Community mourns death of 2SLGBTQ+ advocate, lawyer barbara findlay

Lesbian lawyer and activist, who worked on a number of pivotal cases for 2SLGBTQ+ community, dead at age 77

When barbara findlay was a young woman, she told a psychiatrist she was attracted to women. She was then involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility because she was queer.

In the early 1970s, being gay in Canada was considered a mental illness.

Before she was called to the bar, findlay was then required to produce a "sanity certificate" showing she was fit for the profession, according to her honorary degree citation from Simon Fraser University in 2023.

Findlay went on to advocate for human rights the rest of her life.

She died this weekend at the age of 77 after a long illness. B.C.'s 2SLGBTQ+ community is mourning her loss.

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Fellow activist Shantel Ivits said findlay defied categorization.

"She's not the kind of person who could be squished into boxes," Ivits said. "And in fact, I would say she spent her entire life kind of working to dismantle those systems that try to squish people into boxes that just don't fit for them."

Ivits recalled a favourite memory of findlay: she always spelled her full name in lowercase letters.

Findlay explained why on her website: when she was in law school, she got her own letterhead and the designer spelled it without capital letters. She liked it and stuck with it.

"But what she didn't anticipate was that there would be this sort of interesting backlash against the idea of spelling your name with lowercase letters," Ivits said.

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A court rejected an order because her name wasn't spelled properly. The local queer newspaper refused to spell her name without capitals. Findlay called it "an uproar."

"I realized that I had a perfect illustration of how we react when someone moves even a tiny bit away from a norm of behaviour, even with respect to something that has no impact on anyone else," findlay wrote.

She kept the lowercase spelling.

And the spelling — along with her activisim — was eye-catching.

"I knew barbara findlay even before I moved to Vancouver because she was in the Pride Guide; [she] spelled her name with lowercase letters," remembered Lee Keple, a member of the Rainbow Veterans of Canada.

"And I'm like, OK, that stands out."

Everyone seemed to know findlay, Keple said.

"She was part of the reason that we had the rights that we had in Vancouver in the early 2000s and were able to build upon them ... she was truly a champion."

As a lawyer, findlay worked on a number of "groundbreaking" cases, according to the SFU citation, particularly those involving 2SLGBTQ+ rights.

She advocated for allowing registering the names of both lesbian co-parents on their child's birth certificate, and for the accommodation of a transgender youth at a Catholic school.

In 2001, findlay was designated as Queen's Counsel, and in 2013, she was awarded a Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal. In 2020, the Canadian Bar Association of B.C. presented her with an award for distinguished service.

She co-founded the advocacy group Lawyers Against Transphobia and frequently volunteered for Rainbow Refugee Committee, among many other community endeavours.

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Ivits said findlay once told them that "she would be brought back as thunder and lightning."

"On the night that she died, we had the most spectacular display of thunder and lightning that I have ever seen in my life," Ivits said.

"And to me, that was just a reminder that barbara findlay is and always will be a force of nature."

Lauren Vanderdeen is a Vancouver-based reporter for CBC British Columbia. She formerly worked for community newspapers, including the Burnaby Now and New West Record. You can reach her at lauren.vanderdeen@cbc.ca.

With files from CBC Radio and Radio-Canada's William Burr