This article gives a broad overview of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history in Canada. LGBT activity was considered a crime from the colonial period in Canada until 1969, when Bill C-150 was passed into law. However, there is still discrimination despite anti-discrimination law. For a more detailed listing of individual incidents in Canadian LGBT history, see also Timeline of LGBT history in Canada.
17th century
New France's first-ever criminal trial for the crime of homosexuality took place in September 1648, when a military drummer stationed at the French garrison in Ville-Marie, New France was sentenced to the gallows for sodomy by the local Sulpician priests. After an intervention by the Jesuits in Quebec City, the drummer's sentence was commuted on the condition that he accept the position of New France's first permanent executioner. As only the drummer was placed on trial, the widespread consensus of many historians is that his sexual partner may have been a First Nations man who was not subject to French religious law.
18th century
During the colonial period in Canada a European system of beliefs and values was virtually imposed on the First Nations. As part of this enterprise, missionaries made some of the first observations of LGBT practices among native populations. Jesuit Joseph-François Lafitau spent six years among the Iroquois starting in 1711 where he made important discoveries about Iroquois society. About his observations of cross-gender behavior he later wrote, "If there were women with manly courage who prided themselves upon the profession of warrior, which seems to become men alone, there were also men cowardly enough to live as women."
19th century
Although same-sex activity between men was also punishable by death penalty in British North America, political figures proved to be as reluctant to enforce this as officials in New France had been. Although numerous men were sentenced to death by the courts on sodomy charges, there are almost no surviving records of a convicted sodomite actually being executed in Canada; rather, such death sentences were commonly commuted or pardoned by the colonial governors. Two prominent political figures in this era, Alexander Wood and George Herchmer Markland, were subjected to criminal investigations following allegations of homosexual activity, although both were let off on condition that they resign their political postings.
In 1859, Canada repatriated its buggery law in the Consolidated Statutes of Canada: "Every person guilty of the abominable crime of Buggery, committed either with mankind or with any animal, shall suffer death as a felon."
Buggery remained punishable by death until 1869, when a reform of Canadian criminal law removed the death penalty for all but the most serious crimes. A broader law targeting all homosexual male sexual activity ("gross indecency") was passed in 1892, as part of a larger update to the criminal law.
20th century
Changes to the Criminal Code in 1948 and 1961 were used to brand gay men as "criminal sexual psychopaths" and "dangerous sexual offenders." These labels provided for indeterminate prison sentences.
1960s
The "fruit machine" was employed in Canada in the 1950s and 1960s during a campaign to eliminate all homosexuals from the civil service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), and the military. A substantial number of workers did lose their jobs. Although funding for the "fruit machine" project was cut off in the late 1960s, the investigations continued, and the RCMP collected files on over 9,000 "suspected" homosexuals.
The court case of Everett George Klippert caused much discussion of homosexuality among Canadians. He was the last person in Canada to be arrested, charged, prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for gross indecency for homosexuality before the decriminalization of homosexual acts in 1969; the reform was a direct result of the Klippert case. In 1965 Everett George Klippert was interrogated by the police as part of an arson investigation in the Northwest Territories. Klippert was arrested after admitting that he had had sex with other men. When psychiatrists determined that he was unlikely to stop having sex with men, he was declared a dangerous offender and sentenced to life in prison. Maclean's, Canada's popular newsweekly, then printed an article sympathetic to homosexuals. This led to increasing calls to reform Canada's law on homosexuality. Klippert was released in 1971.