Anti-trans rallies across Canada were met by crowds affirming their support for transgender youth facing a climate of increasing hate, as rhetoric and debate over sex education curriculums grows louder.
Across Ontario, participants in rallies organized by the group “1MillionMarch4Children” — which claims participants are “standing together against gender ideology in schools” — were met by counter-protestors Wednesday morning.
In Toronto, hundreds gathered north of Queens Park as part of the 1 Million March, chanting “leave our children alone,” while thousands gathered in opposition. Police were present on foot, horseback and bicycles.
In London, nearly 80 police officers were on hand as over a thousand protestors and counter-protestors gathered on opposite sides of Dundas Street outside of the Thames Valley District School Board.
“We’re concerned with education and what they’re teaching the kids in education. That’s the biggest thing,” said Lorraine Kane, attendee and member of the Concerned Parents Association of London.
Counter-protestor Elizabeth Dodman says the nationwide rallies violate the rights of 2SLGBTQI+ youth.
“We need to make sure that the world they’re growing up into is safe and that the world that they’re growing up into isn’t burning up under their feet.”
Hundreds of protestors and counter-protestors gathered in front of Hamilton’s public school board offices, spilling out from Education Court onto Upper Wentworth.
Tanya Logan, a grandmother and veteran, claimed she has gay children and gay friends and argued that the rally was in protest of “keeping secrets from parents” and to keep children safe.
“Teachers do not have the right to influence, indoctrinate, push their ideology on children,” she argued.
Retired principal Rosemary Cooper attended the counter-protest in support of her granddaughter who is gay.
“I know there’s a lot of positive things happening in the boards to support our kids who are identifying as part of the 2LGBTQ+ community and I know they’re working hard to make sure that kids are successful in school and successful (socially).”
Cooper also noted that curriculums are approved by the ministry.
In 2018, following a majority win for the Progressive Conservative party in the provincial election, Premier Doug Ford ordered his education minister to repeal the “current inappropriate sex education curriculum” and replace it with a new “age appropriate” version after consultation.
The overhaul outlined in the mandate letter was a nod to the social conservative wing of the Ontario PC party, which helped propel Doug Ford into the leadership in March 2018. However, when the new sex education system was announced, experts widely said it was the same as the version introduced by the former Liberal government.
Elsewhere in the province, Kingston police reported that a combined 500 people attended the protest and counter-protest outside of city hall and in Confederation Park, with the counter-protest seeing a slightly larger proportion of that figure.
In Guelph, attendees on both sides started trickling out by around 11 a.m. with a few dozen people remaining outside of Guelph City Hall.
The rallies came amid a rising wave of hate crimes, threats and protests against drag queens and transgender people in particular.
Police-reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation rose nearly 60 per cent between 2019 and 2021, to the highest level in five years, Statistics Canada reported in December. Transgender Canadians are generally far more likely to experience violence than cisgender people, studies have found. A majority have also experienced sexual violence at least one time in their lives.
In May, the small town of Norwich drew widespread attention when it passed a controversial bylaw banning non-civic flags, including Pride and Progress banners, from being flown on municipal property.
In June, Windsor police charged a London area man after a woman reported being consistently harassed through social media following the Wortley Village Pride event in London, culminating in the suspect driving to a hospital in Windsor where he took a ‘selfie’ with her dying father.
Later that month, in Waterloo, two students and a professor were injured when a man showed up in class on June 28 and drew knives after confirming it was a second-year gender studies class. Investigators allege the stabbing was a planned act motivated by hate related to gender expression and gender identity and, in the months that followed, several universities began pulling course information from public websites citing safety concerns.
With files from Global News’ Sean Boynton, Marianne Dimain, Lisa Polewski, Ken Hashizume, Amy Simon, Isaac Callan and Kevin Nielsen as well as the Canadian Press.
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