Tubby Tabby Soaps' statement on Capital Pride 2026
30 August 2026
Despite being a queer- and trans-owned small business, yesterday (29 August) we decided that we would no longer participate in the annual Capital Pride street festival.
We have attended this two-day event for 4 years, as it was a way to connect with our community and help keep our tiny business afloat financially all at once. Due to an incident that happened yesterday and even more information about the behaviour of Capital Pride towards genuine, small-scale queer vendors that has recently come to light, it is no longer enough that we make a decent amount of money at Capital Pride. The toll would be too great emotionally, ethically and safety-wise for us to continue even if we made a million dollars there.
As some of you know, Lia is now doing Tubby Tabby Soaps full-time since she was laid off from her day job in March. This played a role in our deciding to participate in Capital Pride this year, even though we understood that the community was unhappy with them and we didn’t feel good about it. That’s why we participated quietly, rather than promoting our participation as we would usually do on our website, on socials, and so on. We weren’t proud of it; it was something we were doing simply because we needed the money.
But yesterday was hard. Lia was at the booth with a helping friend when a militant zionist and her companion approached the booth and started verbally berating Lia about quietly displaying a Palestinian flag inside the tent. This lady refused to leave despite both Lia and her friend telling her as politely as possible that she was not welcome at the booth. This interaction continued much longer than it should have, with her shouting over any of Lia’s attempts to speak and eventually bringing Lia to tears. This was embarrassing for Lia, as she’s a very private person with her emotions and does not cry often, most especially in front of customers at her place of work. Despite her clearly emotional state, the zionist lady continued to berate Lia and had to be asked to leave very aggressively by Lia’s friend. She finally did.
During the incident, additional people were gathering around the tent because it was obvious that a scene was unfolding. At no time did the Capital Pride representatives, volunteers or security step in to help.
To their great credit, multiple community members consoled Lia afterwards and made the whole incident much more bearable. Kind customers told her they were glad she was there, and a lovely couple of dog owners offered their precious baby as an emotional support dog for Lia to hold while she cried about how perfect the little doggo was. What a powerful reminder that we, the community, are the heart and backbone of Pride and we protect and heal ourselves!
As beautiful as the community support was, this incident did not happen in a vacuum. The conditions for such a bully to harass and intimidate a small, queer, disabled business owner at a Capital Pride event were created by Capital Pride itself. Over the past two years, they have steadily walked back their commitment to justice for all (most especially their statement in support of a free Palestine) and continually appealed to powerful zionist sympathizers over the community itself. This has emboldened people like this militant zionist to come into our event space and demand that we answer for displaying an “unnecessarily political” and “hateful” flag, all while insisting that we are the aggressors by quietly signalling our solidarity within our own space. It has emboldened her to spread disinformation about the existence of queer resistance in Palestine by asserting that Israel, not Palestine, is pro-queer and that we should distance ourselves from Palestine as queers. It has meant that when a small business owner is harassed at her place of work, individual community members need to step in to help her because Capital Pride lacks the integrity and/or organization to ensure a safe space for Lia to do her job.
This is the last of a number of unacceptable incidents that show us that Capital Pride has behaved in a callous way towards our actual community members while defending corporate sponsors’ interests. These incidents have included, but are not limited to, the situations outlined in the sections below.
Steady reduction of support for street festival exhibitors
In 2025 & 2026, Capital Pride has had so few volunteers available to the street festival exhibitors that it’s difficult for participating organizations, makers and small businesses to do their job.
Capital Pride has become more—rather than less—organized over the 4 years we’ve worked with them. They’ve reduced the availability of their volunteers while increasing their security efforts, but that has meant things like not being able to find where exhibitors are meant to be, and not being able to get through roadblocks to our spots without having to stop traffic, exit our cars, move barricades and so on—something that has caused altercations between drivers on multiple occasions.
As the price of exhibiting has steadily increased, why is it that the support for vendors has steadily decreased over the years? Volunteers donate their time, so they should be an easy solution to these problems, even if money is an issue.
Indifference to the dignity of disabled participants at Pride
In 2025, Capital Pride allowed the only accessible port-a-potty washroom floor on Somerset to remain visibly covered in feces for two days despite Lia personally reporting multiple times to Capital Pride representatives that it was unsanitary. The next nearest accessible port-a-potty was several blocks away.
Finally, after two days of inaction from Capital Pride, Eli (Lia’s partner) brought a bottle of cleaner and gloves from home and personally cleaned the port-a-potty so that disabled community members did not have to walk through feces in order to use the rest room at the festival.
This made it abundantly clear to us that despite their claim to value accessibility, Capital Pride truly could not care less about the dignity of our disabled community members.
Cancelling the 2025 parade and throwing BIPOC organizers under the bus
After pro-Palestine protestors stopped the parade for a brief period in 2025, they negotiated with Callie Metler (the Director of Capital Pride) that they would leave and continue talks elsewhere, so that the parade could go on as planned. As the protestors were preparing to leave via the negotiated exit route, Capital Pride cancelled the parade anyway.
In their communications afterwards, Capital Pride asserted they had to cancel the parade because of the protestors’ unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, conveniently leaving out that it was the Mayor (Mark Sutcliffe) who demanded that they cancel the parade.
The community has been livid about this for a year, as it throws a largely POC-led group of organizers under the bus and shows a staggering level of dishonesty on the part of Capital Pride. Those who took Capital Pride at their word have been hostile towards the queer-led, pro-Palestine movement as a result, but this hostility is based on disinformation.
We’ve noticed that Capital Pride has not walked this misleading statement back nearly as quickly as they walked back their commitment to a free Palestine.
Banning important community advocates and refusing to explain why
In 2026, an elder grassroots organizer with a long track record of advocating for queer and trans rights at Capital Pride has been banned from participating for no apparent reason other than that their behaviour has allegedly been objectionable.
When they requested clarification on this accusation, they received none and were told they would not be permitted to participate in the street festival anymore, even when they offered to pay for a spot at corporate rates for a very small, grassroots organization.
This is an organizer we’re familiar with and they do important, community-centred work. We have never seen behaviour from them that would suggest to us that they act in any way that would merit them being banned from participating in Capital Pride.
Mixed messages leading to huge theft from exhibitors
Numerous small, queer makers and vendors have reported in recent years that Capital Pride reps told them it was safe to leave their tent and display up overnight (between Sat/Sun of the street festival) because security patrolled the street overnight.
Both in 2025 and 2026, we know folks who had significant theft (in one case, even their whole tent) and when they approached Capital Pride about it, the organizers just said it wasn’t their problem. One of the vendors this happened to is disabled and the prospect of saving hours of work tearing down and putting their display back up in the morning is understandably very tempting
At the very least, Capital Pride needs to get its messaging straight so it’s not making promises to vendors that it’s safe and then washing its hands clean when theft happens.
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For us, this establishes a pattern of behaviour on Capital Pride’s part that lacks accountability and silences anything that makes them or their corporate sponsors uncomfortable. Individual queers are bearing the brunt of that. Capital Pride does not favour the values of the majority of the queer community, which are celebrating diversity and using our understanding of oppression to fight against it in all forms.
While Capital Pride has become soul-sucking for Tubby Tabby Soaps as an institution, the individual queer community members we’ve met at our booth over the years have truly given us life and we will never forget the wonderful bonds we made there. However, going forward, we will need to meet and bond with our community at other events, as we simply cannot justify going to Capital Pride anymore.
We’ve made a decision to stay home on day 2 of this year’s street festival. Yesterday was hard for Lia and the weather forecast is not on our side.
We’re sorry to anyone who was counting on us being there today; please accept our apologies for not being able to meet you. We invite anyone who needs to discuss our products or potential collaboration to reach out and connect with us. Please email hello@tubbytabby.com or DM us on your preferred social channel anytime. (Please note that we have thoughtfully considered our position on Palestine for years and it is very evidence-based, so please refrain from contacting us to start an argument over it. We won’t be responding to those kinds of messages.)
And thank you. Thank you for showing up for Lia when she really needed you, and for constantly showing up for this tiny business. You are the heartbeat that keeps us going and we love you all so very much.