A Summer of Protest
Four organizers from the Prairie provinces reflect on the world they’re fighting for.
By Melissa Fundira
Four organizers from the Prairie provinces reflect on the world they’re fighting for.
By Melissa Fundira
The realities of anti-Blackness on the Prairies became hypervisible in the summer of 2020.
Massive protests catalyzed by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis swept across Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, bringing renewed attention to the many Black and Indigenous victims of police violence in Canada.
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The YYC Justice for All Victims of Police Brutality protest on June 3, 2020, began in Calgary’s Kensington area. The march then moved through downtown toward city hall. (Leah Hennel for CBC News)
Winnipeg Free Press
RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Shawna Dempsey (left) and Lorri Millan, outside their warehouse studio in north Winnipeg, where they have been making ground-breaking art for 30 years and recently received a $30,000 award in recognition of the milestone. Winnipeg One Gay City! proclaims bus-shelter advertisements designed more than 20 years ago by artists Lorri Millan and Shawna Dempsey to promote queer visibility in Winnipeg. Winnipeg One Gay City! proclaims bus-shelter advertisements designed more than 20 years ago by artists Lorri Millan and Shawna Dempsey to promote queer visibility in Winnipeg.
The posters were banned back then. Fast-forward to today: they are being displayed in eight transit shelters as part of University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery s One Queer City exhibit.
Posted: Jan 15, 2021 5:00 AM CT | Last Updated: January 15
A bus shelter advertisement riffing on Winnipeg s slogan, One Great City, but with a LGBTQ-themed twist, never saw the light of day when it was conceived in 1997. It has now been brought to life at the corner of Main Street at Stradbrook Avenue as an art exhibition from the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery. (Jaison Empson/CBC)