“Are you looking for somewhere your children can play with others that look like them? Are they tired of being a minority in their schools or daycares?”
Sounds like an advertisement for a school looking to recruit children of color, right? Wrong. It’s actually language taken from signs for a “whites only” playgroup posted in public spaces around the Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada. If you’re scratching your head right now, I wouldn’t blame you.
The flyers invite “proud parents of European children” to “escape forced ‘diversity’ and “create an atmosphere in which [their] kids can feel like they belong.” “Invest in your child’s sense of well-being and racial identity by giving them the gift of time spent amongst their own people – because they deserve it,” the flyers read.
At the bottom of the flyers is a QR code linked to a now-deleted Telegram group and an email with a proton mail domain – clues that the group’s members wanted to keep their identities on the down low.
The city of Port Coquitlam says they were first alerted by a resident who noticed one of the flyers at a bus stop in the area. Photos of the posters surfaced on social media earlier this week. And although most of them appeared to have already been ripped or torn down, the community still has concerns about this kind of messaging circulating in the area and have asked residents to alert city officials if more signs are found.
In a September 25 statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West called the signs “vile garbage,” adding that they aren’t welcome in the community.
“The City of Port Coquitlam condemns this in the strongest terms and promotes an environment without hate,” Mayor West shared.