By Gary Kinsman, August 24, 2026
I could not attend the actual opening of the Monument because of my health problems. I wanted to be there, but I watched the online version. I know this was not the same as being there with people on the site and I saw none of the historical panels or videos. I felt excited and felt good this had finally happened. But I also remembered how long it has taken and how many people who were purged who have died,
I was disappointed to hear the singing of “Oh Canada,” which I used to get thrashed with a ruler for refusing to stand for in high school. and is a clear a settler colonial song. While the design of the Monument draws on Indigenous insights and wisdom and there were good Indigenous performers and a good opening Indigenous speaker there was no visible support at all for the many current Indigenous struggles including those against the current federal Liberal government expediting resource extraction much of which is on Indigenous land. The Monument is clearly a Canadian state one!
Most disturbing was that there was so little description of the scale of the violence and brutality of the purges where thousands lost their jobs or were demoted. Suspected lesbians were interrogated by men about their sexual activities. People were followed and establishments put under surveillance. People were shown mug-shot books of suspected queers and asked to identify them. Suspected queers were told that if they did not give up names, they would have criminal charges laid against them.
However, way before there were any possibilities of legal challenges people often refused to cooperate with the security police to not give them any names, and even turned the tables on them by acting like they were snapping photos of the security cops. The RCMP documents even note that previous informants were refusing to give them names. Even in the 1960s initial queer and trans community formation was directing people to not cooperate with the security campaign. We were never simply passive ‘victims’ but often refused to cooperate and resisted as we could in our various locations, Again I have not seen the historical panels, but I hope this important history of resistance and non-cooperation is clearly remembered.
The best talk in my view was from Svend Robinson who got us thinking about the people who fought the national security campaigns before the Purge Fund. Unfortunately, the We Demand an Apology Network made of these who were purged, researchers and supporters which helped lay the basis for the apology and compensation was not mentioned.
Once our movements emerged, we also became targets of the security police since we were seen as ‘threats’ to the national interest. This perhaps started at the We Demand rally and demonstration in Ottawa in 1971and continued in the 1980s.
‘The official opening did not challenge the ideology and practice of national security which was at the centre of organizing the purges. National Security needs to be examined critically and it did not just impact queer people. We always need to ask which nation and whose security is being defended. Queers and gender-diverse people were thrown outside the fabric of that nation and became ‘threats’ to national security. National security has been used against immigrants, Indigenous people, global justice activists, trade unionists, Blacks, leftists, feminists, Arab and Muslim identified people and most recently Palestine solidarity activists, To not challenge national security means supporting other (often interlinked) groups as being ‘risks’ and being denied their rights,
While I remember Ivan Coyote made a brief reference to the state of the world in which the opening of the Monument took place, there was no mention of the genocide against the people of Palestine, which of course the Canadian government supports and allows Canadian armaments to get shipped to Israel. There can be No Pride in Genocide! The attacks on people in South Lebanon need to be stopped and now the Canadian government has signed an agreement with the UAE which means it us directly supporting genocide in Sudan.
I hope the Monument does not become a site for militarism and wars but like queer and trans liberation more generally be against war and for social justice.
Gary Kinsman is a long-time queer liberation, anti-capitalist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity activist most currently involved in Queers For Palestine and the No Pride in Policing Collective, He has been involved Gay Liberation Against the Right Everywhere, The Toronto Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee, the Right to Privacy Committee, and AIDS ACTION NOW! And the We Demand An Apology among others, He is the co-author with Patrizia Gentile of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010 and the author of The Regulation of Desire, Queer Histories, Queer Struggles (Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2024, and numerous chapter and articles on sex and gender struggles. Their website is radicalnoise.ca