Gary

Get to know Gary:

I was born in Vancouver in 1952 and grew up in a very small mining town in The Yukon: Keno Hill some 300 miles north of Whitehorse. To escape the mosquitoes and black flies we came south to Cranbrook for the summer where my parents had met and married. All my Mother’s friends became my aunts.

 At the time, there was no radio or TV in Keno Hill. My passions in life were all developed early. The town cut a ski hill and a five mile downhill out of the forest. My love of the mountains and hiking was developed. And my devotion to, and inspiration by, the classical repertoire and opera were started with piano lessons at the age of six. My first piano teacher, Mrs. Ruda Lopp, gave me Madama Butterfly for my sixth birthday and Carmen for my seventh starting a lifelong passion for opera.

 In the town’s two room school, we were allowed to proceed through grades as we wished. By the time I left The Yukon in 1964 I was three years ahead of others. Moving to Vancouver in 1964, being in grade 12 when I was 14 when everyone else was 17 was fine intellectually but a disaster socially.

 My piano teachers were and have remained my best friends in life. I became an Associate of the Royal Toronto Conservatory at 16 and continued to study the piano repertoire until I was 23.  I play about an hour and a half a day.

 And at 15 I was off to U.B.C. where I obtained a double honours arts degree in 18th century French literature and music composition, a mineral engineering degree and a law degree. I am also an oil painter and an omnivorous reader.

 After finally graduating for good (my parents were very relieved), I very quickly became a junior on large corporate financings and reorganizations that took me into the board rooms of major B.C. corporations and Cdn. banks. And I discovered another passion: travelling. I have been fortunate to have been on every continent except Antarctica at least three times.

 On a 1989 trip to Paris I met my partner of 14 years, an Argentinian marine with specialties in explosives and jungle survival.

But then life dramatically changed. When I was 44 my mother’s Hungarian genes took their revenge. After a three month committal, I was told I was bipolar type II. The next 18 years saw doctors play Pin the Tail on the Donkey with my brain. Pills that stabilized other people did nothing for me except frazzle my brain and give me severe side effects. Then when the pills were stopped, there were savage withdrawals, often up to three weeks long, before new pills were tried.

My career exploded and I, like Icarus, fell to earth. My law partners did not want a lawyer who had been committed in a mental ward and was extremely unstable anywhere near a client. I was a persona non grata.

 I became partially stabilized in 2004 with 1,000 mg a day of benzodiazepine. But benzos have severe side effects: confusion, unsteadiness, dizziness. muscle weakness and memory problems. I had more committals and multiple arrests when walking on the streets when unstable. I have never understood why the Vancouver police always broke my glasses.

But I was among the lucky ones. In 2014, the best psychiatrist I ever met (and I have met a lot), Cranbrook’s Dr. Reza Khosroshahy, devised a pill cocktail that stabilized me and gave me a life back. Not every mentally ill person is so lucky.

 Tired of getting my glasses broken and being showered with pepper spray by the Vancouver police, I relocated to Cranbrook in 2006. Then my mother decided to move here so we could live together. Seeing her sunset years fast approaching, my last ten years have been mainly spent being her principal care giver. She died in December 2022.

Given I am composing this biography for public consumption, stories of my sex life as a gay man are most certainly not welcome. But I survived the AIDS epidemic. I must have attended 35 to 40 funerals for those who did not.

 I now have to invent a new life for myself. I applaud Joel Robison’s project and hope it will inspire more community in Cranbrook’s gay population.