On Friday (June 9th), a mob of transphobes descended on three Ottawa schools in the west end. They believe that educators are corrupting cisgender children into becoming trans; a reformulation of the old “the gays are recruiting children” trope.
I was disappointed with how many showed up. Maybe eighty, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more. Among their displays they put a bunch of pride flags on the ground and got their children to stomp on them.
One of them punched Ottawa MPP Joel Harden. There were five arrests. I was disappointed with some of the news coverage, which portrayed this group as simply the expression of a man with concerns.
What I saw was known hate groups and conspiracy theorists targeting local schools, at the behest of one of the most prolific transphobes in Canada, and against the wishes of the school board:
The community responded by blocking the street, to keep them away from bothering the kids in the schools. For this, we were called groomers. A large contingent of them then broke off and circled the block to access the schools that way. Among the parties I could identify that were targeting the educational institutions:
Save Canada & Josh Alexander
Save Canada is a Christian nationalist group that takes aesthetic inspiration from the MAGA movement with its red hats. Previously associated with disinformation around public health measures related to the pandemic, they shifted gears to targeting gender diversity as their Covid conspiracies became increasingly irrelevant.
Among their members in attendance is a teen who had harassed trans students at his school in Renfrew, and being rewarded for it, started to target LGBT people at large.
Freedom Fighters Canada
Freedom Fighters Canada is a far-right group that believes that the World Health Organization is at the center of a nefarious conspiracy and that immigration by Muslim individuals is part of a plot to replace white people. They were one of the most active groups during the “freedom convoy”.
Diagolon
Diagolon is a far-right white supremacist and Nazi-sympathizing group. They are linked to a cache of weapons found at one of the “freedom convoy” border blockades, allegedly for use against the police.
The woman holding the flag on the left is Stephanie McEvoy an anti-immigrant organiser who previously organized the No Radical Gender Ideology rally in Ottawa in 2019.
People’s Party of Canada
The People’s Party of Canada is a white nationalist political party. They have a history of homophobic and transphobic harassment.
They are also explicitly anti-trans. Its leader claims that “radical trans activists are trying to destroy one of the key building blocks of a healthy society – the distinction between men and women” and on the day before the mob called to “reject the evil trans and gender ideology“.
Per their official platform:
…radical trans activists are trying to transform society in a way that curtails everyone’s freedoms. This radical agenda, which contradicts basic biological realities, is proving particularly harmful to women and children.
In recent years, cultural Marxists and radical activists in the media, government, and schools have made every effort to normalize toxic transgender ideology.
Per their platform, they would:
- Remove human rights protections for gender identity and expression (Repeal C-16).
- Legalize involuntary conversion therapy (Repeal C-4).
- Outlaw gender affirming care for minors.
- Ban federal funding for gender affirming health care for trans people of all ages.
- Ban trans women from women’s spaces.
- Ban trans women from participating in sporting events for women.
Shannon Boschy
A dad who has a trans kid, and instead of being there for them, runs a political campaign as a trustee in Ottawa on an explicitly anti-trans platform. He portrays himself as the victim in this scenario. That’s him on the left in the photo below.
He has a history of attending anti-trans demonstrations and advocating against the rights of his own son, despite his son’s pleas:
Chanel Pfahl
Another candidate for school trustee in the last election who ran on an anti-trans ticket. Here she is with Julia Mallot, a trans woman who came up from Toronto (more below) and Chris Elston:
As best as I can tell, then as now, she devotes a significant portion of her time on social media to trans people:
Julia Malott
Julia Malott is a trans woman who advocates many of the same positions as transphobes, albeit with conciliatory language.
This is exemplified in her National Post articles such as “The real danger to trans kids is to confuse involving parents with ‘outing“, “New school gender policies aren’t anti trans. They’re pro parent-child relationship” (both in support of new policies in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan that would harm trans kids), “Drag queen story hour is not the way to teach children about diversity” (in response to attacks on story times led by gender diverse people that have included intimidation, arson and bomb threats), and “Nope, parents are not ‘fascists’ for being skeptical of gender politics” (in defence of anti-trans rallies being organized by Kamel El-Cheik and others). She also shares them in interviews with far-right outlets such as True North.
Caryma Sa’d
A livestreamer from Toronto who got big by documenting the freedom convoy, and later pivoted to these displays against LGBT people. This man with the red “Save Caryma” hat among the mob is with her.
David Freiheit
A conspiracy theorist from Montreal who goes by Viva Frei on his livestreams. He was here during the “freedom convoy” occupation, where I saw him make up things on the fly about downtown Ottawa and its residents to defend the worst behaviour of the multiple week occupation.
Mia Ashton
Mia is a founding member of caWsbar, an advocacy group focused on one issue: denying trans people rights. It was part of a wave of anti-trans organizations using the sex-based rights dog whistle. She along with a local group of bigots are linked to multiple transphobic incidents in Ottawa, which I’ve previously covered here, here, here, and here.
Mia Ashton participated in the mob along with National Post columnist Rupa Subramanya and another active member of that local group, @MrsDrBee on Twitter.
Chris Elston
The instigator who chose to target Ottawa schools from his home in BC. He makes his living traveling around the world fear mongering about trans people. For the last few years, he found success using gender affirming care for youth as his dog whistle. He has made a few visits to Ottawa, having been here during the “freedom convoy”, and having previously targeted these same schools in 2021 as well.
Update: June 24
Two weeks after the events above, on June 24, many of the mob’s participants showed up downtown.
From the transcript of one of the participants at the protest above, a YouTube streamer from London, Ontario whose account “Canadian Free Living” had previously all been focused on the “Freedom Convoy“:
Canadian Free Living: This is opposition to so-called transgender agenda, this I call the LGBTQ enterprise, I call it the alphabet community.
Person B: There we go because we shouldn’t legitimize it it’s nonsense it’s not a movement; it’s an operation, it’s an enterprise, it’s a campaign, and that’s what this is about right?
CFL: Yeah I’ve met them a couple times now um at different protests at the school boards and uh yeah they’re they’re against this in the schools.
B: Good for them.
CFL: It’s against their religion and uh yeah their kids are being forced to take it on.
B: Yeah.
CFL: So they’re planning some really big things in September like he was just mentioning. Apparently I was talking to Josh Alexander [of Save Canada] the other day and he said oh yeah school boards get better be ready man because come September I’m not going to tell you what’s going on but you watch what’s going to happen.
CFL: Explain that to my ignorant brain will ya?
B: Because previously disconnected or apathetic or complacent Canadians who are not involved in any regard, either in terms of discussion, let alone voting, or running for office, or supporting politicians that they like, are now motivated. They’re inspired by something that’s so reprehensible that’s so anti-human that’s so deceptive that’s so endless that they’re almost compelled to get into it. Here’s how I look at it: whether it’s the covid-19 enterprise, whether it’s the LGBTQ enterprise, or as you put it the alphabet mafia.
CFL: Community, I said alphabet community.
B: I… I… I won’t use the word “community” because it’s not a community, it’s like it’s like a fake arbitrary supposed unified group of people but yeah like…
CFL: I work for Re/Max I gotta watch my tongue [laughs].
B: [Laughing] Scratch everything I just said.
CFL: But not your tongue but my tongue.
CFL: The guy speaking over there was just pointing at the [Pride] flag hanging on Trudeau’s office saying it’s M.A.P.S. minor attracted people syndrome or something I forget what the “S” stands for and that basically it means pedophilia and that they’re coming for your children. Apparently they got some big things planned for September so School Board better get ready. The school board better get ready. Should be interesting in September.
The speaker at the above event goes by Kamel El-Cheikh (aka. Chk Kamel, also runs Kamel Forums). He was at the June 9th event, and planned to disrupt a drag story time event in Ottawa on the 28th. He appears to believe in conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Jewish world domination, the great reset, and now about trans people.
Kamel El-Cheikh got the trans-flag-colours-means-minor-attracted-person thing that he’s repeated a few times from a video on TikTok which claims that the blue means attraction to boys, pink to girls, and white to virgin children (last two screenshots below).
Update: June 28
A portion of the same mob show up to harass families attending a story time event at the National Arts Center. This isn’t the first time the story time is targeted in Ottawa; it was targeted in February during Winterlude, both at the NAC and at the outdoor venue, and during Pride previously. The community again responds by forming a barrier, preventing them from disrupting the event. Caryma Sa’d, Josh Alexander, Kamel El-Cheikh, and a slew of usual suspects are spotted.
These are the young families they were trying to intimidate over the outfits of the story tellers (a pirate costume and a colourful dress):
Update: June 28
In Waterloo, a 24-year old man entered a gender studies class, asked the professor what class this was, then stabbed the professor and two students. All three suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries. Per the police chief, this had been a “planned and targeted attack” and that “this was a hate-motivated incident related to gender expression and gender identity”. The perpetrator was not a member of the class, the chief said, and had intentionally seeked out a gender studies course to attack.
Update: August 1
Taking a step back and looking at the wider context of Canada, the mentality that had a mob target schools exists in government, albeit with more sophisticated messaging.
In New Brunswick, this same June, the premier embraced the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria conspiracy theory (the one where being trans is a “social contagion”) and then further insinuated that being trans was a fad. That month, the New Brunswick government changed it’s education policy, no longer requiring teachers to use the students’ correct name or pronoun if they were trans, and requiring schools to forcibly out trans students to potentially transphobic parents if the students requested for those to be respected. The Education Minister had claimed that they had received hundreds of complains from the previous policy that recognized the basic rights of trans students, but a freedom of information request demonstrated that this was a lie, and the government had not received a single complaint.
Such a backslide is familiar to Ontarians, where the current government had embraced anti-trans rhetoric when it repealed sex ed in a deal to capture conservative votes.