Peterborough is a small city about an hour's drive northeast of us. We it quite well as we have family and friends there. It's a typical Southern Ontario town, with a downtown full of older buildings and a river running through it. It's a pretty place, but there is a lof of ugliness festering below the surface.
Back in 2020 and 2021 there were extensive protests there against the pandemic lockdowns, public health measures like vaccination, and especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I remember driving by a large encampment of protestors outside Peterbororgh's city hall. I was there a couple of months ago and the protestors are still out, though somewhat reduced in number.
Sadly, as this article from the Peterborough Examiner shows, they've found a new target, LGBQ and trans people.
Having slurs yelled at you from a truck with “F--k Trudeau” stickers on it is something Melissa Higgs has had to face more often lately.
But unfortunately it’s not just her. Other members of the transgender community are dealing with the same thing every day, she says.
It’s a symptom of the rise of “American-style, alt-right transphobic hate,” she explained, as Peterborough and other places are dealing with an increasing number of incidents against trans people.
“We’ve seen that in a big way at the drag story time events put on at the library; they’ve honestly been getting more and more violent and vicious on the bigotry side … at the most recent one, there was someone with straight-up Nazi imagery,” she said.
Canadians sometimes have a smug attitude when we see news about the alt-right in the United States. "It can't happen here. We're better than that." Well, a lot of us aren't and it is happening here.
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