Most young Canadians know Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s famous 1967 quote, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” But they probably don’t realize the then soon-to-be prime minister was talking about a Calgary bus driver named Everett Klippert. Klippert was the last man in Canada jailed simply for being gay, and he spent more than a decade total behind bars. The high-profile case prompted Trudeau, who was justice minister at the time, to introduce in the omnibus bill that eventually decriminalized same-sex sexual activity between two people over age 21 in Canada in 1969. Klippert’s case changed the trajectory for the queer community in Canada, yet a lot of young people have never heard of him. But the people behind a new documentary released Tuesday hope to change that.
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