Photo: Thunderhead, Canada’s first-ever 2SLGBTQI+ National Monument. © Tracey Lynne Towedo
Canada’s capital is making history once again, this time by bringing the past to light. Along the banks of the Ottawa River, a new national monument is asking Canadians to remember a history that, for decades, many were encouraged to forget.
Thunderhead, Canada’s first national monument dedicated to 2SLGBTQI+ communities, is a permanent place to recognize generations of discrimination during the LGBT Purge, while honouring the resilience, resistance, and progress that followed.
Between the 1950s and the mid-1990s, more than 9,000 2SLGBTQI+ members of the Canadian Armed Forces, RCMP, and federal public service were systematically investigated, harassed, and fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Careers and relationships were destroyed, and lives were profoundly altered, all because of a government campaign rooted in discrimination. It’s a dark part of Canada’s history, but one that we must remember. Thunderhead ensures that it has a visible place in Canada’s national landscape.
Developed by the LGBT Purge Fund in collaboration with Canadian Heritage and the National Capital Commission, the monument was funded through proceeds from the landmark 2018 class action settlement between LGBT Purge survivors and the Government of Canada.
“For survivors, this monument is both deeply personal and profoundly public,” said Martine Roy, Co-Chair of the LGBT Purge Fund’s Board of Directors. “It helps ensure that what happened is not forgotten, that those who suffered are recognized, and that younger generations understand this history and why vigilance still matters.”
A Place Built With Meaning
Located on the unceded and traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation along the Kichi Sibi, or Ottawa River, nearly every element of Thunderhead is symbolic.
Designed by Public City Architecture with Elder Albert McLeod and artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, the monument centres on a soaring, fractured column shaped like a thunderhead cloud. In Anishinaabe teachings, thunderclouds are home to the Thunderers, whose storms renew the land and help make things right. Thousands of mirrored tiles line the central column, reflecting the diversity of identities and individual lives within 2SLGBTQI+ communities, and allowing visitors themselves to become part of the monument.
The surrounding landscape is equally symbolic. A healing circle contains 13 stones selected by Two-Spirit and 2SLGBTQI+ Indigenous people from every province and territory. A medicinal garden and fruit orchard bring living elements to the site, with the orchard reclaiming language once weaponized against community members. A tribute circle, centred around a sugar maple, honours those who served Canada.
The monument also acknowledges the colonial roots of homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia and the distinct experiences of Two-Spirit and Indigenous people. Thousands of 2SLGBTQI+ community members contributed input to Thunderhead’s development, helping to create a space intended not simply to be viewed but to be used for education and ceremony, protest and celebration, grief and joy.
“Thunderhead is not only a monument to past injustice,” said LGBT Purge Fund Co-Chair Todd Ross. “It is also a monument to resilience, resistance, and hope.”
Storms can be destructive, but they can also nourish the earth and make renewal possible. For those whose experiences it commemorated, the occasion represented something once difficult to imagine: a history that institutions had worked to erase was now permanently recognized in the nation’s capital. For younger generations, it offers an opportunity to understand how recent this history is, and why progress cannot be taken for granted.
“Thunderhead stands as a permanent place for truth, learning, reflection, and community,” said Michelle Douglas, Executive Director of the LGBT Purge Fund. “It honours those whose lives were harmed by discrimination, while also creating space for future generations to gather, to remember, and to keep pushing for a more just and inclusive Canada.”
