Thunderhead — Canada's 2SLGBTQI+ National Monument

On the bank of the Ottawa River beside the Portage Bridge, Canada is completing something no other country has built at this scale: a national monument to 2SLGBTQI+ people, born directly from a reckoning with state persecution. Between the 1950s and the 1990s, the Canadian government and military systematically investigated, interrogated and fired thousands of public servants and service members for being gay, lesbian or bisexual — the campaign now known as the LGBT Purge. Survivors won a class-action settlement in 2018, and part of that settlement funds this monument: the state's own money, redirected by its victims into permanent memory. The design, "Thunderhead" — by Two-Spirit Elder Albert McLeod with Public City Architecture and artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan — is a thundercloud of thousands of mirrored tiles bursting through a broken column, set in a landscaped park with a stage intended for both performance and protest, on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory. Visiting: ground broke in April 2024 and inauguration is slated for summer 2026, but as of August 2026 no opening ceremony has been confirmed — check thunderheadmonument.ca before making a special trip. The riverside site is minutes from Parliament Hill.