The Pisces raid led Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE) to organize a community meeting the next day at The Roost. Michael was quickly approached about speaking to the media, and after some indecision, agreed to speak out, but only anonymously. He was working with young children, and being associated with this raid, and even being publicly identified as a gay man in 1981, could have ended his career. The anonymity didn’t work; people were still able to identify Michael when the segment appeared on the local news. As a result, he decided that any future dealings with the media, about the Pisces raid or anything else, wouldn’t be anonymous; he would stand visibly, vocally, and proudly as himself, no matter what the cost.

As community outrage continued to build, Michael, Bill Cousintine, George Davison, and Andy Hopkins created the Privacy Defense Committee, which sought to raise funds to help defend those who were arrested in the Pisces raid. The community was now motivated and mobilized. Michael also helped to establish the Gay and Lesbian Awareness (GALA) society, which was the community advocacy group responsible for organizing and hosting Edmonton’s Pride events, starting in 1984; prior to that, Pride events had been organized by gay community groups and bars. Michael knew that visibility and education needed to be key components to help promote societal change as the community organized and mobilized to protect and defend itself.

In 1983, Michael landed in San Francisco for a year of postgraduate studies. Almost immediately upon his arrival, Michael went to his first AIDS-related funeral with his roommate. The enormity of the impact of AIDS in San Francisco was surreal and devastating. When Michael returned to Edmonton, he hosted a social with some of his friends and LGBTQ2 community organizers and leaders. The conversation quickly turned to the impending eventuality of AIDS arriving in Edmonton. When Edmonton’s first case was identified in July of 1984, GATE suggested the media contact Michael for a response. This led to the formation of the AIDS Network of Edmonton (ANE), which started around Michael’s kitchen table.

Michael, along with Ross Armstrong and others, represented the AIDS Network of Edmonton in a meeting in Montreal in 1984, where discussion focused on setting up a national strategy to fight the virus. This discussion led to the formation of the Canadian AIDS Society (CAS), with Michael serving as the first national chair. There was no money for this work, so CAS ran out of the AIDS Network of Edmonton’s office for its initial formation. Working closely with an ally in Ottawa, Michael organized the first national conference on HIV/AIDS in 1985. Serving as the chair for the Canadian AIDS Society, particularly in its early years, gave Michael a sense of the enormity and impact of AIDS on LGBTQ2 and other vulnerable communities across the country, especially at the second national conference held in Toronto in 1986. This early work was exhausting; volunteers such as Michael were not only advocating politically, but they were also directly engaged on the ground in supporting people living with AIDS, which included everything from buying groceries to planning funerals. A huge number of volunteers contributed to this effort, including many gay men, lesbians, and allies.

Michael’s pioneering work with the AIDS Network of Edmonton was recognized with the 1984 John DeSmit Citizen of the Year Award from the Imperial Sovereign Court of the Wild Rose (ISCWR), and the 1986 Citizen of the Year Award from the Edmonton Journal.

The fight against AIDS underscored the need to protect the human rights of all LGBTQ2 people. In Edmonton, this work was championed by GALA among others. GALA continually battled the provincial government to ensure LGBTQ2 people received equal respect and protection under the province’s laws and legislation. Groups of GALA volunteers would go out to local bars with petitions and letters for the community to sign and forward to government ministers and legislators. Michael recalls an early meeting with Alberta’s Human Rights Commission, where the delegates made sure they were well-dressed and presented a very professional front; Michael played a trick on his friend and colleague Maureen Irwin by showing up with a gold lamé purse and shoes, which he hid during the meeting, of course. While some members of the Human Rights Commission were sympathetic, not all supported sexual orientation being added to the Individual’s Rights Protection Act, and without consensus the discussion never advanced past the Minister of Labour, first Les Young and later Elaine McCoy, whose decision it was to bring the proposed human rights changes to the Alberta Legislature. In fact, quite the opposite occurred with a ministerial order explicitly banning the human rights commission from accepting complaints from homosexuals.

Michael’s work with the AIDS Network of Edmonton, the Canadian AIDS Society, and GALA taught him about the importance of having a strong relationship with the media, something that he and others were able to use frequently to their advantage. This enabled them to provide very real and human stories to the public, changing the media narrative of AIDS from simply being statistics to actual people with faces, hopes, and dreams. Humanizing LGBTQ2 people was a critical and important step in the long and ongoing struggle for human rights, especially in the conservative heartland of Alberta.

It wasn’t only the governments that needed to be fought. When a downtown gay bar closed and reopened as a straight bar, the owners made it clear that gay people were not welcome in the new business. Immediately, Michael and others showed up to protest, with their media allies in tow. The simple fact that a business owner could so flagrantly deny entrance to gay people stood as further proof that changes were needed to Alberta’s Individual Rights Protection Act.

In the 1986 Provincial Election, NDP candidate William Roberts approached Michael to find out what Edmonton’s LGBTQ2 community needed from a government representative. This was the first time a politician courted the community, and it proved to be successful. Roberts defeated the incumbent Conservative candidate and served as Edmonton-Centre’s legislative representative for the next two terms.

Given Michael’s community organizing, MLA Roberts suggested Michael help Jan Reimer in her new mayoral campaign. After Jan was successfully elected as Edmonton’s first female mayor in 1989, Michael continued to work closely with her and City Council as president of the Edmonton Social Planning Council (ESPC). This experience, coupled with encouragement by City Alderman Brian Mason, gave Michael the support necessary to try a run for a seat on city council. In early 1992, Michael once again convened a close group of friends and community leaders and asked for their opinions about running for city council. In general, their reactions were supportive and positive, but there was noted concern about whether or not an openly gay person could even be elected in Alberta. On St. Patrick’s Day, Michael decided to officially throw his hat into the race and announced his intention to run.

Being a gay candidate certainly earned Michael’s campaign an extra degree of media attention. No out LGBTQ2 person had ever been elected to political office in the history of Alberta and only a few LGBTQ2 politicians in Canada were out and visible at the time. From the start of his campaign, Michael’s priority was to run a good and fair campaign, win or lose, but by two weeks out from election day, he wanted to win! This was uncharted territory for Michael; he’d never been one for self-promotion, and most of his previous work had always been part of a larger group effort. Community safety was a priority matter for Michael’s first campaign, including issues ranging from community policing to lighting, signage, and traffic controls. Another major platform issue was open and accountable government. Michael and his campaign were met with very little in-the-face homophobia during the campaign, and when the final votes were counted, he had made history and won in a closely contested electoral race.

During his five terms on city council (1992-2007), Michael achieved many things. One key accomplishment was the creation of the Edmonton Arts Council (EAC). The Arts Council took over the governance of city funding for arts and various festivals. A lengthy council debate almost saw the creation of the EAC rejected, but quick thinking on the part of Councillor Sheila McKay led to a trial period for the new initiative. Its success was so overwhelming that it became a permanent organization, forever changing the landscape of Edmonton’s arts community. Michael’s other significant accomplishments included being a champion for the environment and urban renewal, especially the revitalization of downtown and 104 Street. At the time, 104 Street was mostly undeveloped, with many less than desirable businesses.

Incentives for developers helped bring new housing developments to the downtown core, and the grassroots work of community organizations ensured any new development respected the desired aesthetic and needs of the community. Success meant navigating complicated relationships between developers, city administration, local businesses, and the people who lived in the neighborhood. Michael became a very skilled and seasoned mediator who wasn’t afraid to put the needs of the community first.

One of the darkest periods of Michael’s tenure as a city councillor came in the aftermath of the Delwin Vriend decision. Michael knew Delwin quite well. They had worked together at GALA over the years. In fact, it was at GALA’s 1991 “Flaunting It” Conference where Delwin’s parents spoke publicly, for the first time, about having a gay son. The frontpage media spotlight on his parents brought Delwin’s sexuality to the forefront at Kings’ College, leading to his unjust termination as a lab instructor. During the decade of the 1990s, the court case of Vriend v. Alberta and the ensuing legal appeals dominated Alberta’s political landscape, community activism, and organizing. This wasn’t just a battle for Delwin, but for the human rights of the entire LGBTQ2 community in Edmonton, Alberta, and across Canada. When the final judgment was handed down from the Supreme Court of Canada on April 2, 1998, the victory for Delwin and the LGBTQ2 community was a huge cause for celebration.

While this was a monumental victory for the LGBTQ2 community, it was also a time of darkness. Premier Ralph Klein openly discussed the possibility of using the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to exempt Alberta from adopting the Supreme Court’s ruling. Klein’s comments gave tacit permission to the political far right to spew the vilest of homophobia. It was open season on the LGBTQ2 community. As an out gay politician, Michael was on the receiving end of some of the worst forms of this abuse. His office was bombarded with anti-gay phone calls and letters, many of which crossed over to death threats. Things got so serious that the Edmonton Police Service advised Michael to take different routes to and from work, as well as having plain-clothes officers stationed outside his home. A press conference the week after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision gave Michael the opportunity to tell the world about the kind of hate he was receiving, making it clear that it was the Klein government, and particularly Stockwell Day, that had created an environment for such hatred to flourish. Klein’s decision that week not to use the notwithstanding clause brought this deluge of homophobia to an end, but the pain it caused to Michael and others lingers even to this day. While sexual orientation officially became a protected ground against discrimination in Alberta, the real work of educating and changing people’s hearts and minds was only just beginning.

Despite some supportive pressure to run for Mayor in 2004, Michael declined, and then in 2007, announced he would not run for city council again. With this long and storied chapter in his political career now closed, this would not be the end of Michael’s advocacy work. Michael quickly joined the boards of NeWest Press and the ProCoro Music Society, as well as a group called Alley of Light, which had as its mission to rejuvenate the alley between 103 and 105 Street just north of Jasper Avenue. This group’s efforts led to the creation of the city park that now bears Michael’s name.

The park isn’t the only place that honours Michael’s legacy. In 2015, the Edmonton Public School Board honoured Michael’s many community contributions by naming a new school after him. In 2017, the Michael Phair School officially opened in Webber Green.

Michael’s contributions to the city in general, and to Edmonton’s LGBTQ2 community specifically, were also recognized when the Edmonton Pride Festival Society created the Michael Phair Award for individual contributions by a gay man. The University of Alberta’s Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services also established the Michael Phair Leadership Award to recognize undergraduate students who have demonstrated leadership by giving back to their community. In February 2016, Michael was named chair of the University of Alberta’s Board of Governors by Alberta’s first NDP provincial government.

Today, Michael continues to be an exemplary activist and advocate. He is currently involved with Edmonton’s Pride Seniors group, which was founded by Michael and his friend Sherry McKibben, who was notably Edmonton’s first openly lesbian city councillor. The Pride Seniors group is currently planning to develop a unique LGBTQ2 seniors complex, which would become the first of its kind in Canada.

Michael continues to be active in Edmonton as a trusted advisor, friend, and community champion to so many who have come to know first-hand about his legacy of care and compassion. Our community is better and richer because of his many lasting contributions.