Roswell George Mills
Roswell George Mills (1896 - 1966) was a Canadian journalist, poet and magazine publisher. A friend and colleague of poet Elsa Gidlow, he is the first known gay man in Canadian history whose life and sexual orientation is attested through biographical literature rather than court records of a sodomy trial. Born in Buffalo, New York, on July 4, 1896, Mills moved to Montreal, Quebec, in childhood with his family. In early adulthood Mills worked as a journalist for the Montreal Star, where his byline appeared on the financial pages and as a theatre and opera critic. He also wrote a women's column under the pseudonym "Jessie Roberts". He and Gidlow met at a poetry club. According to Gidlow, Mills was open about his sexuality and considered it a personal crusade to make people "understand that it was beautiful, not evil, to love others of one's own sex and make love with them." Between 1918 and 1920 Mills and Gidlow collaborated on the underground magazine Les Mouches fantastiques, Canada's first known LGBT publication. Mills published several poems in the magazine. An Episcopalian priest from South Dakota, Graeme Davis, took leave from his church posting and moved to Montreal to become Mills'