In Homonational Times: Nationalist Mythology and LGBT Inclusivity

There has been a particularly auspicious confluence of anniversaries in Montréal in 2017: the 375^th anniversary of the city is being celebrated alongside the 150^th anniversary of Canadian Confederation and the fiftieth anniversary of Expo ’67, the event that introduced Montréal to the world and welcomed people from all corners of the globe. As a part of the year-long celebrations, Montréal played host to the first edition of Fierté Canada Pride, a pan-Canadian pride festival. The event was promoted as “a nation-wide celebration of Canada’s LGBT movement, reaffirming the position of Montréal and of Canada as leaders in LGBT rights.”² 2 -  “Fierté Canada | Canada Pride,” Fierté Montréal, <www.fiertemontrealpride.com/en/>. What is notable about this description is the problematic nature of the linkage among city, nation, and LGBT identity, which elides the contested linguistic and national space of Québec and fails to acknowledge the continual operations of colonialism and homonationalism that such an event inevitably supports. Although this critical reading of Canada Pride should be accompanied by a word of caution — a number of events being held in conjunction with Pride addressed issues³ 3 - The program was not finalized at the time of writing. such as LGBTI⁴ 4 - The inclusion of the initial “I” here refers to “intersex,”, which is often omitted from the abbreviation LGBT. The event to which I refer in this instance, a panel discussion held on May 17, 2017 and co-hosted by Pride Montreal, used the abbreviation LGBTI. Elsewhere in its promotional material, Pride Montreal uses LGBT. refugees and the state of sexual diversity in the Francophonie, and further programming was yet to be released at time of writing — the question of how LGBT identity has become entangled with the idea of Canadian identity bears further exploration.