Michelle Ross

Michelle Ross was the stage name of Earl Barrington Shaw (August 5, 1954 – March 27, 2021), a Jamaican Canadian drag queen who was active from 1974 until her death in 2021. She was considered one of the key icons of the LGBTQ community in Toronto, especially for Black Canadian members of the community.

Career She performed in drag for the first time at Toronto's Club Manatee in 1974, to Dionne Warwick's "Anyone Who Had a Heart". In Toronto, she was a regular performer at bars in the Church and Wellesley gay village, and a frequent performer at Pride Toronto's Blockorama parties. She also performed internationally, including a six-year stint as part of the Toronto cast and touring production of An Evening at La Cage. She had small acting roles in the 1977 film Outrageous!, and appeared in the documentary films Divas: Love Me Forever and Our Dance of Revolution.

Throughout her career, she was known for performing to the music of disco and soul music divas such as Patti LaBelle, Gloria Gaynor and Gladys Knight, but was most famous for her performances of Diana Ross songs. As of 2018, she had performed on stage at least 15,000 times.

She once expressed her drag philosophy about the difference between men and women as "Both sides are equally part of the glamour. I see them as stories that are ready for a makeover."

Legacy In 2019, she was named as one of 69 key Canadian LGBTQ icons in the Canadian Screen Award-winning Super Queeroes multimedia project. Following the announcement of her death on March 28, 2021, statements of tribute were issued by a variety of influential figures including Toronto mayor John Tory, writer Rinaldo Walcott and drag queens Brooke Lynn Hytes and Priyanka, and organizations including Pride Toronto, The 519, Glad Day Bookshop and the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter.

In October 2025, the CBC Television documentary series The Passionate Eye premiered Michelle Ross: Unknown Icon, a documentary film by Alison Duke about the contrast between Ross's larger-than-life persona and reputation as an entertainer, and Shaw's private personal life with his own family, who knew only that he worked as a designer and were not aware that he was the legendary Michelle Ross until his death.

Filmography

Film