Kael McKenzie

Early Life

McKenzie grew up in a Métis family in the Winnipeg suburb of Transcona. He and his two older brothers were raised by a single mother who worked in banking and property management. From a young age, McKenzie possessed a masculine identity and felt that he should have been born a boy, as he would later say in interviews.

Sea Cadets and Naval Service

At 13, Kael McKenzie joined the Sea Cadets — a youth program linked to the Royal Canadian Navy. McKenzie would later identify his experience in the Cadets as the beginning of his professional life path. Beforehand, he has said, “things were not looking very good for me. I was getting into trouble. I was having problems.” The Cadets “gave me a purpose, gave me something.… that I excelled at, and they told me I was smart enough…that I could be anything I want…to be.”

When he was 17, McKenzie came out to his friends and family as a lesbian. Two years later, however, he enlisted in the navy — at a time when the Canadian Armed Forces forbade gays and lesbians from serving. “We hid our sexuality. We skulked around. We went under the cover of night to places where we could meet other people that are like us,” he later said. “And sometimes we did things we wouldn't otherwise do…. It was a really difficult time in the military.”

Nonetheless, his six years of service came with important benefits. He excelled in military courses and enjoyed his work as a communications research analyst. He met his first wife, with whom he would later have two sons. He also learned of a fellow sailor who had transitioned from male to female. This, he later said, “was the first time I actually had that seed planted.… I didn’t even know you could identify as being male when you were assigned female at birth.”

Law Student

After leaving the navy, Kael McKenzie enrolled at the University of Manitoba, becoming the first person in his family to go to university. He and his first wife separated around this time. Throughout his undergraduate experience, McKenzie had to balance coursework, parenting, and his job as campus security supervisor.

When he completed his degree, his friend Kristine Barr persuaded him to follow her into law school at U of M. He was admitted under the Aboriginal consideration category. (Barr at this time had already made a name for herself, having been elected school trustee in 1998 — the first out lesbian to do so.)

In law school, McKenzie struggled with his identity in ways he hadn’t previously. “All of a sudden, I realized I was the only woman in the class who was wearing a beer T-shirt,” he later said. For the sake of his career, he decided to fit the mold of the “professional woman” for a time. “I grew my hair out well past my shoulders. I had all the power suits…the makeup, the high heels, the whole bit,” he has said. “And the more I became that image of…the stereotypical female lawyer, my gender dysphoria exploded.”

DID YOU KNOW?
The American Psychiatric Association defines gender dysphoria as “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity. Though gender dysphoria often begins in childhood, some people may not experience it until after puberty or much later.”

Legal Career and Transition

Kael McKenzie and Kristine Barr married when McKenzie was in his third year of law school. After completing his Bachelor of Law in 2006, he articled with the Manitoba Prosecution Service. He was then hired at Winnipeg law firm Chapman Goddard Kagan.

While there, he decided to transition from female to male. Throughout the process, McKenzie experienced considerably more support from his colleagues and the broader Winnipeg community than he had expected. The senior partners at his firm were elderly men, and McKenzie had anticipated that he might be asked to leave his job. Instead, he has recounted, they responded by saying, “It doesn't matter to us, Kael. We just want you to be a good lawyer.” After coming out as trans to his co-workers and clients, he received several messages of support. For instance, one of his criminal clients, he has said, was a “young guy who, let's say, maybe led a little bit of an unsavoury life at the time.… [He] actually called me the day I sent out the letter, and he said, I am so proud of you.… I was just blown away.” The process was not entirely smooth, as there was some hate speech directed at McKenzie online. “But for the most part, 95 per cent of my experience is very, very positive,” he has said.

Crown Attorney and Judicial Career

In 2010, Kael McKenzie was hired by the Manitoba Prosecution Service as a Crown attorney in family, commercial and civil law. In 2015, an independent judicial nominating committee recommended him for appointment to the Provincial Court of Manitoba.

Other Activities

Prior to his call to the bench, Kael McKenzie worked as vice-president of the executive committee of the Manitoba Bar Association and president of Manitoba’s Rainbow Resource Centre. He also volunteered with the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the Historical Museum of St. James-Assiniboia and the North American Indigenous Games.

See also Transgender; Gender Identity.