Today, October 14, Charlie Kirk would have turned 33.

Thirteen months ago, he was shot dead on a university campus in Utah while doing what he did best: sitting under a tent and inviting anyone who disagreed with him to come and argue. He was killed saying in public what he held to be true about God, marriage and the child in the womb, and he died a martyr for moral truth.

Ten days ago in Quebec City, a dozen people got a small taste of what that kind of witness can cost.

Twelve people at prayer

On Sunday, October 4, about twelve men and women stood on the sidewalk of Laurier Boulevard, in front of Saint-Charles-Garnier church, for the Life Chain, one of 30 such gatherings in Quebec that day. Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel and of the apostles. They held their signs and prayed in silence for an hour, as Life Chain participants do across North America every fall.

Three days earlier, a group called the Collectif Riposte Féministe (Feminist Riposte Collective) had moved its rally to that exact address, at that exact hour. Its invitation read: "Bring your anger, your signs and everything you need to make as much noise as possible!!"

They brought it. By one participant's count, between 150 and 200 counter-protesters surrounded the twelve. They stood in front of the signs so that drivers could not read them, hurled insults, and whistled into the ear of an elderly man who wears hearing aids. They blocked the boulevard, tore signs from people's hands, ripped them up and trampled them.

A FEMEN activist scratched one woman's face as she wrenched the sign from her hands, then shredded the signs one by one "with a cry of victory, to the crowd's applause." That evening, a counter-protester bragged about it on Facebook: "especially once I ripped off and tore up their anti abortion sign hihi."

Police had to be called twice. When officers arrived, they restored order within minutes and escorted the participants to their cars.

The woman with the scratched face was offered the chance to file an assault complaint, but she declined. "I came there to pray, very humbly, to defend the unborn child," she wrote. She kept praying until the end.

Read the full account here

Picture the two groups side by side: on one side, twelve people praying in silence; on the other, a crowd that had been told to bring its anger and did exactly that. Many of those women carry wounds that no one has ever helped them name, and we pray for them. But a wound gives no one the right to lay hands on a stranger who is praying.

A network, not a spontaneous outburst

What happened on Laurier Boulevard has been organized, and it has been going on for years.

• 2024. At the first March for Life in Quebec City, the "Riposte pro-choix" counter-protest was organized with the cooperation of two of Quebec's largest union federations: the FTQ (Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec) and the CSN (Confédération des syndicats nationaux). The Catholic Register reported that Quebec's minister for the Status of Women, Martine Biron, was among the counter-protesters.
• 2025. At the March for Life, about thirty activists dressed in black bloc took over the speeches with bullhorns, whistles and coloured smoke bombs. Social media posts by Québec Antifasciste carried graphics promoting the counter-protest.
• 2026. The Quebec City regional council of the CSN posted proudly that it had "answered the call" of the feminist collective. In its own photos, its "Québec est pro-choix" banner is stretched across Laurier Boulevard.
• FEMEN joined them this year. The group is known around the world for topless stunts in churches and parliaments, including one inside Quebec's own National Assembly in 2013.
• Antifa activists have been regulars as well. The organizer of our other Quebec City site, a few blocks away, wrote with relief that there had been "no antifa, a first in years." In the United States, antifa was declared a domestic terrorist organization by presidential order in September 2025, and two months later the State Department designated four European antifa groups as terrorist organizations.

Follow the money

These are not small, self-funded groups.

• The CSN. Its central body alone takes in more than $100 million a year in dues. Under the Rand formula, those dues are deducted from workers' paycheques whether or not they share the union's causes, and that includes pro-life workers.
• The FQPN. The Fédération du Québec pour le planning des naissances (FQPN) is the hub of Quebec's abortion lobby, and it is publicly funded. In December 2025 it published a report of about a hundred pages that maps the pro-life movement and names our organization several times. The report was paid for by the government's Secrétariat à la condition féminine (Status of Women Secretariat), and it closes with twelve recommendations to the government on how to counter "anti-abortion influence."
• The government's own plan. In November 2024, the government announced a $7.5 million plan to expand abortion access. It includes measures "to fight disinformation" about abortion, which in practice means fighting people like us.

In other words, taxpayers fund the federation that maps us, the dues of believing workers fund the unions that block the street, and the twelve people praying on that sidewalk are paying for both.

A city on a hill, and a swamp to drain

Quebec City is built on rock. Its old town sits atop Cap Diamant, a cliff high above the St. Lawrence. The National Assembly stands on what Quebecers call la colline Parlementaire, Parliament Hill, and Laurier Boulevard runs along the plateau above the river. As the Gospel puts it, "a city set on a hill cannot be hidden."

Even a city on a hill can hide a swamp, though, and Quebec's capital has one. It is a dark network of activists, union officers and publicly funded groups that swarms anyone who rejects its pro-abortion ideology.

Some like to think of these groups as Quebec's "antibodies" against the pro-life movement. They are nothing of the sort, because antibodies help a body heal. Instead, what we are looking at is a cancer at the heart of the nation's capital, fed by public money and compulsory union dues. The way to remove it is to cut off what feeds it: the swamp will drain once it is no longer being fed.

Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon, govern for all

The new cabinet is to be sworn in on October 21. On election night, Premier-designate Paul St-Pierre Plamondon promised to govern for all Quebecers, and now is the time to show that he meant it.

"All Quebecers" includes the twelve people on Laurier Boulevard. Freedom of expression is not a privilege reserved for those who agree with the Status of Women Secretariat. Year after year, these groups claim the right to silence anyone who opposes their death-cult ideology. That ideology is behind some 20,000 abortions committed in Quebec every year. It is also behind a birth rate that fell to 1.33 children per woman in 2024, the lowest ever recorded. A culture that kills its children is also killing its own future.

The new government has both the opportunity and the responsibility to act on two fronts:

1. Open the books. Every group that receives public money and mobilizes against peaceful citizens should have to account for every dollar. Money meant to help women must not end up paying for intimidation in the street.
2. Keep Law 3, and go further. Since October 2, Quebec's new union law has required a secret-ballot vote of members before dues can be spent on political and social campaigns. The unions want it repealed, and the government must keep it. It should go further, as the Conservative Party of Quebec (PCQ) has proposed, by letting each worker personally opt out of funding his union's political and ideological activities. No nurse, bus driver or teacher should see his dues used to block a sidewalk where people are praying.

Your turn

In the coming weeks, we will give everyone in Quebec a simple way to write to their new MNA (Member of the National Assembly). You will be able to send concrete ideas for pulling Quebec out of its downward spiral and toward a culture of faith, family and life, from conception to natural death, so watch for it.

To our friends outside Quebec, thank you. Your gifts and your prayers are what keep twelve people standing on a sidewalk when two hundred come to shout them down, and we need both.

Long ago, twelve ordinary men with nothing but the truth turned the world upside down. The twelve on that sidewalk in Quebec City will not be silenced either.

For Life,

Georges Buscemi
President, Quebec Life Coalition

Articles of the week:

“Bring your anger”: in Quebec City, pro-abortion activists turn on silent pro-lifers
On October 4, in front of Saint-Charles-Garnier church, 150 to 200 counter-protesters surrounded about a dozen silent Life Chain participants, tore their signs from their hands and blocked Laurier Boulevard until police arrived.

Carney government confirms the ban on prayers on Remembrance Day
Recently, Conservative MP Dane Lloyd questioned Liberal Defense Minister David McGuinty about instructions issued by the government this summer that ordered chaplains not to mention God in their public remarks.

Sherbrooke drops ticket, tickets resident again for same peaceful expression
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms announces that the City of Sherbrooke has withdrawn a ticket issued to local resident Brian Jenkins in 2025 for peacefully displaying signs opposing abortion during the annual “40 Days for Life” campaign. However, police ticketed Mr. Jenkins again for the same activity on October 3, 2026.

The new interim leader of the British Columbia Conservative Party promises to remove gender ideology from schools
Lorne Doerkson, the new interim leader of the British Columbia Conservative Party, has stated that he will remove the so-called “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI 123) policies from all public schools if he is elected in the October 24 provincial election .