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A queer-owned store in Winnipeg’s Wolseley area says the business or its Pride flags have been targeted in multiple incidents recently, including one that has left a gaping hole in the front window.<\/p>\n
Jessica Dahlen, co-owner of Cauldron Bubble, says the incidents started last year, when someone wrote “child-grooming pedophiles” over the Pride flag displayed by the door. A business down the block that also displays a Pride flag in a window found a similar message written over theirs.<\/p>\n
Dahlen said her business has experienced at least three troubling incidents this year alone.<\/p>\n
“I’m not doing anything to anyone. I’m just existing,” she says. <\/p>\n
“I’m just trying to make a living. And that’s enough for people to want to tear us down and vandalize us and yell at us on the street.”<\/p>\n
Dahlen says he was accosted by a man in May who called her various slurs targeting the 2SLGBTQ+, Jewish and Black communities in an interaction that lasted more than 15 minutes.<\/p>\n
Near the end of June, a neighbour told her someone wearing a garbage bag threw a rock at the window one Sunday morning, leaving glass across the sidewalk, which the neighbour cleaned up. Dahlen suspects the man from the May incident threw the rock.<\/p>\n
Though she and her mother are trying to get a quote for window repairs, she says they’re not sure if they can afford to fix it.<\/p>\n
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In 2025, someone wrote ‘child grooming pedophiles’ on Cauldron Bubble’s Pride flag. (Submitted by Jessica Dahlen)<\/p>\n
Winnipeg police said an investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n
The most recent incident occurred in July, when a child biking past the store yelled about how the Pride flags were still in the window before punching it twice. <\/p>\n
Dahlen, who was in the store at the time, says when she walked out, “I just got this little muttered ‘sorry’ from one of the parents walking by. That was it.”<\/p>\n
The store, which sells items for witchcraft and alternative religions, has been in its Wolseley location for almost four years. Though they’ve received criticism for their merchandise, Dahlen says the recent incidents, and last year’s, specifically targeted Pride flags.<\/p>\n
“You can disagree with people, but it doesn’t mean you attack them for it. And they just \u2026 it just makes me really sad to live in a world where that happens,” she said. <\/p>\n
Tandeep Sidhu, an assistant professor in the University of Manitoba’s criminology and sociology department, said he isn’t surprised by the incidents given the “proliferation of these hate-filled discourses targeting the LGBTQ2S+ community.”<\/p>\n
He says these kinds of hate-related incidents are “just the tip of the iceberg.” <\/p>\n
“There’s far more that happens that doesn’t get reported,” Sidhu said, adding that even when they are reported, police might classify crimes under different categories. <\/p>\n
“In reality, the true scope of this issue is far greater than what we can enumerate.”<\/p>\n
Dahlen attributes the hostility to increasing anti-queer sentiments and attacks on women’s rights in the U.S., saying that “tends to bleed up.” <\/p>\n
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The store’s window remains shattered more than a month after someone threw a rock at it. (Alicia Wang\/CBC)<\/p>\n
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