'This was hate speech': Ontario drag performers win defamation case against blogger

A Calgary man has been ordered to pay $380,000 for hateful comments on his Facebook page in connection with drag events in northern Ont.

A Thunder Bay drag performer who successfully sued a Facebook blogger for defamation over baseless accusations of pedophilia says she hopes the case serves as a cautionary tale to those who traffic in anti-LGBTQ+ slurs and hate speech.

“I want them to know that they need to be afraid to be bigots again, because we’re tired of it,” said Felicia Crichton, one of the three drag performers who won their cases against the administrator of a Thunder Bay Facebook page.

Brian Webster was ordered to pay $380,000 in combined damages to drag performers and a Dryden, Ont.-area LGBTQ+ non-profit after a judge found he falsely and recklessly accused them of being “groomers” in posts about drag story time events at libraries in northwestern Ontario.

Crichton said the ruling was a relief and a sign people who peddle in hate will not find impunity on social media.

“They seem to believe that there were glory days when they were allowed to believe this with absolutely no recourse. And I think that the only truth in that is that there was a time when social media didn’t connect us so quickly, and it wasn’t so easy to have a paper trail of everything that you’ve said,” she said.

“There are receipts now.”

The performers and Rainbow Alliance Dryden sued Webster in two separate cases, alleging he accused them of being “groomers” and “grooming” children in his posts about their drag story time events in Thunder Bay and Dryden. One of the posts also linked to web pages about unrelated people who had been allegedly charged with child pornography offences.

Webster responded with likes and laughing emojis to comments on those posts from 2022 that in turn accused the performers – whose names and pictures were in some cases visible – of being pedophiles, mentally ill and sexually abusive, the court heard.

The judge considered how the slur has long been used to falsely accuse and attack LGBTQ+ people of being pedophiles and recruiting young people into being gay and transgender. The court heard how use of the slur has seen an uptick in response to drag story hour at libraries, age-appropriate events where drag performers read books to kids in a way that’s intended to help foster inclusion of LGBTQ+ families and create positive education opportunities for young people.

Thunder Bay Superior Court Justice Helen Pierce granted a summary judgment against Webster in a ruling dated Feb. 20.

“The defendant intended to smear the reputations of the individual plaintiffs and RAD with the message that they used their drag queen/king persona and activities to groom children for sexual abuse,” read the decision.

“There could hardly be a more damning message than that, spread across the internet. The message was clearly understood by Mr. Webster’s readership: he called the plaintiffs pedophiles.”

Webster’s lawyer James Kitchen said in an email that his client had not instructed him to seek an appeal, but he would not be surprised if that changes. He did not comment further on the judgment.

The ruling noted Webster was living in Calgary and working in construction. The Facebook page, which the court heard routinely shared anti-LGBTQ+ posts, appears to have been inactive since 2023.

Drag performers and organizers in cities across Canada have been repeatedly subject to violent death threats over drag story hours in recent years, often forcing the events to be cancelled or rescheduled.

The ruling noted that hate crimes in Canada motivated by sexual orientation had increased by 388 per cent from 2016 to 2023. An expert witness for the drag performers noted Canada’s intelligence agency in 2024 warned of the imminent possibility of extremist-inspired violence against the LGBTQ+ community.

Douglas Judson, the lawyer for the drag performers, called last week’s judgment a landmark decision that helped establish case law around how “groomer terminology” has been wielded against performers and the LGBTQ+ community.

“We have a complete repudiation of the suggestion that this type of hate speech has any public interest value,” he said.

The performers in the case have talked about how Webster’s posts and the subsequent fallout made them fear for their safety and their reputations.

Caitlin Hartlen, a Dryden-based performer who works for an Indigenous child and family services agency and is co-chair of RAD, worried their professional reputation and community standing would be hampered by the defamatory accusations, according to an affidavit quoted in the ruling.

Crichton, a Thunder Bay performer and mother of four kids, said it was heartbreaking to think her children may hear accusations circulating about her at school or elsewhere. It was also disheartening to see people who shared mutual friends on Facebook commenting on Webster’s posts.

Yet, the ruling helped restore some of her “faith in humanity,” she said.

“It was nice to know that someone out there was listening and heard us, and was able to cut through all of the nonsense and just see the plain truth,” she said.

“This was hate speech. It was malice. It was intentional. They knew what they were doing. End of story.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 26, 2025.

Jordan Omstead, The Canadian Press