Unknown Speaker 0:00 In the early 1980s, there were whispers of a new disease. No one had heard of it before. Was it a mysterious plague, or a strange kind of pneumonia? Unknown Speaker 0:10 It's mysterious, it's deadly, and it's baffling medical science. Almost all its victims were homosexual males who frequently change sexual partners. Unknown Speaker 0:21 My name is Trevor green. I was born in the mid 1980s. And so I wasn't part of the AIDS epidemic, but doomed so many gay men, Unknown Speaker 0:28 scientists at the National Centers for Disease Control and Atlanta today released the results of a study, which shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic Unknown Speaker 0:39 of a rare form of cancer. That's an NBC News clip from 1982. With anchor Tom Brokaw, as we just heard, the disease wasn't called aids, it was known as the gay plague or gay cancer. To get a sense of the fear and anxiety of the time, I decided to speak to the men who lived through that period. Unknown Speaker 1:01 Okay, it's James Dobro. And I'm a crime writer and long time person who lives in the gay village for in Toronto here since 1970. I remember very well, because I was totally obsessed with it, you know, they first surface the whole thing in the New York Times as a gay cancer, that various people were dying of a gay cancer, which basically was screwed. They had various names for it for a long time. They didn't know what it was. There was no way of knowing what you had it. There's no way of knowing we're gonna get through it all. Unknown Speaker 1:36 After a while the disease became known as grid or gay related immune deficiency, Unknown Speaker 1:41 the sense of people being swimming in uncertainty. People were nervous, people were scared people knew. We all know people who were starting to get sick. Unknown Speaker 1:57 That's David Hallman. He's 69 years old. He lived in Toronto in the 1980s. Unknown Speaker 2:03 Nobody knew what was causing it. Nobody knew how it was being transmitted. And then people started dying in our own community, including people that we knew. Unknown Speaker 2:14 It can't be too dramatic about. It was just so awful. And those of us who didn't get it, we're quite lucky. But we just don't assume we had it. It's terrible. I always had this overwhelming feeling of despair that it was just a question time before I'm going to be diagnosed and then I'll be gone within a year. The symptoms, the symptoms, we're always looking at symptoms, Unknown Speaker 2:37 the condition severely weakens the body's ability to fight disease. Many victims get a rare form of cancer called kaposi sarcoma, others, there were many kinds of symptoms, it seemed like a cluster of diseases. People were getting lesions on their body, they were going blind. They had no immune system. In response to the health crisis, the gay community became more political. Unknown Speaker 2:59 Yeah. It's definitely dealt by galvanized the gay community. I remember, one of the first public meetings was around 1982. And it was in Jarvis collegiate. And I remember in the auditorium was packed. Every gay man in the city was there because the news reports had been coming initially from the New York Times and then in Canada as well in Toronto, about this, what was just previously being still referred to as a gay plague. There was just this nervousness, this really deep seated nervousness. Unknown Speaker 3:45 And as gay men started getting sick and dying, David took care of people, his friends, his loved ones, he also joined part of the activist organizations. Unknown Speaker 3:54 I mean, obviously, there were there there, various gay activists who got involved in starting various committees, and trying to raise the consciousness of people about it. And of course, a lot of it was because it was through sex, people thought, well, maybe they should just stop having sex, which is what a lot of us did. You know, a lot of us became celibate during most of the 80s until the test came along, and one could no one knew it was a virus and there are certain things you could do. Like use a Unknown Speaker 4:29 condom, many gay men were unprepared to accept a new reality in which you had to limit your number of sexual partners. For many people, gay liberation meant sexual freedom. And now they were being told to cut back and in some cases to abstain from sex altogether. Unknown Speaker 4:45 People didn't know how to protect themselves. There was then there was the whole debate about how it was transmitted, the sense of what was shipped we just if it is sexually transmitted, everybody just abstain from sex and that wasn't going to happen. I Unknown Speaker 4:58 kept a journal started. get around at three or four about my various symptoms which went on till at nine. So until I said I had the first Ace test, and it came up that I negative At any rate, and that that's when I had that test every year for three years to make sure. And occasionally I would slip and go to a steam bath after a party. And then I was thinking, Oh, my God, I've exposed myself again, any rate. So until that came around, I just assumed I was going to go, and then I would be one of the many unlucky ones. Unknown Speaker 5:29 Eventually, in the mid 1980s, Unknown Speaker 5:31 the virus was identified, and a test was developed, which could determine whether or not you were positive, early, fairly early on in the 1980s. Once it was identified that there was a virus and blood tests would detect it. It became just standard that we all started getting tested on on a regular basis. And for years, tests always came back negative, that was fine. That was expected. That was certainly hoped for. And it worked out, okay. Until in 1993. I had applied for health insurance, and it got denied. And we got this letter saying that the reasons for the denial of the health insurance coverage were been communicated to my family doctor, and I went to my doctor, and he told me that the testing that they had done for the health insurance with blood testing, came back that I was HIV positive. And, and very, what she described as a high progressor, my viral load was very high. And this was like just believable, even though we've been living with this for almost a decade by that point with in the community. I hadn't anticipated that I would become one of those statistics. I didn't want to tell Bill, Unknown Speaker 7:07 Bill Conklin was David's partner, they met in the early 1970s, Unknown Speaker 7:11 and knew that he would be primarily upset out of concern for me, and that I made my die a horrible death as many of our friends were. So I hesitated and we went to monkey Thursday service. I remember that that gear at St. Thomas's, as we usually did, and it was just the most gripping Monday, Thursday, because all of this was going through my head. By Easter Sunday. Two days later, after we had finished our dinner I, I knew that I could not keep this secret, I could not protect him from this news. And so I told him, I said, I've got something to tell you. And I told him and I remember this cry, there was this couple moments of silence. And then this cry that came out of his soul out of his guts is just an agonizing sound. And we both started crying and holding each other. And it was it was very, very, very rough. I was back at work. Monday was a holiday, I was back at work on the Tuesday. And halfway through the day, my secretary came in and said, there's a delivery here for you. And she brought it in and it was a big long rectangular box. And in it. When I opened it were a dozen red roses. And a note from him, saying I will always love you. And I saved some of those roses. They're nice. I'm looking at them now and the rose petals dried rose petals and and the note that came with them in and glass container in my display cabinet. And then we just rebuilt our lives. Based on the new reality. Unknown Speaker 9:12 David has been one of the lucky ones. He's almost 70 years old and has lived with HIV for a quarter of a century. As we have heard, the epidemic was a time of dread. But it also showed how community could come together in a time of crisis. Unknown Speaker 9:29 And the advice give to someone who has recently tested positive would be multifold. One is it's not the end of the world. And it's not a death sentence as it was in the early stages in the 80s and even when I suppose in 1993 so there's don't get overdramatic about it. It's serious, but life can go on Secondly, take care of yourself. I'm I've been living with this, how many years is it since 1993, almost 2026 years, and I'm thriving, life can go on it will be different. And there'll be things that you have to really attend to, but don't be discouraged. You there's a lot of support available for you. Unknown Speaker 10:30 In Toronto, I'm Trevor green. Transcribed by https://otter.ai