PEOPLE WORTH WATCHING
The journey of a Gay Straight Alliance By Catherine Cavanagh
I
feed another bead onto the string and listen to the students chatting around me. We are gathered around a table in the center of the chapel. The beads give us something to do as we talk about life as an LGBTQ+ person in our Catholic school.
We are in a meeting of our school’s Gay Straight Alliance.* Our school has been home to a GSA since the Ontario government passed legislation in 2012 ensuring that students in Catholic schools could form such clubs. Our students wasted no time getting theirs up and running.
The last eight years have been full of variety and change. Some years, our club has been loud and vibrant, an active part of the larger school community, putting up posters promoting inclusion, selling rainbow cupcakes for charity, and hosting movies. Other years, it has been a small, simple, and discrete place of conversation. The students lead the way. Always, our discussions and membership are confidential, while our welcome sign invites anyone to join us. The journey has been a learning process for me. As a straight white female, I still worry if I am doing enough. There is no
