Noreen Stevens is a Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 cartoonist

Cartoonist

A cartoonist is a person who specializes in drawing cartoons. This work is usually humorous, mainly created for entertainment, political commentary or advertising...

, who created and wrote the lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 comic strip The Chosen Family

The Chosen Family

The Chosen Family was a Canadian comic strip, written and drawn by cartoonist Noreen Stevens. The strip, which first appeared in 1988, was based on Stevens' own life, revolving around a lesbian couple named Weed and Kenneth-Marie...

.

Stevens graduated from the University of Manitoba

University of Manitoba

The University of Manitoba , in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, is the largest university in the province of Manitoba. It is Manitoba's most comprehensive and only research-intensive post-secondary educational institution. It was founded in 1877, making it Western Canada’s first university. It placed...

 with a degree in interior design

Interior design

Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...

, and began the comic strip (originally titled Local Access Only) as a hobby while trying to pursue her main career. Originally published in Winnipeg's LGBT magazine Swerve

Swerve (magazine)

OutWords is a Canadian magazine, published in Winnipeg, Manitoba for the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. Launched in November 1994 as Swerve by a collective that included Carol Philipps, Stephen Lawson, Ian King, David McGunigal and Noreen Stevens, it published as funds...

, where Stevens was also a member of the editorial board, the strip was eventually syndicated

Print syndication

Print syndication distributes news articles, columns, comic strips and other features to newspapers, magazines and websites. They offer reprint rights and grant permissions to other parties for republishing content of which they own/represent copyrights....

 to many LGBT

LGBT

LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 publications across North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Stevens retired the strip in 2004.

Stevens and her partner, Jill Town were the first same-sex couple in Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

 to be granted adoption rights as a couple. Stevens was also formerly an owner and manager of Winona's Café, the first gay and lesbian café in Winnipeg.