Canada’s Thunderhead Monument is slated to be unveiled in Ottawa on Friday, recognizing the harm caused by the Canadian government’s historic and systemic discrimination against the queer community.

The monument is also a vision that was brought to life by a team of Winnipeggers. Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan are two visual artists who were part of the Winnipeg team that won an international design competition in 2020 to design the monument.

“I would be wrong to say it’s not in our wildest dreams, we didn’t even have the wildest dreams of this happening,” Millan told Global News in their Winnipeg studio.

The monument depicts the strength, hope, and resilience of queer communities in Canada.

“We felt very invested from the beginning, because we’ve been engaged with the struggle for queer rights our whole lives. So we had a lot to say,” Dempsey said.

Through much brainstorming, Millan and Dempsey decided they wanted to depict that through the imagery of a thunderhead cloud over the Prairies.

“Lorri was remembering the feeling of going to a women’s dance or protest march, when really, we were fighting for our lives — our right to be,” Dempsey said. “And (we thought of) that uplift of being with community, and it was, as (Lorri) said, it was like a thundercloud.”

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“That convection, that feeling of being larger than you are,” Millan added.

“We thought of the thunderclouds because it’s very prairie, we’re very in tune with the skies here. But I think everybody kind of relates to that expansive, powerful feeling you can get when involved with a common group of people and experiencing something uplifting, energizing.”

The monument serves as a reminder of the LGBT Purge; a systemic, decades-long campaign by the Canadian government to identify and expel thousands of queer members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP, and members of the federal public service between the 1950s and the 1990s.

A class-action lawsuit was launched in 2016 against the federal government over the LGBT Purge, and a settlement was reached in 2018. In addition to compensating survivors, the LGBT Purge Fund was also established, a non-profit corporation to manage funds of the settlement that were dedicated to reconciliation and memorialization efforts.

The Thunderhead Monument, a first of its kind in the world, is funded by the LGBT Purge Fund.

“It’s the Canadian people recognizing we did harm and that harm rippled out to all of us,” Dempsey said.

“And by acknowledging that and by making a monument, creating a physical thing, it’s irrefutable. This happened, this cannot happen again.”

The duo also worked with Winnipeg knowledge keeper Albert McLeod and Winnipeg-based Public City Architecture.

“Shawna and Lorri brought this idea of the thunderhead to us as a thing that could represent destruction and also hope for the future. So it seemed perfect,” said Liz Wreford, a principal landscape architect with Public City.

Wreford and her team designed the entire area surrounding the monument along the banks of the Ottawa River, which includes a healing circle that is anchored by 13 stones selected by two-spirit community members from every province and territory. The area also includes narrative walls telling the story of the LGBT Purge, a tribute basin and a fruit orchard.

The monument itself stands at about 30 feet.

“It’s a white, monolithic column that is hollowed out on the inside in the shape of a thundercloud all the way up to the top. And the whole thundercloud is clad in disco-ball mirror tiles. So it’s this amazing reflective experience,” Wreford said, adding it’s an emotional space to stand in.

“And that’s the really wonderful part of this monument. It is actually really joyful at the same time as being very serious. And I think that’s the opportunity there is in the project — to find hope.”

The Winnipeg design team will be in Ottawa for the unveiling on Friday.

“I think it will be in part a site of grieving, because many people didn’t survive. Many lives were lost due to the effects of homophobia and transphobia,” Dempsey said.

“But I also think being in that form, that thundercloud, that uplift with all those disco tiles, I think there will be that same sense of power that Lorri talked about. We are together. We are powerful. Look at what we can do together.”