The woman who has declared herself the “Queen of Canada” has been arrested, according to RCMP in Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan RCMP Insp. Ashley St. Germaine said it had executed a search warrant after receiving a report on Aug. 25 that someone inside a privately owned, decommissioned school in Richmound, Sask., was in possession of a gun.
Police said during the execution of the warrant, 16 people were arrested: 11 women and five men.
Of those taken into custody, 10 were inside a privately-owned, decommissioned school while six were arrested from RVs that were on the property and one person taken into custody outside a residence in the village.
According to St. Germaine, they found and seized four replica handguns.
She also confirmed that Romana Didulo, who has declared herself the “Queen of Canada,” was among those arrested.
The 50-year-old and an unknown number of her followers moved into the Saskatchewan school in September 2023.
“So what I can say is that one of the individuals that was inside the building identified herself as Romana Didulo, which was as I understand livestreamed as it happened,” St. Germaine said.
“So she presented herself and identified herself as that and released it to the public so I can confirm that she is in custody.”
RCMP say no one has been charged at this time, but all 17 remain in custody.
St. Germaine told reporters they have a certain amount of time with respect to next steps.
“They’ve been arrested and legally we have 24 hours to either lay a charge, have a person before the courts or release them,” she said.
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“If we release individuals without charges, that doesn’t mean that they may not be charged down the road. What that means is we potentially don’t have enough evidence to charge them right now, but we can gather enough evidence to charge them down the road if that’s appropriate in that case.”
Didulo calls herself the “Queen of Canada” promoting various conspiracy theories, including ones about QAnon, and her followers have disrupted local residents in the small southwest Saskatchewan community located near the Alberta border.
QAnon is a wide-ranging term for internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is run by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles.
Didulo has amassed a following of tens of thousands of people on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where she has allegedly called for health-care workers to be shot and for her followers to make citizen arrests of law enforcement officers.
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network alleges she’s also encouraged her followers to target a wide range of people involved with the COVID-19 response including politicians, government workers, journalists and teachers.
Global News has not been able to independently verify the allegations made by the network.
In a disturbing incident in 2020, an elementary school in Alberta was targeted by her followers, who arrived while children were in class and began distributing anti-vaccine information. The incident was first reported by Vice news.
Earlier in August, Richmound Mayor Brad Miller posted on Facebook alleging that the group has been dumping raw sewage onto the grounds of the school in which they’re living.
He said in the post that in early 2025, the town was able to block off sewer access to the school after saying they’d been “stealing water” and “using the town’s sewer system without paying, all while claiming they aren’t.”
“But now, with their sewage backing up, they’ve started pumping it around their compound — and even near the ball diamonds outside of the compound where our kids used to play,” he wrote.
More than a year before moving to the Saskatchewan village, some of Didulo’s followers were arrested after they tried to place Peterborough, Ont. police officers under arrest.
At the time, a group of 30 tried to enter the police service’s station, but were met by locked doors. The group said their goal was to arrest officers for “crimes against humanity” and “COVID crimes,” saying they were ordered to do so by Didulo.
Several individuals then confronted officers who were entering the parking lot in a vehicle, with at least five of Didulo’s followers arrested.
Eight months before that, Didulo herself was taken into custody by RCMP in Victoria, B.C.
In December 2021, Didulo said in a YouTube video the RCMP’s integrated national security enforcement team (INSET) had served her with a search warrant and told her she was being detained under B.C. mental health act.
— With files from The Canadian Press
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