Being a gay/single/new father was a triple whammy, one that I, who have chosen not to have kids because (a) I didn't want to have them alone, and (b) I'm much too selfish, could barely fathom.

"Why?" I asked him.

"Because I really didn't have any other thought, to be honest," he said from his home in Toronto. "I wanted to pass on traditions. I had a great growing up and great parents, so it was a normal thing that I'd be a dad. Sure, when I came to the realization that I wanted a husband rather than a wife, the process was a bit more of journey."

Durkee, 34, who spent the first six years of his life in Cowansville, was recently the first gay daddy to be featured on the Life Network's Birth Stories, a long-running series that follows mostly mommies-to-be to labour and beyond. In a way, it's testament both to how our definition of the word 'family' is fast-changing, and to how the very notion of gays and gay life has entered mainstream culture in ways that society could never have imagined even 20 years ago.

The "usual way" is usual no longer.

Consider Vanity Fair magazine's December cover story on gays and lesbians as the latest "It" people. Or It's All Relative, the ABC sitcom that features two gay dads and pits them against the homophobic parents of their daughter's fiancé. Or Rosie

O'Donnell's in-your-face motherhood and the so-called "gayby boom." Or the fact that gays and lesbians can now legally marry in Ontario and B.C., with possibly more changes to come.

Of course, cultural and societal changes haven't eradicated homophobia, not by a long shot. Last month, MP Larry Spencer, the former Canadian Alliance's family issues critic, yearned publicly for the days when homosexuality was illegal, and only a few weeks ago, a 7-year-old boy in Louisiana was punished at his school for using the word "gay" when describing his mother to a classmate.

Durkee, a former executive with the Walt Disney Co., admits that sometimes, when he walks into a store pushing Taylor's stroller, people coo and ask, 'Where's Mommy today?' He says it's always a judgment call whether or not to reply that she has two dads (a boyfriend recently moved in with them) or fluff it off and lie.

And his own friends were polarized by his decision to use a surrogate - still the centre of an ethical debate - over adoption or foster care. He tried to explain that he really wanted his first child to be biological, and he thought that with surrogacy, he could better control the variables.

To a certain extent, he did - until the day Taylor was born. It was in the middle of the SARS epidemic in Toronto and Durkee had to film himself for Birth Stories in the hospital because no one else was allowed in. Friends set up camp chairs in the parking lot to wait for news.

"In a way, it was saddest moment of this entire experience," he says.

But it also marked the start of the happiest of journeys. Durkee knows that his little family might not be the norm, but he says that if a woman can decide to have a baby on her own, why can't a man play by the same rules?

Then, just for a moment, he betrays a little doubt, a symptom of the self-knowledge that, even though he speaks for himself, some will also consider him representative of what constitutes the new kind of 'family.'

"So," he asks, "how did I do?"