Canada opened its first national monument to LGBTQ+ people on Friday, and it only exists because the Canadian government spent forty years hunting gay people out of their own jobs. From the 1950s into the mid-1990s, the military, the RCMP and the federal public service investigated and forced out anyone suspected of being gay, lesbian, bisexual or trans. Researchers estimate around 9,000 lives were upended. Todd Ross was discharged from the navy in 1990, with paperwork stating he was "not advantageously employable due to homosexuality." The government even funded a device to help with the hunt, measuring pupils, pulse and perspiration while subjects were shown provocative images. It never worked. It ran for years anyway, and became known as the "Fruit Machine." Survivors sued. A class action brought by 719 of them ended in a $145 million settlement, and $15 million of that was set aside to build a monument in downtown Ottawa. It is called Thunderhead, a white column with cloud-shaped openings, and Ross, now co-chair of the LGBT Purge Fund, had a hand in what went inside it. "Really to gay it up, we lined it with mirrored tiles so it feels like you're inside of a giant disco ball," he told CBC