LONGLISTED FOR THE TORONTO BOOK AWARD
“An utter treat among graphic novels. This beautiful, honest coming-of-age tale is a standout in its quality.... One of the best books so far this year.” —Toronto Star
For fans of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is an epic graphic memoir about a queer illustrator surviving his intensely Christian childhood in 1970s Toronto.

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.

Maurice Vellekoop's profile page

MAURICE VELLEKOOP was born in 1964 in a suburb of Toronto. A prolific artist and illustrator, he has worked non-stop for the last three decades. In addition to publications, his corporate clients include Swissair, Abercrombie & Fitch, Air Canada, Smart Car, LVMH, and Bush Irish Whiskey. He lives on Toronto Island with his partner Gordon Bowness.

Praise for I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together:
“Welcome to an utter treat among graphic novels. This beautiful, honest coming-of-age tale is a standout in its quality, in a crowded field of graphic autobiographies and biographies with similar elements, and it’s a compelling story, too. . . . All this is presented in Vellekoop’s expressive style—showing emotions on faces is a cartooning skill that deserves more attention—and adds up to one of the best books so far this year.”
—Toronto Star
"Sumptuously drawn.... Vellekoop will enchant both his longtime queer comics followers and newcomers with his frank storytelling and tantalizing art."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Both visual feast and celebrity tell-almost-all, Vellekoop’s memoir is a magnificent, magnified bildungsroman centering his personal and artistic development....Vellekoop deftly turns his panels into an intimate barometer, reflecting mood in muted single-color washes, adding saturated highlights for breakdowns and breakthroughs, deploying spectacular prismatic hues to celebrate the most transformative moments. The result is an effusive, unguarded reveal of family, friendship, healing—and finally finding wondrous true love."
—Booklist
“The drawings are incredibly detailed and evocative. . . . In the end, this is a love story written about loving yourself enough to fight for the life that you deserve. This book will make you laugh and cry and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.”
—The Miramachi Reader
“Amidst the scenes of personal torment, unrequited desire, homophobia and personal growth, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together simultaneously celebrates a post-Stonewall, pre-Internet generation of gay men who embraced shared cultural references, often offbeat, to find and bond with each other.”
—IN Magazine
“Provocative and witty Canadian illustrator and cartoonist Maurice Vellekoop delivers this much-anticipated memoir of a young queer life in a very Christian family. From watching Cher and joining the Calvinist Cadet Corps in the ’70s, to the freedom of art school and the terror of AIDS in the ’80s, Vellekoop traces an era of kitsch, camp, anxiety, and art, alongside a personal journey of self-acceptance.”
—Quill and Quire

“I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is that rarest of things: a book about coming out to a loving yet conservative family that is as heartrending to read as it is to look at. It’s an incredibly moving, funny, and ultimately triumphant account (spoiler alert!) of what can only be described as a magical fairy tale (pun totally intended!).”
—Anderson Cooper

“I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is a colossal achievement, perfect for those of us who search 'real life' for the perfection we find in Art. A significant addition to the Toronto and Canadian cartooning canon."
—Jillian Tamaki, Co-creator of This One Summer