What Happens When a QAnon Cult Leader Moves Into Town

Published June 13, 2023 By admin with Comments 0

TATAMAGOUCHE, Nova Scotia – The QAnon Queen of Canada leans so close to the windshield of her motorhome her face is almost pressed against the glass when she screams into her walkie-talkie.

“Ignore them!” her voice crackles over the radio. “Ignore them!”

The small collection of Romana’s Didulo’s ragtag group of cult followers-turned-servants who populate a rural Nova Scotia property look at me with a mix of horror and apology. One man, wearing a security hat straight out of a dollar store costume section, tries to take control and meekly tells me I need to leave the area. Another follower, a bit bolder than the security guy, coldly says “absolutely not” when I ask if we can speak to their so-called “queen.”

There are three motorhomes strewn across the front lawn of the property and our conversation has to be loud in order to hear over the cacophony of the dozen or so dogs barking and fighting. Here is where Didulo and her followers, who have been proselytizing her unique brand of QAnon conspiracy-cum-alien stuff-cum-soverign citizenship beliefs across Canada for the better part of a year, stayed over the winter. Here is where Didulo made her most loyal followers sleep on the floor of RVs so her dogs could sleep on the bed, and made people sit in their filth for weeks, eat expired food, and face torrents of abuse.

Marching from the motorhome housing their spiritual leader, Didulo’s second-in-command comes storming towards us. Pointing her phone at us she begins to take control of the situation.

“No comment,” she screams repeatedly. “No comment!”
The Queen and her subjects
For reasons only known to my editor and therapist, I’ve been reporting on Didulo and her QAnon following for over two years now.

The story has led me to get the worst sunburn of my adult life on a B.C. beach as I heard former followers tell me about how they were locked in a motorhome as she played Boney M’s disco hit “Rasputin” for nine straight hours; dive deep into legal documents of a woman who lost her home because the Queen of Canada said she didn’t have to pay her bank; and waste hours upon hours of my life watching the cult’s bizarre live streams.

It has now led me to the village of Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, home to about 700 souls according to the latest census, although it swells in the summer months due to its proximity to water and parks. I had long known that Didulo had set down somewhere for the winter in Canada’s Ocean Playground, but didn’t know exactly where until a concerned local tossed me an email. Armed with this knowledge and knowing the flights would be cheap in the offseason, I convinced my boss to let me expense a ticket to once again try to meet the QAnon Queen of Canada.

Despite writing over 20 stories about her, breaking almost all of the news about her cult, and speaking to former victims, this Albertan hidalgo has only managed to speak to the person at the heart of the story once. It was on the cold streets of Victoria in January 2022 when she left to start her cross country tour. As she marched towards her RV I matched her pace and tried to ask her questions but was quickly shut down. Since then I’ve done my best—my due diligence as I would tell the company lawyers—to make contact. I’ve emailed every spokesperson she’s had and tried to talk to her through multiple channels but with no luck. Once again I was packing my bags and making a long journey to prove to myself that this is something worth covering and I’m not just tilting at windmills.

It would be a journey that would take me across Nova Scotia, make me question journalistic ethics, visit a town devastated by a hurricane to meet a “demon of a man,” cause a minor bit of drama in a lovely small town, hear stories from people who escaped an abusive cult compound, and share beers with many a friendly Maritimer. All to answer the a variety of questions—like is this a real cult, a scam, a mental health issue, or a mix of all of this, and why did they pick Nova Scotia?—that at its heart boils down simply to: what the fuck is going on here?

Content retrieved from: https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7zzn9/qanon-queen-canada-nova-scotia-moves-in.