Ottawa Pride parade dissolves after Palestinian demonstration blocks route

2025/08/26 2 Comments

Apart from the somewhat oxymoronic name Queers for Palestine, given the lack of LGBTQ rights in Palestine and elsewhere Arab and Muslim countries, stil hard to understand how blocking route increases public support for their position.

They could have, after all, simply marched along with the others, with some signs identifying themselves their Palestinian identity:

Hundreds of Palestinian supporters blocked the Capital Pride Parade shortly after it began Sunday afternoon, demanding parade officials come down and meet their “demands.”

Protesters gathered on Wellington Street near O’Connor, dancing to music while holding up signs and Palestinian flags. Many signs said “no pride in genocide.”

A giant pink-and-black banner read “all of us or none of us” and “stone wall was an intifada.” They also chanted slogans like “free, free Palestine,” “long live the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

“We will not leave until our elected officials and Capital Pride come down and meet our demands,” said Masha Davidovic, a member of Queers for Palestine-Ottawa group.

At about 2:30 p.m., the decision was made to cancel the remainder of the parade.

The confrontation comes after Capital Pride quietly took down its statement of solidarity with Palestinians this year, sparking criticism among some members of the community.

According to a pamphlet handed out at the protest Sunday, pro-Palestinian groups want Capital Pride to host a BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) townhall and support PACBI, or the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The BDS movement is a Palestinian-led movement that uses economic pressures to force corporations, banks and other entities to withdraw support from Israel.

Protesters also called on Mayor Mark Sutcliffe to “apologize for last year’s boycott (of the parade) and the call to defund Pride” and “commit to stand with (protesters) and all oppressed peoples, including Palestinians.”

Stefania Wheelhouse of TotoToo Theatre was marching in the parade with 30 other people before the event was cancelled.

She told the Ottawa Citizen that they walked for about a block and half before they were stopped.

Around an hour later, they received word from Capital Pride officials that the remainder of the parade was cancelled and they were told to pack up and leave.

“We are bummed, of course, but we had a blast for the block and a half that we walked, and everyone was so positive, so it was still a net win for us,” Wheelhouse said.

“We sang, we spread the word. It’s still been a bit sad to not get to finish the run, but it is what it is.”

Donna Blackburn, an Ottawa-Carleton District School Board trustee, was marching in the parade with the rest of the school board.

Blackburn was previously censured by her colleagues for disagreeing with the school board’s decision to withdraw from the parade last year after Capital Pride issued a pro-Palestinian statement. She was also told to take part in antisemitism training.

In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen on Sunday, Blackburn called the actions taken by the pro-Palestinian movement “backwards” and said protesters had “hijacked” the parade.

“I have publicly stood up for the Palestinian community in a very public way, took a lot of personal heat for doing it. I’m now a target of the Zionists. They’re coming after me. But this is not the way to get people onto your side,” she said.

“Blackmailing the mayor in the middle of the parade is completely, highly inappropriate. … There are ways to lobby. There are ways to advocate, and holding a parade like this hostage and blackmailing politicians in the middle of it is completely inappropriate.

“Hopefully the rest of the day we can just go about celebrating. The community organizations are down (on Bank Street) with their booths, and I’m sure the music will be good and all that stuff. It’s just unfortunate the parade was hijacked.”

Sutcliffe, who attended the parade along with other city councillors and city staff, said in a social media statement that he was proud to join the LGBTQ2S+ community at Pride but said it was “deeply regrettable” that protesters and activists chose to block the parade.

“My heart goes out to the many people in our city who were deprived of the opportunity to participate in this celebration of joy, resilience, and community,” the statement read.

“At a time when 2SLGBTQIA+ rights are under attack around the world, it’s critical to show our solidarity with the community and honour all those who have achieved hard-won progress on equal rights.

“Ottawa should always be a place of inclusion, where everyone feels welcome. Let’s continue to work together for a better city, for everyone.”

Source: Ottawa Pride parade dissolves after Palestinian demonstration blocks route

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John Robson: The progressive backlash against Capital Pride is something to behold

2024/08/23 Leave a comment

Of note:

When even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thinks your Pride event is too aggressively weird and disruptive, it’s probably time to reconsider. Instead, Ottawa’s Capital Pride doubled down on its berserk anti-Israeli views, because ideas have consequences and bad ideas have terrible ones.

The Liberal Party of Canada is just the latest outfit to pull out of the sort of event it normally can’t get enough of. Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is gone, plus the U.S. Embassy, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), Public Service Pride Network, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Hospital, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and more. Which isn’t exactly like having the Southern Baptists or Sons of Thor give it a pass.

Indeed, when the Toronto Sun reported that “CHEO CEO Alex Munter said they wouldn’t take part” because some hospital staff and citizens “no longer feel safe or welcome,” I had to check whether “they” was just Munter. (No, it’s CHEO generally.) And Trudeau is such a Pride enthusiast, the Liberals are organizing a counter-event “to celebrate Ottawa’s 2SLGBTQI+ communities.”

Yes, plural. All have won and all must have communities. And the OCDSB puts up so many Pride flags, there’s barely room for a times table. So what’s going on?

It’s a seismic tremor along an ominous fault line in modern progressivism. The trigger was an Aug. 6 Capital Pride statement saying:

“Part of the growing Islamophobic sentiment we are witnessing is fuelled by the pink-washing of the war in Gaza and racist notions that all Palestinians are homophobic and transphobic. By portraying itself as a protector of the rights of queer and trans people in the Middle East, Israel seeks to draw attention away from its abhorrent human rights abuses against Palestinians. We refuse to be complicit in this violence.”

It’s provocatively, transgressively false. Israel is “portraying” itself as a haven through the devious scheme, typical of the Elders of Zion, of being one. And this “growing Islamophobic sentiment” has nothing to do with Israel respecting human rights and much to do with Hamas and its supporters here and abroad backing genocidal brutality.

The “pink-washing” indictment is hysterically and mendaciously anti-Israel. Capital Pride offers a perfunctory condemnation of Hamas atrocities before going full Henry Ford about Israel’s slaughter, dehumanization, “flagrant violation of international law” and “plausible risk of genocide.” But such demented one-sidedness is driven by a deeper, odious hostility to the people whose historic homeland includes Jerusalem.

The Jewish Federation of Ottawa, after kowtowing to “safe and inclusive,” frankly denounced Capital Pride’s “recent antisemitic statement.” And there’s the nub.

The urge to subvert, to transvalue values, cannot stop with odd hairstyles and lifestyles. It must reach into the depths of morality, and I mean the depths. Thus Capital Pride ranted, “We wish to reaffirm our commitment to solidarity as the core principle guiding our work.” But solidarity with whom? Evidently the whole dang decolonizing family, even the Muslim Brotherhood. How can you not?

Following such dangerous logic part way, the boycotters also babble about inclusion. The Ottawa Hospital said that, “Inclusivity and supporting all communities we serve is very important to us,” while Munter objected that some people “no longer feel safe or welcome.” But surely some shouldn’t feel welcome. The Klan, say. Or Hamas. Such touchy-feely inclusionism promotes unilateral mental disarmament.

Or worse. After the Sun asked Capital Pride about a sermon at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which was pointedly constructed where Islamists deny the Temple of Solomon ever stood, calling homosexuality an “abomination,” demanding a Schwulenrein Palestine including Jerusalem and objecting to men and women attending college together, it issued a new statement, “We reject any attempts to marginalize religious and cultural minority groups from the broader Pride movement.” Even death-to-Jews ones, consistently if ominously.

Wokeness may start as a trendy virtue-signalling wrapping you expect to don and doff like the rebellious calf’s leather jacket in that “Far Side” cartoon. But as Queen’s history Professor Don Akenson said, people have small ideas but “big ideas have people.” And if you’re committed to “subversion,” transvaluing all values and making others uncomfortable, you start with blue hair and a rainbow and end with a burqa and inverted red triangle.

The chickens-for-KFC paradox of queer militants supporting Hamas militants is part of the thrill. And this slippery slope is especially vertiginous if officialdom is sliding, too. If every government email lists pronouns, art galleries duct-tape bananas, the Olympics turn the Last Supper into the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” and politicians trample free speech to fight “hate,” how do you shock the bourgeoisie sufficiently that politicians recoil instead of leaning in for a selfie?

Well, respectable progressives still draw the line at blatant antisemitism. But sufficiently radical immigration policy and generalized postmodernism may erase even that boundary.

So I applaud those boycotting this transgressively transgressive event. But please check your assumptions because they’re not safe or inclusive.

Source: John Robson: The progressive backlash against Capital Pride is something to behold

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