"Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of five children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a middle class suburb of Toronto. He loves watching Cher and Carol Burnett on TV, making clothes for his best friend's Barbie dolls, and helping his mum with her hair salon which she runs out of the basement of the house. In short: he is really, really gay. Which is a huge problem, because his family is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect, which is not accepting of homosexuality to say the least. We see him participating in weekly church services, catechism classes, going to Christian schools, his stint as a member of the Calvinist Cadet Corps. Vellekoop struggles through all of this, until he finally graduates high school and gets accepted into the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1982. It is there that his life truly changes, thanks in no small part to his taking a class called "Plays In Performance" taught by the wildly flamboyant and brilliant Paul Baker. Baker is thefirst "out" gay man Maurice has ever met, and the two soon become close friends. It is through witnessing Baker's functional relationship with his long-time partner Martin that Maurice finally starts to reconcile with himself and begin to accept who he actually is. But it's going to be a long, messy, difficult, and occasionally hilarious process. I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together is an enthralling portrait of what it means to be true to yourself, to learn to forgive, and to be an artist."--,Provided by publisher.

"Meet little Maurice Vellekoop, the youngest of four children raised by Dutch immigrants in the 1970s in a blue-collar suburb of Toronto. Despite their working-class milieu, the Vellekoops are devoted to art, music, and film, and they instill a deep reverence for the arts in young Maurice-except for literature. He'd much rather watch Cher and Carol Burnett on TV than read a book. He also loves playing with his girlfriends' Barbie dolls and helping his Mum in her hair salon, which she runs out of the basement of their house. In short, he is really, really gay. Which is a huge problem, because the family is part of the Christian Reformed Church, a strict Calvinist sect. They go to church twice on Sunday, and they send their kids to a private Christian school, catechism classes, and the Calvinist Cadet Corps. Needless to say, the church is intolerant of homosexuality. Though she loves her son deeply, Maurice's mother, Ann, cannot accept him, setting the course for a long estrangement. Vellekoop struggles through all of this until he graduates from high school and is accepted into the Ontario College of Art in the early 1980s. Here he finds a welcoming community of bohemians, including a brilliant, flamboyantly gay professor who encourages him to come out. But just as he's dipping his toes into the waters of gay sex and love, a series of romantic disasters, followed by a violent attack, sets him back severely. And then the shadow of the AIDS era descends. Maurice reacts by retreating to the safety of childhood obsessions, and seeks to satisfy his emotional needs with film- and theatre-going, music, boozy self-medication, and prolific art-making. When these tactics inevitably fail, Vellekoop at last embarks on a journey towards his heart's true desire. In psychotherapy, the spiderweb of family, faith, guilt, sexuality, mental health, the intergenerational fallout of World War II, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, French Formula Hairspray, and much more at last begins to untangle. But it's going to be a long, messy, and occasionally hilarious process. I'm So Glad We Had This Time Together is an enthralling portrait of what it means to be true to yourself, to learn to forgive, and to be an artist."--,Provided by Amazon.com