Peter Jepson-Young became the face of the HIV crisis in broadcasts that described the reality of an epidemic
Thirty years since her son first dared to show his face on the nightly news, beaming his story of living with and eventually dying of AIDS into living rooms across British Columbia, Shirley Young still starts each morning with Dr. Peter’s words:
“I accept and absorb all the strength of the Earth to keep my body hard and strong,” she recited from memory. “From these elements I have come, and to these elements I shall return. But the energy that is me will not be lost.”
Now 87, Young has devoted much of the past three decades to keeping that energy alive by continuing her son’s work fighting the stigma of HIV/AIDS.
Broadcast as the Dr. Peter Diaries on CBC Television, the story of Peter Jepson-Young told of a deadly new virus killing marginalized people and traumatizing doctors and nurses in the 1980s and early 1990s – all playing out against the backdrop of a race to try to find a cure before more people died.
It has felt freshly relevant this year to those who lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis as a second wave of COVID-19 changes the way we live.