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TRANSCRIPT: The Village, S2E4: We Belong

EPISODE WARNING: The following episode contains difficult subject matter, so please take care.

[Intense music fades in]

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: On Monday August 25th 2003, Miss Do, who was working as a sex trade worker, had two dates set up for the day. She was living with a family member. At that time, she asked her family member to leave for a couple hours while she had her dates over. They never received the call to come back, so ...eventually they decided to go back to the apartment, which they found the door locked. So, they called some more family members who also came down, and three family members entered the apartment and found Cassandra deceased in the bathtub with marks on her neck. It turns out once the officers got there that Cassandra was manually strangled to death during the day.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I'm Justin Ling, and This is The Village.

Cassandra Do’s murder has hung over the trans community in Toronto for almost two decades. When I first started looking into her death, I really didn’t know whether the Toronto Police Service still cared about this case at all. I thought, maybe, the file on Cassandra’s murder was like so many others, living in filing cabinets at police headquarters: Open, technically. But mostly forgotten. That was...until … I got a call back from Detective Sergeant Steve Smith, from the cold case team. It’s not just open, but being actively investigated. And, he said, they know someone who could help identify the killer. So, in spring of 2021, I went to Toronto Police Headquarters to meet Smith and his colleague, Detective Barb Douglas.

[Intense music fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] One thing that has always stuck out for me about Cassandra's murder is just how solvable it should be.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] The DNA you pulled from the scene, are you confident that is in fact the killer?

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: It was a sole source DNA, and we believe that initially -- because her family member didn't receive a call between dates, that it was at the first date where she was actually killed. So, we believe that we have the offender's DNA.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This DNA connected him to another attack on a different sex worker six years earlier. And that woman survived.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: It was considered a bawdy house where there was a few different sex trade workers working out of this particular location. He ended up violently sexually assaulting her as well.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Barb Douglas is assigned to that unsolved sexual assault. Steve Smith is assigned to Cassandra's murder. That makes them partners.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: He works in homicide; I work in sex crimes and I deal with cold cases in sex crimes. And we've been working together looking at each other's information because it's important too, to see maybe that they might have something that we don't have.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Douglas has remained in contact with the woman who was attacked in 1997.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: Recently we had a chat just to say that I -- we're still involved. She knows about the history, the connection with the two cases. She's a great witness for us because she is aware. She is looking at her surroundings and very aware that she's by herself in this home at the time and had provided a statement with a lot of detail. She described as a male, Black. Very large. The description was about 6'3, so he was large to her, very muscular, very strong. 230.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] It could’ve been a game of broken telephone but a suggestion that he may have had some ties to the Caribbean or Jamaica. I saw at one point a name attached to a possible alias of 'Victor.' Is that accurate?

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: I know he had supplied that as a name. We've checked our databases. We still to this day check on a regular to see if there's anyone else that pops up with that sort of same similar background.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] There’s a good physical description. A possible alias. DNA. Some details about the assault. And there’s something else:

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: He was looking for an Asian woman.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In 1997, the attacker requested a specific sex worker, whom he appeared to know, who was Asian. But she wasn't working that night. So, he saw a different worker, who was white, and whom he would attack. Cassandra was also Asian. So was Lien Pham, who was killed in her apartment just months after Cassandra.

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: I can unequivocally say Lien Pham is not related. We have a different person we're looking at in regards to that. In that one there was working cameras.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] You said a minute ago that the door was locked when her family member arrived. What does that tell you? It seems as though whoever killed her would have been able to lock the door from the outside.

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: Yeah, we're guessing that they must have taken her key with them. We believe that this fella came prepared to either sexually assault and/or murder these women. He came prepared to commit an offence. That's our belief.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] There would have, you know, been a lot of outreach to the transgender community. Cassandra was well connected to many folks through the 519 Community Centre, but also just through the bars and cafes and Church Street. I'm wondering how much you learned from what the transgender community was offering.

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: Cassandra had said that she'd been having some threats in regards to you know, a person in one of the bars. Taking a portion of her money to set her up on dates, that sort of thing. And she was having a bit of an issue so she moved to a different bar.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Did that bring you anywhere? I mean, did you manage to identify who that person may have been?

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: The person she was fearful of was actually a female. We don't believe that there was a connection. It doesn't seem like someone was hired to go and deal with this at the time. But it was fully investigated at the time.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] She listed most of her ads in Eye Weekly or NOW Toronto. Ostensibly there would have been some phone record. Did you manage to pull some numbers?

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: So, the process at the time was, the date would come and call her from the speaker phone downstairs, and it would dial to her phone. So, she was using a home phone at the time. So unfortunately, local calls weren't logged. Unlike cell phones now where you'd have every single phone call, every single text, everything logged. But we did go through a huge amount of phone numbers, including a Bad Date book, including her date book. We went through every single phone number.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Recently one of those phone numbers led the detectives down a path.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: So, the phone number we have is not a full phone number. It's just bits and pieces. And we had to try to put it together. And that's what we were trying to do.

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: Sometimes the ladies, especially if they go through a traumatic experience, aren't going to remember a seven-digit number that called them once. Or a license plate that picked them up. A lot of times you're getting partials. It's self-preservation for a lot of these women. But they take notice of these things. Like things that we would probably never pick up on, but these women are sharp enough that they pick up on that. Who they're with, a description, a physical description, what they're driving, what they're wearing. Any identifying numbers or any identifying addresses, anything. They immediately submit that to memory.

We worked back off some of the phone numbers that were provided to us. We were able to identify a male. He had a history of sexual offences. He had a history of sexual offences against Asians, which we believe may have been a factor in this. And he fit the physical profile. We were able to put him in the area at the time. He was working in the area at the time, he was living in the area at the time. I don't want to get into the details of some of the criminal offences that this person was charged with, but they really fit our criteria on a lot of levels.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: We thought for sure we had the guy [Laughs]. Like you know we just believe it so much. We talked about constantly and excited. We think we have it. Everything just sort of aligns. And then, whoop, no. And it ended up not his DNA.

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] I'm wondering if you're still in touch with Cassandra Do's family?

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: I was speaking to her brother last week, both by email and on the telephone. You know, we don't like to tell families an arrest is imminent, obviously because you don't want to give people false hope. But we're going to keep them updated on the case. And we want all these families, we want them all to know that we're still investigating their loved one's murder.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] This case is now 17 years old, almost 18 years old. But it sounds like there's still activity going on.

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: Absolutely, this case has been ongoing in the cold case unit since 2003. We have 700 cases and we're investigating them all. We resubmit DNA in a lot of these cases, and we resubmit it every couple years because of the advances in science, the amounts that can be used to see if we can find an offender profile.

The cases are kind of like dominoes, where we push down this domino here, we go and investigate that on a day. But then we need to submit evidence so we've got to wait eight weeks. So, we pop that domino back up, we push this domino down. We take a look at this one for a day, and we bring that one back up. Then this one will be two days, three days, maybe a week. Maybe we get some traction. Maybe we go straight through with it. But we're always looking at different ways, different techniques, different advances in science, different relationships that have occurred. Because that's one of the other ways you solve cold cases, is changes in relationships, changes in science.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] So far science hasn't provided the detectives with the break they need. They're hoping a change in relationship will. In particular, the relationship between the attacker and the person who ran the brothel where the attack happened in 1997.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: I mean, we do have what we believe is the person that was sort of running this house. He knows who is responsible for this. Other officers several times throughout the course of this investigation have tried to get him to come forward. And so far he's refused to tell us who this was. We need to go out ourselves and have a chat with this gentleman and try to see if he will... is willing to speak to two new investigators. He wasn't very happy with the police. It's like, 'stop bothering me.' But now we're two new faces, we have a different style. And we - you know - we're hoping that he'll change his mind.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I do figure out the address of this brothel — it was just a few blocks from where Cassandra lived. It’s not around anymore. It hasn’t been there in more than a decade. And unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anyone who worked there, or knows who ran the place. Hopefully the police have some more luck in cracking this guy - who could know the identity of Cassandra's killer.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: They were seen together, this potential suspect and this other witness. And to this day he denies that. He denies that he has any knowledge of this person whatsoever.

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] In 2003 it was still the reality for many sex workers that if you came forward, you couldn't guarantee you yourself wouldn't end up with a citation or a ticket or an arrest or potentially even jail time. Do you think that may have been a hindrance then and still be a hindrance now? This still kind of pervasive fear that even though the laws have changed somewhat, and I think the attitudes have changed a fair bit, this feeling that, why would I bring information to the cop? They're the one who wants to put me away.

DETECTIVE BARB DOUGLAS: You're right, things have evolved. We weren't maybe so good at investigating back in the day, but we've changed. Obviously, we keep continuing to hopefully grow and learn from different mistakes in the past. If you have a sex trade worker coming forward with a sexual assault, it's believable and that's my take on that. And you do whatever you can obviously, to help them solve that crime.

DETECTIVE SERGEANT STEVE SMITH: Public trust is utmost importance in these days. And that goes for everybody in the community. It's not public trust as in certain communities feel safe. It's everybody across the board regardless of what's going on in their life. And they need to understand that they can come forward and we're going to look after their needs.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I hear this optimism. And I want to share it. But I have a hard time getting there.

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Canada’s sex work laws made sex work more dangerous than it had to be. Those laws put Cassandra, and the woman who was attacked in 1997, at risk. And the Toronto Police service enforced those laws enthusiastically. Aggressively. But there’s something else. In 1995, the Canadian government passed new laws, codifying what constituted a ‘hate crime.’ If the state could prove that a violent act was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, or sexual orientation, it would carry a harsher sentence. But it specifically did not include gender identity.

CHERI DINOVO: The stats around being trans are horrendous.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This is Cheri DiNovo.

CHERI DINOVO: So, I've always argued that this is the most beleaguered minority that we have in terms of marginalization, in terms of trauma, and we have to do something about it. And the first step is to recognize that they should be covered by human rights codes!

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Cheri grew up on the streets. By the 70s, she was a prominent queer activist, even as queer activism was largely dominated by gay men.

By the 90s, she was a Protestant Minister. And she began seeing more and more trans folks and sex workers in her congregation.

CHERI DINOVO: We had a number of trans folk in our evening service. Most were sex trade workers. Almost all were, if not under housed, living rough or street involved and drug involved. Almost all of them were involved in a negative way with the police. So, that was my community and that's the community that I came out of. Also as queer myself, it was my community from the get go. And Toby, who was a trans woman, came out in the process of being our music director and ultimately died a violent death as well.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In 2006, Cheri got into politics — ran for provincial parliament.

CHERI DINOVO: So, when I was elected, one of the first acts that I really wanted to get done was something to commemorate Toby and working with advocates from the community, people like Susan Gapka, what seemed obvious was to add trans rights to the Ontario Human Rights Code.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Susan Gapka: She’s this tour de force of an activist. She also grew up as a queer kid on the streets. She has successfully campaigned for better access to healthcare for trans people, and for changes to ensure that trans people can more effectively change their ID. [background conversation.] She and I sat down to talk in a park near the Village

SUSAN GAPKA: When I came out a little more than 20, more than 20 (blublbublbub) years ago, gay rights and sexual orientation seemed to be pretty strong. And felt that trans people needed some rights, too. So, that's what's prompted us to try to codify provincially and federally trans rights. It also would tell employers, landlords and other facilities, programs and services, it is not only wrong to discriminate against trans people, it's now illegal. And so, that sends a very clear message.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In 2006, Cheri introduced a bill to amend Ontario's Human Rights code. She called it “Toby's Act.” It expressly forbade discrimination against trans people in housing and employment. It would have given Cassandra a chance to fight back against the owner of that nursing home who fired her for being trans.

But Cheri’s bill went nowhere. She reintroduced it in 2009: It went nowhere. She reintroduced it in 2010 and it went nowhere.

CHERI DINOVO: When I first tabled that bill, people thought it was insane. They treated trans folk as crazy people that they didn't want to listen to.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] When the bill finally came up for debate in 2012, Susan was called to testify in the provincial parliament.

SUSAN GAPKA: [CLIP] My name is Susan Gapka, I'm chair of the Trans Lobby Group.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Susan made it clear to the politicians studying the bill just how high the stakes were.

SUSAN GAPKA: [CLIP] Almost 80 to 90 percent of young trans people consider suicide. It's a friggin miracle that we're still, we're alive here. I can't tell you the stories of my youth. When I told my teacher that I shaved my legs instead of my face as a child in school, the teacher came over and said, ‘you don't talk about that in school.’ I eventually left home, came to Toronto, ended up on the streets of Toronto for 10 years, and became housed. Let's give that chance to our young people. Let's say that trans people, gay people, no matter what your background, that people are protected and don't experience the bullying that many of us have, that they live to be adults.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Around the same time, in Ottawa, her colleagues in the federal Parliament were making a similar push.

BILL SIKSAY: [CLIP] The bill will add gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act and to the Criminal Code sections regarding hate crimes and sentencing provisions, providing explicit protection for transgender and transsexual Canadians from discrimination in all areas of federal jurisdiction.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This familiar voice is Bill Siksay. In 1978, Bill’s close friend, William Duncan Robinson, was killed in his apartment in Toronto. It is one of the cases that was re-opened after Bruce McArthur’s arrest. But it remains unsolved to this day.

Bill was elected as a Member of Federal Parliament in 2004. A year later, he introduced the first Trans Rights Bill in the House of Commons.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] last time we talked you were telling me how the death of Duncan Robinson inspired you into politics. I'm curious if you see the connection there.

BILL SIKSAY: Oh, very much so. Coming out as a gay man and somebody who was interested in politics, the need for political action was never far from my imagination. I think I knew of the stories of trans folks at Stonewall. And knew that sort of this community had shown leadership in the fight for gay rights. And that folks in the gay community owed a debt, [music fades in] in a sense, to members of the trans community for the work that they did for how up front they were about our struggle, and for really teaching us how to fight in lots of ways.

[Bill Siksay fades to the background]

[Music level rises]

BILL SIKSAY: [CLIP] Transgender and transsexual people are regularly victims of abuse and harassment, and physical violence. The bill would ensure that transphobic violence against transgender and transsexual people is clearly identified as a hate crime

[Music level reduces]

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] you know you're canvassing trans people across the country, what are they telling you that they need?

BILL SIKSAY: Well, health issues were key. And I think that was the sort of dramatic thing for most people - access to appropriate medical care and care that they could afford. There was also a lot of emotion around policing and safety So the amount of violence that folks in the trans community faced was pretty key.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This legislation seems like a no-brainer. But, much like Cheri’s efforts, Bill’s legislation stalled before it even got a chance to leave the gate. The politicians just didn’t care. It took six years for it to even come up for debate.

BILL SIKSAY: I remember one MP struggling that he wanted to support the Bill because he thought it was the right thing to do, but he didn't think his riding would understand. And he also said, and his kids would be very angry with him if he voted against it. And so, he was struggling on a very personal level with that. He eventually voted against the bill.

There were others who were um … I don't even think they got to that point. They were just struggling with the issue. They didn't know any trans people, they didn't understand the issue, they didn't understand why we had to be talking about it, those kinds of things…

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] That’s where activists like Susan came in. They phoned up MPs. Showed up at their offices. Said: Hey, look, you’ve met a trans person now.

SUSAN GAPKA: [CLIP] Long ago, personally, I was afraid to pursue transition in case I got fired. Eventually, I found the courage to move forward. Years later, when I was visibly trans and my work was undergoing layoffs, I was afraid. When I looked around for other jobs, I noticed how people were reacting to my appearance, and I had reason to fear whether I'd be treated fairly somewhere else. For better or worse, that uncertainty kept me where I was.

HOUSE OF COMMONS: [Voting clip]: Yays pour, 143, Nays contre, 135 (clapping) Je déclare la motion adoptée, [clapping]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] By a narrow margin, the House of Commons voted, in 2011, to enshrine some of the world’s most ambitious and far-reaching protections for trans people. This was huge. There was only one problem…

SENATOR DON PLETT: [CLIP] The issue I have is that many elements of society are separated based on sex and not on gender—

[Don fades to the background]

JUSTIN LING: The Senate. The unelected upper chamber of Canada’s Parliament still had to pass the bill. And there were an ornery few who just did not want to. Senators like Don Plett.

[Don continues]

SENATOR DON PLETT: [CLIP] — shelters, change rooms, bathrooms, even sports teams. They are not separated based on internal feelings but on sex, physiological and anatomical differences.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] From the outset, Senator Plett, and a few others, led a crusade against the bill. One that was transphobic, conspiratorial, and not based on any available evidence.

SENATOR DON PLETT: [CLIP] when you say that this 0.3 per cent of society is trans how their rights can trump the rights of my five-year-old granddaughter walking into a change room, a biological male walking into a bathroom. So How can this 0.3 per cent of society trump the rights of my grandchildren, my granddaughters?

BILL SIKSAY: The bathroom issue — I think there were some people who — that really made them nervous. I think it was based on a misunderstanding of gender identity. They didn't have any hard evidence to show that this was, in fact, an issue. The reality was that the people who were in danger in washrooms were trans people. And there was lots of evidence of them being denied service, being harassed, being assaulted in washrooms.

[ Somber music fades in]

CLIP: If your argument truly is about protecting people, then pass Bill C-16 as is, because I can assure you the person most likely to be assaulted, raped or murdered in a public space is me, a transgender woman. Transgender people are more at risk from society than society will ever be from us.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Trans Pulse, a research project, found that as of the mid-2000s, More than one-in-ten trans people in Ontario said they were fired for being trans. One in five reported being physically or sexually assaulted for being trans. More than a third considered suicide. And here were Canada elected, and unelected, representatives making excuses for why they didn’t deserve protection. In Ontario, Cheri DiNovo heard the same nonsense: It was even being pushed in the newspapers!

CHERI DINOVO: The urban myth and it is an urban myth that was promulgated by many mainstream press outlets was that, of course, that if this bill passed and others like it, if we started to take trans rights seriously, that that would mean that men dressed as women would attack women in washrooms.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] And, far from Senator Plett’s fearmongering, witnesses testified how it could help make public spaces safer for trans people.

WITNESS 1: [CLIP] I know the topic of bathrooms has been talked about a lot here. However, when we focus on the discomfort of non-trans people, we rarely hear that two thirds of trans people avoid public spaces like bathrooms for fear of harassment or violence. Can you imagine being afraid to drink some water in case you were somewhere where it wasn't safe to use the washroom? Or can you imagine needing to see a doctor because of having to hold it? As a trans person, I'm grieved and outraged by this. As a health care administrator, I think it's very sad to be spending health care dollars on problems caused by discrimination, problems that are totally avoidable.

WITNESS 2: [CLIP] That's the kind of mythology that I heard around gay teachers back in the day and lesbian, you know, Girl Scout leaders back in the day. I mean, this is the kind of queer phobia, if I can say that, that was so... I was so used to and that others like me from the community were so used to, that it wasn't hard to see it for what it was: simply hatred under a different guise.

[Somber music fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Let’s be frank, these pieces of legislation were never going to fix discrimination, or prevent every single hate crime. They might not have, at least in the short term, made a big difference in many trans peoples’ day to day lives. Just like adding sexual orientation as a protected class under the law, in 1996, didn’t solve homophobia. But what these pieces of legislation aimed to do was to provide some really basic protections and to say something really important.

BILL SIKSAY: I wanted trans people to know that one of the values of our society was that they were explicitly protected and that their rights were explicitly regarded positively by Canadian society. And the way you do that is by saying the words in this legislation.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] And they would help pull down a few of those barriers that made trans lives even more difficult.

CHERI DINOVO: Getting that covered by the Ontario Human Rights Code opened up huge doors because all of a sudden, you know, it was about identity, it was about health care, it was about covering trans, you know, trans surgeries of various sorts. You know, it was about prison treatment. It was about how trans folk are treated in schools and what washrooms you have as institutions. I always said after that, if the government had realized, you know, what, this Bill would open up, they never would have gone for it. But they did thank you Jesus.

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] It took until 2012 for Cheri’s bill to finally become law. With activists like Susan, she got support from all three parties in the legislature.

CHERI DINOVO: What we are doing here today, ladies and gentlemen, is the first step towards saving lives. That’s what we’re doing.

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: [CLIP] I’m proud to announce that tomorrow, on the international day against homophobia and transphobia, we will be tabling a bill in the house of commons to ensure the full protection of transgender people.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In Ottawa, in May 2016 newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau introduced the trans rights bill as government legislation.

HOUSE OF COMMONS: [Voting clip, cheering at the end]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The same transphobic talking points were trotted out in the Senate. They brought in new witnesses to oppose the bill. But it didn’t work. Not this time. The legislation would finally become law in 2017. Every province and territory in Canada now has discrimination protections for trans people. And yet, it shouldn’t have taken this long for protections as basic as these. Morgan, the trans historian, says it was trans people who suffered in the meantime.

MORGAN: I don't always want to boil the conversation down into life or death, because certainly there are trans people who will keep on living even if you make our lives absolutely miserable. But, why do you want to make our lives miserable? [laughs] Like, why do our lives have to be miserable?

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] If you follow the debate around trans rights — whether it’s healthcare, or sports, or basic anti-discrimination laws — it always comes back to this idea that discussions around gender identity or gender expression are putting kids at risk.

MORGAN: Young trans people today are growing up in a world where their very existence is under international debate, where there are more than one country trying to ban your entire life.

[sad music fades in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] For decades, society has accused queer people of putting kids at risk. But, in reality, it’s often queer kids who are the real victims.

MORGAN: So, what we're seeing in particular is a major attack on the rights of trans young people and their doctors. An attempt to literally make giving health care to trans young people illegal, which is incredibly concerning, even just from a medical standpoint, like it should be doctors deciding what is the right treatment for people, not legislatures. Here in the UK, we've had a very recent and really horrible legal judgment that has made access to puberty blockers and effectively access to all trans related health care for people under the age of 18, no longer legal.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In Canada, this problem is not in the past tense. In June of 2021, as we worked on this podcast, the House of Commons voted on a bill to ban conversion therapy — which is a bad phrase to describe what it really is: Psychological torture designed to try to force queer people to deny their sexuality or gender identity.

But 63 members of Parliament opposed the bill. During the debate, some politicians stood up to spread transphobic misinformation.

HOUSE OF COMMONS: [CLIP] Isn’t something not out of place here, where parental consent is required to allow children to join a field trip or to get a tattoo, but when it comes to changing their gender, the child has full authority? Madam Speaker, I have three wonderful children. They are bright kids, but I can assure you that nine times out of 10 they do not know what is best for themselves.

[Sad music fades out]

MORGAN: For the most part, trans young people don't have any access to medical care, period. Right? Like the vast majority of trans people in Canada, in the United States, in the UK — have either zero access to health care or extremely limited access to health care, particularly if they don't have supportive parents. So, this idea that like, people are going around trans-ing the kids! And these experimental doctors are forcing hormones on children! It's just not the case.

[Somber piano music plays]

MORGAN: Where do you think trans people come from? We don't you don't just wake up one day and you suddenly are like, oh, I'm trans now, I guess. The reality is that while not all trans people know with total certainty from the moment they were born that they were trans, most of us know that something was up. And we have spent a very significant portion of our lives searching for it. You know, it's quite personal for me because I'm someone who transitioned as a young teenager before that was a common thing to do. I transitioned in the very early 2000s, I got access to hormones and surgery really early. And for me, those things were lifesaving.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] There is a concerted effort by politicians to put back up the barriers that trans people have just succeeded in tearing down.

MORGAN: There's a lot of weirdly granular issues that people are trying to outlaw, the biggest among them being access to sports. So, you can imagine if you're 13, 14 years old, you're just understanding yourself as trans. OK, you can have a life, you could have friends, you could have a family, but you're still going to be locked out of sports. You're going to be locked out of potentially bathrooms. You're going to be locked out of public life.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The Human Rights Campaign, a U.S. queer organization, reports there are now 195 anti-LGBTQ bills that’ve been introduced across 30 states, mostly targeting trans people. The campaign says that 2021 is already the worst year on record for anti-queer legislation in the U.S. 16 bills have thus far become law — including laws that would make it a felony to provide healthcare to trans youth.

And the thing is, these laws, almost without exception, are being debated by cisgender people. There are very very few trans or gender non-conforming people elected anywhere in North America.

That’s why trans people have lined up to do what Susan began doing two decades ago: To confront those politicians who have no idea what it’s like to be trans.

ACTIVIST 1: [CLIP] I can’t describe to you the pain a transgender person goes through, having to live in the wrong body. At 22, I stepped in front of a dump truck just hoping to God it would end it all. Luckily it failed. So, at the age of 55, I came out. God made me the way I am so that I can understand and help and mentor these kids. [Clapping] Because I don’t want any of them to ever, ever go through what I did.

ACTIVIST 2: [CLIP] After today, we will no longer be silenced. [Chanting]

ACTIVIST 3: [CLIP] I point my finger at you and call it what it truly is. It is propaganda, fear-mongering and oppression. This bill will cause human beings’, trans beings’, children’s death. I can promise you that if a supportive process had been the norm when I was a child instead of this outdated rhetoric, the scars of attempted suicide will not adorn my body to this day. The options for trans-affirming healthcare should principally always be left to the people themselves and not legislators.

PROTEST CROWD: What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!

ACTIVIST 4: [CLIP] The moment we allowed my daughter to be who she is, to grow her hair, to wear the clothes she wanted to wear. She was a different child. And I mean, it was immediate. It was a total transformation. I now have a confident, a smiling, a happy daughter. She plays on a girls volleyball team. She has friendships. She's a kid. I came here today as a parent to share my story. I need you to understand that this language, if it becomes law, will have real effects on real people. It will affect my daughter. It will mean she cannot play on the girls volleyball team or dance squad or tennis team. I ask you, please don't take that away from my daughter or the countless others like her who are out there. Let them have their childhoods. Let them be who they are. I ask you to vote against this legislation.

[Somber music fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] It’s not just the U.S. and Canada. Politicians around the world have campaigned against trans people, introducing laws — as Morgan says — to make them miserable. The United Kingdom, Brazil, Turkey, Australia, India, Hungary, Poland — trans people and their rights are under attack everywhere.

ACTIVIST 5: On the 14th of June, The Sunday Times reported that the UK government is planning to roll back the hard-won rights of trans people. [Crowd chants]

[Clip of a crowd chanting]

ACTIVIST 6: [Passionate] How dare you sit there and try to oversee the rolling back of our rights, rolling them back by decades, trying to attack the most vulnerable people in our society — transgender young people — who’ve already got it tough enough. You are nothing but a thug and a bigot who doesn't represent anyone but yourself. A tiny minority of bigots in this society. How dare you. We are here to fight. We are not going to let you get away with this. When trans rights are under attack, what do we do? [Crowd chants: “Stand up, fight back!”]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] And it’s impossible to divorce these bills from the violence that trans people face. The Human Rights Campaign says 44 trans people were murdered in America in 2020 — the worst year on record. We don’t know how many trans people were killed in Canada, even as the victims of hate crimes, because Canada still does not report that data.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: [CLIP] I also hope Congress can get to my desk the Equality Act to protect LGBTQ Americans. [Applause] All transgender Americans watching at home — especially young people — you’re so brave. I want you to know your president has your back. [Applause]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Politicians can’t stop violence. They can’t end discrimination. But, at the very least, they can stop trying to make trans peoples’ lives miserable. And they can craft laws that actually help, and support trans people. That requires electing politicians who actually engage with these problems. Or, better yet, electing trans people themselves. In the meantime, the job falls to people like Susan Gapka.

SUSAN GAPKA: What I'm very proud of is to get politicians — elected politicians to change legislation took a lot of education, a lot of putting the human face on saying, we're your neighbors, we're human. Now, I think, the result of it being passed in provincial jurisdictions and now federally it's a clear message both in Canada and globally that we are loved, we are protected, we are included in Canadian and Ontario society. And I think that’s — that's really important to message for Canada, and an important message for young people like myself struggling…Where do I fit in? Where do I belong? And it sends a message that I do belong.

[Reflective music fades in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Where Susan and I sat, you could see Cassandra’s old apartment. It’s also where her friends and her community came to remember her, after her death.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] So we're sitting in Allen Gardens Park. We're not too far away from where the memorial for Cassandra Do was. And you were, you were there for that.

SUSAN GAPKA: I came, you know, to in solidarity and in support of - for Cassandra. I had met Cassandra and she was going to George Brown College, I think, for nursing diploma. And I was going to George Brown College for community work. She was engaged in a way of making a living to pay for medical procedures that were not funded by the provincial government at the time and that is a struggle that I was really engaged in as well to provide basic access to health care. For me, what I can take away from that today, so many years later this is our experience, this can happen and this is not an isolated incident about Cassandra, but she was beloved she was very much in a similar place that I was — used to sleep in this park when I was homeless. I had a long history of being in and out of institutions in this neighborhood. I could point to them and you know, could be me. I was going to college trying to get an education, got some housing. But, you know, it's like those forks in the road. You don't know which way it's going to take. And it's turned out really well for me.

I'm light skinned. I've had some privileges. I'm a Canadian citizen. I have a good grasp of English language and ability. So I need to be mindful of that. This is things that I didn't really fully grasp when I was just focusing on my own everyday experience. I'm actually grateful you're asking me about this because it helps me reflect on the journey and path that we all take. I grew up feeling really ashamed and guilty of who I was. It's an enormous, like mental health struggle. And especially when everywhere you go, the door is slammed shut in your face. So I think the things like Cassandra Do or other people and we'll go with Alloura Wells who used the service just down the street here, who ends up in a ravine camping out because there's no place to go. The circumstances that put people in these situations are those barriers to access to social determinants of health, housing, social supports. But now society doesn't look down on us the same way they used to. Some people will never change, that's for everything. But we’ve got to end the violence.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Coming up, on the final episode of The Village…

[Clip montage from episode 5]

MORGAN: Our community has worked really, really hard across decades to take care of each other because society's not going to take care of us. The police aren't going to care for us. They're never going to care about us.

CHIEF RAMER: When you speak specifically to the Alloura Wells case, there's just been some pretty shoddy police work.

MICHELLE WHEELER: Whoever's not doing their job…that's really horrible.

JUSTICE EPSTEIN: The public is entitled to know the truth. So are the loved ones and friends of those who went missing.

[Episode closing music starts]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling and Jennifer Fowler.

Sound design by Julia Wittmann, with help from Evan Kelly.

Our associate Producer is Eunice Kim and our digital producer is Fabiola Melendez Carletti.

Additional clips from CBS News, NBC News, and Ruptly.

Alex V Green, Faith Fundal and Chris Oke are our story editors.

Our senior producer is Cesil Fernandes.

And the executive producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.

If you’re looking for another podcast to listen to check out Chosen Family, from CBC Podcasts. Hosted by Tranna Wintour and Thomas Leblanc, Chosen Family is a talk show that shines a light on the intersection of art, queerness, and community. You can listen to Chosen Family on the CBC Listen app and everywhere you get your podcasts.

[Episode closing music ends]

Transcript: The Village, S2 E4: We belong

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