I’ve been attending Pride marches across Canada since I was a teenager in the late 1980s—in big cities, small towns and even smaller Gulf Island communities. In the 1990s, my parents marched in Toronto’s Pride Parade with PFLAG. And when my partner and I became parents, Pride became a fun day out for our whole family: we’d meet up with grandparents, spend time with friends, join the parade, buy snacks from food trucks and listen to music in a local park. Over the past decade, my parents, my partner and I have worked with the nonprofit Rainbow Refugee to sponsor LGBTQ individuals fleeing persecution. Celebrating their first Pride events in Canada with them and seeing their happiness as they witness the community’s support after years of hiding has deepened my own commitment to queer visibility.

For me, being at Pride is a joyful experience: it’s about communities coming together to celebrate everyone’s right to be who they are and love who they choose. For the kids who attend, it’s a chance to see that LGBTQ people and families exist and are loved and supported by many, many people. That wasn’t something I saw growing up in the ’70s and ’80s. And although the LGBTQ community was more visible by the time I became a parent, there were still only a handful of picture books about families with two moms. I wanted to write books that would fill that gap.

Twenty years ago, on parental leave from my job as a crisis counsellor, I started writing. Since then, I’ve authored more than 30 books of fiction and non-fiction for young readers, many of which include LGBTQ characters or are about queer history and rights. In 2021, I released Pride Puppy, an alphabet book that follows a family as they attend a Pride Day celebration and temporarily lose their dog in the parade. It’s illustrated by Julie McLaughlin and published by Orca Books. All of us—author, illustrator, publisher—are from Vancouver Island, B.C.

Pride Puppy was well-received, appearing on best books lists in B.C. and Ontario, and nominated for a reader’s choice award in Saskatchewan. More importantly, it found its way to families who loved it. I heard from parents delighted to find a book that showed people who looked like those in their own family and community. Many of them said it was their child’s favourite book.

Then, near the end of 2022, I suddenly started getting hateful messages filled with homophobic slurs, violent language and vile accusations—and then death threats. Because the threats were coming from the U.S., I reported them to the FBI, who investigated. After searching online, I learned that my book was one of several LGBTQ picture books selected by a school board in Montgomery County Maryland, as part........

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