The queer community is no stranger to cultivating joy in the face of oppression. One of the many historic injustices endured by 2SLGBTQI+ individuals is the LGBT purge — a period between the 1950s and 1990s when the Canadian government investigated and fired civil servants based on their sexual or gender identity. (In the 1960s, the RCMP even developed a so-called “fruit machine” that measured pupil dilation in response to homosexual imagery.) Now, a new Ottawa monument that broke ground this May (with an anticipated unveiling next summer) is setting out to make amends — and it’s doing so in shimmery disco style. Indeed, Michelle Douglas, the executive director of the LGBT Purge Fund that is leading the project, describes the monument as “tall, proud and unabashedly queer.”

In June 2018, the government of Canada reached a settlement as part of a nation-wide class action lawsuit brought forward by survivors of the LGBT purge. That settlement included the establishment of a fund dedicated to “reconciliation and memorialization measures” — and one of this fund’s core projects became the development of a national monument to discrimination against 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada.

After issuing a request for qualifications in 2020, the LGBT Purge Fund (working in collaboration with Canadian Heritage and the National Capital Commission) shortlisted five teams to carry their concepts forward to a public survey and juried evaluation. Based on feedback from this poll as well as from other key stakeholders, the jury eventually awarded the project to a Winnipeg-based team led by Public City Architecture in collaboration with Indigenous Elder Albert McLeod and visual artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan.