Why It Is Important To Celebrate Pride Month

Jeff Green | Jun 21, 2023

It could have been 1990, or 1991.

My wife Martina was showing her work at an art fair on the grounds of a small church in Toronto, one Sunday in late June.

I don't remember why, or how, we had decided to participate in that show, but I do remember it was one of a number of unsuccessful weekend shows that we attended during that recessionary year, in an attempt to sell her prints. We had done well selling art in the late 1980s, but were struggling because of how vulnerable the art market was to an economic downturn, which is why we took on this show.

The reason I still remember that particular show is because there was a small break in a long, dreary day for us and the other artists at the exhibition. A small offshoot of The Toronto Pride parade passed by, on the street next to the show.

We had to ask people in the parade what it was all about because no one was really dressed up. There were a number of people in the parade with telltale skin lesions from Kaposi sarcoma, a cancer that is associated with AIDS.

The parade was a show of defiance not only against AIDS, which had devastated the community, but against the indifference of the greater community of people who were disinterested in the gay community.

In 1990, AIDS was a dominant issue in the community, and AIDS Action Now held a parade in that year to process a lack of research into AIDS/HIV. 40,000 people attended the parade that year, according to Pride Toronto. Toronto City Council voted to officially proclaim Pride Day, and then recanted when the Mayor of Toronto, Art Eggleton, refused to make the proclamation. He did proclaim, “Official Muppet Baby Day” on the same day,

Pride began in Toronto in 1981, and over time it overcame many obstacles, including Art Eggleton, and even the devastating AIDS pandemic, to become a major, month-long event in the city. It has become an economic driver for the Toronto tourism industry.

Pride Toronto claims that, in 2019, 1.7 million people attended Pride events in the city in June of that year, and that Pride contributed $374 million to the Ontario economy, created over 3,000 direct jobs and generated almost $150 million in tax revenue.

No one seems to be able to agree about how many people attended the parade that year, but the two-kilometre parade route, through the commercial heart of the city, is completely packed with hundreds of thousands.

Pride Month was sidelined by COVID in 2020 and 2021, came back in 2022 with some limitations, and this year it is back in full force, with expectations that the 2019 stats will be outdone.

Pride events take place in other Ontario cities and towns, including Kingston, where an estimated 3,500 people attended the parade last weekend.

There was also a parade in the Town of Perth in early June this year. In tiny Westport, they held a Pride Crawl, and participants then traveled to Smiths Falls to celebrate the new rainbow crosswalk, before heading to Perth for the parade. The mayor of Westport proclaimed Pride month.

In Frontenac County, the celebration has been non-existent.

There have been no proclamations, to my knowledge, and aside from a tweet from the Township of South Frontenac early in the month, the month has passed without any acknowledgement at all.

The hamlets in Frontenac County are small, and there are no local Pride Committee’s asking for political support, so it does not appear that anyone requested any recognition from Frontenac County politicians this year, or any other year.

All of this does not make Frontenac County discriminatory against local residents who identify as Two-Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and/or Questioning, Intersex, or Asexual, but it also does not signal that the local communities are welcoming.

I mention all of the labels that are captured in the tongue twisting acronym 2SLGBTQQIA+ because the acronym is recognition that there are many ways that people identify themselves in terms of their sexual and gender identity these days, and inclusion is about celebrating all of those expressions.

Also, the acronym has become a target in the culture wars that are centred in the United States, and have a life in our country as well.

It is identified as an example of “woke” culture by people who identify as “anti-woke”.

I know little about woke or anti-woke, but I do know that the ‘anti-woke’ banner provides a forum for some people to openly oppose communities of people who have worked for decades to be open, accepted, and celebrated in our country.

Freedom of expression and freedom to live without discrimination are aspirational values in Canada.

And Pride is about celebrating the diverse ways of life in a free society, nothing more. Anyone who is uncomfortable with it, can simply stay away.

When federal politicians, such as Pierre Poilievre and Stephen Harper before him, decide not to march in Pride parades, I am of two minds about it.

For them to march if they do not whole-heartedly support Pride, would be dishonest, so good for them to stay home.

But if not marching is part of an effort by a politician to ensure they will get votes from those who want rights that have been won over 4 decades of activism to be rolled back, that is another story. In Pierre Poilievre’s case, it might be more the latter.

He wished Canadians a happy Pride month, and even linked support for Pride with his party’s emphasis on freedom, but still he did not march and that is a political message to his supporters.

Poilievre has deliberately shown himself to be a supporter of all that the anti-woke movement entails, which includes opposition to enhancing gay rights and celebrating gay culture in the country.

Local politicians are not in the same position. They can, and have, remained silent on this issue, which has no direct impact on their municipal mandate

But for Frontenac County residents who identify with any one of the identities captured in the 2SLGBTQQIA+ acronym, silence on the municipal level is a signal that they may not be as welcome here as they are in neighbouring communities, and that diminishes us all