Waterloo region trans woman says Trudeau LGBTQ apology 'long overdue'

Cait Glasson, a trans woman from Waterloo region, will be among those gathering to watch as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's delivers a formal apology to the LGBTQ community in Ottawa on Tuesday.

"I think it's long overdue and we've earned it," she told CBC News.

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Glasson, 51, has lived in Waterloo region for 25 years. She said she was fired from her government job in the mid 1980s because of her sexual orientation. 

"This was going to be the [career] I was going to do with my life," she said. "It turned out, that wasn't available to me because in those days it was still considered a big security risk to be gay."

Catch-22

It was a Catch-22 she said. In those days, if an individual revealed that they were gay, they would be let go. But if an individual decided not to reveal that information, they were at risk of being blackmailed and so they would be let go as a potential security risk.

Glasson plans on watching Trudeau's apology with several coworkers at MPP Catherine Fife's office, where she regularly volunteers.

"It's a deeply emotional thing to discover that your government is out to get you," she said. "I expect to be crying a fair bit."

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She hopes that Trudeau explains and describes "outrages" the federal government carried out at that time, to bring more awareness to the issue.

"I do education sessions, that's part of my work in Spectrum and one thing we find is that people have very little idea of the history of gay people in this country."