Thunderhead: Canada’s
2SLGBTQI+ National Monument
Public City’s Role
Landscape Architecture, Architecture, Indigenous Design Collaborator
Team
Shawna Dempsey, Lorri Millan, Albert McLeod, Wolfrom Engineering, ARUP
Client
National Capital Commission and LGBT Purge Fund
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The Thunderhead Monument is situated at a critical moment in Canada's path toward justice. This international competition-winning design creates new ground for recognition of 2SLGBTQI+ communities and those lives forever affected by the LGBT Purge, a dark moment about relentless persecution in Canadian history. A testament to resilience and activism, the monument transforms site into symbol through its engagement with landscape and memory. The form speaks to both the weight of history and lightness of hope, the gravity of pain, and the levity of celebration. Inside the monument, hundreds of discoballs are frozen in a thunderous dance of memory and declaration, rage, and love. The space is for gathering and reflecting together and to continue an all too fragile dialogue about inclusion in what has become again an all too uncomfortable time.
