The QAnon Queen Has Taken Over an Empty School and Locals Want Her the Hell Out
QAnon influencer Romana Didulo and her followers moved themselves into an abandoned school in small town Saskatchewan. Now the local children are too scared to play in the town's park.
A QAnon influencer who has somehow convinced her followers that she’s the true “Queen of Canada” has holed herself and her closest followers up in an abandoned school in rural Saskatchewan, and the townsfolk want her out.
Just under two weeks ago Romana Didulo, better known as the QAnon Queen, rolled into Richmound, Saskatchewan, and promptly turned the tiny town upside down. Driving in a convoy—and licking her wounds after being kicked out of another small Saskie town—she pulled up to an abandoned school in the middle of town and, much to the chagrin of those who actually live in the community of less than 200, began to unload.
As they have done in the past, her cult followers acted rather paranoid to any outsiders, refusing to let anyone in and filming them if they got too close. Soon after arriving they unspooled a wire marking a line that outsiders cannot cross—the wire sits unsettlingly close to one of the town’s only playgrounds.
“The families are afraid to let their kids go to the park, which I totally agree with,” Richmound mayor Brad Miller told VICE News. “I asked a kid the other day what he thought and he said ‘I’m not going to play there, too scary when you see the lights on at school.’”
The school the group has set up in has been closed for about 11 years now. Miller said he believes the cult has no water or heat in the school but they do have power. Photos Miller shared with VICE show Didulo’s followers standing on the roof of the building filming the locals.
Didulo is a figure who grew out of the QAnon conspiracy movement where she essentially posited herself as a a leader who is fighting a war against a pedophilic cabal that is running the world—her rhetoric has since grown incredibly esoteric and touches on the extraterrestrial and Didulo essentially having superpowers. She’s been traveling the country for the better part of two years now with her closest followers accompanying her and doing her bidding. She’s entirely funded by her followers from which she is constantly asking for money.
The people of Richmound came together and held a rally trying to push Didulo and her followers to leave. So they all hopped in their trucks and drove around the school for hours, honking their horns and letting the cult know they weren’t welcome. They then stood in front of the school with signs showcasing the classic Canadian politeness like, “Please leave our town and let our children come out and play.”
The action didn’t convince the group to leave but it did get the locals’ message across. Didulo and her closest follower did a nine-hour livestream filming the locals and have focused on the protest in every single one of their nightly livestreams.
In the videos, they state the locals have fallen for the “lamestream media” and that they should recognize Didulo as their benevolent leader. In particular, the group is upset about a local journalist who came and filmed the group in several livestreams where he, at times, got into mild confrontations with Didulo’s followers. They even made a cardboard “billboard” listing reasons why the locals should convert to following Didulo and attacked reporters and experts—including at VICE News—who have covered Didulo in the past.
“These village folks bought into the lie after lie after lie by the paid for, bought, sold journalists and mainstream media, infiltrators and traitors,” Didulo’s second in command, who goes by Darlene Ondi, said in their Wednesday live stream. “It’s time to grow up, y’all.”
Recently the group went into the town—which they call a “deployment”—and filmed and took photos of locals.
Do you have information or tips about “QAnon Queen” Romana Didulo or her followers? You can contact Mack Lamoureux by email at mack.lamoureux@vice.com, or DM him on Twitter at @MackLamourex for a Signal number.
Former members of the cult who previously lived with Didulo have told VICE News “the abuse was non-stop” and that they live in horrific conditions when traveling with their “queen.” They painted a picture of an emotionally and verbally abusive community that Didulo leads with an iron fist—micromanaging them to an absurd degree, screaming at them and pitting them against each other. The group is, unsurprisingly, subject to flights of fancy which don’t typically go well, in perhaps the most dramatic incident they attempted to arrest a police force in Ontario only for several of their members to be arrested themselves.
It’s not just the followers who travel with her who are suffering, Didulo has preached that utility bills and mortgage payments are no longer required in her “kingdom” leading some followers to stop paying their bills and have their power shut off or even lose their homes. Outside of the group, Didulo often uses rhetoric with an undercurrent of violence and loves to threaten death sentences to those that oppose her.
“Didulo is a person who has issued edicts, which the cult members are ordered to follow, for the violent death of those at hospitals, schools, and other facilities that are promoting vaccinations,” Christine Sarteschi, a criminology professor at Chatham University who follows Didulo closely, told VICE News.” She has issued many other edicts including public hanging, throwing people out of helicopters, for many other groups of people.”
Didulo has announced that she’s holding a “meet and greet” with her followers in early October but refuses to say where it will be held, which has some of those in Richmound worried that even more Didulo followers are going to swarm into her town.
Miller said the town is thinking of holding a BBQ near the school in the hopes of once again showing the cult they aren’t welcome. As for if it will work, well he doesn’t know, but he hopes.
“I have a high tolerance but as mayor, I’m here for the people,” he said. “It comes back to one answer and one answer only, we want them out, bottom line.”
