On the evening of Nov. 19, Moose Jaw Pride opened the doors of the Crescent Park Event Centre for a memorial service in honour of Transgender Day of Remembrance.
The special service, organized with the help of the Moose Jaw chapter of Journey to Hope, takes place each year to honour and remember all transgender people lost to anti-transgender violence.
Across the world, LGBTQ+ organizations hold similar services to commemorate Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20, which is the culmination of Transgender Awareness Week from Nov. 13-19.
During the service, members of Moose Jaw Pride read the 330 names of murdered transgender people across the world — a list that doesn’t capture the true number of people who are victims of transphobia and violence, as many go unrecorded.
“This year, I suppose I am glad to tell you that none of. . . this year’s dead are Canadian, as far as we know,” said Cole Ramsey, vice-chair at Moose Jaw Pride, during the service. “But that doesn’t mean that no one was assaulted, or denied work or housing, or no one was abused at home or at work or at school.”
The names read each year are collected by the Trans Murder Monitoring project, an ongoing initiative that collects the names and stories of transgender murder victims.
Holding a vigil service each year is a way to recognize the community’s loss, and to remind the community that there is still a need to continue fighting for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ individuals.
“Transgender Day of Remembrance is a very unfortunate day for us to have to have, and it's by no means the sum total of the work we do,” said Ramsey. “We need as much help as we can get in educating and bringing people together and helping to end transphobia where we find it in our communities, so that next year we'll have fewer names to read.”
The transgender community faces statistically higher rates of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and violence. Around ⅔ of transgender people experience depression or other mental illness, which contributes to being two to four times more likely to attempt suicide than other demographics.
Ramsey was honoured and grateful for how many community members attended the service, as was Taylor Carlson, the executive director of Moose Jaw Pride.
“I'm very proud of this community, for coming to this event and recognizing that there are intersectional challenges that relate to race, colour, poverty, and gender identity and sexual orientation,” said Carlson. “We're putting our hand up and we're saying it's okay, you belong here.”
