NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO — With June right around the corner, organizations across Northwestern Ontario are busy planning this year’s Pride Month celebrations, but they aren’t all on the same page about what it means to celebrate and promote pride year-round.
Relationships officially soured back in February, when a group of Northwestern Ontario pride organizations consisting of Borderland Pride, Rainbow Alliance Dryden and the Rainbow Collective of Thunder Bay announced they would be putting a pause on their relationship with Kenora Pride, until further notice.
According to trio, the groups were met with disrespect, micromanaging and gatekeeping by Kenora Pride, and namely its chair, Andrea Campbell, while trying to work collaboratively on certain initiatives. “We feel that these actions have a personal, partisan motivation, and we know from our connections in the community that many people have been alienated from Kenora Pride as a result,” the groups wrote in a statement.
A day after the statement was released, Kenora Pride responded on Facebook, explaining that their “organizing committee is a democratic group of volunteers.” And that while they “will defend trans kids always,” and believe that Pride is for everyone who believes in human rights, they “refused to ban members of the Conservative Party of Canada and hope that with education, they won’t continue to try to win political points by targeting the most vulnerable of our communities,” the post said.
That post, as well as some earlier reporting by another media outlet, suggest that the other Pride groups were planning to ban certain people from their celebrations, but Douglas Judson, chair of Borderland Pride - which covers the Rainy River District and Koochiching County in Minnesota - said that wasn’t the case.
It didn't take long for Borderland Pride to respond by announcing that in addition to pausing the relationship with Kenora Pride, they would also be removing Kenora Pride from the directory of other pride organizations on their website.
“As far as I understand, the issue is Kenora Pride continues to fabricate what our objection is to working with them,” said Judson.
“Our objection to working with Kenora Pride has to do entirely with Kenora Pride and, frankly, their treatment of people in leadership positions in the other pride organizations.”
“This talk about banning conservatives writ large from attending pride events has never been proposed,” he said.
Although Judson doesn’t feel it would be unfair to suggest that leaders within the federal conservative party shouldn’t be welcome at Pride celebrations “if they're unwilling to show support for the community in any other capacity,” that isn’t the issue when it comes to Kenora Pride, he added.
“There’s a lack of collaboration that we see whenever there's been outreach,” explained Judson. “So this seems to be the best decision for us to move forward until there are changes in the approach.”
The dispute comes at a time when the Conservative Party of Canada has come under fire for its apparent stance - or depending on who you ask, silence - on Pride movements in general.
Borderland Pride has, in turn, issued a letter to Kenora MP Eric Melillo, requesting to speak with him about the rise in anti-2SLGBTQ+ rhetoric, and a number of homophobic and transphobic policy proposals that a CPC convention produced, but they say they still haven’t heard back.
Melillo has “declined to meet with local LGBT organizations since September 2023, despite continuously holding himself out as an ally,” said Judson.
“I think that it is absolutely repugnant that the federal conservatives and many of their kindred spirits outside of Ontario, at the provincial level, have decided to target our community with outright lies, pseudoscience and hatred simply because they know it polls well,” he continued.
Melillo hasn’t always been silent on 2SLGBTQ+ issues. As the youngest MP to ever be elected in Canada, he was previously the Official Opposition critic for diversity and youth and participated in some of the federal Conservative’s first ever Pride events.
“It troubles me that people who know better, who personally might even mean better, are willing to use hatred targeting our community to their political advantage,” said Judson.
"With that in mind, he encourages allies and those who “value having diverse and inclusive communities to make time for Pride this year, even if it's in a little way, like putting a lawn sign in front of your home or in your shop window, or going to an event.”
Looking ahead to Pride this year and reflecting on the relationship with Kenora Pride, Judson said, “We think it's incumbent on community members in Kenora to decide what pride looks like in their communities.
"And certainly, the rest of our organizations are there to help if there's a good faith effort to work on things collaboratively.”
The Miner and News reached out to Campbell and Kenora Pride for further comment on these matters, but did not hear back.
The Miner and News / Local Journalism Initiative
