Why Gabriola?
What does Gabriola have to do with genocide?
I saw an interview with a man in Gaza. The host asked him: what can we in the west do? He said: speak. Speak for us. Speak soon, before we all suffer and die in silence. That's what the sign does. Nothing more. It speaks.
Because I live here. Because I care. Because I believe you do too. Because I want to do something - say something - to help bring an end to the non-stop killing of innocent people. Because doing nothing feels like complicity.
My father - who has been an active protester against war before I was even born - along with my mother, Wendy Strachan, live here too. This island is my community and these are my neighbours.
But there's a bigger answer to the question of what any of us in Canada have to do with a genocide on the other side of the world.
Canada claims to have an arms embargo on regimes carrying out genocide. It doesn't. Canadian weapons components - F-35 fighter jet parts, explosives, bullets - continue flowing through a legal loophole that routes them through the United States first. Once they cross the border, Canada claims no responsibility for where they go. The bombs dropping on Gaza and elsewhere have Canadian parts in them. Your tax dollars paid for some of what is killing people right now.
The Canadian government knows this. On March 11, 2026, Parliament voted on Bill C-233, the No More Loopholes Act, introduced by NDP MP Jenny Kwan, which would have closed the loophole and required human rights assessments on all military exports. It was voted down 295 to 22. The Carney government killed it. Source: Parliament of Canada, LEGISinfo, Vote 85, March 11, 2026.
It isn't only weapons. The Canada Pension Plan, the fund every working Canadian pays into, increased its investments in companies a 2026 report calls complicit in Israel's occupation and genocide by more than 23 billion dollars in the year ending March 2026, nearly doubling its holdings to 54.8 billion dollars. That includes billions in companies whose technology, surveillance systems, and equipment are tied to the military campaign in Gaza. Every Canadian paying into the Canada Pension Plan is, whether they know it or not, funding part of what they may also be protesting. Source: The Maple, citing a Just Peace Advocates report, June 2026.
Canada votes at the United Nations, where its votes carry weight. And Canada still maintains full diplomatic relations with genocidal regimes today - relations that signal acceptance, not opposition.
On May 15, 2026, almost 200 former senior Canadian diplomats wrote to Prime Minister Carney urging "robust" sanctions on Israel, citing the blockade of Gaza, the high civilian death toll in Lebanon, and Israel's ongoing destruction of civilian infrastructure. They called for a review of Canada's trade agreement with Israel. Their letter noted that "without robust international sanctions the Israeli government will persist in disregarding international law." Source: The Canadian Press, May 15, 2026.
In two separate attacks on unarmed civilian vessels in international waters, Israeli naval commandos kidnapped 428 international citizens from 48 countries. The first attack came on April 29, 2026, off the coast of Crete, where Israeli forces boarded 21 vessels and abducted 181 participants, injuring at least 35 people with rubber bullets and physical violence. The survivors regrouped in Turkey and sailed again. The second attack came on May 18-19, 2026, near Cyprus, where Israel seized all remaining vessels of the Global Sumud Flotilla. In both attacks the citizens were taken against their will, their ships seized, their cargo stolen, food, medicine and baby formula intended for a population being deliberately starved. Soldiers destroyed cameras on board and fired on at least five vessels. At least 67 participants required hospital care. Survivors reported a coordinated campaign of torture, physical and sexual violence. Prime Minister Carney called Israel's treatment of detained citizens "abominable" and summoned the Israeli ambassador to Ottawa. All 428 were eventually released. Sources: Associated Press via PBS, Al Jazeera, May 2026.
A sign in your yard won't stop a bomb. But silence is also a statement. Gabriola putting up Stop Genocide signs says that people here are paying attention, that we are not looking away, and that we expect better from our country.
What is genocide?
Genocide is the deliberate extermination of a people - through mass killing, starvation, displacement, or the systematic destruction of the conditions necessary for survival. It is defined in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, which Canada has signed, as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
The International Court of Justice has ruled there is a plausible case that genocide is being committed in Gaza. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and dozens of legal scholars have reached the same conclusion. As of May 2026, Genocide Watch lists Gaza, Sudan, the DRC, Myanmar, and Rojava in northern Syria as active Genocide Emergencies.
The following scholars, legal experts, and organizations have all concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza - including prominent Israeli historians and Holocaust scholars:
When we say STOP GENOCIDE, we mean this. Not a metaphor. Not hyperbole. This.
That's why Gabriola.
