City Hall event honours Moose Hide Campaign Day in Edmonton

People gathered at Edmonton city hall ahead of Moose Hide Campaign Day, which encourages men and boys to be part of the solution to end gender-based violence.

A special event was held at City Hall on Wednesday to invite Edmontonians to take a stand against gender-based violence.

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Moose Hide Campaign Day, held on May 15, is a day of remembrance and action to end domestic and gender-based violence.

“We are celebrating early and bringing awareness to our missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and brothers across the province and country,” said Taylor McPherson, sports program coordinator at the Indigenous Sport Council of Alberta (ISCA).

“Although it’s just a one day event, we should be talking about this every single day, because it’s an issue that our communities face on a daily basis,” she added.

The campaign was created in 2011 by Paul Lacerte and his daughter Raven, who were inspired by a hunting trip they took near the Highway of Tears in B.C.

The campaign, and the moose-hide pins the pair made to represent it, have since grown into a national movement challenging men and boys to become active allies and stand up for safety, healing and change.

“Basically it’s Raven and Paul’s way of getting medicine to everyone else and making sure this medicine carries that word of ending gender-based violence,” McPherson said.

This is the fourth year for the event at City Hall. It was hosted in partnership by the ISCA and the City of Edmonton.