What to know
- Canadian Transgender activists Fae Johnstone and Victoria Bucholtz launched the Trans Canada Tour through their advocacy organization, Queer Momentum.
- The campaign includes more than 60 events across the country, including town halls and public Q&A sessions.
- Johnstone says the goal is to reduce stigma by creating opportunities for open dialogue between Trans people and the broader public.
- The tour comes amid growing concerns about anti-Trans rhetoric and legislation, including recent policy changes in Alberta.
- Johnstone hopes the campaign will help rebuild grassroots organizing efforts and remind young 2SLGBTQIA+ people that their community has overcome backlash before.
At a time of increasing precarity for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, including heightened attacks on our Transgender and Gender Diverse siblings, one duo is taking their show on the road to help decrease stigma through education.
Queer Momentum (QM) was founded in 2024 by Canadian Trans activist Fae Johnstone, who runs the organization alongside fellow advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ communities Victoria Bucholtz, AKA Karla Marx. While the duo are both well known for championing the rights of Queer Canadians through protests, advocacy campaigns and educational initiatives, Johnstone says QM was created to help rebuild the 2SLGBTQ+ rights movement and respond to the growing wave of anti-Trans and anti-Queer hate across Canada.
“We have so many incredible activists on the local level, but at this moment we need to come together, because there are conservative politicians and far-right groups that want to divide us and strip our rights away,” Johnstone told Queer & Now. “We need to unite, we need to build our power and bring that power to protect those rights.”
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Lovingly called the Ask a Trans Person Anything, or the Trans Canada Tour, QM’s latest campaign sees Johnstone and Bucholtz hit the road to put on more than 60 different events across the country, with the goal of “changing hearts and minds.”
“The first piece is about bringing the community together through drag shows, town halls, just like they did in the 70s and 80s,” Johnstone explained. “We need to get together to plan, to strategize, to think about how we organize to win.”
The second component sees the duo host panel-style events where heterosexual and cisgender people are welcome to pose questions to the Queer Momentum duo.
Trans Canada Tour: Combatting dangerous misconceptions
Aiming to address any confusion for cisgender and heterosexual people, caused by ongoing public debates surrounding Queer rights, Johnstone explained that she hopes open dialogue can help combat this issue.
“For them, it’s often two sides screaming at each other, and we want to turn the temperature down. We want to have some real conversations,” she explained.
“We want to answer some questions. Because we believe in our ideas, [and] we believe that Canadians, if they hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, if they’re in dialogue with us, they’ll agree with us more than they think they will.”
She shared that two of the most common misconceptions she hears about the Trans communities are that they are dangerous, or that they are trying to take away other people’s rights. When in reality, equality is the goal.
“Trans people, just like women, just like racialized communities, just like newcomers, all of us come from legacies of exclusion,” she explained. “What we want people to understand is that Trans folks want what their neighbours want: to be free, to be respected, to be treated with dignity, and able to live lives in peace.”
She says the goal is to help people understand that this isn’t a theoretical debate; this is about human lives and supporting your neighbours.
Words of advice for young Queer people
Johnstone, who has been organizing for the better part of a decade, also shared some words of advice for 2SLGBTQ+ young people who may be scared by the current political climate: We’re going to be OK.
“Our community has overcome so much, and we’re in a period of backlash, but as a 30-year-old Trans woman, I can’t imagine what it was like for those who came before me,” she shared. “Those who came of age 20 years ago in a world that was more stigmatizing and ignorant around Trans experiences.”
So while this is difficult, we’ve been here before.
“So this backlash is hard, and it hurts, but I believe in our community, I believe in Canadians too. Canadians are kind and caring people, and we’re going to get through this backlash and build a freer world through our advocacy.”
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While Bucholtz was unable to join us for the interview, Johnstone shared her tour partner’s message: The rest of Canada has to get ready.
“So if you’re a Queer or Trans person, if you’re an ally, we do want you to show up at these tour stops, because this is part of how we rebuild the movement.”
Johnstone pointed to Alberta as a warning sign of how quickly hard-won rights can come under threat. In recent years, the province has introduced policies restricting access to gender-affirming care for some Transgender youth, limiting participation in school sports, and requiring parental consent for certain name and pronoun changes in schools.
For many advocates, these measures represent a broader trend of growing anti-Trans sentiment in North American politics and underscore the urgency of organizing, educating and mobilizing communities before similar policies spread elsewhere in the country.
“We’ve got to lean in, and it’s going to take a village, and if I know anything about community, it’s that when we rally, we have more power than anybody can imagine. So we’re excited to see people, and we need to stop what’s happening in Alberta from spreading anywhere else in this country.”
