Toronto Sun – Michele Mandel
When Jade was still Matt, he went into Dale Callender’s cubbyhole office at Northern Secondary School to talk to the counsellor about his recurrent anxiety and panic attacks.
He seemed to have everything going for him — a 6-foot-4 member of the track team and incoming student council president. “Oh, something else,” Matt suddenly announced as an aside at the end of one of their chats, “I also like to dress in women’s clothes.”
And so began the journey for both as Callender helped Matt become Jade in a very public gender transition in her graduating year of high school.
Last night, Callender presented Jade, now 19, with a personal achievement award from the Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Youth Line for her courage and willingness to share her story.
“She had so much working against her,” marvels Callender, a counsellor for Delisle Youth Services who has now written a manual, When Matt became Jade, to help others making gender transitions in high schools.
“She was 17, she was student council president in a 2,000-student high school, it was her final year, she was already dealing with some anxiety issues. How did she do it? Most kids would have said, ‘Absolutely not. I’m just going to struggle through.'”
Jade tosses off his admiration at her coming out. “I just needed to do it. Having to pretend that you’re a guy eats away at you and eventually it’s too much and you have to do something,” she explains.