Same-sex couples began getting married in Toronto June 10.

The weddings began hours after the province of Ontario’s highest court, the Court of Appeal, ruled that the federal government’s definition of marriage was unconstitutional and ordered the Toronto city clerk to issue marriage licenses immediately to several gay couples who had sued for the right to marry.

Toronto City Hall responded that the city would issue a marriage license to any same-sex couple that otherwise met the license criteria. And the first full same-sex marriages in North America began.

The court’s ruling said: “To remedy the infringement of these constitutional rights, we:

“(1) declare the existing common law definition of marriage to be invalid to the extent that it refers to ‘one man and one woman’; “(2) reformulate the common law definition of marriage as ‘the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others’; “(3) order the declaration of invalidity in (1) and the reformulated definition in (2) to have immediate effect; “(4) order the Clerk of the City of Toronto to issue marriage licenses to the Couples; and “(5) order the Registrar General of the Province of Ontario to accept for registration the marriage certificates of Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell and of Elaine and Anne Vautour.”

Bourassa and Varnell and the Vautours were married in 2001 by a Metropolitan Community Church minister but the province refused to register their marriages. They were married via the ancient Christian tradition of “publishing the banns of marriage” (asking in church on three Sundays if anyone objects to the marriage) which is a legal alternative in Ontario to obtaining a marriage license from the city.

One of the couples at the heart of the legal challenge wasted no time in getting hitched June 10. Michael Leshner and Michael Stark tied the knot before an Ontario Superior Court justice that afternoon as Leshner’s 90-year-old mother and a gaggle of reporters looked on.

“We’re blissfully happy,” Leshner said. “The bench has wished us a long, happy marriage and we hope to fulfill that.... Go tell [Prime Minister] Jean Chrétien it’s dead. The argument’s over. No more political discussion, we’ve won, the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms] won, it’s a great day for Canada.”

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms forbids discrimination that cannot be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

The federal government made no immediate effort to stop the events unfolding in Toronto. Spokesperson Mike Murphy said Justice Minister Martin Cauchon needed time to review the ruling. Canadian federal officials could appeal to the Canadian Supreme Court.

But Deputy Prime Minister John Manley told reporters, “I think it’s time for us to recognize that same-sex marriages are part of our societal norm.”

Provincial officials promised to follow the ruling and register the Toronto marriages — the two from 2001 and the new ones.

“I’m charged to follow the laws and will follow the laws with regards to this matter,” Ontario Attorney General Norm Sterling said June 11. “We said during the appeal process that the province of Ontario would follow the court ruling. We made that clear during the process.”

A court in Quebec and British Columbia’s highest court also have recently declared the opposite-sex definition of marriage unconstitutional but both courts gave the federal government more than a year to change the law before having it forcibly changed by the court. The Ontario ruling left no such gap.

Meanwhile, a very different scenario began unfolding in the more conservative province of Alberta shortly after the ruling.

Premier Ralph Klein said there will be no gay marriages there and gay marriages from elsewhere in Canada won’t be recognized either.

Klein promised to invoke a very rarely used section of the Constitution called “the notwithstanding clause” that allows provinces to reject federal laws which might adversely affect them.