Transsexual woman names Diocese of New Westminster in Human Rights complaint

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A Vancouver transsexual has filed a human-rights complaint, alleging discrimination on the basis of sex, age, and disability after she was evicted from a downtown social-housing complex. In an interview with the Georgia Straight, Pamela Burge said she was thrown out of the Wellspring, which is at 415 Nelson Street, at the end of June. This came after the society that manages the complex claimed that she owed $1,355 in outstanding rent.

Burge, once a well-known broadcasting executive who went by the name of Tim Burge, has alleged that the real reason she was evicted was that the building administrator, Joanne Graham, did not like her because she is transsexual. Burge, 65, claimed that she did not owe any back rent, and that the society refused to acknowledge receiving her documentation of her income from social assistance and the Canada Pension Plan.

“I could never imagine this happening to me as a middle-class man or even as a regular woman,” she said.

Burge has named Graham, the 127 Society for Housing, and the Diocese of New Westminster as respondents in her complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. The Anglican church has supported the society and its name is on a plaque outside the front door of the building, but Burge said that it has absolved itself of any responsibility for her eviction.


The prospect of seeing Bishop Michael Ingham being hauled before the Human Rights Tribunal for evicting a transsexual from her apartment is an irony more delicious than any that could be concocted by the most fertile imagination. I wonder if the Anglican Journal will cover the story?

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