2026 Recipient
Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo, C.M., DMin, MDiv, BA
Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa)
Rev. Dr. Cheri DiNovo is recognized with the honorary Doctor of Divinity for her prophetic vision, transformative leadership, and ongoing work to advance 2SLGBTQIA+ rights and legislation in Canada.
Dr. DiNovo was born in Toronto in 1950. During her teen years, she left home and lived on the streets of Toronto for four years. It was then that she recognized her own queer identity and some of the ways in which members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community were discriminated against. Even in those early days, she participated in protests and events that drew attention to systemic injustices inherent in our broader society. In 1971, Dr. DiNovo was among those demonstrating at the “We Demand” march, which was the first public pride march on Parliament Hill. She is recorded in Canadian history as the only woman to sign the “We Demand” manifesto, which was the first demand for equal rights of gays and lesbians.
After an early corporate career, Dr. DiNovo completed a BA at York University (1994) and then Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry at Emmanuel College (1995 and 2002, respectively). Dr. DiNovo’s doctoral dissertation focused on how to grow congregations by being inclusive of all races, sexualities, and income brackets; the dissertation was published by Pilgrim Press in 2005 as Qu(e)erying Evangelism: Growing a Community from the Outside In, and in 2006 received the Lambda Literary Award for Religion and Spirituality.
In the mid-1990s, after receiving a call to ministry, Dr. DiNovo spent 12 years serving United Church of Canada faith communities in Brucefield, Ontario and then Emmanuel-Howard Park United Church (known today as Roncesvalles United). It was in 2001, during her time at Emmanuel-Howard Park, that Rev. DiNovo officiated what is regarded by many as the first legal same-sex marriage in Canadian history. The legality of the ceremony stood on both religious and civic grounds; religious on account of a little-known liturgical loophole known as “the reading of the banns,” and civic on account of a cunning stroke of clerical craftiness (Dr. DiNovo sent the marriage papers to a registry office in the more rural Thunder Bay, where the clerk missed the gender identities of the marriage applicants and proceeded to issue a marriage certificate to the same-sex couple!).
After 12 years of ministry, Dr. DiNovo transitioned to politics, serving as a Member of the Provincial Parliament (MPP) for the Ontario NDP in the riding of Parkdale-High Park from 2006–2017. During her eleven-year tenure, Dr. DiNovo is on record as having passed more Private Member’s Bills than any other MPP in Ontario’s history, and she also is regarded as having passed more pro-2SLGBTQIA+ legislation than anyone in Canadian history. Included in these bills are several pieces of historic legislation, including the 2012 “Toby’s Act” (Bill 33), which amended the Ontario Human Rights Code for the inclusion of gender identity and gender expression (thus making Ontario the first jurisdiction in North America to pass such an amendment), the 2015 “Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act” (Bill 77), which prohibited conversion therapy for youth, and the 2015 “Cy and Ruby’s Act” (Bill 137), which established parental equality for LGBTQ parents. As a result of these efforts, Ontario has enacted laws protecting trans rights, banning conversion therapy, establishing parental equality for queer parents, and enshrining November 20 as Ontario’s Trans Day of Remembrance. This impressive legislative agenda was accomplished—remarkably—in ways that earned Dr. DiNovo the nickname, “queen of tri-party bills,” on account of the fact that her legislative record regularly garnered support from all three sitting parties.
Upon retiring from politics, Dr. DiNovo returned to the church, where she served as minister of Toronto’s Trinity-St. Paul’s United Church up until her retirement in 2024. Since 1998 she has hosted a radio show and podcast titled, “The Radical Reverend,” and in 2021 she published a memoir titled, The Queer Evangelist: A Socialist Clergy's Radically Honest Tale (Wilfred Laurier University Press). In 2022 she was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada, in 2025 she was a nominee for Moderator of the United Church of Canada, she has been named one of Toronto Museum’s “52 Women who Changed Toronto,” she has been honoured as the Grand Marshall in Toronto’s Pride Parade, and in 2026 she was given the Keys to the City of Toronto. Dr. DiNovo is awarded the Doctor of Divinity (honoris causa) for her lifetime of work as an advocate, author, speaker, politician, and minister.