Michael Lynch (1944 – July 9, 1991) was an American-born Canadian professor, journalist, and activist,[1] most noted as a pioneer of gay studies in Canadian academia and as an important builder of many significant LGBT rights and HIV/AIDS organizations in Toronto.[1]

Born and raised in Harnett County, North Carolina,[2] he studied at Goddard College and the University of Iowa.[1] He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the poetry of Wallace Stevens.[1] He moved to Toronto in 1971 with his then-wife Gail Jones,[1] and from 1971 to 1990 he taught in the Department of English at the University of Toronto at both the main and Erindale College campuses.[3]

After coming out as a gay man in 1973,[1] Lynch was a writer and a contributing editor for The Body Politic.[4] In 1974, he taught the first gay studies course offered at a Canadian university, through the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Education.[3] He was a founding member of the Toronto chapter of Gay Alliance Toward Equality and the Gay Academic Union.[5] In 1980, he convened the first academic conference on the topic of Walt Whitman's 1880 visit to London, Ontario.[2] He helped found the Toronto Centre for Lesbian and Gay Studies,[3] which continues to offer an annual academic grant in his name.

Lynch was a committed AIDS activist from the dawn of the AIDS crisis in 1981 until his death in 1991,[6] including as a founding member of AIDS Action Now!,[7] the AIDS Committee of Toronto[7] and the AIDS Memorial in Toronto's Barbara Hall Park.[8]

In 1989 he published the poetry collection These Waves of Dying Friends.[9]

At the time of his death, he had an unfinished gay studies manuscript, The Age of Adhesiveness: From Friendship to Homosexuality, in development.[1] The book was an expansion of an earlier academic paper, for which he won Crompton-Noll Award from the Lesbian and Gay Caucus of the Modern Languages Association in 1981.[1] He also served as the editor of the Lesbian and Gay Caucus's Gay Studies Newsletter.[1]

Honours and awards

In honour of his role as a significant contributor to LGBT culture and history in Canada, a portrait of Lynch by Gerald Hannon is held by The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives' National Portrait Collection.[6]

A biography of Lynch, AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community, was published by Ann Silversides in 2003.[10]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, Who's Who in Contemporary Gay and Lesbian History, vol. 2: From World War II to the Present Day. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 9781134583133.
  2. 1 2 "Inventory of the Michael Lynch Papers (Fonds)". Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, November 14, 1996.
  3. 1 2 3 "Out & Proud". U of T Magazine, Summer 2009.
  4. ↑ "It Seems All Right to Him to Care for His Son, but Society Doesn't Agree, Homosexual Says". The Globe and Mail, March 30, 1978.
  5. ↑ McLeod, Donald (1996). Lesbian and Gay Liberation in Canada: A Selected Annotated Chronology, 1964–1975. Toronto: ECW Press/Homewood Books. pp. 7, 119. ISBN 1550222732.
  6. 1 2 "Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, National Portrait Collection". CLGA. 2002. Retrieved 2017-04-03.
  7. 1 2 "Gay Activist Michael Lynch Helped Found AIDS Groups". Toronto Star, July 11, 1991.
  8. ↑ "It's for One Person to Have a Cry, or a Thousand People to Hold a Demonstration.". The Globe and Mail, January 5, 1991.
  9. ↑ Judith Lawrence Pastore, Confronting AIDS Through Literature: The Responsibilities of Representation. University of Illinois Press, 1993. ISBN 9780252062940.
  10. ↑ "AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community, by Ann Silversides". Quill & Quire, August 2003.
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