A prominent figure in the online QAnon movement — who insists she is the “Queen of Canada” — has been meeting with supporters in Sault Ste. Marie throughout the weekend.
Romana Didulo could be seen on Saturday speaking to small groups of people at a fenced-in property on Landslide Road, near Fish Hatchery Road. Her personalized motorhome has been camped on the property since last weekend.
The day before, on Friday, numerous vehicles arrived at the property and people were mingling.
“We’re having a meet and greet,” Darlene Ondi, Didulo’s press secretary, told a SooToday reporter on Friday. “It’s by invitation only.” Ondi said the attendees are supporters of “The Kingdom of Canada.”
When SooToday reporters walked toward the outside of the property on Friday and Saturday, they were immediately photographed by Didulo’s supporters and told they could not use their cameras.
SooToday requested an interview with Didulo but she has yet to reply.
QAnon, which originated in the United States in 2017, is an online political movement fuelled by ultra-right conspiracy theories. Simply put, the core belief is that a secretive network of left-wing Satanic child molesters control the government and plotted against former U.S. president Donald Trump.
Didulo’s rise in the QAnon universe peaked during the pandemic, when her followers began handing out cease-and-desist letters across Canada on her behalf that demanded an end to all COVID-related restrictions.
Boasting more than 40,000 followers on Telegram, she has gone so far as to encourage loyalists to execute healthcare workers, politicians and other dignitaries who support the vaccine.
Didulo has also issued royal "decrees" that she claims cancel people's debts. As a result, some followers have had their water or electricity shut off — or lost their homes entirely.
In January 2022, she was recorded burning a Canadian flag on Parliament Hill during the so-called Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.
Last summer, her followers made national headlines after they tried — and failed — to make a citizen’s arrest of police officers in Peterborough. In the aftermath, the city’s mayor posted a tweet that went viral: "F**k off, you f**kwads."
Vice News journalist Mack Lamoureux recently published an in-depth feature about the two years he spent reporting on Didulo and her followers. The article is titled: What Happens When a QAnon Cult Leader Moves Into Town.
Christine Sarteschi, a professor of social work and criminology at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, has studied Didulo and her group since the QAnon movement took off several years ago. She says they try hard to keep outsiders from knowing the details of their events, such as times and locations.
"They are very quiet about this and are very specific about who they invite," Sarteschi says. "They want to make sure that none of the ex-followers show up to disrupt the events."
But that rarely works.
"The ex-followers did show up at the last event, but this time they said they were going to bring a bullhorn," she says. "Even though they try to be quiet about their location, people always find out."
Sarteschi says Didulo likely invited several “city coordinators”: people who are named to supposedly replace Canadian politicians.
"They typically have some of the people in Didulo’s inner circle meet [the city coordinators] to drive them to the location," she says. "Again, they do this because they want to make sure the location is a secret."
The professor says Didulo's events usually comprise of 20 to 40 people, sometimes including attendees' children. The self-proclaimed Queen will give a propaganda-promoting speech and then hand out awards of courage and bravery.
"They also do what they call the Declaration of Sovereignty Oath Ceremony where people take an oath to the 'Kingdom of Canada,'" Sarteschi says. "It's a weird thing because a group of people all do this in unison."
In a recent post on Telegram, Didulo asked followers to assist with Saturday’s event, including four people to drive, more than 20 to set up and take down the event, as well as four others to assist with "loyalty money sequencing and distribution to provincial coordinators."
She also asked for 50 security personnel to monitor Saturday's gathering to make sure unwanted guests don’t show up.
"If someone does show up that they don’t want, Didulo will send her security out to tell them to leave, and they also record everything on cell phones," Sarteschi says. "Sometimes, she hands out loyalty money which is fake money she’s printed out and gives to people who attend the ceremonies. People are excited about the money because they think that they will eventually get to cash it in at the ‘treasury."'
According to Sarteschi, the well-known conspiracist told people at a previous event that it's important they stay loyal to her because she "believes in the death penalty."
It is not known how long Didulo plans to stay in Sault Ste. Marie.