This project brought together insightful data gathering with thoughtful editorial design to make an intangible threat unignorable. The resulting book was used to lobby for urgent action against an alarming rising tide of hate towards Canada’s 2SLGBTQI community.

The Pride Unravelled Report was not created to be purchased. It was designed as a lobbying tool for a Canadian 2SLGBTQI advocacy organization. Printed copies were sent to key government officials and a digital version was publicly available on a campaign website.

In 2023, the Human Rights Campaign declared a state of emergency for 2SLGBTQI people in the United States due to a well-documented spike in hate-fuelled incidents and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.

However, across the border in Canada, anti-LGBTQ+ hate levels had largely been ignored. The federal government had not tracked anti-LGBTQ+ hate data in over 2 years – even as anti-drag and anti-trans incidents were becoming increasingly commonplace. This created a dangerous perception that the queer community wasn’t facing a serious threat.

Action wasn’t being taken to combat hate and the general Canadian public wasn’t aware of the scale of the issue. Even certain segments of the queer community didn’t know how much anti-LGBTQ+ hate had grown, because much of the vitriol had been directed towards trans people and drag performers.

Egale Canada is a leading advocacy organization whose mission is to save and improve the lives of LGBTQ+ people through research, education, and awareness. Through their work with many different queer groups across the country, they sensed that anti-LGBTQ+ hate had risen dramatically.

The problem? The federal government had stopped tracking anti-LGBTQ+ hate in 2021. Without any national data, the issue wasn’t getting the attention it needed and people believed the safety of Canada’s queer community wasn’t at risk.

In the lead-up to Pride month, Egale Canada wanted to make the issue of anti-LGBTQ+ hate unignorable and get people talking about what queer Canadians were facing.

With a modest $10,000 budget and some donated media, we needed to start a national conversation. This budget was used to create a full campaign that included online video, TV, out-of-home, print, and a limited-edition run of books.

We created the Pride Unravelled Report – a book that made the scope of anti-LGBTQ+ hate in Canada unignorable.

But first, without government data, we needed another way to quantify the threat. Our solution was to measure anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in spaces where people gather: at in-person protests and on social media.

We tracked every Canadian anti-LGBTQ+ protest using the ‘Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project’. Then, using social media analytics platform Infegy Atlas, we scrubbed Canadian social posts against hateful terms used in conjunction with LGBTQ+ terms.

Our search revealed 6,423 incidents from just the first three months of 2023. The stories behind these incidents became the contents of our book, which Egale Canada used to rally the community and lobby government officials for urgent action.

The Pride Unravelled Report was printed on newsprint stock to emphasize the newsworthiness of our message. The paper stock was also chosen for its fragility, to mirror how fragile progress can be if we don’t protect it. Each book consisted of 5 folded signatures (8 pages per signature) that were kettle-stitched together using threads from a Pride flag. A single blue thread was stitched into the page that showed the first story.

The design also featured close-up images of the unravelled flag and photographs of three LGBTQ+ influencers from the integrated campaign. No matter how offensive the homophobic and transphobic social posts were, they were shown in the book verbatim, but usernames were redacted.

We sent printed books to 35 key Canadian government officials. A PDF version was made available on the campaign website and viewed more than 11,500 times.

The government of Canada acknowledged the threat against the LGBTQ+ community and pledged $1.5 million in emergency funding for Pride event security.

The Pride Unravelled campaign received significant coverage, ultimately garnering over 73 million earned impressions from 110 outlets. The 6,423 anti-LGBTQ+ incidents that we uncovered became a national news story – first published by The Canadian Press and syndicated across the country, including top-tier news outlets like CTV News and The Globe and Mail.

The PDF version of the book was viewed over 11,500 times. Campaign assets were downloaded by individuals, labour unions, schools, research centres, and other advocacy organizations who amplified our message in their own social channels.

A post-campaign survey also showed that 6/10 people who recalled the campaign would donate to Egale Canada. Finally, three months after the launch of the campaign, the Canadian government released its first report on anti-LGBTQ+ hate in over two years.