“Queer evangelist,” “socialist clergy,” and “honest politician” are not phrases you typically see thrown together. Cheri DiNovo, former member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and current United Church of Canada minister, embraces all three.

Cheri lived on the streets, ran a headhunting agency, joined the clergy, and became a politician—one who passed the most LGBTQ bills in Canadian history, no less. Clearly, she had plenty of material to choose from for her memoir, The Queer Evangelist: A Socialist Clergy’s Radically Honest Tale. As she notes, “It’s been quite a life, and I think after I left politics I felt a need to kind of just do it for my own sake … I was writing it for myself.”

In the first episode of our four-part series, Cheri discusses her writing process and approach of radical honesty in and outside of politics. She also digs into the excessive capitalistic period of the 1980s, various factors that led her to join her church, and the culture shock of her first settlement charge in a rural town as a lifelong city-dweller.