Becoming an Elder in the Trans Community with Activist Susan Gapka

Today, I get to speak with the legendary Susan Gapka, who has fought long and hard for trans rights in Canada. With her characteristic wit and humour, Susan discusses her upbringing, early refusal of organized religion and the status quo, and her process of coming out and coming to trans politics in Toronto. Susan will join us for launch week on Thursday, November 26th to discuss spirituality and aging at 11 am on a panel with elder leZlie Lee Kam and moderated by the great Ty Sloane. 

Haven't yet registered yet? Go to this link and get your free ticket: https://rff.salsalabs.org/faithincrisis/index.html

Read more about Susan here: https://ilga.org/trans-steering-committee-North-America

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Susan Gapka is a dedicated campaigner for social justice highlighting her record on affordable housing, homelessness, mental health, harm reduction & lesbian, gay, bisexual & trans issues since coming out as a community leader 20 years ago.

As founder and chair of the Trans Lobby Group Susan helped lead a lengthy campaign to persuade the Minister of Health to fund Sex Reassignment Surgery for trans people in Ontario, helped change the Vital Statistics Act sex designation so that trans people's legal documents more accurately reflect their lived identity, and amended the Ontario Human Rights Code to include 'gender identity' and 'gender expression'. Susan also help mount a national campaign to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code Hate Crimes to include protections for gender identity and gender expression .

Susan has served on the Toronto Local Advisory Committee & as Toronto representative on the National Consumer Panel of the At Home/Chez Soi Research Demonstration Project, the Housing Component for the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

She also served on the Board of Pride Toronto which hosted World Pride 2014 and is past Fierté Canada Pride's Central Regional Director for Ontario.

Susan has been employed at The 519 since 2015 in the Education
Department as an Education and Training facilitator. She was elected
to CUPE Ontario Pink Triangle Committee in December 2017 and appointed
to CUPE National Pink Triangle Committee in January 2018. In June 2019
she was elected to CUPE Ontario Executive Board as the Pink Triangle
representative.

Susan has a degree in Political Science from York University & a
diploma in Community Work from George Brown College.‎