Canada Had an LGBT Purge. Today, We Have a Monument to Remember It.

Canada Had an LGBT Purge. Today, We Have a Monument to Remember It.

Today, Canada officially opened Thunderhead, a national monument in Ottawa honouring 2SLGBTQI+ communities and, importantly, the survivors of something many Canadians have probably never been taught about:

The LGBT Purge.

I had to stop and ask myself: How did I not know this history?

The LGBT Purge was not one isolated incident. It was a government campaign that began in the 1950s and continued into the 1990s. Canadian authorities systematically investigated people suspected of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, particularly within the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP and the federal public service.

People were surveilled, interrogated, investigated, harassed, demoted and fired. Careers were destroyed. Lives were changed.

The justification came from Cold War fears that LGBTQ people could supposedly be blackmailed into becoming security risks.

Think about that.

The Canadian government was investigating its own citizens because of who they loved or who they were.

And this wasn't ancient history.

The Canadian military's discriminatory policy remained in place until 1992.

One of the people who fought it was Michelle Douglas, a Canadian Armed Forces officer who was investigated and discharged because she was a lesbian. Her legal challenge helped force the military to abandon its discriminatory policy.

The federal government eventually apologized in 2017, and a $145-million class-action settlement followed in 2018.

Now, in 2026, Thunderhead stands in Ottawa.

And I think monuments like this serve a purpose beyond remembering the past.

They make us stop.

They make us ask questions.

They make us uncomfortable.

And sometimes that's exactly what history is supposed to do.

Because Canada wasn't always the country we like to imagine it was.

Rights that seem obvious today were fought for by people who lost jobs, careers, dignity, relationships and sometimes their sense of safety simply for being themselves.

Today, Thunderhead opens as a place to remember those people — but also as a reminder that rights are not self-maintaining.

We have to know our history if we want to recognize when we're heading backward.

I didn't know enough about the LGBT Purge.

Now I do.

And maybe that's part of what this monument is for.

Remember. Learn. Question. And don't let history disappear.

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