Positively Positive
Bradford McIntyre celebrates 23 years of raising HIV and AIDS awareness through his website and advocacy work.
August 25, 2026 • By Bradford McIntyre
August 15, 2026, marked the 23rd anniversary of the launch of my website Bradford McIntyre Positively Positive Living with HIV/AIDS. Designed to create awareness about HIV and AIDS and promote positive messages of living with HIV, the website has grown from a 20-page site in 2003 into an internationally recognized information and resource hub. To date, my independent, ad-free website has had more than 21 million visitors from 187 countries.
Driven by a Global Community
According to the World Health Organization, it’s estimated that 92.2 million people have been infected with HIV, and 44.2 million people with HIV have died. We must never forget all those around the world both who are living with HIV as well as those who have died.
Their lives and memories motivate me to continue raising awareness about. Even today, the current situation remains critical, as massive funding gaps around the world are driving HIV and AIDS transmission rates in the wrong direction. Seeing these global challenges in the effort to end AIDS deeply fuels my dedication. It reminds me that people living with HIV and those affected by AIDS are my motivation. My mission is to showcase the work being done to end this epidemic through love, connection and global solidarity.
The Spark of Writing and Early Collaborations
Before launching my own website, my passion for writing was ignited through a profound international connection. In 2001, I began submitting my articles to HIV/AIDS Positive Stories, a website launched in 1999 by Carolena Helderman in Australia as part of her master’s research project at RMIT University.
Those early years of having Carolena post my articles gave my voice an outlet and sparked my passion for writing. That early experience of a digital community showed me the power of global connection and became the bridge to my next chapter: creating a home for my own work.
In 2004, Carolena sent me Macromedia Studio 8, providing me with the tools to learn to code, design and maintain a website. Remarkably, after years of collaborating across the ocean, Carolena and I finally met in person in 2008 when she traveled to Vancouver and stayed with my husband, Deni and me. She has become a very good friend.
An Early Global Inspiration
The global impact of my own website was validated almost immediately after its inception. On World AIDS Day in December 2003, less than four months after the site went live, I received a message from Andy Seale, the Campaigns Coordinator for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) asking if they could include a link to my website on the UNAIDS website. He wrote, “It is good to see positive people taking the lead in the fight against stigma. Keep up the great work.”
Knowing that my website was encouraging people from all over the world to be open about their status and to tackle the epidemic was a massive inspiration. That understanding fueled my dedication to expand my efforts. HIV needs to be in the media each and every day as most people only see snippets of news, which is not effective enough.
In 2007, I decided to create an HIV/AIDS News page where people could find information on many HIV- and AIDS-related issues, infectious diseases and more. I also created an HIV/AIDS News Archive page for news older than a month.
A Personal Journey of Survival and Aging
The history of my website is inextricably linked to my own life living with HIV. As a long-term HIV survivor since 1984, I have lived through the darkest decades of this epidemic. In those early years, the future was uncertain. I remember thinking that if I could just live ten years, better treatments and medications would surely arrive. I believed that in twenty years, the fight would be over, and HIV would be completely eradicated.
While HIV eradication remains an ongoing global battle, my own physical survival has taken a unique path. I have lived all these years with various chronic health issues and have nearly died. In 2000, I started to develop resistance to the HIV medications I was on, and there was a growing concern regarding the toxic effects of the treatment on my kidneys. To survive, I enrolled in a drug study trial using the protease inhibitor Kaletra, provided by Spectrum Health. By 2001, Kaletra was officially approved for public use by the Canadian Food and Drug Administration. I continued to take Kaletra for 15 years until 2015, when the effects on my kidneys became a serious concern.
Being highly resistant to most standard medications, I then enrolled in a five-year drug study to evaluate switching to a once-daily single-tablet regimen of darunavir/cobicistat/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide. This combination, which was later officially named Symtuza, was subsequently approved in Europe in 2017, and in Canada and the United States in 2018. I continued on Symtuza for the duration of the study, and I am deeply grateful to Janssen Therapeutics (Johnson & Johnson) for continuing to provide me with this life-saving medication.
Remarkably, HIV hasn’t been a concern for me because of the success of newer treatments. People have lived with HIV for decades. Many suffered from opportunistic infections and diseases and developed AIDS. We went through it all and treatment gave us our lives back. Now, many of us are battling aging-related health issues—issues we never thought we would be dealing with. I maintain a strong immune system; my viral load remains undetectable, and my CD4 count sits at 1400. Today, my health concerns have moved away from the virus itself and toward dealing with these aging health issues. Globally, about 26% of all people living with HIV are aged 50 and older.
The Spark of Advocacy: 1994 to Present
My journey as a public HIV/AIDS advocate began after I appeared on national television on The Dini Petty Show for World AIDS Day in 1994. My reason for publicly coming out about living with HIV was clear and deeply personal: I did not want anyone else to go through what I and so many others had to endure—the heavy burden of stigma, discrimination and the reality of a horrendous illness and disease.
After I came out publicly about my HIV diagnosis, I came to know, admire and learn from legendary Canadian HIV advocates like Ron Rosenes, Louise Binder and Janet Connors. They taught me and motivated me, which reaffirmed my commitment to ending AIDS. They paved the way to cross the boundaries of fear and discrimination, so that when I came out as living with HIV a decade after they did, I did not experience the same stigma and discrimination. This is why I launched the website nearly a decade later. It is just as important now, as it was in the very beginning of the pandemic, for everyone, globally, to do their part to stop HIV. We must continue the work to end the HIV epidemic.
From a Personal Story to a Hand-Coded Digital Archive
A unique feature of my website logo is the intentional design within the words‘Positively’ and ‘Positive’. By carefully utilizing different fonts for specific letters, the word HIV is visible in the middle of each word, reflecting the reality of living openly with the virus while maintaining a positive life.
When my nephew Trevor Uksik first built the website for me in 2003, I had no understanding of web design or HTML code. The website is not built with automated web generators or software templates. In 2004, I learned enough to operate and manually code the website. Over the last two decades, I have transitioned into the roles of webmaster and digital archivist, managing thousands of files and pages individually to build a bridge to all those around the world who are also living with HIV.
This technical journey has run alongside my 30-plus years of public HIV/AIDS advocacy, writing, volunteering and public speaking—locally, nationally, and internationally. The website continues its core mission: providing a visible face to combat fear, stigma and denialism, while demonstrating that an HIV diagnosis can still lead to a long, healthy and fulfilling life.
Keeping the Website Moving Forward
Over the years, the website has allowed me to participate in the movement to end AIDS even when I am not physically able to attend events. It also affords me the opportunity to showcase the amazing work being done by individuals, groups and organizations from around the world who are working to end HIV and AIDS.
The digital space changes quickly and keeping a hand-coded website of this scale functional requires continuous effort. When the architecture of the internet shifted between 2012 and 2015, changing standard code protocols caused much of the early history of the epidemic to disappear as older HIV and AIDS organizations ceased to exist. Because my website houses thousands of files and historical documents that would have otherwise vanished, preserving this digital archive is vital.
Since mid-April of this year, I have been working tirelessly on a major technical code upgrade for the website. Operating an independent, ad-free resource on a low income comes with heavy financial challenges, and at 74 years old, the physical and financial realities of maintaining the website are constant hurdles. Regardless of what the future holds, that uncertainty is exactly why I have poured everything into this recent technical refresh—to ensure the website is the absolute best it can be, remaining stable, secure, and mobile-friendly. It is comforting to know that even if I can no longer maintain the live website, The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been archiving the website since 2004, preserving this work for generations to come.
Technology evolves, but my dedication to my website remains uninterrupted. I am incredibly proud to collaborate with a diverse network of global stakeholders—including international research institutions, academic universities, pharmaceutical developers, medical scientists, global HIV/AIDS organizations, media groups and individuals from around the world. The website’s daily updates underscore the vital importance of the work still being done globally to finally bring an end to HIV. Along the way, these collaborations have brought many meaningful friendships over the past 23 years.
Reclaiming Connection from Isolation
The global community I share today stands in stark contrast to how my journey began. Under the weight of being given six months to live in 1985, I isolated myself. I chose to live far away, moving from Kitchener, Ontario to Hull, Quebec, so that no one would know I was HIV positive, and so that family and friends I loved would not have to watch me get sick and die. I spent four years in isolation from family and friends I love.
Yet, after stepping into public advocacy and building this website, that profound loneliness was entirely transformed. Today, instead of being alone, my life is filled with incredible people and collaborators, and I am deeply grateful for the connections and the many friendships with fellow HIV/AIDS advocates around the world.
Source: POZ - Health, Life and HIV - POZ https://www.poz.com/article/positively-positive
“Reproduced with permission - POZ - Health, Life and HIV - POZ”
POZ - Health, Life and HIV - POZ
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