This article has been updated to include events of the summer.
Since the late nineties, organized antagonists of gender and sexual minorities were largely Christians or affiliated with major conservative political parties. The dynamics have changed. In the past few years, there’s been a rise of nationalist groups across Canada and they have been inserting themselves in spaces created by these anti-gay and anti-trans voices. They are going to Pride with the intent to intimidate and harass gender and sexual minorities, as well as attending events that advocate to institutionalize the oppression of these minorities.
In June 2019, nationalists under the banner of Yellow Vest went to the Hamilton Pride event. Some had body armor. They joined up with the anti-gay Christians that had showed up to harass members of the gender and sexually diverse community. In response, queer people put up a black cloth fence and blew whistles to drown out the hateful rhetoric. The nationalists then attacked with punches.
A week later in Toronto, men wearing shirts that said “Canadian Nationalist Party” and Christian t-shirts attacked people in the Eaton Centre during the Dyke March. The men were shouting anti-gay slurs and saying they were going to the gay village in Toronto. The timing isn’t a coincidence. One of the attackers in Toronto is the man seen with the body armor in the photo from the attack at Hamilton Pride above.
In August 2019, a preacher and a Yellow Vest member who was at the Hamilton and Toronto attacks harassed children and young families at Pride storytelling event in Ottawa.
Meanwhile in June 2019, members of the Soldiers of Odin were front and center at an anti-trans rally in Vancouver. The Soldiers of Odin is an nationalist group founded by a self-declared neo-Nazi in Finland in 2015 and developed multiple chapters in Canada by the summer of 2016. The rally was to oppose SOGI 123 which is a set of policies, resources and curriculum to create welcoming schools for students with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.
Again in June 2019, the Christian group Culture Guard crashed a Pride flag raising in Surrey. They used loud speakers to harass those attending. Joining them were members of Canada’s other nascent nationalist party, the People’s Party of Canada.
Then in May 2019 on Vancouver Island, the Soldiers of Odin attended the event “The Erosion of Freedom: How transgender politics in school and society is undermining our freedom and harming women and children”, to act as the body guards for its presenter.
In September 2019, a former candidate for the nationalist Canadian Constituents’ Party organized the anti-trans “No Radical Gender Ideology” rally in Ottawa. Speakers included a representative from the Christian group Campaign Life Coalition who linked trans-inclusiveness with pedophilia, Bolshevik Russia, and Nazi Germany.
Also in September 2019, an anti-LGBTQ rally organised by the evangelicals David Lynn and Charles McVety made its way through the heart of of Toronto’s gay village. McVety has advocated on his television show that homosexuals prey on children while David Lynn was previously arrested for harassing individuals in the village. Supporters for the People’s Party were prominently visible, leading the subsequent march with a large banner.
The introduction of nationalists in Canada is new and it makes the situation more hostile to gender and sexual minorities in attendance. But it’s not a radical departure from how things were already. Even without nationalists at their side, conservatives and Christians have been disrupting events intended for gender and sexual minorities. For Haldimand-Norfolk Pride, they installed themselves in front of the stage with a loudspeaker. In Ottawa, the same group protested WinterPride, while previously another individual disrupted a support group for parents of trans youth, and another bunch harassed families during a picnic at Pride.
Google Trends indicates that interest in nationalist groups in Canada such as the Proud Boys and Soldiers of Odin started in the 2016-2017 time frame. This matches Donald Trump’s presidency and Trump hats were visible in both the Hamilton and Vancouver events mentioned at the start of this article. The Canadian Nationalist Party was founded in 2017. The People’s Party of Canada was founded in 2018.
Google Trends of the Proud Boys. 
Google Trends of the Soldiers of Odin.
This rise, however, should not be cause for alarm. Before nationalists, newspapers in Canada were still advocating for the removal of trans people from public life. Politicians were still comparing trans people to sexual predators. Movies and television were still ostracizing trans women. Youth were still being kicked out of their homes for their gender identity or sexual orientation. Trans people were still being harassed and assaulted by strangers in public places. Antagonists were already disrupting events for gender and sexual minorities. That a handful of entitled young white men and politicians have now decided to join the bandwagon doesn’t change things much.
That the Canadian Nationalist Party has an official video saying homosexuality shouldn’t be normalized and that the People’s Party of Canada has it in their official platform to repeal federal protections on the basis of gender identity and gender expression just a continuation of the positioning the Conservative Party of Canada has taken.
Also keep in mind that it’s really only a small core group of antagonists at the heart of all of these events. It’s the same few nationalists that attacked people during the Toronto and Hamilton Pride events and that harassed children and young families at the Ottawa Pride event. It’s the same group of Christians that crashed Pride in Ottawa, Hamilton, Haldimand-Norfolk. It’s the same speaker at the anti-trans rally in Vancouver and who did anti-SOGI talks on Vancouver Island. These antagonists seem bigger than they are because they go to so many events and physically impose themselves. But at the end of the day, they are a fringe group vastly outnumbered by the gender and sexual minorities they are harassing.
Still, this doesn’t negate the harm they are able to accomplish. There needs to be an organized response to protect those who attend the events with a focus on minimizing the impact on the participants. This means blocking harmful messaging and discouraging conflict escalation. To that end, The 519’s mobilization kit is a welcome initiative, as was the noise makers and cloth wall seen used at Hamilton Pride. Calgary Pride is an example of the tactics learned from Hamilton in action.
There also, however, needs to be a response on behalf of the media and politicians. In particular, they must acknowledge that this white Christian nationalist moment is harmful. Gender and sexual minorities shouldn’t have to be alone in this. They must also recognize that giving these white nationalists a platform is a choice that bridges the gap to the mainstream.