CoA was honoured to assist with planning, managing, and executing the first Dominion Society conference: DomCon 2026. This amounted to approximately 9 months of work, several contract negotiations, venue changes, shipments of promotional material held at the border, entry into the country denied by the state, and a coordinated campaign from the media and political class to stop the event taking place. Despite the full weight of our mainstream news, Ontario politicians, local police, and political agitators, we still successfully held over 250 members and non-members at a large ballroom just outside of Toronto.
It was lively, it was livestreamed, and the walls shook with applause.
In the months leading up to the big day, what started as a trickle of coverage in the Hamilton Spectator snowballed into official denouncements from the Hamilton Mayor and a campaign by Hamilton Police to turn public support away from Dominion Society by dissuading venues from hosting the event, going so far as to boast about contacting legal businesses directly in a form of intimidation.
This was a multidimensional battle the likes of which has never been encountered by a legal, popular, Canadian political event.
One of the headline speakers – Martin Sellner – was denied entry into Canada. He was able to submit a video reflecting the speech he would have delivered. A second international guest – Charlie Downes – had his Electronic Travel Authorization approved months in advance, only to have it revoked a week before taking a flight from the UK. We handled every aspect of flights and accommodations, so we were invested in these developing stories.
Charlie ultimately took a flight across the border in America and we brought him over a land route, where he was detained by border authorities for several hours. With his subsequent release, one more plot to handicap DomCon was foiled. The situation remained fluid until the doors opened, but we had the support of Dominion Society volunteers, a private security company, and local police ensuring no bad actors were permitted to breach the perimeter.
