Activist looks back 40 years to Toronto’s bathhouse raids — the flashpoint moment in fight for LGBTQ rights in Canada

ou probably don’t know his name, but for decades Bob Gallagher has worked tirelessly as an activist and organizer behind the scenes in the fight for LGBTQ rights in Toronto and Canada. Libby Davies, Canada’s first out lesbian MP, was a member of Parliament for 18 years, many of them working with Gallagher, who was chief of staff to Jack Layton. Davies pays tribute to a man she calls a friend and colleague, talking to Gallagher recently about the moment 40 years ago when everything changed for Toronto’s LGBTQ community and his years of “getting things done.”