At Semiahmoo Secondary, Jack Fox was known as Jodie.

Being seen as a woman was difficult for him, having never identified as female.

"I was often mistaken as a boy, however, friends, family, etc. would correct that. This caused a level of embarrassment and loneliness," Fox said.

Little did he know, someone else at the school was experiencing the same thing.

Two years younger, Shayne Forster, known at the time as Katherine, always felt strange growing up, like he was in a foreign body.

"I'd look in the mirror and be confused and disappointed, though at the time, not understanding why. When I was a kid, I wanted to emulate my dad and brother, and I imagined things like being a father when I grew up, but I didn't make the connection that I needed to transition until I was about 17, when I learned more about it," said Forster.

"At that point, it was like a lightbulb went on."

The teens went through high school oblivious to the fact they were both struggling with their identities. Fox graduated in 2002; Forster in 2004.

It wasn't until two years later, at a Vancouver club, that the two met and discovered their commonalities.

They became roommates shortly after.

The friends both started transitioning in 2006, and have since undergone hormone therapy and surgical procedures to attain male appearances.

"Finally getting to the point of going through with transitioning was probably the hardest because there are so many 'what ifs?' and thoughts of the unknown," said Fox, 25. "The time was confusing because there is nothing anyone can really say or do to predict the future outcome."

The transition process was not only physical for Forster, 22, but emotional, mental and social.

"Your whole life changes," he said. "Transition affects your relationships, the way you process things, the way you emote... You go through puberty all over again. When you're first starting out, it can be stressful since you might not pass in public quite yet, and you have to wait for the physical changes to set in.

"This is why community can be beneficial; knowing other people who are going through or who have gone through it."

Fox and Forster met such people in Vancouver, where they now live and work as child and youth workers.

"The good thing about the trans-community in Vancouver is a lot of people know each other; it's fairly tight-knit," Forster said. "There definitely wasn't a trans-community in White Rock."

However, the resources available in Vancouver are not always accessible to people who live outside the city.

"A lot of people need these kinds of resources but not everyone goes to the city," Forster added. "We wanted to do something for everybody."

And so they did.

In 2007, Forster and Fox created T Bodies Productions, through which they create projects and events geared towards transgender people.

Their first effort was Manamorphosis, a 2009 calendar that features a photo and brief bio of a different transman for each month.

It became a second full-time job for Forster and Fox, who, among other responsibilities, did photography, editing and canvassing.

The calendar is meant to give insight into the lives of transmen, while promoting awareness of the female-to-male transition.

"There's a lot of education around male-to-female, but not for female-to-male," Forster said.

Released last summer, it is available in five retail locations in Vancouver, as well as at www.t-bodies.ca

Recognizing a need for transgender events, they then planned two dance parties – Trans Hunt (for Halloween) and Trans Continuum.

"Trans people can go there and be themselves," Forster said. "We wanted to create a space that was just for them."

"The Halloween one was really, really good," Fox added. "We are planning on doing it as an annual event."

Forster and Fox have also engaged in public speaking, and have spoken about being transgender at Capilano University, an Abbotsford youth centre and for a Vancouver radio show.

The duo are also the subjects of a documentary UVic law students filmed for their human rights class.

While they are comfortable talking openly about their personal stories, it did take some getting used to.

"You don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. You don't want to offend anyone," Fox said. "(But) if you're going to come out and do this kind of thing, you have to be pretty open."

Forster and Fox are now looking ahead to their next project – a book.

They plan to collect excerpts from transmen discussing transgender issues such as parenting, coming out, surgery, identity and transitioning later in life and culture.

"It's accessible; it's people's lives," said Forster.

For this project, they are branching out from the local trans-community and appealing to transmen around the world.

"Education is needed everywhere," Forster said, noting a book has more shelf life than a calendar. "There's a community at large. We wanted to reach out and see if we could bring together the (international) community."

Fox and Forster hope to help transgender people who need guidance and information – whether they be youth or adults – by drawing on their own experiences.

"As soon as I started to transition, I decided to revamp the people in my life depending on their support," Fox said. "It was a bit of a lonely process, however, I managed to build a strong support network."

Without that support, Fox said some people live their whole lives in a body they feel uncomfortable in, and don't transition until their 40s or 50s.

Forster said he would've come out a lot sooner if he had more resources, and wonders how his life would be different if he had.

"What would high school have been like if we had transitioned?"

High school can already be a traumatic experience, let alone being a transgender teen, he added.

"If we can make it easier for them, we want to do that."