Peace. Security. Body sovereignty. Freedom. Education.

You’d think these concepts would be unifying for most people across Canada. And they could be. But interactions at a conference held over the past weekend at the Victoria Conference Centre (VCC) demonstrated there was considerable, and for some,  insurmountable distance between two groups gathered there who wielded these concepts differently.

The Reclaiming Canada conference organized by We Unify ran from June 21 to 23 and featured speakers such as Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, reality television’s Dr. Drew Pinsky, and former Newfoundland and Labrador premier Brian Peckford. We Unify is a volunteer-run organization that “champions leaders and organizations that defend democracy.”

In the week leading up to the event politicians and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ advocacy group pushed to have the event cancelled. 

At a June 17 Victoria City Council meeting, 1 Million Voices for Inclusion advocates Martin Girard and Monique May asked that the city-run VCC not be permitted to play host. 

“The speaker lineup is an affront to the 2SLGBTQ+ community. The conference centre has to reconsider offering space to those who promote hate in any of its forms,” said Girard.

Local politicians also spoke out against the city hosting this conference. In a letter dated June 14, Canada Green Party Leader and Cowichan MLA Sonia Furstenau addressed Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto directly. 

“Allowing this event to take place at a city-run venue implies City of Victoria support for this event, in direct contradiction to the (2003) Declaration of Ongoing Solidarity with Gender-Diverse Residents.”

Grace Lore, NDP MLA for Victoria-Beacon Hill and BC’s minister of children and family also asked on the social media platform X the to city use “all its available tools to stop the conference. We are the city with more non-binary and trans people than any other city across the country,” she said. “As a local MLA, I am deeply worried about the We Unify conference. Every member of our community deserves to be who they are, as they are.”

Attendees they were concerned about included Alberta street preacher Artur Pawlowski who appeared on former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s online podcast the War Room and who, as recently as 2019 said of the 2SLGBTQ+ community that "They perverted God's symbol [the rainbow] and they are using it for sin."

Pawlowsky is listed in the conference brochure as “a figure of inspiration.”

Another attendee, John Carpay, former speaker of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has conflated 2SLGBTQ+ rights with totalitarianism and once compared the rainbow flag to the Nazi flag.

First Nations also concerned

It’s not just 2SLGBTQ+ community members that speakers and supporters of the conference challenge but also the BC Indigenous community. 

Rebel News journalist Drea Humphrey, an event speaker, produced the documentary Kamloops: The Buried Truth, a documentary that sought to discount findings of 215 children in unmarked graves on the Kamloops residential school grounds. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs has called residential school denialism deeply offensive and compounds the suffering that generations of survivors have already endured.

And yet, in Alto’s opening comments at the June 17 meeting on whether the conference at which Humphrey was slated to speak should go ahead, she said, “We treasure our relationships with those two [Songhees and Esquimalt] nations.” It’s always important before we begin the work of our day just to pause and think about how we can do that better.”

The city says it is respecting Charter rights

When asked last week why the city was allowing the conference at one of its venues, City of Victoria spokesperson Colleen Mycroft told CHEK News “The city’s actions are subject to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and there is a right to freedom of expression in public places.”

According to the We Unify conference website, the organizer’s mission was “to increase the amount of dialogue within our country and with a focus on healing polarization which has invariably been shaped by a lack of discussion and treatment of the ‘other’ as an enemy.”

A conference participant who did not wish to have her name shared said, “There could be common ground. Canadians are not caring about one another anymore. We need to bring people together to talk about how we move forward and how we resolve this crisis as common ground, but they have to leave their prejudice and their egos at the door.”

In the hour before the doors opened to the conference there was little talk or coming together between attendees and protestors but there were moments of connection.

At one point, the protestors moved from Douglas Street to the courtyard where participants were lining up to get into the venue. “We are love,” said Taeron Warren through a bullhorn in their direction. Many waiting in the lineup immediately smiled and clapped in response. “Well, we know this,” said one protest onlooker.

In other moments, the sense of antagonism and irreconcilability was palpable. At one point, a protestor began banging on the locked doors of the VCC and shouting through the glass “You’re all Nazis!’’ He was told to back down by others in the group. 

Standing with protestors on Douglas Street on Saturday morning May, a 1 Million Voices for Inclusion advocate said, “Victoria has no space for hate. Our community is feeling violated and vulnerable.” 

Told not to engage 'with hostiles'

When Capital Daily asked Girard how might the protestors build common ground at the event he said “We have a directive not to engage with hostiles.”

The perceived and also very real divide showed how easy it was for protestors and conference attendees to make broad assumptions about each other. Inside the conference, one participant told Capital Daily that she has a gay daughter. “My daughter is a lesbian. She’s 13 years old. I’m not anti-trans, I just don’t want her to make an irrevocable decision about her body when she’s so young.” 

At one point, Lauren Southern, a well-known figure in the alt-right movement came out to speak to protestors about their mutual experience of censorship. “A few years ago, people were claiming that LGBTQ content was being censored on YouTube due to the algorithm. You should be in there talking, not trying to shut it down.”

“It’s a privilege to share in personal dialogue because the media is a huge area where we connect but this is the best connection,” Warren said, pointing to the small physical space between them.

Some though, were happy to keep driving the wedge.

Humphrey, who was live tweeting her participation at the event said on X: “That moment when the rainbow mafia realizes you’re that reporter who isn’t afraid to inform the public about why mutilating and sterilizing gender-confused kids is wrong.”

May, the 1 Million Voices for Inclusion advocate, spoke to the obvious contradictions that the inside vs. outside posed, saying of the We Unify organizers, “Their claim is this conference is to stop disinformation and bring the country together. And they are purposefully doing the opposite. They’re dividing us.”

Since the close of the event, 1Million Voices has claimed that a transgender minor was sexually assaulted at a demonstration and that a complaint had been filed with the Victoria Police Department. 

Despite their mutual wish for peace, security, freedom, and body sovereignty, there was very little dialogue or actions through which to achieve it.