As P.E.I. marks Transgender Awareness Week, advocates warn of rising violence
CBC
National Transgender Awareness Week is underway, and a series of events is taking place across Prince Edward Island to help spread awareness.
The week includes activities like zine making, poetry, flag raisings and workshops. It leads up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance on Nov. 20 — a day to honour and memorialize victims of transphobic violence. A vigil will be held on the Island that day.
This is the first year PEERS Alliance, the P.E.I. Transgender Network and the Native Council of P.E.I. have come together to co-ordinate events. The week began with a flag raising Thursday in Charlottetown.
AinZ Kendrick, executive director of the P.E.I. Transgender Network, said the week offers a chance for Islanders to come together and learn.
“When we can connect and see each other and get to know each other on a human-to-human level, that creates more love, more openness, more understanding. And I think we need that in this world and at this time,” Kendrick told CBC News.
Anastasia Preston, the trans community outreach co-ordinator at PEERS Alliance, said greater awareness is especially important given the current environment.
She pointed to concerns highlighted in the Trans Murder Monitoring 2025 report by Trans Europe and Central Asia, a trans-led non-profit focused on the rights and well-being of trans people.
“One of the starkest facts that came out of it is that there has been a doubling of the violence against trans advocates, particularly… politically motivated attacks, which is a shift away from the type of violence that we were largely seeing, which was intimate partner violence,” she said.
As an advocate herself, Preston said that finding is unsettling.
“As a trans woman, every time I leave my house could be the last time, and hearing a number like this only drives that fact home deeper for me.”
She added that rising transphobic sentiment in the U.S. is also worrying, and a reminder of why awareness efforts in Canada matter.
Despite these challenges, Preston said the National Transgender Awareness Week on P.E.I. is meant to bring people together and inspire optimism.
“This week for me is a week of hope," she said. "Hope has always been one of our greatest tools of resistance. Without hope, we don't step forward."
Preston said progress has been made on the Island, particularly around gender-affirming care, with P.E.I. considered one of the leading provinces in Canada for access.
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