On World AIDS Day, local queer author reads from his new memoir, Our Story: Coming out in the time of HIV and AIDS
Robert Hamilton appears via YouTube in support of McLaren Housing Society on December 1
Author Robert Hamilton lost his dear friend Joe, pictured, to AIDS.
Robert Hamilton reads from his memoir, Our Story: Coming out in the time of HIV and AIDS, via YouTube in support of McLaren Housing Society to mark World AIDS Day on December 1.
A SMALL PULP-AND-PAPER-MILL town in northern New Brunswick in the 1970s was no place for Robert Hamilton to come out as gay. He left in 1977 as a naïve young man, first to Toronto then to Edmonton, where he launched his career as a prison guard. In Alberta, he met Joe, who loved to perform drag and would become one of his best friends. Together they moved to Vancouver in 1982, seeking fun and promising futures—until the AIDS epidemic changed everything. Joe tested positive for HIV in 1987 and died at age 35 seven years later.
Hamilton recounts the impact that AIDS had on his chosen family in his new memoir, Our Story: Coming out in the time of HIV and AIDS (Renaissance). Written in diary form, it’s an account of loss, courage, compassion, strength, and sometimes drag. It’s a story Hamilton didn’t want to die with him.
Robert Hamilton.
“I carried this story with me for a long time, of what it was like during the early days of the AIDS crisis in Vancouver for me and my friends, and those around us,” Hamilton tells Stir. “This was at a time when testing positive for the HIV virus was considered a death sentence. The AIDS crisis began in 1980 and it was only in 1996 when the AIDS cocktail became available so that gay men could stop dying in vast numbers. That nightmare lasted over sixteen years.
“Within that time, I lost my best friends Roger and Joe, plus friends of friends and acquaintances,” he says. We were all so young then, full of hopes and dreams and want for adventure—that was until we were swept into the AIDS storm. I love and miss my friends dearly and I didn’t want them fading into history without someone hearing their story….I am not only a survivor but I am also a witness.”
Our Story reflects what so many in the Vancouver gay community--as well as in other gay communities around the world--went through.
The success of treatment for HIV/AIDS makes it difficult for younger generations to appreciate the enormity of the AIDS crisis. Aside from the devastating toll on human health and life, it was a time, Hamilton says, “when the whole world seemed to be against us”.
“We were made to feel shame, and deserving of the unprecedented death that was happening around us,” Hamilton says. “Government didn’t care. Fighting for our rights and freedoms was nothing new, but fighting for our lives with urgency was. Gay was forced out of the closet. It was the gay community and their allies who organized and came to our rescue. Heroes and leaders were made out of many ordinary citizens, and they are the giants whose shoulders we stand on today.
“Gay marriage, adoption, representation, inclusion, and so on come from that hard battle fought back then,” he says. “It was a war. I hope knowing of this time in their gay history helps today’s gay youth see the value and importance of their gay communities. They are not alone. As seen with Trump, depending on the government we have, our safety and freedoms cannot be taken for granted.”
World AIDS Day is marked on December 1 each year to raise awareness of issues surrounding HIV and AIDS, show support for people living with HIV/AIDS, and commemorate those who have passed.
For Hamilton, World AIDS Day is a time to remember and to heal.
On December 1—which is also Giving Tuesday—McLaren Housing Society of British Columbia is launching a YouTube video featuring Hamilton reading from his book as part of a new fundraising campaign to help people living with HIV/AIDS.
As Canada’s first housing program for people living with HIV/AIDS, McLaren started out in 1987 offering housing to five people. It now supports more than 300 individuals and families from throughout Greater Vancouver.
The people it houses are especially vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. Because of COVID-19, it had to cancel its annual fundraiser, McLaren Sparkles, so the society has launched a new campaign called There’s No Place Like Home. It’s raising funds for PPE and food security, with the aim of combatting social isolation. More information and donation options are at McLaren Housing Society.
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