For the last 47 years, like clockwork, a coalition of grassroots feminist, student, social justice, climate movements leaders and labour unions organized and led Toronto’s International Women’s Day (IWD) 2025 rally and march. In fact, Toronto is the only city in North America to have had an annual IWD day rally consecutively since 1978.
If you have ever attended or participated in this event, or understand how it works, you will come to know why it stands out and has outlasted other feminist march organizations, past and present.
Unlike Pride Toronto or even the U.S. Women’s March Inc (founded in 2017), IWD Toronto has never incorporated. It has no paid staff. It does not depend or event invite corporate sponsors or funding. Each year in January, just three months before March 8, coalition representatives come together to decide and name the theme, organize speakers, engage allies and determine which issues will take centre stage. For the past forty years, IWD Toronto has been led in large part by Carolyn Egan, Steelworkers Toronto Area Council president.
This year in particular, the lecture hall at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) was filled to the rafters. Over 200 gathered at 11a.m. on a Saturday to show thunderous support for presenting activists, artists, and union leaders highlighting key issues and how we must organize to fight back.
The vibe? Love, urgency, frustration and solidarity; Like a large family under attack who has not gathered in a year. People seem to know each other or are seemingly just two degrees of separation apart. Outside, with their signs, drums, bull horns and hot coffees, approximately 3000 waited for the march to begin after the rally.
Heather Wood, a rally attendee, has been going to this rally for over 20 years. Wood grew up with a feminist activist mother who was once fired for being pregnant.
“I come because here I feel like I am not alone. It’s good to know people are out there fighting for us all. It’s also great to remember the victories of the past in order to see why we need to fight in this way to create a better future,” Wood said.
This year, in addition to creating a space for core modern Canadian feminist issues such as anti-racism, resisting right-wing ideologies, struggles of Indigenous, Palestinian, Afghan, Iranian, and in 2025, Kurdish women, the rise of American nationalism and modern fascism in the United States took centre stage too.
Virginia Rodino, a prominent American labour activist and the Executive Director of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), is an instrumental promoter of women in leadership roles in unions, plus tirelessly advocates for the growth of union membership among women, especially, women of colour, called out for the need for solidarity across borders.
“We gave the world Donald Trump. But we have also given the world the #metoo movement, Occupy, anti-globalization (Battle in Seattle) and Black Lives Matter. I am here to share with you that the workers in the United States are radicalizing. We are mobilizing. We are resisting. Trumps cuts are touching the lives of all Americans. America is noticing. We are not taking this lying down. Your support and solidarity are important,” she said.
Judy Rebick, prominent feminist, author and pro-Palestine activist, recalled how Canadian activists and leaders in Toronto and Montreal marched in solidarity with those marching at the 1965 Selma (Alabama) civil rights march (also known as Bloody Sunday) to support the American people’s fight for civil rights.
“Solidarity between the working-class people of the United States and Canada has always been there—and it will continue. When we act together, we are unstoppable,” said Rebick.
Other speakers at the rally included Dr. Catherine Brooks, an Anishinaabe Kwe Elder, Nicole Brennan, a worker at the Ford Oakville Assembly Plant, and Narbot Alinia, a migrant worker facing deportation.
This year, special recognition was paid to Ursala Jacko (90-years-old), a ground-breaking indigenous elder who was an active IWD Toronto organizer for decades and fought against coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada.
As Carolyn Egan handed Jacko a lifetime achievement award, rally participants gave a standing ovation.
“We don’t recognize leaders in the feminist movement enough,” said Egan.
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