Beyond Monuments and Apologies Symposium
Wednesday, November 4, 2026 from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm
- Hybrid event
- 2017, Dunton Tower, Carleton University
- 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
- Zoom meeting link
On November 28, 2017, the Canadian state issued its ‘apology’ to 2SLGBT+ communities for injustices done to us. It focused on the national security purge campaigns against thousands of queer, trans and Two Spirit in the public service and the military. On August 21, the LGBT Purge Fund will be unveiling the Thunderhead Monument as a response to the purge campaign. This national monument, while including Indigenous representation, does not uphold our collective resistance against police and state brutality and surveillance perpetrated against us.
It is now time to evaluate the impact of the apology. We are witnessing and directly experiencing a rising tide of right-wing opposition to trans people and queer young people. Two spirit people continue to face racism and colonization. Black and racialized trans and queer people continue to face racism and police violence. Apologies to Indigenous, Chinese, and Japanese communities do not reconcile the ongoing violence of settler nationalism and colonialism. Similarly, the apology for the anti-queer purge has not eradicated the continuing oppression and violence people still face.
Beyond Monuments and Apologies will evaluate memorialization *what is remembered? and the limitations of apologies as we move toward freedom from oppression and racism.
The symposium is a one-day event featuring invited speakers from across Turtle Island, organized by Dr. Patrizia Gentile with the support of Dr. Gary Kinsman (co-authors of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, UBC Press, 2010).
For questions, please contact patriziagentile@cunet.carleton.ca.
Wheelchair accessible and light refreshments will be provided.
Program:
9:00am: Welcome and Land Acknowledgements
9:15 to 10:30am: On Forgetting and the Security State
Moderator: Tonya Davidson
- Gary Kinsman, “Beyond Apologies and Monuments: Resisting the Social Organization of Forgetting” [in person]
- Patrizia Gentile, “Restricted Access Revisited: Anti-queer security documents post-apology” [in person]
- Jeff Monaghan and Andy Cosby, “Apologies within expansion: The affective politics of the police countermovement” [in person]
- Beverly Bains, “The Politics of Refusal: Black Radical and Queer Feminism in the 80’s – 90’s in Toronto” [online]
11:00am to 12:15pm: The Politics of Apologies
Moderator: Alexandra Arraiz Matute
- Sunera Thobani, “What Do Apologies Apologize For? Rearrangements of State Violence” [online]
- Amy Fung, “Rich the hand which holds the stone of memory: Revisiting the Public History of the Chinese Railroad Memorial in Toronto and Ottawa” [in person]
- Vanessa Fells, “Beyond Recognition: Turning Acknowledgement into Action” [online]
- Tom Hooper, “Queer Apologies Inaction” [in person]
12:30 to 1:30: Lunch Break
1:30 to 2:45pm: ‘Memorializing’ the Margins
Moderator: Stacy Douglas
- Ryan Conrad, “Queer erasure and the militarization of [2S]LGBTQ+ memorials in Canada and the UK” [in person]
- Leon Laidlaw & River Rossi, “The 2SLGBTQI+ National Monument and Apologies from Above: Gender Justice and Settler Accountability” [LL online & RR in person]
- Hadley Howes, “Lessons from a Tin Can – Bandstands, Blowjobs, and Other Acts (Up) Against the Imperial Archive” [online]
3:00 to 4:30pm: Resistance and Protest
Moderator: Ryan Conrad
- David Austin, “Surveillance, Abolition, and Solidarity: Rosie Douglas, Internationalism and What Could Have Been” [online]
- A.J. Withers, “Trans Kids as Pawns: Mapping the Parental Rights Movement’s Interconnectedness with White Nationalism, Christian Nationalism and Globalist Conspiracism” [in person]
- Alexa DeGagne, “The Carceral Logics of Edmonton’s Pride Parade” [in person]
- Aliqa Illauq, “Inuuqatigitiarniq (co-existing in a respectful and caring way)” [online]