Saskatchewan family turns homophobic graffiti into inclusive artwork

WATCH: A family in Yorkton, Sask. turned a targeted, hateful attack into a powerful message for the LGBTQ2S+ community. Fruzsina De Cloedt reports.

A family in Yorkton, Sask. has turned a targeted, hateful piece of graffiti into a colourful and powerful message in support of the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

On Monday, the Willems family awoke to a disturbing sight – as their garage door and housefront were spraypainted with homophobic slurs.

“My son Ben discovered this first thing in the morning,” Becky Willems explained. “He leaves for work at 6 a.m., and so he quickly took a picture and sent it to me and that’s what I woke up to.”

The family reported the graffiti to their local RCMP detachment. The mischief is now under investigation – with police believing the incident occurred between 3 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 11.

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Willems said that the act itself felt like an attack on her home.

“I don’t think we were super upset at the time, but my daughter was, especially the words that they used were so ugly,” she noted.

As the saying goes, after every storm, there is a rainbow.

In this story, the proverbial rainbow was one of Willem’s neighbors. They gave her the idea to turn the graffiti intended to hurt and harm, into something that was loving, beautiful, and positive.

“When [our neighbour] sees things like this, even if it’s not targeted at her, it hurts her. The words are so ugly and what was done was so ugly that it’s hurtful to everybody,” Willems explained.

The family then decided to paint over the hateful words. They preserved and included a piece of the original graffiti in their new artwork promoting support for the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

They see this as an act of defiance to the perpetrator.

“The idea wasn’t to fight fire with fire, but to respond to their negativity with positivity, because then you refuse to give them the reaction that they want,” added Willems’ son, Sam.

“Then it’s honestly the best revenge,” he added.

Today, the garage door and the housefront are full of colourful letters, rainbows, flowers.

A big heart frames what’s preserved of the original graffiti which reads: “family of.”

“We are proud of who we are, we’re proud of ourselves as a family and we’re proud of the 2SLGBTQ+ people in our family, in our community, and within our friends,” Willems said.

“The person that did this, is the person that should feel ashamed and small and ugly, not us.”

Willems says the process of painting over the hateful messages turned into a joyful event for the whole family.

“In today’s political climate, and just kind of even all over the world, you can feel really alone and you can feel outnumbered and you can feel attacked and judged by the world,” she explained.

“That’s not how we felt that day, which is surprising because we started it off with this kind of ugliness.”

Sam says his views on living in a small-town community have completely changed in-light of the incident.

“I’ve always felt pretty isolated, and it’s just kind of like me and my family, and my friends, and those are my people,” he said. “It was just a lot of people came to me, like more than I expected it and to be as upset as they were, it made me feel like a part of a community that actually cared about me and understood me.”

Yorkton Mayor Aaron Kienle strongly denounced the incident, saying that vandalism is bad enough on its own, but when it’s tied to hate, it’s completely unacceptable.

“It is disappointing from my place as mayor and I think for most of the residents of our community, if not all the residents of our community,” Kienle told CTV News. “It’s a very disappointing thing to see happen.”

He went on to say that he’s aware the prairies may appear as a less progressive place to some – but believes that progress is being made.

“I think that there’s been some good strides made in our community and in our province,” he said, adding that an inclusive and welcoming community is what he’s pushing for as mayor.

Kienle hopes that the incident – and its defiant reaction – will motivate people to donate their time to Yorkton Pride, which had to call off its parade this year due to a lack of volunteers.

“If you are a person who sees hate, intolerance and ignorance, you have a chance to totally turn it around, because that’s what the people around us did for us,” Willems concluded.

Yorkton RCMP ask anyone with information about the incident to contact them by calling 310-7267 (RCMP).