Mutchmor Public School in Ottawa’s Glebe neighbourhood has cancelled a drag storytime event planned for Friday to celebrate Pride Month, according to emails sent to parents and obtained by CBC News.
In a June 11 email signed by principal Sandy Miller and vice-principal Marc Laliberté, parents were told that the storytime “raised questions about curricular alignment.”
Adrianna Exposée, an Ottawa drag queen, was booked for the event. Exposée told CBC she did the same storytime last year and was looking forward to returning to the elementary school.
“I think we got a lot of positive feedback [last year],” she said.
Exposée said when a school official called last week to cancel, they told her there had been “parent pushback” and “quoted security concerns.”
The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) did not answer when CBC asked if parents had complained about the event.
In a statement, a spokesperson wrote the decision was “based on a desire to ensure that our Pride Month activities broadly reflect the diverse spectrum of identities, histories, and voices within the 2SLGBTQI+ community.”
“Additionally, the school sought to ensure that guest presentations have a direct, clear connection to specific Ontario curriculum learning outcomes,” the spokesperson wrote.
A ‘head-scratcher’
Some parents told CBC the abrupt cancellation left them bewildered and looking for answers.
Chris Kamel, whose daughter is in Grade 2 at Mutchmor, described the email from school officials as a “head-scratcher.”
“It has this message that they’re deeply committed to fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment,” he said. “Yet the decision sends a bit of a different message.”
Kamel said he’s concerned by a “lack of transparency” surrounding the cancellation.
Mutchmor Public School in Ottawa is seen on June 15, 2026. (Gabrielle Huston/CBC)
Alexandria Sjöman said after Exposée’s visit to Muthchmor last year, her son, who’s now in Grade 3, came home with questions about identity, fashion and community.
“It was great last year because it just really opened up a vocabulary, a language for children that age,” Sjöman said.
Sjöman said the school’s parent council had approved and funded the event, adding that in her experience the community is “overwhelmingly supportive” of drag storytime.
“Why was it OK last year? Why was it OK when we discussed it at school council earlier this year, but it’s not now?” she asked.
“Our school community has always been good at communicating different points of view and finding a way through them for the benefit of students,” she said. “I worry that this communication may have been lost on this issue.”
Adrianna Exposée, a local drag queen, asked protesters to leave her storytime event on Aug. 17, 2019. (Radio-Canada )
‘Increasing opposition’
In 2019, protesters interrupted one of Exposée’s drag storytimes. She said the protesters posed as participants, but soon began asking questions about hell, a lake of fire and the corruption children.
“I’m not the type to get angry at all, but I felt horrible because there were families there,” she recalled. “That’s not to say it scared me off doing storytimes, [but] I do find it’s just not necessarily a situation I want to put myself into.”
Cyril Cinder, an Ottawa drag king who took part in storytimes between 2019 and 2024, told CBC that the cancellation at Mutchmor didn’t surprise him, citing “increasing opposition” to the events, especially in schools.
Cinder wondered about the message the school is sending when it says the storytimes don’t align with the curriculum.
“What are you saying to those students who maybe have queer parents [or] family members, [who] maybe already know that they are queer themselves or may discover that someday?”
Sachin Maharaj, an assistant professor of educational leadership, policy and program evaluation at the University of Ottawa, said the cancellation didn’t strike him as unusual because the OCDSB is under provincial control.
“The premier of Ontario has, multiple times, accused school boards of indoctrinating students when it comes to gender identity and sexual orientation,” he said.
Maharaj noted the provincial takeover of the OCDSB and other boards has also led to cuts to equity programs, calling it a “back to basics” approach to education.
“It’s getting schools to kind of shift their focus away from equity and social justice initiatives to a much more traditional, academic orientation,” he said.