HIV Edmonton is proud to launch The HIVE - a place for you to share your thoughts and memories. As we commemorate World AIDS Day 2010, we thought it fitting that our first post be a celebration of Ross Armstrong, the first man in Edmonton to disclose his status, written by one of our founders, the Reverend Charles Bidwell. Want to be a part of The HIVE? Send your stories to Joyce LaBriola for future postings.
I Remember Ross Armstrong
In 1981, my roommate Matthew urged me to join the Edmonton Roughnecks Volleyball Club. I spent many a pleasant weekend afternoon playing with the guys and one of them was Ross Armstrong. Ross was full of the playful spirit that either endeared him to you or annoyed you to the point of grimacing. I was newly out of my marriage and the secret and silent closet, so Ross intrigued me because he was so comfortable in his own skin and so open in expressing himself.
In 1981, we heard a lot about a terrifying disease that was spreading through the gay communities south of the border. It was terifying on at least two counts; one was that it seemed to be incurable and fatal, and the other was that no one seemed certain how it got spread. There were many rumours about how it was caught and one of them connected it to the use of amyl or butyl nitrate or ‘poppers’ -- the legal high of the time which was used medically as a cardiac stimulant in emergency situations but created a ‘high rush’ in normal folks. It turned out to be a false rumour, but no one knew what actually did trigger the problems -- and there were many of them.
Unfortunately, Ross came down with enough symptoms of opportunistic conditions to qualify for the diagnosis of having Auto Immune Disease or Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and was hospitalized in an isolation unit at the University of Alberta Hospital. Forunately, that was where I worked as a director of media productions, so I could visit him as often as twice a day.
The health care providers were as scared as the rest of us and the precautions showed it. To enter Ross’ room, you had to put on a gown and wear gloves and a mask. One time when I visited him, I discovered that they had just placed his food inside the door and so I took it to him. Another time, I sat on the bed next to him and hugged him; it was the first bodily contact he had received in days. I told him the I was wearing all this protective barrier to prevent me from bringing anything into his space; he was dealing with more than enough already so he didn’t need anything that I might introduce into his almost sterile area.
Ross was the first AIDS patient in Edmonton and certainly the first one I knew of. I was to get to know many more in the next decade. I was a minister with the Metropolitan Community Church of Edmonton (MCC-Edmonton) which ministered mainly to the GLBTQ folks who had been shunned by their faith communities. In that capacity, I was asked to conduct many memorial services for guys I knew and for those who knew of me and whose friends or family requested my services. I was grateful that I could help provide some comfort to those who were in such stress of grief and sometime of shock at discovering that their son was gay and also had AIDS!
Ross died as did most of the early patients and for so many years the whole gay community and their comrades in arms, our lesbian sisters, reeled at the growing losses of young men. We made quilts to remember them by and we marched and we held vigils to pray for the sufferers and the healthcare providers and all who held their hands and tried to support them either in hospital or hospices or palliative care units.
In 1982, I met the sculptor Patrick Morin, my first husband, and although we had seven years together, he spent the last four ‘living with’ AIDS. He spent the last year of his life in and out of the same University Hospital where I visited him morning, noon and night on days I was working. He finally died in February 1989. I am still HIV-negative by some quirk of nature and one of his HIV-positive buddies is still alive and very healthy, thanks to the ‘cocktail’ of retroviral drugs that finally acted as a means to stop people from dying of HIV complications. Unfortunately, they came too late for Patrick.
In 1982, Michael Phair and several others in the gay community, were so concerned with the lack of action on the part of the medical research community and the level of support for AIDS sufferers that they formed the AIDS Network of Edmonton and applied for funding. Since this group was so new it had not yet achieved charitable status and so was unable to receive the funds it got offered. Michael and I had become friends and so I agreed to ask the Board of MCC-Edmonton if they could receive the funds and use them to pay the expenses of the new AIDS Network society. The Board agreed and the funds supported the initiatives of the Network in getting various agencies to cooperate and provide services to AIDS sufferers.
Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Michael, and the others he gathered around his kitchen table, cetainly proved that point in Edmonton.
The Reverend Charles M. Bidwell, PhD.
June 2010
