Originally published by The Huffington Post, February 8th 2016

I remember, very clearly, the day my childhood best friend told me he was transgender. The tone of his voice blends in my memory with the image of his white knuckles resting on the table, and the immediate silence that followed, awkwardly suggesting our friendship would never be quite the same.

I remember not being surprised at all, but curious about how this next chapter of his life would impact our relationship. How could I best support him? What would happen to the memories we’d made as two best female friends?

J’s experience was atypical. He identified as a woman for 28 years, growing up in our small Nova Scotia town as part of an even smaller tight-knit church community. He married into a heterosexual relationship at 22, found himself questioning his sexual orientation at 26, and eventually his gender identity at 28.

Our moms had been best friends before we were and he was a presence in my life literally before I was born. I had never known my life without this person, yet here he was, sitting quietly at our kitchen table informing me that I, in fact, knew nothing about his identity.

My ignorance became even more apparent when J attempted to explain the gender transition process to me. He had done extensive research and had talked to many others about hormone therapy and surgery. Some transitions were so successful that you’d never know the person had been assigned a different gender at birth.

“But you’d never actually be a real man,” I distinctly remember saying at the time.

I was (literally) just thinking out loud, but when I looked at my best friend’s face and saw him fighting back tears, it became clear that I really needed to educate myself. I was hiding behind all of the typical safety nets, trying to convince myself that there was nothing to learn. I’m young, I’m open-minded, I spend a lot of time on the internet, I’m relatively informed —

And I still knew nothing about gender identity.

Even now as this memory surfaces four years later I still really have no idea what I’m talking about. I do remember what it felt like during those brief moments of ignorance. I know what it feels like now, as a Nova Scotian in Alberta, to witness the same kind of ignorance as it manifests collectively across the province. And I can’t help but feel the need to add my voice to the giant mess of dialogue that’s been permeating my life since mid-January.

“Even with gender identity and gender expression now being protected under the Alberta Human Rights Act, the province is still the eighth Canadian jurisdiction to make it happen.”

I agree that it’s kind of scary to admit that many of our previous perceptions around gender were false. It’s daunting to actually recognize that there are unlimited gray areas of something that’s been so widely accepted as black and white.

Most of us will never have to spend much time thinking about gender. But when a loved one looks at you in pain because they’re so desperately trying to get you to understand who they are? You have no choice but to listen and learn.

When the Government of Alberta released their set of guidelines to support school boards in developing LGBTQ-inclusive policies, I was hopeful, then immediately disgusted by the public response. This is something I’d been waiting for, something that I had desperately needed growing up, and it is undoubtedly of critical importance to anyone who loves a trans person.

Even while avoiding the Catholic Bishops’ responses and mainstream media comments, I failed in my attempt to ignore all of the negative feedback.

It ranges quite broadly from mildly ignorant to extremely hurtful. Some have expressed concerns around their children being able to self-identify their genders. Others have communicated frustration around the idea that school board policies need to be completely revamped to cater only to the needs of a small minority group.

I would like to make something very clear — these guidelines do not just cater to the few.

Statistically speaking, perhaps there are less individuals who identify as LGBTQ than those who do not. But those who oppose the guidelines seem to fail to realize that these people, like all other human beings, are deeply loved and widely supported.

So many of us would go to great lengths to try to understand what they’re experiencing, simply as means of being able to support them better. So many of us are harmed by the hate and ignorance we see our loved ones exposed to. All of that harm could be reduced by increasing public dialogue, education and awareness.

J and I didn’t go to schools with LGBTQ-inclusive policies. There were no resources to help us figure out who we were or what we felt. He did everything he believed he was “supposed” to do — attended church regularly, got an education, got married. He was my (female) counsellor at church camp for years. But ultimately, no amount of religious teaching, no lack of public awareness could stop my best friend from becoming who he is.

People still question him all the time: “How did you manage to live to nearly 30 before coming to this realization?”

This is why it’s so important for the government to take the lead on promoting public education and awareness of LGBTQ rights. As an adult, it’s frustrating and uncomfortable to challenge mainstream public opinion. As a child, it’s utterly terrifying. Watching J come out even at age 28 and seeing him struggle to try to educate close family, friends and colleagues by himself was still overwhelming.

Even with gender identity and gender expression now being protected under the Alberta Human Rights Act, the province is still the eighth Canadian jurisdiction to make it happen.

There couldn’t be clearer indication that Alberta needs to do more, and these guidelines are an important piece of that. I’m grateful everyday that J was able to find himself and find happiness. The fact that so many people still can’t is unacceptable.

Reflections of an inexperienced traveler on the influences of pop culture, the impacts of energy and the benefits of taking risks.

I have always avoided the Happy song because the falsetto voices get stuck in my head for long hours on end and I think it’s the worst. But when I went to Egypt, I couldn’t get away from it. It was always playing in shops and in markets, in restaurants and on dance floors, blaring from the stereos of cab drivers or from the voices of locals belting out the words in the streets.

The city of Dahab featured in this video was my favourite of the three Egyptian cities I recently visited.  I have to admit I’m grateful these Happy videos are popping up online right now, because this one captures the spirit of Dahab in a way that I never could  by simply typing words on a screen.

Ironically, that  video was released online shortly after I got back to Canada, and it almost recreates the atmosphere perfectly. If you can imagine that song somehow merged with everyone and everything you’d encounter during a day, if you look closely at the facial expressions of the people in the video and imagine being constantly surrounded by that kind of boundless positivity, to the point that you want to bust out the lyrics to the Happy song yourself,  then you can almost imagine what Dahab is like.

The word Dahab actually means “gold” in Egyptian Arabic. According to a couple of my Egyptian friends (and Wikipedia),  its probably for historical reasons, as gold was rumored to have washed down from the mountains during rainstorms, accumulating along the flatter plains of the city.

I think the name is suitable though, because Dahab really is like a hidden gem worth hunting for. To get there,  we had to take a plane from Cairo to a nearby beach resort town called Sharm El-Sheikh, and then drive for 90 minutes across the South Sinai peninsula.  My older sister (who has been living in Egypt for 2 years and is the reason I went there in the first place) assured me that taking the complicated trip would be worth it.

It poured rain the day we planned our trip, and the roads were closed for a full day from flood damage(leave it to a couple of east-coast Canadians to bring rain to a region where it never rains).

We spent the night at a hotel in Sharm and tried again the next day. We still almost didn’t make it, even our massive land rover couldn’t  get over some of the boulders that had washed onto the roads. We passed cars that had gotten stuck in giant holes where the road had completely washed away.  What’s normally a 90-minute commute from  took us over two hours that day.

We also passed through several security check points, where armed guards with AK 47’s looked at our passports and questioned our driver before letting us continue. Although the stops were intimidating  they were actually put in place for the safety of tourists.

Official warnings had been made against travel in the South Sinai about a month earlier, when three South Korean tourists were attacked and killed on their bus, supposedly by a militant Islamist group.

We laughed nervously about the stops afterwards, but those minutes seemed to drag on. The experience of having  a gun pointed at me felt completely unfamiliar and tense. A few of my sister’s neighbors and drivers had warned us about the dangers of the roads in the Sinai, and at each security stop I wondered if this plan was a mistake.

In typical Dahab spirit though, our driver was pleasant during the whole unpredictable trip. So were the stranded drivers we saw along the way, sitting outside their cars in a circle around a hole in the road while talking, laughing and listening to music on their phones. They waved at us when we passed, just hanging out with no apparent distress over their situations. The lightheartedness of it made that long daunting drive seem almost bearable.

But once we arrived,  everyone was this same kind of carefree and the struggles of the trip seemed irrelevant. In Dahab I didn’t feel like a tourist, but like a welcomed guest sharing a secret. I  joked and bartered with local merchants, took in vibrantly colored sunsets and smoked crazy amounts of flavored shisha in beach huts on the Red Sea. It’s no wonder people in Dahab identify so well with the Happy song, happiness seems to be their whole city’s essence.

The energy created when people  are relating to one another can be felt in the best way during moments of travel. In the humility of a bad situation, the beauty of ocean scenery or over the shared love (or loathing) of a pop culture song. That’s what compels me to keep going new places, even when intimidated: the-almost-instinctual urge to bring my attention back to the things that matter, the need for a reminder that some things that are the same for all humanity.

I found the perfect satisfaction to this urge in Dahab.  I’d go back a thousand times just to relive its energy, a completely relaxed, extra-friendly vibe that provided such a welcome contrast to the constant intensity of Cairo. Even Sharm El-Sheikh, though beautiful, still isn’t quite the same; it has more of a cater-to-the-tourists feel, whereas Dahab is genuine, warm and rich in its own unique culture. A noticeably refreshing alternative to Egypt’s underlying angst,  the empty beaches and lonely attractions stir feelings of hope rather than desperation, blatant proof that a city’s energy can have a profound impact

So incidentally I gave Pharrell’s song another chance, since it was practically a constant companion on my travels through the South Sinai.  It still gets stuck in my head but now I don’t mind so much.

Hi there,

Thanks for visiting my site, unfortunately my first blog post is going to be incredibly boring, as it’s just going to be an explanation as to why I don’t yet have any blog posts.

I have been travelling and am looking forward to posting all of the pictures I’ve taken, I just need to find the chord for my DSLR (and recover from the jet lag).

Please check back in a couple of days for updates!

Cheers,

-L