The exact number of transgendered Canadians is hard to estimate.

The precise number of transgendered Canadians is hard to pin down.

The medical establishment says that 1 in 30,000 adult males and 1 in 100,000 adult females seek sex reassignment surgery. These numbers do not account for those who may not seek sex reassignment surgery, but question their gender identity. The prevalence of transgendered people in society is much higher. However, the true number remains a mystery...

Here are some of their stories.

Michelle Duff
Michelle was once Mike - then and still today she is the only Canadian to win a world championship motorcycle Grand Prix.

In the eighties, Mike’s Canadian doctors refused to recommend him for sex reassignment surgery. But Mike was determined to become Michelle.

The fifth estate first met Michelle in 1987, just after she returned from a private sex change clinic in Belgium. Reporter Hana Gartner told Michelle’s story just as she was starting to live life as a woman. At the time she had high hopes for the future.

Michelle Duff, seventeen years ago, when she was first interviewed by the fifth estate. Michelle Duff today.

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Alan Finch
Thirty-seven year-old Alan Finch lives in Melbourne, Australia. He had sex reassignment surgery at twenty-one.

Alan Finch: "At eighteen I started on hormones. I had breast implants not long after. At the age of twenty-one, which is the minimum legal age that you can have it done, I had the genital amputation surgery, my penis and testicles were amputed. This was supposedly done as a therapy for my mental problems."

Alan became Helen Finch at 21. Then decided he was a man after all.

Alan became a woman named Helen. The operation was a success; Helen even married. But the marriage didn’t last. Neither Helen nor her husband could deal with the fact that the bride used to be a man.

At age 30, Alan stopped taking female sex hormones and started living as a man again. Finch and other former patients are now coming together to sue Australia’s top gender clinic. They’re accusing their doctors of misdiagnosis.

Alan Finch: "At the end of the day the choice is with the man holding the scalpel. Nobody's got a gun to his head and is forcing him to do this. He's the one who makes the ultimate choice. Now he better be sure he's got it right."

Alan admits he desperately wanted to become Helen, but says his doctors should not have treated his psychiatric problems with surgery.

"Every hospital has at least one Jesus Christ who wants to be crucified. Do we do it to him? No, we don't. No matter how much he wants salvation."

Alan Finch: "I'm not arguing that these people are not in pain. I'm not arguing that they don't need relief. I've been there...I know what it's like. Whether amputating their body parts is the correct therapy is what I'm questioning."

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Aaron Devor
British Columbia Sociologist Aaron Devor says most people who have sex changes never look back.

He hasn’t…

Holly Devor wrote two books about transgender. Then she became Aaron.

When Aaron was still Holly, she wrote two books about transgender. After writing FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society, Devor had a personal realization.

Aaron Devor: "I came to the end of that process and published the book. After that, I started to think, you know what, I think that's maybe my story too."

Devor has lived as Aaron for two years now. It’s been a successful transition, but he says he'll never leave Holly behind completely.

Aaron Devor: "There's a whole variety of core elements that are part of what makes a person male or female that are not affected by a sex change. We don't have the technology to affect people on that core level. However, if we're talking about the look, the feel and the smell and the shape of a body, we can change that quite successfully."

Hana Gartner: "It almost sounds as if we are creating a third sex."

Aaron Devor: "In some ways we are."