Ask Brigette DePape if she has surprised people with her bold protest in the Senate and she’ll say it depends on who you ask.
Her friends probably saw it coming. But DePape’s grandmother wouldn’t expect her granddaughter to smuggle a handmade stop sign emblazoned with the words “Stop Harper!” into Friday’s throne speech, DePape said.
The 21-year-old was escorted from the Senate chamber, and quickly fired from her coveted job as a parliamentary page.
The University of Ottawa graduate spoke with her family in Winnipeg Friday night on the phone. Her mother, Marcelle, is proud of her, DePape said.
“It was really good to hear some encouragement from a really important woman in my life,” she said.
DePape’s father was less positive.
“My dad was quite critical of it. He sort of asked what concrete changes can this actually have,” she said.
Her family, like DePape herself, is non-partisan — more focused on the issues than a specific party, she said.
“I do think the act of one person can’t make a difference but I can’t wait for when the resistance continues to build and to show my dad that social movements actually are an effective means for pressuring government and initiate changes that we need to happen.”
DePape, the youngest of three daughters, comes from a politically-savvy family. She remembers reading the newspaper and watching the news together from the time she was very young.
Denis DePape first heard about his daughter’s protest when a relative called him.
“It was unexpected. We didn’t know about it in advance,” he said.
But Brigette is very passionate about the state of the world and what she thinks the world should be like, he said.
“She is often looking for ways to express her caring and her interest, her desire to see improvement,” he said.
The family is very active in community activities and non-governmental organizations, he said, and they encourage their children to travel and expand their boundaries.
DePape said she hatched the protest idea with some friends. The challenging part was figuring out how to fold the sign under her skirt to get it into the chamber, she said.
Since DePape’s protest, her Facebook account has been inundated with friend requests. Her future is up in the air, but she took that into consideration before she walked into the Senate chamber with that sign, she said.
“The future is a blank canvas right now,” she said. “I’m definitely looking at connecting with existing social movements to really help there with this resistance and to create a better community and Canada for everyone.”