true marriage offers hetero couples by default. When gay marriage was made official in Canada in 2005, they shrugged – they’d already de facto done the deed all those years back – why bother with the paperwork now?

I guess there’s something about a milestone like a quarter-century that changes minds, because they decided they’d “get legal” this year. But who would do the deed? They reached out to one close friend authorized to perform weddings — but he was going to be out of town on the specified date. So they found an attorney, a close friend who’d never officiated at a wedding before, but with a modicum of preparation and licensure could be deputized to perform the act in compliance with the law. My jaw nearly hit the table when I learned who that was.

My father!

Leaving aside my wonderment at my parents’ openness and acceptance of gaydom, or how great it is of my Dad to be doing this for two close friends… was their attitude about the whole thing. All three parties – the gay couple and my father – were so nonplussed they’d neglected to mention it to me altogether! As I strolled through Montreal’s “gay village” with my coupled friends – the district’s main drag turns into a lively pedestrian mall during Montreal’s all-too-brief summer – they expressed amazement at my amazement: none of them realized what big news this would be if it were occurring south of their border.

It’s times like these I’m truly proud to be Canadian!

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