Juno News - October 09, 2025


Vancouver cancels Harry Potter!

Mentioned
Harry Potter Forbidden Forest J.K. Rowling Vancouver Parks
Time to end birthright citizenship？ + Reacting to Carney's meeting with Trump Vancouver apologizes to LGBT activists for Harry Potter attraction

Episode Stats


Length

3 minutes

Words per minute

147.17

Word count

470

Sentence count

30

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Vancouver Parks and Recreation Board voted to apologize for hosting the Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience, which was a transphobic event hosted by J.K. Rowling, who has been a vocal opponent of trans and gender diverse people and their rights.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 It turns out that the original author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has since
00:00:07.200 2018 taken very public political positions, seeking to limit the rights and opportunities
00:00:16.420 of transgender, gender diverse, and two-spirit people in the UK, in Canada, and other countries.
00:00:25.540 Now, I don't want to platform her ideas and her opinions, so I'm not going to describe
00:00:31.860 her political views here.
00:00:33.300 Let me say that in several cases, her views and her activity has impacted Vancouver and
00:00:39.660 the Lower Mainland directly.
00:00:41.820 Now, personally, I believe those harms are clear and unmistakable.
00:00:47.180 As many of you may be aware of those widely publicized comments about transgender people
00:00:52.340 that cause significant distress for many transgender and non-binary individuals, globally and including
00:01:00.660 here in Vancouver, which is meant to agree with this particular individual's transphobic
00:01:06.340 and low-cost denying stand on a lot of other issues.
00:01:12.660 J.K. Rowling has been one of, if not the most single influential person on Earth leading the charge against transgender rights. 0.96
00:01:21.620 So, hosting Harry Potter Forbidden Forest Experience has undermined trust between Vancouver Parks and Recreation and trans, gender diverse, and two-spirit individuals, and the 2SLGBTQ plus community in general.
00:01:36.620 The first part of the motion here calls for this board to apologize for the harm caused to TGD2S people and their community and the broader Vancouver community by hosting of the Harry Potter event.
00:01:50.620 So, I'd like to offer a personal apology for the difficulty that this has gone through.
00:01:56.620 And then pain is real.
00:01:57.620 And when we as a city program, these types of events, like, we need to acknowledge that I have knowledge of her.
00:02:04.620 We can hold a space for dialogue and contain a program delivering safe and inclusive experiences.
00:02:10.620 That's right.
00:02:11.620 I have been really good by your words, by the words of all the emails and the lived experiences that I've heard.
00:02:22.620 And so, on behalf of yourself, I do apologize, and I do thank you again for being your team.
00:02:28.620 Thank you.
00:02:29.620 Thank you.
00:02:30.620 I also want to apologize, and I hope to work together in the future and have your input so this doesn't happen again.
00:02:37.620 I accept my apology as well, however I wanted to see you guys in current.
00:02:42.620 And this will not happen again.
00:02:45.620 As chair, I do want to recognize the harm that this has caused and apologize.
00:02:49.620 This has been a step backwards in our relationship, but I think now we need to take two steps forward to not only repair that harm,
00:02:56.620 but both our relationship forward.
00:02:58.620 So, on behalf of the board, I think we all apologize and hope to repair the heart and blood cost.
00:03:05.620 You might as well call a vote by a show of hands.
00:03:07.620 All in favor?
00:03:08.620 I carry it unanimously.
00:03:10.620 Thank you, everyone.