Opinion
Ontario mayor refuses to cave in to demands after town rejected ‘pride’ flag
Mayor Harold McQuaker of Emo, Ontario
From LifeSiteNews
Emo, Ontario mayor Harold McQuaker said he will ‘absolutely not’ pay a fine or attend re-education classes, emphasizing that ‘I will not be extorted.’
Last month, the Ontario Human Rights Commission ordered the township of Emo to pay the LGBT activist group Borderland Pride $10,000 for voting in 2020 not to fly a “Pride” flag. Mayor Harold McQuaker was ordered to personally pay $5,000 — and take a re-education course titled “Human Rights 101” to boot. We covered both the original story as well as a follow-up, detailing Borderland Pride’s threats and demands.
There is a new development in the case: Mayor Harold McQuaker is flatly refusing to do what is being demanded of him. Asked by the Toronto Sun if he will pay the fine or attending re-education classes, the 77-year-old McQuaker was blunt. “Absolutely not,” he replied. “I will not be extorted.” He also stated that he will not host Drag Queen Story Hour at the local library, either — one of the demands laid out in an open letter published by Borderland Pride.
Emo Township is a small town of just over 1,200 people located 380 kilometers west of Thunder Bay. The township now has to decide whether to pay the LGBT activist group as demanded by the Ontario Human Rights Commission or refuse to do so. McQuaker has made up his mind. “I utterly refuse to pay the $5,000 because that’s extortion,” he stated. “I have a lot of respect for our four councillors. We have a special meeting of council, and they will decide that and what to do next, either pay the fine or appeal it.”
McQuaker grew up in the area and owned a construction company there for 50 years, and he cannot be pushed around easily. “I will not pay the $5,000 I have been fined and will not take the training,” he emphasized to the Sun. “The council will decide on the fine levied to it. I did not do anything wrong … if anybody needs training it’s the LGBTQ2+ to quit pushing their weight around and making demand that people can’t live with.”
Ironically, the Emo town hall doesn’t even have a flagpole — but that didn’t matter to Borderland Pride, which has, in addition to other demands, stated that it expects a written apology as well as “diversity and inclusion training for council, and a commitment to adopt Pride proclamations in the future without stripping out their 2SLGBTQIA+-affirming language.” Borderland Pride insisted that despite the lack of flagpole the LGBT flag could have been displayed somewhere else, “such as in a window or on a counter in the municipal office.”
McQuaker emphasized that he “doesn’t hate anyone” and that he will not tolerate the accusations being leveled at him by Borderland Pride. “I am a husband to my wife for 51 years, father of two, a grandfather of seven and a great grandfather of one,” he said. “I consider myself a very reasonable person and a good leader for our community and I would have a lot of support if there was an election.”
In response, Doug Judson of Borderland Pride suggested that the mayor should be happy to learn from the LGBT group because his role:
(A)ctually requires that the mayor ‘participate in and foster activities that enhance the economic, social and environmental well-being of the municipality and its residents.’ Part of showing this kind of community leadership is to set the tone for civil debate and to demonstrate a willingness to learn and adapt one’s perspective on issues that, for various reasons, they may have more limited understanding of. It seems obvious enough that the mayor does not have many ties to the queer community. We hope that the training that was ordered by the tribunal will assist him in his leadership role moving forward.
In short, Judson and his LGBT activist buddies hope that forcing the 77-year-old mayor of a small town to take re-education classes will create “ties to the queer community” and that he will be a good boy from now on and do what they demand the first time. Harold McQuaker isn’t having any of it — and we need more like him. Godspeed to the mayor — I hope that the council follows suit.
Adin Hill. Jordan Binnington. Logan Thompson. Sam Montembeault. Four goalies considered for Canada’s Olympic mens hockey roster.
One of these players is not like the others. In fact, one of them is unlike anyone else on Canada’s team announced last week. Sam Montembault— who was on the Four Nations roster last February— would have been the only French Canadian player on the roster. The absence of Quebec players marks the first time no Quebeckers made a Canadian Olympic team. (They’ve averaged four players per Olympics post 1998.)
It’s no better at the junior level as only Caleb Desnoyers made Canada’s roster for the 2026 World Junior championships in Minnesota. Who knows if a couple of French players might have saved them from a third-straight ignominious exit at the WJC.
How is it that the province that has produced so many stars is now reduced to no Quebec players representing the country? Montreal author Brendan Kelly called the shutout an “indictment of Hockey Quebec… Why is it that the province is not producing NHL stars any more? Quebec is not producing the goalies like it used to?”
What is surprising is how little competition there is in Quebec for that Olympic berth these days. Hockey is blood and bone (sang et os) in Quebec. Always has been going back to the days of Aurel Joliat. It was built on the legacies of Rocket Richard, Jean Beliveau, Mario Lemieux and Vincent Lecavalier.
On defence there was Denis Potvin, Serge Savard, Jacques Laperriere and Guy Lapointe. There have been great goalies such as Jacques Plante, Bernie Parent and Patrick Roy. Now?
It’s probably safe to say the best French Canadians in the NHL at the moment are Jonathan Marchessault and Pierre-Luc Dubois. But they were hardly favourites to play in Turin. Ditto Calgary’s Jonathan Huberdeau, who once scored 115 points in 2022-23. Last February’s Four Nations Canadian roster had the single Quebec product— and that was goalie Montembeault.
It’s not like the QMJHL doesn’t produce players. Three star Maritimers on the Olympic squad— Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon and Brad Marchand— are products of the Quebec League. Since the NHL began allowing teams to send players to Olympic rosters, Canada has averaged four Quebec-born players per squad and each year featured at least one goalie from the province.
And it’s not like there are no Quebec players in the league. Last year, 6.1 percent of the NHL was Quebec-born players. That was the second-most of any region behind only Ontario (17.6 percent), and it’s up from the 5.3 percent from last season. And yet, you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the overall stats.
To find the root of the drought you can look at the draft where only one French Canadian player— Alex Lafreniere— has been taken No. 1 overall since Marc-Andre Fleury was taken in 2003. (No one seriously considered Lafreniere for Team Canada.) In 2025 three QMJHL players went first round. In 2024 none. In 2023 none. In 2022, two. In 2021 four (one non Quebecker). You get the idea.
Now look back a decade or longer. Only one French Canadian other that Dubois went in the first round in 2016. Just one French Canadian went in the 2017 first round, two in 2015, none in 2014, Drouin and three others in 2013, none in 2012, Huberdeau in 2011 and none in 2010.
As Boston star Michel Bergeron showed, you don’t have to be a first rounder to become a star. It’s also true that prospects are emerging from everywhere in the world, and so French Canadians— who used to have better odds— are having to compete in a far bigger talent pool. But that hasn’t kept the OHL from turning out a motherlode of young stars.
The culture of hockey in Quebec is in turmoil. Former Montreal goalie Jocelyn Thibault resigned as head of Hockey Quebec, citing a “resistance to change” among the regional associations.
There are many other factors in play. Access to elite training, cost, warmer winters eliminating outdoor rinks, cultural preferences for other sports— all play some part. But as we said in 2019, “the days when Canadiens GM Sam Pollock getting the top two French Canadians as protected draftees was considered a steal are long gone.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Immigrants are beginning to question the sacrifices they made to come to Canada, signalling deeper problems facing the country
Whenever I meet someone who immigrated to Canada from a warm place, I am always remarkably impressed. The choice to deliberately leave a pleasant, warm homeland to endure our cold winters says a lot. Overall, living in Canada is apparently better, and that should make us grateful. But what should concern us is how that upside is becoming less apparent all the time.
I recall almost a decade ago sharing a meal with Filipinos. One showed me a picture of the oceanside home he left behind where he could successfully catch fish every day without leaving home. Why would he ever leave a place like that? The answer was jobs.
It’s remarkable how Filipinos can do any job with a smile and, regardless of how little it might pay, send money to their family in their country of origin. I once told a young Filipino working at a McDonald’s to keep the change from my purchase because he was sending money back to his family. He smiled with a bit of surprise that a stranger like me would know that. He also gave me back my change, just to stay honest.
Older stock Canadians used to be like Filipinos, characterized by faith, family, hard work and gratitude. I’m afraid all four aspects have eroded in mainstream Canadian culture in recent decades, especially in the past 10 years.
At my gym two years ago, I met a Sikh named Jagjeet Singh and asked him how he liked Canada. He said when he arrived in 2019, the country was paradise on earth. Now, he said, it was turning into a s___hole. My memory fails on some of his exact observations. I only recall his disdain for the Trudeau government and the NDP leader whose name sounded a lot like his own.
While immigration to Canada remains robust, some newcomers are souring on Canada for very good reasons. This is worthy of our attention.
Maclean’s has featured several stories about immigrant struggles over the past two years, including Eleanor Zhang’s. The international student started her studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax in 2016. Back then, rent was $700 a month, people were friendly, and life was good.
By 2021, she felt things had turned for the worse. The city’s population had grown by 9.1 per cent in five years. Congested traffic left drivers angry. Her friends shared stories of their cars being broken into and items stolen. Zhang’s rent was $1,670 per month, and her grocery bills had skyrocketed. For the first time, she saw people living in the park.
Zhang wanted to start her own gift shop, but commercial spaces were so expensive that she saw little room for profit. She had fallen in love with Canada but also fell out of it. Her pursuit of a prosperous life took her back to Beijing.
Canada used to be a patriotic country with robust free speech, a respectable military, strong family and moral values, an abundance of private sector jobs and quality education and health care. Today, not so much.
Some Canadians are aware of this decline and want a new direction, while others remain aloof, ignorant and insulated from the country’s erosion. Our last election offered fresh proof of the deep generational, occupational and regional divides in Canada.
The problem is, we have to build a country together. It is hard for a people so divided against itself to stand.
Like the story of Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, this holiday season is a good time to reflect on our past, present and future. We’re not what we were, and we could get worse, but we can also get better. As Scrooge found out, it’s not too late to turn things around and lay hold of the best Canada possible.
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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