apartment and distribute some of his belongings as he had requested. As
he had requested, I also wrote a letter of thanks to Air Canada for giving
him a job that he loved and for treating him with respect and patience.
Gaétan didn’t give me a lot of information about his youth, but I do
374
Epilogue
think that he was harassed a fair amount for being gay. He spoke about
aggressively and physically fi ghting those who taunted him. I think what
many people took for arrogance was simply another instance of Gaétan
determined to stand up for himself, to be himself. I remember early in
our relationship that I had expressed some reservation about his dress;
he met me later that day in full gay regalia . . . telling me, without words,
that he would be who he was. This same, fi ghting spirit was evident
when he went to the beach in 1983 and he made no attempt to disguise
or cover up his Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions, defi antly staring back at those
who stared at him. While I wasn’t there, he also told me how he had
stood up alone to speak of his experience and needs at a gay meeting
downtown. I assume this must have been the meeting in 1983.
As I have said, despite being harassed by others at the bars and told
that he should stay home, Gaétan did continue to go out and be himself
while in Vancouver, though I’m sure that those responses, plus changes
within him, were why he went out less and less and with far less joy. I
don’t know how he dealt with his AIDS status when he met strangers,
but it wasn’t something he could easily have hidden as his legs and torso
had many KS lesions. Certainly, the man he was in a relationship with
was well aware of his health situation. As a gay man, Gaétan was com-
pletely imbued with the spirit of Stonewall, stronger and braver than
many who were so critical of him. That spirit led him to embrace the sex-
ual revolution in all its fullness; it also gave him immense strength when
that whole world turned around on him and he was left so alone, not
yet thirty, his beauty suddenly marked by lesions that seemed to signal
death. Somehow, he kept himself together, fought on to be who he was
and live as he wanted to live.
Gaétan also told me that he was adopted. He had met his birth
mother, though they were not close. In my visit with the family in 1972,
he seemed a very integral and popular member of his adopted family— a
particular favourite of his mother, who seemed totally supportive of his
gay sensibility— lavishing praise on his fl amboyant clothes and interested
in his shelves of cosmetics and creams. She and the whole family were
very welcoming to me and we slept together in a guest room upstairs.
I fi rst read about AIDS in the paper. My mother was far ahead of
her time in her knowledge of nutrition and health. She had stressed to
us very early the importance of disease prevention, the risks of catch-
ing disease from strangers, the dangerous side effects of too much med-
ication, and the importance of staying healthy by minimizing exposure
Zero Hour 375
to disease. I had been very critical of the carelessness with which Gaé-
tan and my friends in San Francisco— in fact most gay men— took antibi-
otics and dealt with STDs. Even doctors seemed to view STDs as amus-
ing hiccups in life. Several of my friends had contracted hepatitis from
sex and many were frequently taking antibiotics for a variety of other
infections. I knew the lifestyle was unhealthy, and had been very wary;
my fi rst assumption was that AIDS was caused by the breakdown of the
immune system, the cumulative effect of the generally unhealthy life-
styles of liberated gay men. All the expert advice early on was to limit
the number of partners to reduce the strain on the immune system. My
view only changed when I read an article by Larry Kramer in the Advo-
cate, which, for the fi rst time, suggested that AIDS was a communicable
disease, that the issue was likely not how many partners, but what you
did with those partners.
In the 1980s, AIDS information was very confusing and contradic-
tory. The medical establishment seemed at odds with alternative views
expressed in gay papers or articles in the alternative press. People were
nervous of dangerous, debilitating drugs, such as AZT, suddenly be-
ing prescribed to gay men. It was a time of great anxiety and not a lit-
tle paranoia; almost everyone felt in the dark and argued for their ver-
sions of the light. I think it was especially hard for gay doctors who had
been trained to believe that they could solve almost all medical prob-
lems, only to be confronted with something that they knew almost noth-
ing about and that was killing their friends and patients.
I was never contacted by Randy Shilts and never read his book,
though have read about it. I was not aware that he was in Vancouver in
1986.
I think that I fi rst read about “Patient Zero” in reviews of And the
Band Played On, but I’m not sure. I remember seeing a movie at a gay
fi lm festival, Zero Patience, which provided a reasonably accurate view
of Gaétan’s family. I never seriously considered that Gaétan was “Pa-
tient Zero,” though I’m sure, given the times, that he did help to spread
the virus. But Gaétan was no different than the vast majority of gay men
then. If he had more partners than most, it was only because his per-
sonality, looks, and job made that easier for him than for others. Gaé-
tan was no ogre and no saint . . . just a young man exploring the world
as it opened up for him in his twenties. Like almost all gay men who had
grown up lonely in a homophobic world, he found being desired and at-
tractive intoxicating and there seemed no reason not to make the most
376
Epilogue
of all the love and joy suddenly available to him. While he certainly
couldn’t remain sexually faithful to me, and lied to hide that from me,
I never doubted the purity of his heart or the reality of his love; he was
a generous lover, friend, and family member, a young man of immense
charm with an intoxicating sense of humour, who took intense joy in
making people laugh, whose smile was truly magnetic. I remember going
to a T- Dance at John Barley’s, likely in the summer of 1983, and seeing
him there with his boyfriend, dancing with great joy and abandon, bare-
chested, his shirt rolled up and held high above his head, whirling in the
air between his outstretched arms, his whole body lost to the music. He
was a compelling fi gure, beautiful and brave— still very, very young, defi -
ant in the face of disease and death just as he had always been defi ant in
the face of all that had threatened to limit his joy in life.
Appendix
Oral History Interviews
The author recorded fi fty- two interviews— fi fty in English and two in
French— on audiocassette in 2007 and 2008. These recordings were
later converted to digital fi les, and the English interviews were then tran-
scribed by the author’s mother, Jane McKay. Of the fi fty- two interviews,
<
br /> agreement was obtained for fi fty to be archived at the British Library,
under the collection title Imagining Patient Zero: Interviews about the
History of the North American HIV/AIDS Epidemic. The collection in-
cludes audiocassette tapes, digitized copies, and verbatim transcripts.
All but one of the interviewees assigned their copyright in the record-
ings to the British Library; the author and Robin Metcalfe have retained
their copyrights for the duration of their lifetimes, after which their
rights are transferred to the British Library. All the recordings are cat-
aloged on the British Library Sound and Moving Image catalog (http://
sami .bl .uk) and can be accessed at the British Library, subject to any ac-
cess restrictions requested by individual interviewees and the author.
Number
Date
Location
Interviewee
C1491/01
July 6, 2007
Los Angeles
Don Spradlin
C1491/02
July 6, 2007
Los Angeles
Zvi Howard Rosenman
C1491/03
July 10, 2007
San Francisco
George Rutherford
C1491/04
July 12, 2007
San Francisco
Daniel Detorie
C1491/05
July 16, 2007
San Francisco
Jay Levy
C1491/06
July 19, 2007
San Francisco
Rink Foto
C1491/07
July 19, 2007
San Francisco
Mervyn Silverman
C1491/08
July 22, 2007
San Francisco
Hank Wilson
C1491/09
July 24, 2007
San Francisco
Andrew Moss
Not deposited*
July 26, 2007
San Francisco
Selma Dritz
C1491/10
July 27, 2007
San Francisco
Marcus Conant &
Joseph Robinson
Number
Date
Location
Interviewee
C1491/11
July 27, 2007
San Francisco
Paul Volberding
C1491/12
July 28, 2007
San Francisco
Josh Lancaster
C1491/13
July 28, 2007
San Francisco
Ken Maley
C1491/14
July 29, 2007
San Francisco
Peter Roberts
C1491/15
July 29, 2007
San Francisco
Ross Murray
C1491/16
August 28, 2007
Vancouver
Richard Mathias
C1491/17
August 28, 2007
Vancouver
Gordon Price
C1491/18
August 31, 2007
Vancouver
Brian Willoughby
C1491/19
September 3, 2007
Vancouver
Noah Stewart
C1491/20
January 8, 2008
Vancouver
Terry Twentyman
C1491/21
March 28, 2008
Miami
William Darrow
C1491/22
April 8, 2008
New York
Michael Denneny
C1491/23
April 14, 2008
New York
Larry Kramer
Not deposited†
April 24, 2008
New York
Alvin Friedman- Kien
C1491/24
April 25, 2008
New York
Richard Berkowitz
C1491/25
April 28, 2008
New York
Lawrence Mass
C1491/26
June 10, 2008
Vancouver
Barbara Dunn, Elaine
Watson & Janice Miller
C1491/27
June 11, 2008
Vancouver
Spencer Macdonell
C1491/28
June 11, 2008
Vancouver
Alan Herbert
C1491/29
July 9, 2008
Montreal
Richard Morisset
C1491/30
July 9, 2008
Montreal
Christos Tsoukas
C1491/31
July 10, 2008
Montreal
Ross Higgins
C1491/32
July 10, 2008
Montreal
Norbert Gilmore
C1491/33
July 14, 2008
Montreal
Jean Robert
C1491/34
July 25, 2008
Halifax
Desiree Conn
C1491/35
July 31, 2008
Halifax
Rand Gaynor & Robin
Metcalfe
C1491/36
August 1, 2008
Halifax
Eric Smith
C1491/37
August 19, 2008
Vancouver
Jacques Menard
C1491/38
August 21, 2008
Vancouver
Richard Bisson
C1491/39
August 27, 30 &
Toronto
Douglas Elliott
September 6, 2008
C1491/40
August 30, 2008
Toronto
Erica Moghal
C1491/41
September 2, 2008
Toronto
John Greyson
C1491/42
September 4, 2008
Toronto
André Picard
C1491/43
September 5, 2008
Toronto
Rosemary Barnes
C1491/44
September 7 & 9, 2008
Toronto
Robert (Bob) Tivey
C1491/45
September 9, 2008
Toronto
Franco Polillo
C1491/46
September 10, 2008
Toronto
Horace Krever
C1491/47
September 11, 2008
Toronto
Pierre- Claude (Pedro)
Levaque
C1491/48
September 14, 2008
Toronto
Ed Jackson
C1491/49
September 15, 2008
Toronto
Theresa Dobko
C1491/50
September 15, 2008
Toronto
Ron Rosenes
Note: Italic type denotes a pseudonym.
* The author and Debbie Dritz, Selma Dritz’s daughter, jointly decided not to deposit the interview. Readers are encouraged to consult instead Selma Dritz’s reminiscences in Sally Smith Hughes’s The AIDS Epidemic in San Francisco at the Bancroft Library, University of California– Berkeley.
† A signed waiver was never returned, pending its review by New York University’s attorney, thus the interview was not used for research purposes nor deposited.
Bibliography
Archival Materials
Canada
Halifax
Sir James Dunn Law Library, Dalhousie University
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Montreal
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Formu
laire de mariages
Ottawa
Library and Archives Canada
Air Canada fonds
Canadian Association for Journalists, acc. 1990– 0395
Census of Canada, 1911
Telephone directories
Quebec City
L’Aéroport international Jean- Lesage de Québec
Institutional records
Toronto
Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives
Accession 2014– 054
Records of the AIDS Committee of Toronto
AIDS Memorial Committee fi les
The Film Reference Library, Toronto International Film Festival Group
John Greyson Collection
380
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Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic Page 63
