Pride Month protests staged throughout Canada Day weekend

The Canada Day long weekend was marked by three straight days of protests and counter-protests featuring self-described Evangelical Christians and members of the local LGBTQ+ community.

The former group coordinated these demonstrations to “confront” the celebration of Pride Month, which organizer Tim Coderre characterized as a “mockery of God” on his personal Facebook page.

To drive this point home, Coderre and his supporters spent Saturday and Monday protesting at the corner of Spring and Bay Street, where a rainbow flag had recently been painted at the crosswalk for Pride Month.

The rainbow crosswalk has since been vandalized, as of Tuesday evening, although it’s unknown at this point if the individual(s) responsible are directly connected to the long weekend protests.

Over the weekend, Coderre’s group also showed up to The Machine Shop on Sunday to protest a “Pride Party” being run by The KLUB 2SLGBTQ+ Community Centre that featured a drag show and “story time with Queens” event.

Members of Sault Pride, in turn, organized their own counter-protests throughout all three days, writing on Facebook that they aimed to challenge “the hateful false narrative imposed upon our lives and families.”

The Sault Star talked to both groups at the intersection of Spring and Bay on Monday evening, with the city’s official Canada Day festivities taking place roughly a block away.

On one side, protesters brandished Canadian flags and hoisted signs that cited various bible verses.

Some attendees even carried signs that directly attacked members of the LGBTQ+ community, with slogans such as “Hands Off Our Kids” and “Danger Due to Pedophiles!”

Sault Pride and its supporters, meanwhile, showcased various flags under the LGBTQ+ umbrella (including a rainbow variant of the Canadian flag) with some slogans of their own, including “Honk If You Love Rainbows” and “Human. Kind. Be Both.”

Sault Pride chair Amanda Zuke told The Star that the last three days have been mostly peaceful, barring a heated moment on Saturday that required police intervention.

“We’re just having a three-day party. We’re having a good time,” Zuke said.

“We’re trying to stay positive about it, because we have a lot of positivity inherent in the community and it’s really been shining out everywhere over the last few days.”

Monday’s dueling demonstrations eventually turned into a karaoke battle, with Sault Pride enlisting some local drag performers to help lighten the mood.

This crowd included Ashley Aikens-McIntosh, who performed Taylor Swift’s “You Need To Calm Down” under her alter ego of Luke McAnally-Gore-Shadow.

“This is my community, and these people bring so much energy and positivity in the face of hate,” Aikens-McIntosh said. “There’s a lot of positive vibes happening over here.”

Aikens-McIntosh told The Star she’s never performed during a counter-protest before Monday, but felt the situation called for it given the recent rise of what she sees as anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments in the community.

This backlash really started to pick up steam in January 2023, when a drag story time event at the James L. McIntyre Centennial Library, featuring Aikens-McIntosh, was protested by a lot of the same people who occupied Spring and Bay on Monday.

While the event eventually went ahead as planned, Aikens-McIntosh said misinformation concerning the art of drag has continued to circulate in the Sault, including the idea that these story time events are hyper-sexualized spaces.

However, Aikens-McIntosh describes these story time events as family-friendly affairs, where she and other drag performers read simple children’s stories, like Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, dressed in outfits that wouldn’t be out of place in a Disneyland stage show.

“If they don’t want their kids to see drag, then their kids don’t need to go to the story time (events),” she said. “The point is to just create a space where all kids feel like they’re welcome and they have space no matter who they are or what their families look like.”

Across the street, Coderre told The Star that his group set up these demonstrations over the long weekend “to defend the kids and to defend the supremacy of God,” stating that increased awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in schools and other public institutions is tantamount to “indoctrination.”

“Adults can do what they want to do,” he said. “If they want to bark like a dog, have 73 genders … God’s going to judge them. Our beef is what they’re doing with our kids.”

Fellow protestor Arnold Heino, who is listed as a federal election candidate for the People’s Party of Canada, also took issue with the growing presence of Pride flags in public spaces, such as schools and government buildings.

“The Canadian flag, ethically, should be the highest flag (flown) and no other flag should be on that same pole,” he said.

Heino told The Star that he helped organize the local 1 Million March 4 Children gatherings last fall, where dozens of people arrived at Sault city hall in September and October to oppose “the indoctrination and sexualization of children,” according to an event leaflet spotted by The Star.

Sault Pride also stood as counter-protestors during these fall gatherings and will remain on guard throughout the rest of the month as their 2024 Pridefest celebration is set to take place throughout July 21-28.

This week-long affair will feature a variety of events, including a Pride Walk (July 21), fashion show (July 24), Inclusion in the Workplace Workshop (July 25) and Rainbow Brunch (July 28).

kdarbyson@postmedia.com

The Local Journalism Initiative is made possible through funding from the federal government

Kyle Darbyson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Sault Star