[6] Professionally, Egan was self-employed as the owner of a biological specimen business, and so felt able to speak out without risk of losing his job, a fear that kept many other LGBT people in that era in the closet.
[1] Beginning in 1949, Egan wrote hundreds of letters, articles, and op-ed pieces to magazines and newspapers advocating equal rights for and criticizing inaccurate portrayals of lesbian and gay people, and to politicians, advocating for fairer treatment of lesbians and gays under the law.
[8] In another article in 1954 published in the tabloid Justice Weekly, he declared "The acceptance and integration that every thinking, responsible homosexual desires will come some day.
"[1] By 1963, he was being published in mainstream publications, writing under his real name in the Toronto Daily Star that "[t]he homosexual is the sole remaining minority who can be sneered at, reviled, libeled, and spat upon with virtual impunity.
[3] Egan was also active in local politics, serving as a representative for Electoral Area B (Comox North) on the Comox-Strathcona Regional District board from 1981 to 1993.
[17] Egan published the memoir Challenging the Conspiracy of Silence: My Life as a Canadian Gay Activist in 1998,[10] with the assistance of University of Toronto librarian Don McLeod who edited and compiled the volume.