Dianna Boileau, a trailblazer in receiving gender-affirming surgery in Canada, honoured in Fort Frances, Ont.

Dianna Boileau was one of the first Canadians to receive gender-affirming surgery over a half-century ago and wrote about her journey to living her true life in her memoir Behold, I Am Woman.

Now, Boileau and Dr. Harold Challis, who was based in Fort Frances and counselled Boileau and her family on the path to her transition, are being honoured with a new plaque near La Verendrye Hospital in the northwestern Ontario town on Friday.

Boileau, who died in 2014, was born in Winnipeg, and at various times lived in Fort Frances and other parts of northern Ontario, as well as Toronto and Alberta. Challis, who emigrated to Canada from Britain in 1950, died in 1971 in a hunting accident at age 53, according to his obituary.

An event to unveil the plaque Friday, on the International Trans Day of Visibility, was set to be livestreamed starting at 1 p.m. CT.

The plaque is part of an Ontario Heritage Trust program that commemorates significant people, places and events throughout the province. Following the unveiling at the Fort Frances Museum and Cultural Centre, the plaque is being installed in front of La Verendrye Hospital.

The Ontario Heritage Trust's website says Challis, who worked at La Verendrye Hospital, had learned of Boileau's struggles at school. He's is credited with counselling Boileau, who became his patient, and the family in the 1950s. "His support encouraged Boileau to begin living openly as a woman," the website article says.

Boileau says in her book that she was born a boy and her adoptive parents named her Clifford. She received gender-affirming surgeries in 1969 and April 1970, in Canada and the U.S., at a time when few such procedures were done around the world.

Douglas Judson is with Borderland Pride, which Ontario Heritage Trust has credited with getting the plaque initiative going.

Judson said Boileau's story is one of trans rights and recognition, and how health care in Ontario has developed. He said although he's from Fort Frances, he only learned about Boileau from a Toronto Star story he read in law school.

"A large portion of it was about Dianna's youth and encountering Dr. Challis in Fort Frances. And this would have been back in the 1950s. So if Fort Frances is a rural northern community now, it was a very honky-tonk paper mill and logging community back then," said Judson.

"And so just a really remarkable story about someone who rose to media prominence as a result of their journey, but also who was able to, I think, self-actualize and develop their identity in a way that would have been even more difficult than it might be today."

Borderland Pride later created a podcast called Behold Dianna that was based on Behold, I am a Woman.

WATCH | Dianna Boileau tells her story:

Samson Busch, a transgender man who has lived in Fort Frances and now is in Thunder Bay, learned about Boileau when he was approached to help with the podcast series. Busch also helped with the plaque unveiling at La Verendrye Hospital.