As Eloise Morrison prepares to raise the Pride flag at St. John Catholic School in Toronto’s east end on Tuesday, she’ll be thinking about her father.
George Morrison, a well-known Toronto hairstylist who died earlier this year, was openly gay.
“He didn’t hide,” his daughter told CBC Toronto. “He lived authentically.”
Tuesday’s flag raising — part of the Toronto Catholic board’s first-ever recognition of Pride month — will bring a feeling of celebration, of things being set right.
“He would think it should be this way,” said Morrison in an interview with CBC Radio’s Ismaila Alfa. “Everybody should be accepted for who they are.”
But as she stands in front of St. John with her sons, who currently attend the school, there’s also a more painful history to look back on.
It was in 1987, while she was a 12-year-old student at that same school, that Morrison was introduced to the idea that homosexuality was a sin.
“After hearing that message, I just felt so judged, and I felt like my family was literally going to hell,” she said.
From freedom to silence
The moment that changed everything came during Morrison’s confirmation ceremony, when a bishop was addressing her and the other children as their families sat…
