By: Emma Bainbridge
For many spectators, Ottawa’s annual Capital Pride march took an unexpected turn when Queers 4 Palestine Ottawa (Q4P) and their allies stopped the parade on August 24 to make demands of Capital Pride and Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. This protest was the culmination of a month and a half of negotiations between Q4P and Capital Pride following the removal of the latter’s 2024 statement of solidarity with Palestine.
“It’s [23] months into the genocide. It’s been months of enforced starvation. It’s been months of open declarations of intents of ethnic cleansing and the colonization of Gaza at the Knesset. It’s been months of Trump-sponsored and Trump-supported sanction for Netanyahu to continue a more brutal stage of genocide. It’s really not a time for backtracking,” said Q4P member Masha Davidovic.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has only intensified its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, killing over 62,000 at the time of publishing, as reported by the Middle East Monitor. The UN World Food Programme warns that half a million Gazans are on the brink of starvation as Israel continues to impede the entrance of humanitarian aid. The Israeli Defence Forces recently began an invasion of Gaza City, assassinating many of the journalists documenting its ongoing genocide. At the same time, research by the Palestinian Youth Movement and World Beyond War uncovered Canadian weapons shipments to Israel despite a supposed arms embargo.
Q4P demanded Capital Pride reinstate its 2024 statement in solidarity with Palestine and commit to the guidelines of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement to put non-violent pressure on Israel. The organization also called on Mayor Mark Sutcliffe to apologize for his 2024 boycott of Capital Pride and to pledge support for all oppressed people, including Palestinians.
Why disrupt pride?
In August 2024, Capital Pride committed to recognizing the ongoing genocide in the festival’s opening remarks and “push(ing) for an immediate ceasefire, the return of the hostages, increased access to humanitarian aid, and more accessible pathways for refugees.”
Several public figures and institutions withdrew their support from the parade following this statement, including Mayor Mark Sutcliffe, Loblaws, the federal and provincial Liberal parties, the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), and several hospitals, including CHEO. Throughout this backlash, Capital Pride stood by its statement.
However, on July 15 Q4P announced on Instagram that Capital Pride’s 2024 Palestine solidarity statement had disappeared from its website. After outrage from community members, Capital Pride agreed to meet with Q4P.
After attending several meetings with staff and board members, Q4P says it still doesn’t have answers.
“I think at a broader community level, there was a lot of trust broken,” said Davidovic. “A lot of questions came up about why this had happened, [and] why it had happened without any community consultation.”
In an email to the Ottawa Citizen, Capital Pride Executive Director Callie Metler wrote that even though the statement may be removed, “we do not retract our position.”
“Questions about the lack of transparency and accountability in how Capital Pride works go far beyond the question of Palestine or removal of a statement” – Q4P member Masha Davidovic
Following their initial meeting, Q4P launched an email campaign calling on Capital Pride to reinstate its statement and fulfill the commitments made to the community, particularly integrating BDS practices into its operations. Q4P stated that over 10,000 emails were reportedly sent to the Capital Pride Board and over 65 organizations across Canada endorsed their demands, including CUPE 4600, The Enchanté Network, and Independent Jewish Voices Ottawa.
“The statement basically committed Capital Pride to taking actions of concrete solidarity, particularly by moving forward with implementation and adoption of [BDS],” explained Davidovic.
“This is one of the critical demands from queer organizations in Palestine themselves, which have asked our communities globally to show their solidarity by joining the BDS movement.”
In meetings with Capital Pride, Davidovic stated that Q4P was given assurances that Capital Pride would still follow through on some of its commitments to Palestine solidarity. This included a commitment to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and a BDS community town hall. Despite making these promises behind closed doors, Davidovic said there seemed to be external pressures preventing Capital Pride from making these commitments publicly.
“We’ve engaged with Capital Pride pretty intensively over the last six weeks or so.” Mayor Sutcliffe’s Chief of Staff Mathieu Gravel
“In conversation with the grand marshal, the plan was made to announce the stoppage of the parade at a specified moment together, [and] disseminate throughout the parade the reasons for the stop,” explained Davidovic. Q4P would stop the parade until Capital Pride agreed “to make public and visible in front of the entire community the commitments that had already been made behind closed doors.”
The Role of the Grand Marshal
Officially, Q4P was invited to lead the 2025 parade by Miss Patience Plush, the grand marshal. Plush was aware of the plan to disrupt the parade, and gave Q4P their consent to go through with it.
“For me, having Queers 4 Palestine march with me was my way of letting them know that we are on the same page and I will always stand up for Palestine regardless, and to give them a platform to be able to share those messages,” they said.
On Wellington & O’Connor, Q4P was the largest contingent leading the Capital Pride Parade when they suddenly stopped the march. This was deliberate, and they made their demands clear. Mark Sutcliffe must apologize for lobbying and bullying Capital Pride into retracting a BDS statement in solidarity with Palestine last year. He must apologize or else Q4P would not restart the march. Honouring the roots of pride, Q4P turned pride into a protest. Credit: Mackenzie Po. Edited: SAND Lab
When Plush was first invited to be grand marshal at the Capital Pride march, they said they had mixed emotions. It was an opportunity to use their platform for good, but they were disappointed in Capital Pride for removing the Palestine solidarity statement.
“When that statement was originally made, it was the first time that a lot of queer Palestinian folks and just queer people of similar marginalized communities felt welcome in pride,” they told the Leveller, echoing Davidovic’s assertion that many community members felt betrayed when the statement was removed.
Plush decided they would agree to be grand marshal on the condition that Q4P would walk alongside them. In fact, in their first meeting about the role, Plush recalls that Metler suggested the idea before they could bring it up. However, Capital Pride’s statement following the parade did not acknowledge Metler’s alleged role in inviting Q4P.
Davidovic also recalls that Metler invited Q4P to lead the parade, but presented it as Plush’s suggestion rather than her own. In the statement, Q4P’s participation was presented entirely as Plush’s initiative, leaving the Black trans performer on their own to deal with the ensuing harassment and death threats. Metler did not respond to the Leveller’s request for comment.
“Q4P was supposedly the people who weren’t communicating in good faith, and it was all my mastermind plan … when that’s not what happened at all.” – Miss Patience Plush, Capital Pride grand marshal
According to Plush, they have not been in contact with Capital Pride members since the parade. Q4p has also not resumed any official communications, according to Davidovic.
“I regret nothing. I was going to have Q4P walk with me anyways,” said Plush. “But Capital Pride, who had said they would have my back, very much did not in that statement.”
Over a month of dialogue
Even before the statement was removed, Davidovic said Q4P had been preparing to engage with Capital Pride about following through on their 2024 Palestine solidarity commitments. When it realized the statement had been removed, the first course of action was to reach out to contacts within the organization to find out if it was a technical glitch. Q4P had several meetings with Capital Pride in the run-up to the festival, mainly with Metler and board member David Breault, but members felt they were getting mixed messages about the removal of the statement. Specifically, they wanted to know the exact pressures that led to the removal of the statement.
Following the parade, Breault described discussions with Q4P as challenging, echoing Capital Pride’s post-parade statement describing Q4P as “[refusing] to have a meaningful discussion” and “insistent on misrepresenting our discussions.”
Plush, on the other hand, said communications between themself, Q4P, and Capital Pride were always in good faith. They believe the backlash against them and Q4P reflects a tendency to “[blame] people of colour … Q4P was supposedly the people who weren’t communicating in good faith, and it was all my mastermind plan … when that’s not what happened at all.”
For Davidovic, the main difficulty in negotiations during the parade came from the Mayor, who refused to meet with the protesters, yet also refused to leave the parade. Once it became clear the Mayor wasn’t going to talk, Q4P and Capital Pride agreed that Q4P’s contingent would leave the original parade and march along Bank street. While Q4P members were able to complete their march “on their own terms,” according to Davidovic, the Capital Pride march was subsequently cancelled and statements were released from both Capital Pride and the Mayor.
For Davidovic, Capital Pride’s post-march statement really shattered her trust in the organization.
“It really framed the events of that day in terms of pro-Palestine protesters and the grand marshal, a Black and Indigenous trans person, causing pride to be cancelled and ruined,” she argued. “That’s a framing that unleashed a real storm of hate and harassment.”
Facing external pressures
In an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Breault said Capital Pride faced pressure from several groups, including the Mayor’s office, following its 2024 Palestine solidarity statement. This pressure reportedly involved threats to cut funding.
“Our goal is to have a successful festival and organize a successful Pride parade. We also have to balance out the very real expectations and demands of different community groups, and whether people like it or not, that costs money, and, as board members, we have to make decisions that aren’t going to put Pride in jeopardy,” he explained. Breault did not respond to the Leveller’s request for comment.
The Leveller obtained a July 23 email to the OCDSB, the Ottawa Hospital, and CHEO where Sutcliffe’s Chief of Staff Mathieu Gravel confirmed that “we’ve engaged with Capital Pride pretty intensively over the last six weeks or so.” He added that the Mayor’s Office had been advised that the statement was removed, and was pleased with the decision. They had also conveyed the decision to the Jewish Federation of Ottawa, one of the organizations who spearheaded the boycott in 2024. The JFO reportedly felt that the removal of the statement “was a good start,” and looked forward to continuing dialogue with the Mayor’s Office.
Davidovic said she believes the community deserves to know where the pressure is coming from, and what specific pressure was exerted on Capital Pride. A Freedom of Information request recently published by Q4P shows former CHEO director Alex Munter lobbied the OCDSB and other youth-oriented organizations to pull out of Capital Pride in 2024.
“Bullying one of our community’s largest institutions is simply not acceptable in our capital city,” she said. “We deserve a chance to actually strategize on how to respond to it, as we did last year when the boycotters launched their campaign.”
She added that now 23 months into Israel’s genocide, many community members have experience responding to intimidation and anti-Palestinian racism, and would’ve been willing to support Capital Pride. She also points to Budapest Pride, where tens of thousands of people attended despite a government ban, as an example of how pride can still be successful without government support.
Following the parade disruption, Sutcliffe was quick to voice his disapproval, calling Q4P’s action “deeply regrettable” and refusing to meet with the group during the protest. He later warned Capital Pride not to let this type of event happen again. The Mayor’s Office did not respond to the Leveller’s request for comment.
But for Davidovic, it’s not the place of the Mayor to dictate how the community celebrates pride.
“The mayor is presenting himself as an ally in our space,” she said. “This was a continuation of the pattern that we saw last year of non-accountability and non-engagement. It made it clear that for him, this is a photo op.”
After Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and Capital Pride refused to communicate with Q4P, Parade organizers cancelled the march while halfway through the Bank Street Village. Q4P decided to join the rest of the parade participants in the Village, but were blocked for three blocks by Ottawa Police. Community members peacefully removed the barricades blocking Q4P and held hands at intersections to block traffic to allow the largest pride contingent to safely enter the Village. Along the way, Q4P and activists were met with threats of violence from the police. Capital Pride has lost its roots in looking for mediation from the same forces that brutalized them decades ago. Credit: Mackenzie Po. Edited: SAND Lab
She said this reflects a broader issue within the LGBTQ+ community, where mainstream pride organizations prioritize the interests of non-LGBTQ+ institutions or public figures over those of the community.
“Last year, with all those institutions pulling out, the message sent to our community is that their allyship is conditional, and that allyship isn’t really worth very much at all, especially at a critical time for our communities, with the threat of rising anti-trans and anti-queer hate in the US and globally,” said Davidovic.
Putting the Community Back in Pride
As Israel intensifies its genocide of Palestinians, many pride festivals around the world are expressing solidarity with Palestine by taking actions such as adopting the BDS guidelines. In Canada, pride events in St John’s, Halifax, and Fredericton committed to adopting the BDS guidelines in 2024. More radical, pro-Palestinian alternative pride events have also emerged to counter mainstream, corporate festivals, such as Wild Pride in Montreal, Pride Against Apartheid in Toronto, and the Dyke March in Ottawa. Around the world, queer people have been consistently organizing in solidarity with Palestine, despite pro-Israel “pinkwashing” narratives presenting Palestinians as inherently homophobic and transphobic and erasing the existence of queer Palestinians.
“One of the main reasons why I love our community so much is we always say the statement: “all of us or none of us”,” said Plush. “Genocides in Palestine, Sudan, Congo … are all very important to a lot of queer folks because we honestly want to show up for other marginalized communities.” They also point out that many queer people are directly affected by these genocides.
Pride began as a protest in direct response to police raiding a New York gay bar, Stonewall Inn, in 1969. Prior to Capital Pride, early Ottawa LGBTQ activities included the We Demand Rally in 1971, as well as opposition to the Canadian government’s homophobic policies throughout the 1980’s. By disrupting 2025’s Capital Pride, Q4P and Plush wanted to restore the celebration to its radical roots.
“I think that a lot of people just associate these big corporate things with pride,” Plush said. “[2025] was probably one of my favorite prides because we were actually in community with each other.”
Despite the harassment following the 2025 march, both Plush and Davidovic emphasized the support they’ve received from the queer community, as well as allies in labour and Palestinian solidarity movements. Once the action was broadcast on social media, people from the aforementioned communities flocked in to support, and helped to block Bank street so that Q4P could continue their parade. Although the march was a protest, the organizers wanted it to be joyful.
“Even though a lot of us were feeling so many emotions, we were dancing, we were singing, we were laughing, we were just being with each other in community,” said Plush. “It really shows that the pride we all want is the actual community part of it.”
Davidovic also points to Capital Pride 2024 as an example of what pride should be.
“What we actually saw last year, in spite of that pressure and that boycott announced by all these institutions that refused to come, and despite all the rhetoric that this was an unsafe pride, was the biggest and best attended pride in the history of Ottawa.”
However, she thinks the 2025 parade debacle raises important questions about transparency in pride organizations.
“Questions about the lack of transparency and accountability in how Capital Pride works go far beyond the question of Palestine or removal of a statement,” she said. “A lot of the decisions around things like who funds our pride are not being made with the community.”
She believes these conversations will happen at a broader community level, but admitted it’s hard for her to imagine meaningful change under the current executive team.
Plush agrees that Capital Pride needs to focus on restoring trust with the community.
“I hope that they take this time to rebuild all of the things that they’ve broken and reach out to the people that they’ve hurt and try to find a way, again, to work together in building community.”
