Adam Zivo: Why won't Pride Toronto stand up for Canadian Jews?

The festival had always responded warmly to my offers to create exhibits to highlight communities facing discrimination. Until this year.

The author in front of one of his past art murals at Pride Toronto.

By: Adam Zivo

For three years, I produced portable murals for Pride Toronto that spotlighted the struggles of various international LGBTQ communities. These projects were always glowingly received by the organization, yet, when I pitched the idea of foregrounding Jewish Canadians this year, I was abruptly frozen out of the festival on seemingly specious grounds.

This experience has led me to worry that Pride Toronto may be institutionally anti-Semitic.

My working relationship with the festival began in early 2020, when its then-director of operations, Bobby MacPhearson, asked if I would be interested in collaborating on a large-scale art project. At the time, I was the founder and director of an LGBTQ advocacy campaign, “LoveisLoveisLove,” which had produced several successful photography-based installations in Ontario (including 1,000 square feet of banners inside Toronto City Hall, and a “Big Gay Bus” that operated as a mobile educational resource).

The collaboration fell through due to the pandemic, but I ended up befriending MacPhearson. So, when Russia invaded Ukraine two years later, I asked if Pride Toronto would be interested in a portable fabric mural — 20 feet wide by eight feet tall, stretched over a plastic frame — spotlighting queer Ukrainian voices.

MacPhearson liked the idea and forwarded it to the programming manager and executive director, who approved it.

The 2022 Ukrainian mural was a success and stood out in a street festival that was lacking in visual art. It was also a bargain for Pride Toronto: I charged no fee for my work, and the material costs were only around $2,800. The festival ultimately provided $2,000, and I found a private donor to plug the shortfall.

The next spring, while visiting my family in Serbia (a beautiful but homophobic country), I called MacPhearson again, and we agreed to do another fabric mural, this time focusing on queer Serbian experiences. Pride Toronto provided $2,850 and I once again volunteered my time. This mural, too, was a success, and seemed to resonate with Balkan festivalgoers.

We produced a third mural in 2024, this time spotlighting Taiwan, the first Asian country to legalize same sex marriage. Pride Toronto chipped in around $1,500, with the Taiwanese embassy covering the rest of the budget. Again, I worked for free. (See above for an image of this display.)

Each year, the response from Pride Toronto was glowing. The festival’s visual arts and event coordinator, Derek Kang, who acted as my main contact, referred to these murals as “wonderful” and “outstanding” during our email exchanges.

But this year I wanted to focus on a very pressing domestic issue: the explosion of anti-Semitism in Canada, which has been particularly acute in LGBTQ spaces. So I sent a pitch to Pride Toronto in January, and, anticipating resistance, emphasized that, unlike previous years, this mural would not require a single dime from them and would be entirely funded through community donations.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, the past year has seen a considerable spike in anti-Semitism — not only do many LGBTQ Jews feel unsafe and disillusioned, they believe that they have been abandoned by large swathes of the queer community. I’d like to use this project to spotlight their lived experiences and concerns,” I wrote, avoiding any references to Zionism and Israel.

I received an automated email from MacPhearson indicating that they had left the organization the previous month — which seemed fine, as multiple other staffers had approved of the past murals.

In an emailed response later that month, Kang claimed that Pride Toronto could not accept my Jewish-focused mural because of “limited exhibition space.” When I pressed for more details, he wrote that I had not submitted an application to the festival’s open call for artist submissions, the deadline of which had passed a few weeks earlier, and that the festival was “striving to provide opportunities for new artists” who had not yet exhibited with them.

This seemed like nonsense. I pointed out that Pride Toronto had never before asked me to use the open application process and that both the Ukrainian and Serbian murals had been pitched in March of their respective years, far after normal deadlines, with no trouble.

In previous years, there had always been empty room on the street. “It seems unthinkable that there is no physical space for this kind of installation anywhere within the festival,” I wrote, noting that it was odd that Pride Toronto had been happy to invest thousands of dollars into murals that focused on Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan, but had no appetite for a fully externally-funded mural focusing on anti-Semitism and Canadian Jews.

Kang replied that, although the previous murals had “consistently garnered positive attention and praise,” concerns had been raised that my collaborations with Pride Toronto might be perceived as “a unique privilege granted exclusively” to me. He wrote that our previous projects, which occurred outside the normal artist selection process, “were only possible due to unique circumstances and availability at the time,” and that changes in the festival layout had made it impossible to guarantee space for additional installations.

It was a slap in the face.

According to Pride Toronto’s 2024 financial statements, the festival paid out $1.1 million for artists and their associated fees that year. Seemingly every participating artist had been compensated for their labour except me, and the material costs of my projects amounted to only approximately 0.13 per cent of the festival’s overall artist budget. It was disappointing to see my volunteerism, and the smooth workflows that had arisen from my “impactful and well-received” work, abruptly recast in a dark light after I sought to take a stand for Canada’s Jews.

Pride Toronto eventually allowed me to submit a post-deadline proposal through the regular open call. So I did. It was rejected. When the festival eventually announced the eight artists it had selected for 2025, it turned out that five of them had exhibited the previous year, contradicting the claim that my Jewish-centred mural could not be supported due to the prioritization of fresh talent.

I was not in Canada for Pride Toronto this year, but asked a friend to check the street for empty space. He sent me a video confirming that the spot my murals had once occupied had been left vacant. Just an empty fence and bare pavement. Perhaps, for some organizations, that is preferable to exhibiting public art that acknowledges Jewish Canadians.

I emailed Pride Toronto a list of questions this summer: had they been involved in any projects over the past two years that specifically address anti-Semitism? Why does Pride Toronto publish content about the struggles of Asian, Black, Latino, South Asian and Indigenous communities, but not Jewish ones? Had concerns about my “unique privilege” been documented in writing anywhere?

For the first time in our working history, Pride Toronto did not respond.

I later contacted MacPhearson, who referred me to the organization’s executive director, Kojo Modeste, as he oversees approvals of visual arts projects. So I sent another, more detailed, list of questions, which touched upon Modeste’s involvement, and specifically told them that I was writing an article about my experience. “[B]ased on our interactions,” I wrote in my email to Kang, Pride Toronto’s main email for inquiries and also its communications email, “I believe that the organization may be antisemitic.” Having told them I intended to publish an article, I gave them a reasonable deadline of several days in which they could reply with answers or a statement of any kind.

There was no response.

With this stonewalling, it seemed that the festival had given their answer: a silence which spoke volumes.

I am proud of the work I’ve done with Pride (no pun intended). I was honoured to shine a light on the struggles faced by LGBTQ people around the world. It would have been my honour to do the same for Canadian Jews facing threats, harassment and intimidation during this awful surge in anti-Semitism. I had hoped Pride Toronto would be as eager a partner in that effort as they always had been before.

They weren’t. And I wish I had an encouraging or innocent explanation to offer. But I don’t.

Adam Zivo is a columnist and founder and director of the LoveisLoveisLove Campaign. The image at the top of this article is courtesy of the author.

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