A gay Winnipeg couple have lost their fight to have their marriage of nearly five decades registered by the province of Manitoba. Chris Vogel and Richard North got married in 1974, becoming the first gay couple to get married in a Canadian church. When they tried to register the marriage with what is now the Manitoba Vital Statistics Agency, they were denied based on the fact they were both men. The pair fought the decision in court, but the judge at the time declared declared Vogel and North’s ceremony a “nullity.” In 2018, a human rights adjudicator ruled he was bound by the 1974 ruling, which found there was nothing to be registered because there had been no marriage. The Manitoba Human Rights Commission and North sought a judicial review of that decision in April, but their application was dismissed on June 1.