“The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel?” — Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, Chapter V: “Discipline”

  Growing up on a farm isn’t a fairytale.  --     --From a young age I raised dairy and beef cattle and swine alongside my father and brother in Huron County. Our days weren’t spent strolling through lush green pastures where happy cows and contented pigs roamed under sunny blue skies. We focused on managing resources to optimize production. My childhood involved lessons on minimizing weed establishment to increase the yield of feed crops. I learned how to maximize animals’ reproductive performance by selectively breeding for superior genetic traits.  --   --  Growing up as a shy, delicate boy on a farm in Huron County certainly wasn’t a fairy tale. Farming is hard work and a tough way of life; I was soft and easily bruised. Others teased me for these qualities and I struggled to understand my place in the world around me. Depression and self-doubt were my constant companions.--       --When I was 14 a neighbor’s barn caught fire. (In Huron County, a farmer living two miles away is a neighbor.) All of the nearby families raced there to help, extinguishing the blaze and then dragging out the charred remains of Mr. Dowson’s livestock while corralling the animals who survived into a pen they formed with with their own bodies. Letting them escape could have ruined Mr. Dowson and although I barely knew him I did not hesitate—nor did anyone else—to leave their own farms untended to rescue his.--     --  No one asked any of us to lift a finger the night of the fire. No one asked us in the days and weeks that followed to work together to collect what could be salvaged (despite our efforts, the barn burned to the ground) and to begin the process of rebuilding. No one had to ask. In farm country, accidents, injuries, and even death are inevitable no matter how carefully you prepare and plan to avoid them. Bad things happen to everyone and when they do, the community rallies together as spontaneously as a broken bone mending itself. No words are needed. --   --  I did not really know for the first few decades of my life what “gay” meant. It took years, and only after I left the farm for university, to understand that two men could be together and although they couldn’t produce offspring like the animals on the farm, the outcome was something just as natural: love. --     --  I did not always like living on the farm or the work it entailed. I did not always like being so closely involved in the lives of the people around me when I sometimes felt like a stranger to myself.  --   --  Years after leaving the farm I finally came to terms with who I am. This time I did need to use words. I told my parents that I am gay and then, in a matter of hours, the dozens of members of my extended family. No one hurt me. No one screamed at me. No one rejected me. “All we want is for you to be happy and not get sick,” is what I heard. (It was the early 1990s then and HIV and AIDS were still a death sentence.) I felt a calmness I had never before experienced.  --   --  The world is full of connections. When we are young we may not see them clearly or understand what they mean but experience teaches you their value. Being LGBTQ is not something you choose because it is glamorous or cool. It is just who you are. When I overcame my fears and shared that essential part of myself with my community I learned something about them I should have known but had never before realized: they were flexible and could adapt to, and appreciate, things they had not previously experienced. They still saw me as one of them and they treated me with the same love and compassion they would anyone going through hard times.--       --I have tried to take those lessons from the people of Huron County with me wherever I go. I have tried to take care of others in the same way the members of my Huron County community care for each other and have cared for me. As a university student I began volunteering at St. John’s Rehab, visiting with patients to make them feel less isolated and alone during their stays. That work eventually took me to a seat on the board of St. John’s, which serves individuals recovering from amputations, traumatic injuries, strokes, transplants, and other complex medical conditions. Through the relationships I formed in Toronto I became involved with the TriAdventure, a triathlon that raises money to provide food, shelter, and education to 52 children in Kasese, Uganda who poverty, HIV/AIDS, or violence have left without family support. I have now been involved with TriAdventure for 20 years. August 2019 will bring the TriAdventure journey to a joyous end: the 52 children we started helping two decades ago are now young adults, all of whom have graduated from college or university. --     --Putting those lessons into action continued when I moved to the USA to take a job as an executive vice president at Liberty Mutual Insurance. I became the first person to found an employee resource group (ERG) for LGBTQ staff at Liberty, which was the first ERG of any kind for this multinational corporation with over 40,000 employees worldwide. I eventually sat on the boards of directors of two nonprofit organizations whose core missions reflect the values that Huron County taught me: Community Servings, which began as a program to provide home-delivered meals to people living with HIV/AIDS but which now serves thousands of people with various critical illnesses that leave them unable to shop or cook for themselves or their families; and GLAD GLBTQ Advocates and Defenders, a pioneering legal organization which fights for the rights of others who cannot fight for themselves and which has secured groundbreaking victories such as the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and the entire United States.--     --  Although I am now a US citizen, I have never left Huron County very far behind. I hope this exhibit highlights how growing up on a farm here, while not a fairy tale, was a story whose moral I eventually understood.