Same-sex marriage was progressively introduced in several provinces and territories of Canada by court decisions beginning in 2003 before being legally recognized nationwide with the enactment of the Civil Marriage Act on July 20, 2005. On June 10, 2003, the Court of Appeal for Ontario issued a decision immediately legalizing same-sex marriage in Ontario, thereby becoming the first province where it was legal. The introduction of a federal gender-neutral marriage definition made Canada the fourth country in the world, and the first country outside Europe, to legally recognize same-sex marriage throughout its borders. Before the federal recognition of same-sex marriage, court decisions had already introduced it in eight out of ten provinces and one of three territories, whose residents collectively made up about 90 percent of Canada's population. More than 3,000 same-sex couples had already married in those areas before the Civil Marriage Act was passed. Most legal benefits commonly associated with marriage had been extended to cohabiting same-sex couples since 1999.
Henekh "Henry" Morgentaler,, was a Polish-born Canadian physician and abortion rights advocate who fought numerous legal battles aimed at expanding abortion rights in Canada. As a Jewish youth during World War II, Morgentaler was imprisoned at the Łódź Ghetto and later at the Dachau concentration camp.
Osgoode Hall Law School, commonly shortened to Osgoode, is the law school of York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Michael Hendricks and René LeBoeuf are Canadian gay rights advocates. At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 90s, the couple helped lead ACT-UP activists in a fight with the City of Montreal to create a permanent memorial to Quebecers who died of AIDS. After several years trying to stop the grassroots efforts to create the memorial, city officials abandoned their fight in September 1994 and the 'Parc de l'Espoir' was built in the heart of Montreal's gay village.
Sheila Leah Fischman is a Canadian translator who specializes in the translation of works of contemporary Quebec literature from French to English.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in Quebec since March 19, 2004 in accordance with a ruling from the Quebec Court of Appeal that the heterosexual definition of marriage violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Quebec became the third Canadian province after Ontario and British Columbia and the fifth jurisdiction in the world to open marriage to same-sex couples.
Claire L'Heureux-Dubé is a retired Canadian judge who served as a puisne justice on the Supreme Court of Canada from 1987 to 2002. She was the first woman from Quebec and the second woman appointed to this position, after Bertha Wilson. Previously, she had been one of the first woman lawyers to handle divorce cases, and was the first woman appointed as a judge to the Quebec Superior Court and the Quebec Court of Appeal.
Jan Wong is a Canadian academic, journalist, and writer. Wong worked for The Globe and Mail, serving as Beijing correspondent from 1988 to 1994, when she returned to write from Canada. She is the daughter of Montreal businessman Bill Wong, founder of Bill Wong's buffet in 1963, and earlier of the House of Wong which was the city's first Chinese restaurant to open outside Chinatown.
Canada Reads is an annual "battle of the books" competition organized and broadcast by Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC. The program has aired in two distinct editions, the English-language Canada Reads on CBC Radio One, and the French-language Le Combat des livres on Ici Radio-Canada Première.
Stacey McKenzie is a Jamaican-born Canadian model, runway coach, motivational speaker, and television personality. McKenzie has been a judge on the reality television shows America's Next Top Model, Canada's Next Top Model, and Canada's Drag Race.
Elena Miller, originally known as Yelena Borisovna Olshanskaya, is a Russian who, as alleged by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), lived in Canada as a spy, using the name of a dead child as a cover. Olshanskaya later lost the right to immigrate back to Canada to live with her second husband, Canadian Peter Miller.
Anti-Quebec sentiment is a form of prejudice which is expressed toward the government, culture, and/or the francophone people of Quebec. This prejudice must be distinguished from legitimate criticism of Quebec society or the Government of Quebec, though the question of what qualifies as legitimate criticism and mere prejudice is itself controversial. Some critics argue that allegations of Quebec bashing are sometimes used to deflect legitimate criticism of Quebec society, government, or public policies.
François Legault is a Canadian politician serving as the 32nd premier of Quebec since 2018. A member of the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), he has led the party since its founding in 2011. Legault sits as a member of the National Assembly (MNA) for the Lanaudière region riding of L'Assomption.
The 2011 Canadian federal election was held on May 2, 2011, to elect members to the House of Commons of Canada of the 41st Canadian Parliament.
The Quebec Writers' Federation Awards are a series of Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the Quebec Writers' Federation to the best works of literature in English by writers from Quebec. They were known from 1988 to 1998 as the QSPELL Awards.
Kim Thúy Ly Thanh, CQ is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer, whose debut novel Ru won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2010 Governor General's Awards.
Charmaine Borg is a Canadian politician who served as the New Democratic Party Member of Parliament for the riding of Terrebonne—Blainville in Quebec from 2011 to 2015.
Dominique Anglade is a Canadian businesswoman and former politician who served as the leader of the Quebec Liberal Party and Leader of the Opposition of Quebec from May 11, 2020 to December 1, 2022. She has served as a member of the National Assembly of Quebec from 2015 to 2022, representing Saint-Henri–Sainte-Anne. She is the first woman to lead the Quebec Liberal Party, the first black woman to lead a provincial party in Canada, and the first person of Haitian descent to be a cabinet minister in Canada. She is the daughter of the academic Georges Anglade. She was also the first woman CEO of Montréal International.
Strippergate was a 2004-2005 political scandal in Canada in which federal immigration minister Judy Sgro was accused of providing favours to people who helped with her political campaigning during the 2004 Canadian federal election. Sgro was accused of giving favourable immigration processing to Romanian immigrant, stripper, and campaign volunteer Alina Balaican, and Harjit Singh, a campaign donor and pizza shop owner.
