Our campaign against the We Unify: Reclaiming Canada conference was a mitigated success. Come read about what went right, what went wrong, and what we can learn from the experience.
The campaign I waged against We Unify was my first major initiative as a lead organiser. Until then I’d been organising left and right, usually either as a strategist or filling some minor role like promotion. I knew all along that it couldn’t last though, and that sooner or later I’d have to overcome my aversion to leadership, which I attribute to my extreme introversion. Two years down the road the moment indeed came. The lessons I learned follow, for fellow organisers (and aspiring ones) to benefit from the experience.
Disclaimer: The following account is written primarily from my own perspective, and may not reflect the views of my allies at 1 Million Voices For Inclusion. And while the campaign was a collective work, not everybody on the team may get the credit they deserve in this piece, because it is no more meant as a credit roll than as a credit grab on my part.
Also, those among my allies who haven’t gone public with their names shall be referred to pseudonymously with a capital letter. The battle against the anti-SOGI crowd features heavy doxxing in both directions, and not everyone in our ranks is as brazen as I am.
Reference articles:
My involvement with trans rights activists goes back to shortly after the nearly spontaneous 1 Million March For Children counterprotest at the BC Legislature in Victoria. A national counterprotest network, which would later assume the name 1 Million Voices For Inclusion, then organised a second demonstration at the Legislature the next month, in anticipation of a repeat of the March by the anti-SOGI movement which would not not materialise.
Back then I had no links to the queer community nor any particular inclination to advocate for the rights of transgender people. Yet when the group issued a call for volunteers for the second event, I felt compelled to answer. I happened to know the lead organiser and was in good standing with her, so I reached out, expecting to take on a role of warden or something; instead I was catapulted into an organising Zoom call within the hour. That’s how a cis-straight-boring guy such as myself ended up mingling with queer militants basically: I was sucked in by the vacuum and rode on good karma. And since my persona forbids me from chickening out, I just went along for the ride.
That being said, 1 Million Voices For Inclusion would then undergo a period of soul searching after this. In BC in particular it felt like we’d already won, especially after our city council issued a Declaration of Solidarity with Gender-Diverse Residents of Victoria. Abbotsford seemed to be the only remaining enemy stronghold; elsewhere the opposition was collapsing, most spectacularly when a tractor spearheading a convoy headed for Surrey rolled over and hit a police car. For a while it felt like we had no more foes to fight on the ground.
But then the challenge to the rights of transgender people extends far beyond those fringe groups, with ramifications deep into social conservative movements. One in particular I had some affinity with, which may be why I was the only one to see the threat coming, and arguably why I was the best suited to lead the charge against it—in spite of my acute aversion to leadership.
We Unify came to be in 2022 in the aftermath of the pandemic restrictions. It was originally meant as a libertarian civil rights movements, with the ambition of fielding candidates for public office. Spearheading it were political figures like People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier and former Premier of Newfoundland Brian Peckford, who had filed a lawsuit against the federal government challenging the domestic travel mandate’s constitutionality.
To be honest, when it started I was cautiously optimistic about it, and even covered two of its rallies: the first Reclaiming Canada event, and the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Charter. Of course I had certain reservations about its platform, like some leaning toward social conservative circles and their agendas running counter to civil liberties. But then I’ve been somewhat apprehensive about every group or movement I’ve joined.
This would change in the long run. Over the next two years it would turn into some kind of COVID cult that would turn just about everyone else off, such that I would distance myself from their events. But it’s the acute surge in alt-right trolling in the past year that got them on my radar, reflected by that of some of its allies such as Rebel News and the Justice Centre For Constitutional Freedoms embracing a Canadian brand of MAGA Trumpism and Jordan Peterson worship.
So when the announcement for the Reclaiming Canada conference 2024 was delivered to my mailbox, I had a close look at its list of speakers, and… Oh God, quite a few were world-class homophobic and transphobic trolls, banned from social media and even entire countries, dammit. As a civil rights advocate, I draw the line at hate speech, and the conference threatened to cross the line by a mile. That’s when I decided to ring the alarm, and with 1 Million Voices For Inclusion standing in wait of a new mission, I had just the network to unleash Hell.
Actually, getting fellow members on board was very easy. From the start I could count on a fantastic team on which everyone contributed something of value and worked well with each other. R in particular took over team management and all the boring duties that come with it. And she worked harder than anyone else, to the point it would actually become an issue; we had at some point to tell her to cut down on the caffeine and leave some work for the others!
That being said, the main obstacle we faced from the onset was that We Unify remained virtually unknown outside of right-wing circles, and its agenda was so broad that it would prove difficult to sell our initiative to the public. That’s why we had to single out individuals in the group, and tailor our message to emphasise guilt by association.
From the start my strategy consisted in winning without fighting if we could help it. I was able to sell the idea that cancelling We Unify’s events was better than crashing them on the ground. We needed to put pressure on the Union Club and the Victoria Conference Centre to deny the group its venues.
One of my ideas was to circulate a change.org petition, but S proposed a letter writing campaign with New/Mode instead, which is way better. S and R just took over with little supervision on my part; I only helped draft the letter. I also proposed to request a meeting in person with Destination Greater Victoria. R sent them a paper letter by mail with the invite, but we never got an answer.
Slipping into the role of leader may have been as uncomfortable as wearing a sandpaper suit, it was nevertheless easy. I’ve been around enough leaders in the past couple of years to know they all fake it until they make it, and so did I. Want to take the lead? First convince yourself that you’re awesome, and you’ll find it’s contagious. Tell everyone else they can be awesome too, and they’ll believe in themselves as well. Seriously, if you’ve got impostor syndrome, kill it. You can be a leader too, but first you have to believe it yourself. All you have to do is take the first step and keep the momentum going.
Sceptical? Read the next section for a cool anecdote.
The Reclaiming Canada conference wasn’t the only event We Unify held in town. There was another talk a few weeks prior featuring three panelists, including Artur Pawlowski. That one was about the COVID pandemic and civil liberties, not transphobia like other of We Unify’s lectures, so it was low on our group’s list of priorities. I for one was so busy and burnt out already that I had just announced I would not take on any new organising commitments.
But then Artur Pawlowski wasn’t just a pandemic folk hero who’d gotten himself arrested for feeding the homeless. The leader of Street Church was also a staunch homophobe and transphobe championing conversion therapies and even held the annual March For Jesus to promote his platform. And that didn’t sit well with one of us in particular.
P is a trangender man. Short, soft-spoken, with poor constitution, and utterly timid. The kind of person we had to condition ourselves to listen to when they tried to step into the conversation in online meetings, otherwise they’d never be able to get a single word through. But they really, really didn’t like Pawlowski. So at some point they tried pushing for a protest at the Oaklands Chapel where he was featured to speak.
But as I said, everyone was too busy, and there was rather little time left before the event anyway. The proposal fell into deaf ears. That’s when they wrote: “If I put together a counter protest will folks come other than myself” and, believe it or not, that’s all it took for most of us on the team to get on board. Even me, who had declined to organise it; at least I would show up.
Trust me, if P can be a leader, just about anyone can. And I have to admit they did a decent job at putting this demonstration together on short notice. Of course there were predictable deficiencies, although I don’t get to complain since I turned down their request for help. Even then, it would prove a valuable field test for the main event.
The main issue is that the people who attended the lecture had no idea why we showed up at their event that night (don’t forget it was a talk about pandemic restrictions, not transphobia), and explaining it on the fly turned out to be awkward. One thing I would have done had I been in charge (and did for the conference) is bring flyers explaining exactly what we had against Pawlowski, like quotes and background material. When confronted by hostiles or sceptics, the attendance has to be able to articulate its stance without fumbling too much, and printed material helps tremendously in this regard.
Meanwhile S was working on getting our letter writing campaign online. Our goal, as I explained, was to get We Unify’s venues cancelled without a fight, and we needed an impactful tool to get the message across.
The campaign has two main targets: the Union Club of British Columbia, which was to host the evening reception on the Friday prior to the conference, and the Victoria Conference Centre, which would host the conference proper over the weekend. That being said, we aimed very broadly with the list of recipients and included Victoria city council members (since the VCC is a publicly-owned facility), our MLA Grace Lore, our MP Laurel Collins, Green Party Leader Sonia Fursteneau (who challenged Grace Lore for her seat), and… quite a few who didn’t really belong there; somehow even the mayor of Oak Bay ended up on the list, who naturally replied that he had nothing to do with the event.
The campaign had a huge impact. We scored a victory early on when we Union Club responded by cancelling the reservation. At first it replied it didn’t have anything to do with the conference nor We Unify, because we had neglected to mention the Friday reception in the latter; we had to point it out afterwards.
Then the Victoria Pride Society came forward openly denouncing the VCC for hosting the conference, ending up on CHEK News, and that had a huge impact. It even met with Destination Greater Victoria CEO Paul Nursey to discuss the matter, to no avail. The City of Victoria issued a statement to the press claiming it could not deny the client a public space, citing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, while Destination Greater Victoria invoked its contractual obligations instead.
Later V on our team obtained the contract with DGV for the conference with an FOI request. We had speculated that We Unify reserved both the Union Club and the VCC via a proxy, and it turns out we were right. The client’s name on the contract is Jonathan Bower, which is a known alias of Chad Allen Stewart, a career criminal who spent most of his adult life behind bars for offences including theft and robbery.
Also, the VCC Rules for Use on the document require the customer to abide by the Criminal Code of Canada and the BC Human Rights Code, the former which forbids the promotion of conversion therapy, while the latter prohibits the publishing of material discriminating on the basis of gender expression. So we have proof the DGV’s excuse was spurious.
In the political arena, Sonia Fursteneau sent a letter to Mayor Alto calling upon Destination Greater Victoria to cancel the reservation. In contrast, Grace Lore replied that while she sided with us and encouraged us to keep reaching out, there was nothing she could do; I replied that if we hadn’t even convinced her to at least place a phone call herself, then I would be campaigning for Sonia Fursteneau’s election campaign against her. Somehow she changed her mind just before the conference and even posted a reel on Instagram to support us. And somehow I’m tempted to see a cause and effect relationship. Just saying.
Not bad an impact for a mere letter writing campaign put together by just a few activists with little experience and resources. It got over two thousand hits in just a few weeks, whereas most online campaigns and petitions fail to take off. Still, while it got us considerable exposure and one quick surrender, the VCC fortress still stood defiant.
By the way, I have to admit to one slipup on my end. John Carpay’s short bio in the letter has one factual error due to the sentence being wrongly worded, and nobody caught it until the count exceeded 2000 because I was the only proofreader on the team. Next time I’ll have someone proofread me for sure.
While we already had a significant amount of exposure at that point, we could do better. Monique on our team suggested we address the Victoria city council at the next session. Since I knew openings run down fast, I immediately reserved what turned out to be the last remaining spot, which I offered to share with her as a joint address. And while I was at it I called it a rally.
My goal was to pack the room, and I think it would have worked had we started promoting it earlier but at that point we were really in a rush, so we had to settle for three dozens in attendance, which isn’t bad. CHEK News also showed up and interviewed us, although I’m not aware the footage was used. We were also interviewed by True North, which the both of us knew was an alt-right outlet, but hey, we just felt like indulging them somehow since we’d called in the media after all. I haven’t read the article though, and I don’t want to know what it says.
Those of you who follow me know I spend considerable time attending speeches and recording them, but I’m not much of a public speaker myself, and this was my first time addressing the city council. Since both Monique and I had to share a three-minute slot, I had to cram a convincing argument in ninety seconds, which wasn’t easy. Since I’m a legal advocate, I wrote a piece pressing the imminent prospect of a BC Human Rights Code violation, whereas my partner went ad-lib denouncing the city’s attitude toward 2SLGBTQIA+ people and its decision running counter to the spirit of reconciliation with indigenous communities.
While I was told otherwise, I don’t think my first address went well. To be honest, I was way too stiff and concerned with my performance, and as a result my eyes were everywhere except where they needed to be. I forgot to press the button to display the slides R had prepared for my portion, and I didn’t keep track of the remaining time, such that I exceeded my time limit by about ten seconds. I’d say Monique did a much better job in spite of going off-script, something I don’t think I’m capable of doing in a formal context.
Even then, I was congratulated by many people afterwards, who told me my words made an impression on them. R herself told me not to worry about the slides, and added, speaking of the attendance: “They weren’t looking at the slides, they were looking at you.” That’s something I’ll keep in mind for future speeches. Next time I’ll just cool down and read from the page instead of pretending I can be an orator, trying to make an impression like speakers who can stare at the audience and still get the words out, something introverts struggle with. My words will reach them anyway.
A week before the conference I made a trip to Vancouver to try to recruit some allies. While I was confident we would get a good turnout, I’d felt from the beginning the event we meant to counter was big enough to be worth calling upon allies living even half a day away from Victoria.
One of our team members, M, lived in Vancouver and offered to tag along, so we visited several queer advocacy groups unannounced, shaking their hands, trying to convince them our cause was worth travelling to the Island. In hindsight, I don’t think it made much of an impact on the turnout—nor did I expect it to. But it got us something just as important: exposure. With just a few hours of work both We Unify and 1 Million Voices For Inclusion were suddenly on mainland advocates’ radar. We even got the formal endorsement of QMUNITY:
Just like we worked on gaining exposure in order to increase turnout, we also meant to increase turnout in order to gain exposure. But there are other ways to gain exposure, such as practising the art of the handshake; this by the way is so much more convincing than sending cold emails to people you’ve never met.
In the meantime we were devising a battle plan for conference day. My idea was to exploit our numbers to seize the atrium, then blare the gayest music out there with the most powerful PA equipment we could rent (including a subwoofer) right in front of a glass facade from where powerful noise would reverberate throughout the building.
Furthermore, I had calculated that if we could threaten to infiltrate the building via every entrance at once we could force security to shut down the facility, effectively cancelling the conference; if protesters can’t get in, neither can the conference guests.
This plan I had come up with by scouting the venue, studying the facility’s floor plan (the website even has a 3D virtual visit) and security system, and most importantly learning about our enemy, which was homophobic and really worried we had the means to crash their party (see how granting an interview to True North played out). Seriously, every protest organiser ought to practice The Art of War by Sun Tzu; make it your bedside book and pray to it every evening.
That being said, I’d worked on the assumption that the turnout would at least be comparable to that of the 1 Million March For Children counterprotest, which I estimated at 500 at peak attendance. I would turn out to be mistaken, which is why the plan fell short. War boils down to numbers, after all…
In the end, only a hundred people showed up the morning of the protest, which was a huge disappointment. Granted, this is a respectable number, but nowhere near what we expected, and not quite enough to carry out the plan I’d drafted. Looking back, I should have anticipated a lower turnout because we relied on students to show up en masse like in September, but this protest was in June, during the summer recess; many students from afar had left town already, while others had summer jobs, or had gone on vacation. In any case, turnout in the summer is usually lower, a pattern I’ve observed since for Palestine solidarity rallies, which also attract a lot of students.
That being said, the media presence in contrast was excellent. Monique and I were interviewed by the Times Colonist, CHEK News, and the Capital Daily. In fact it went a bit too well in this regard, because as a co-media person I was continually distracted from my role as lead organiser with requests for interviews, to the point that for a while Mar Mar, one of our supporters, had to fill my shoes. Never again will I take on two roles at once, especially not these two; the leader has to focus on keeping the event going, not talking to the press.
I tried setting the tone for the event with a speech, but the crowd simply wasn’t in the mood to listen, to the point that I decided to cut it short and lead the crowd to the atrium as planned, where a portion of the attendance had already gathered to heckle the conference guests trying to sneak behind us via the Empress Hotel. At first I thought people wouldn’t listen to me in particular, but then R would later face the same predicament—made worse by a heckler I had to rouse the crowd into shaming away. Truly it wasn’t the kind of event propitious for speeches.
As I explained, we did not have the numbers to hold every entrance, and besides the troops’ morale wasn’t high enough for us to to stand our ground even against a handful of police officers threatening us with dispersal, so I decided against deploying the PA equipment after all. When leading an anarchic force like this, it’s crucial to go with the flow instead of sticking to the agenda, even if it’s frustrating.
The flyer we’d made for the event came in handy when hostiles showed up, especially RebelNews reporter Drea Humphrey whose challenge I had anticipated (and later faux reporter Lauren Southern). We’d issued the directive not to engage with the enemy, at least on its own terms, so we just gave Humphrey the flyer instead of answering her questions. As I explained earlier, that’s a good tactic when allies cannot be relied on to know what to answer on the spot when confronted.
While I had braced myself for hostiles and scuffles, what I hadn’t anticipated was this flamboyant character identifying with Gays Against Groomers showing up. Not a big issue by itself, but his sexually assaulting a transgender minor on our team really threw a wrench in my plan. This kind of incident is among the most delicate an organiser could ever have to deal with, and no one else on the team knew what to do.
Fortunately I’m extremely level-headed and used to emergencies, so I made the decisions the others couldn’t. I rallied the team to NeighbourSpace where we had rented a space and made sure everybody was unhurt. Then I went back to the scene looking for witnesses, to no avail. I went back to our base of operations in time to attend the victim’s police interview in a capacity of legal advocate, even though I wanted to be anywhere but there; that being said, I knew police officers often disbelieve victims of sexual assault or blame them, so the mere presence of an advocate as an observer could make a difference in how the interview went. I have nothing else to say about what happened in that room.
Then I made the difficult call to put an end to the event. I had to deal with team members who were overwhelmed, in tears, or in shock. I decided to get the team away to a safe rally point at a nearby cafe and debrief. Not exactly the kind of celebration I had anticipated, but then no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. We’d get an actual celebration a few weeks later at a queer pub for the sake of morale though, don’t worry.
In retrospect, this mess could have been avoided if we’d had wardens. We had called upon the BC Flying Squad to fill that role but it arrived way too late, having to travel from the mainland while the event started at 10 in the morning (we heard they showed up right after the last of us left). Not bringing a few yellow vests as a contingency turned out to be a huge blunder on my part.
To conclude, this is an aspect of leadership that is little discussed. The true mettle of a leader isn’t shown when the team is on a roll, but when everything goes downhill and no one else knows what to do. Always make the leader someone who can handle the worst the enemy can throw at you, not just a charismatic figurehead that will break down or flee at the first sign of trouble. The best experience one can get in this regard is responding to emergencies; get some first aid or CPR training (or naloxone training, whatever), then volunteer on the front lines and save the lives of a few people with quick initiatives, and you’ll gain the confidence to rally troops in adversity.
If any metric could define the success of our campaign, I would choose media coverage. Over the month of June there were no less than 13 mainstream news articles published across the province, which falls little short of incredible for a small group with negligible resources:
You may have noticed that Michael John Loo’s article has been published by no less than five media outlets, including the Vancouver Sun and The Province, which is huge. The Victoria Buzz has covered our campaign no less than three times, and I find that this outlet is a good vector for protesters to get exposure. And since I speak French I was also interviewed by Radio Canada, and even featured on the Phare Ouest radio show.
For sake of completeness, I would also like to enumerate the alt-right media pieces that have been covering us:
I have not read or watched most of the above, and I do not want to know what they say. The Western Standard reports We Unify’s claim that it had to spend an extra 50K$ on security, a claim which I find dubious, although if it turned out to be true then it would be an economic victory as well since the conference doubled as a fundraising event. And while I’m at it I’m adding this clip by Clyde Do Something, who made a pathetic attempt at mocking the Victoria Pride Society denouncing the conference on CHEK News:
Despite all this, my allies at 1 Million Voices For Inclusion are disappointed by the coverage. I do not share their appraisal. The vast majority of protests I cover receive no mainstream media coverage whatsoever, and I’m often the only independent blogger around documenting them. In contrast, this campaign made so much noise that it reached all across the province, and We Unify’s face has really been rubbed in the mud as a result; as a bonus we even got the alt-right media sphere to freak out at being cancelled by a bunch of ‘crybullies’. Likewise, the social media spread was mind-boggling, the conversation on Reddit’s r/VictoriaBC getting particularly heated in several threads. We could hardly have wished for a better outcome.
In fact, such was the backlash that I predict next year’s conference won’t be in Victoria, or even in BC. Although if they want some more, let them come.
So just how transphobic was the conference actually? The short answer is: not as much as it could have been, but it still had its damning moments.
Lauren Chen was announced early on as the host for the conference, which promised to make it a transgender freak show since she’s unable to speak three words without saying anything offensive toward them or some other queer group. But she was removed from the list of speakers without explanation at about the time we launched our letter writing campaign.
Likewise, John Carpay proved to be a no-show. I’m certain that, had he been there to speak, he couldn’t have helped himself from promoting transgender conversion therary or calling on a Gay-Straight Alliances ban, because he has very little else to say.
Zuby took over Lauren Chen’s role as host for the event, and proved rather restrained about it. Since he didn’t have his own one-hour slot on the stage, he was able to last the whole conference without making tasteless jokes. His commentary might have been COVID pseudo-profound bullshit, it at least wasn’t offensive.
What about Artur Pawlowski? Well he, unlike some others on this list, does have things to say other than gay bashing, and didn’t have quite enough of an hour to brag about his exploits and martyrdom as a pandemic folk hero, which falls beyond the scope of this article.
Which leaves Lauren Southern and Drea Humphrey. And they make up for the rest.
Lauren Southern’s segments are filled with bragging about her racist and homophobic stunts, such as getting herself booted from the UK for distributing flyers claiming that Allah is gay—all in the name of journalism, of course. She claims it’s freedom, not trolling! Seriously, did anyone expect her to say anything else if she was given the mic at any event?
And then there was Drea Humphrey. Of course the scope of Humphrey’s phobias is so wide that, unlike Southern, she couldn’t spend a whole hour ranting on transgenderism. Yet she too couldn’t help herself:
[…] I’m still scared, it’s still scary to stand in truth, and say that young kids, many who are suffering from mental health issues, being told that it’s possible to be born wrong, being told that they are able to make a decision that could make them sterile for the rest of their lives, for mutilate [sic] healthy body parts off of themselves or destroy their future sex lives, before their frontal cortex, which is for reasoning and decision-making, being told that’s okay, and not saying anything against it, that’s not okay, that’s not transphobic, the people who are telling these children the truth, that “there’s hope for you, ” that “you’re beautiful just the way you are,” that “you have your whole life to figure your future out,” let’s just wait on this important issue, those are the people that care about trans kids the most. —Drea Humphrey, RebelNews reporter
Well sorry darling, but once you scrape off the sugarcoating all that’s left is deep contempt for transgender kids who make their own decisions, using a highly spurious argument in particular that has been invoked ad nauseam by white supremacists looking down on negroes, which of course is the pinnacle of irony:
Viewed from the side the Negro brain appears to be pressed back, while, the Caucasian appears to be pushed forward, the result being that the frontal lobe of the Negro brain appears considerably smaller than that of the Caucasian. —Robert Bennett Bean, Instructor in Anatomy, University of Michigan, 1906
And that same line of reasoning led to countless indigenous women being forcefully sterilised, often while still children. So be very, very wary of bigots invoking frontal cortex development in support of any argument, because they’re the worst.
Here’s a legal advocate’s take on this: every transgender or gender ambivalent minor in the province has, on this basis alone, sufficient grounds to file a complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal against Drea Humphrey, We Unify, and the City of Victoria, for infringing upon Section 7 of the BC Human Rights Code, which forbids publishing material that exposes a class of persons to hatred or contempt; likewise I’m confident Muslims and homosexuals have standing for a complaint over Lauren Southern’s comments.
The respondents’ least pathetic defence would then be to claim it was a private communication since they hid behind a paywall, but since it was produced in a public facility, shown to an audience of hundreds, and uploaded to Youtube, that is indeed certain to be scoffed off by any reasonable judge.
On the bright side, it could have been way worse. I have this feeling some of the restraint and unexplained changes to the speaker lineup can be attributed to We Unify having been wary of crossing the line once the pushback began. In any case, judging from their latest Substack entry I’m sure I and my allies at 1 Million Voices For Inclusion will be sparring with them some more in the near future, so stay tuned.
UPDATE 2024/12/19: We actually won, according to the Canadian Press: ‘Running in fear’: How Victoria accepted, then banned ‘Reclaiming Canada’
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