ABSTRACT
Debates over police participation in Pride parades have become proxies for the long-simmering antagonisms between LGBTQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning and two-spirit) communities and police organizations across the country, as Canadian police organizations have a long-standing history of targeting, surveilling, harassing, accosting and criminalizing people on the basis of sexuality, gender and race. In 2017, LGBTQ2S refugee organizations in Vancouver and Winnipeg refused to walk in their cities’ Pride parades with the police due to their continued engagement in deportations of queer and trans asylum seekers and refugees. Using these cities as a starting point, our chapter aims to contribute to this conversation by examining queer and trans refugees’ experiences with police and being policed post-arrival, and how these experiences have been taken up in the context of police presence at Pride. We then examine similar debates in other cities where LGBTQ2S refugee organizations and allied groups have pushed back against and protested Canadian police organizations’ incorporation into LGBTQ2S communities through Pride parades. In the third section of this chapter, we present a mini case study, consisting of two interviews with LGBTQ2S community members who have been directly involved in debates over police presence in the Edmonton Pride Parade.
