Richard Burnett

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}THREE DOLLAR BILL columnist RICHARD BURNETT

Three Dollar Bill is Canada's first and only syndicated column about gay life and culture across Canada and around the world, written by Montreal journalist Richard Burnett. The column is based at Montreal's alternative newsweekly Hour (magazine), where the column debuted in July 1996 and where Burnett is also Editor-at-Large. The column has also run in several other alternative newsweeklies, gay publications and websites, including Vue Weekly (Edmonton), Uptown magazine (Winnipeg), VIEW (Hamilton), Echo Weekly (Kitchener), The X Press (Ottawa), Fab magazine (Toronto), Here magazine (New Brunswick), Current magazine (Newfoundland), The Tampa Bay Gazette (Florida), 365Gay.com (Canada) and GayWired.com (USA). The column first made national news in September 1998 when Winnipeg’s Uptown magazine dropped the column after one installment ignited a city-wide furor over gay sex. "After the column was published a local radio personality read excerpts over the air as an example of the kind of material easily accessed by Winnipeg children," Toronto-based Masthead Magazine reported in its Nov/Dec 1998 issue. "Reaction was swift and ferocious. Uptown managing editor Jason Nichol says he was "inundated" with angry phone calls and letters; advertisers were chagrined and large-scale distribution points were jeopardized. Nichol says he had no choice but to kill the column. Interestingly, there wasn't a peep of outrage in Edmonton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa or Montreal where other publications carried the same column." As Montreal Gazette columnist Bill Brownstein reported in his July 26, 2006 column on the 10th anniversary of Three Dollar Bill, "Over the last decade, his column has been dropped by a Winnipeg weekly after complaints about its graphic content, and underwent an investigation by the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary for being 'pornographic'. Current Parti Quebecois leader Andre Boisclair is no fan of the man, after Burnett outed him nine years ago - not out of malice but because Burnett felt that Boisclair, a PQ cabinet minister at the time, was being hypocritical and hurtful." Brownstein also writes, "Burnett has interviewed celebs from diva Cher to author Anne Rice. He has crossed swords with B.B. King and Mordecai Richler. He has outed Ricky Martin - again for hypocrisy - and outraged Cyndi Lauper. And he's had death threats." Burnett also provoked outrage across the United States in August 2005 when he was quoted about rising new HIV supervirus infections in a POZ magazine cover story called 'Bite The Bullet' [1], "If you want to play God, spread HIV and ruin other lives in the process—then do us all a g------ favor and put a f------ bullet through your head instead.” Burnett was one of the original organizers of Montreal’s Divers/Cité Gay Pride Parade, was the founding president of the Montreal chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, is a regular lecturer and panelist at universities and conferences, starred in the first season of the Life Network’s reality-TV series Out in the City, and has been interviewed and profiled in publications across Canada and the U.S., including Xtra!, The Ryerson Review of Journalism, The Washington Blade and Masthead magazine. Burnett is also listed by Quebec's French-language gay publication Fugues (magazine) as one of that province's 123 most influential gay Quebecers [2]. Three Dollar Bill in Hour magazine [3]