An event at the University of British Columbia by the OneBC political party ended with its leader and a couple dozen supporters being escorted by police onto a waiting bus after being surrounded in a building by opponents for nearly an hour.
“We chased them out. And now, they’re hiding in a public building,” said Andy Lin, one of nearly a thousand people who took part in duelling events in the middle of campus Thursday afternoon.
“It’s really angering for me to see these people come here to try to wreak havoc … you have one of the best schools in the country, and it’s a productive society that we have going on here. And they’re here to just wreak havoc. So of course I’m going to voice my opinion.”
On Jan. 20, OneBC leader Dallas Brodie announced she would hold an event at the UBC Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre, writing “truth cannot exist without discussions and debates. We will be heading to UBC to engage in conversations with students and anyone else open to an exchange of opinions.”
One of her supporters advertised for the event, author Frances Widdowson, said in a release that “UBC is promoting falsehoods about ‘unmarked graves’, compromising academic values.”
Brodie, who was reinstated as party leader in December after an internal dispute, now sits as its sole MLA.
She founded OneBC in March 2025 after she was kicked out of the B.C. Conservative Party, with then-leader John Rustad saying she was ejected for mocking former residential school students.
In the two days between her announcement and the event, people against the event had organized, with one viral Instagram post saying “this is not a counter protest but rather a show of solidarity with survivors.”
It resulted in a chaotic scene in the centre of campus, with Brodie and a few other OneBC supporters talking to media and other supporters, surrounded by hundreds of people singing, chanting or playing instruments around them.
Over the course of an hour, there were multiple times when different people aggressively pushed or shoved one another, with around two dozen RCMP officers and campus security forces moving from skirmish to skirmish as incidents arose.
“When it became clear that there were potential safety risks, Campus Security, with the support of the RCMP, directed the visitors to leave the campus for their own safety,” said UBC in a statement.
It added that they had worked with community stakeholders and RCMP to develop a security plan.
At that point, a OneBC supporter was arrested and later released without charges. The rest of their supporters moved east through campus before going inside the lobby of the UBC Aquatic Centre, which Campus Security then barred others from entering, resulting in a standoff.
“As the visitors were not following these instructions, RCMP then facilitated their departure from campus,” the UBC statement read.
In a statement, TransLink said “University RCMP requested that Coast Mountain Bus Company move approximately 50 people off UBC campus to enhance safety … when asked to do so, Coast Mountain Bus Company and TransLink support police requests to enhance public safety when incidents are unfolding.”
As the bus left, both OneBC supporters and people at the counter rally pointed smartphones at one another, while chants of “get off our campus” filled the air.
Brodie did not respond to a request for comment, but reposted an interview she did inside of the Aquatic Centre, where she said it “went really well.”
“We knew this was going to be a big commotion here today, but Canadians, British Columbians need to see this is what’s going on,” she said.
