Victoria’s Pride Parade grows up
Sunday’s event likely to draw thousands of revellers, a far cry from small picnic in 1991
Colin Craig says he never could have imagined, at the first Pride event in Victoria 26 years ago, that it would evolve into the showy, colourful Pride Parade and Festival.
Sunday’s event is expected to draw thousands of revellers and more than 100 community groups, making it the largest Pride event yet.
Craig said the small picnic in Beacon Hill Park in 1991 was much more subdued.
“It was the first time we were outside being seen. That was a big deal at the time,” he said.
“Some people didn’t want to come. They thought there’d be snipers in trees. Homophobia was a major issue.”
Craig, a retired fine-dining server, said the group — mostly gay men and women — had a banner, balloons and about six bucks. They sold hot dogs and the orange drink McDonald’s gave to community groups, to raise money for the next Pride.
“There was no way we’d do a parade,” he said.
But just three years later, on June 25, 1994, Victoria witnessed its first Gay Pride Parade, as it was called at the time.
“There were maybe 200 people, but it was very empowering,” said David Tillson, president of the Victoria Pride Society and parade organizer for the past 13 years.
Pride marchers walked along the sidewalk from Victoria City Hall to the legislature because they could not afford the city fee to get a street permit.
As the group passed a croquet tournament on the Empress lawn, chanting: “We’re here. We’re queer!” a player was heard saying: “We’re square. You’re there. We don’t care.”
The group held a moment of silence for those too afraid to be there, and for those lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Tillson said the emergence of public Pride events came after “a closed period when the AIDS crisis wiped out whole social groups.”
Pride events often take place around the end of June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, which protested police raids on queerwelcome places and launched the modern gay liberation movement.
Victoria’s 1995 Pride parade stirred controversy because of a bare-breasted biker group called the Lesbian Avengers. There were angry letters to this newspaper, a presentation to city council and warnings of charges from Victoria police. That year was also a celebration because sexual orientation had been included in the country’s hate-crime legislation.
“The issues are different every year and the parade can definitely be used as a vehicle for protest,” Tillson said.
“But I think of it as more of a celebration.”
Each year, the Pride parade and festival has grown, with more participants, supporters and businesses, and more backing from the wider community.
Victoria council unanimously proclaimed Pride Week for the first time in 2000. It also marked the first time police participated in the parade, with police board members Jannit Rabinovitch and Randall Garrison leading the way.
“We were the first ‘out’ police board members and making the department more LGBT-friendly was really important and has come a long way,” said Garrison, the New Democrat member of Parliament for Esquimalt Saanich-Sooke.
Garrison said he plans to march alongside premierdesignate John Horgan on Sunday and celebrate the recent win for transgender rights — the Senate’s passage of amendments to the Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to ban discrimination and hate acts based on gender identity.
“We’ve come a long way, but we still have work to do in making sure policies align with this change,” Garrison said.
Judy Lightwater, a retired charity fundraiser and self-described lesbian activist, said she has attended every Pride parade since 1994.
“In some ways, a lot of things have stayed the same,” she said. “Will this be a protest? Will this be a celebration?”
She said as gender identity has become “more fluid and less binary, there is more room for expression.”
Tillson said that every year, Pride is a balance of celebrating the community and raising awareness about important issues.
“It really is about equality and inclusion to make things better,” said Tillson, regarding concerns in other cities about corporate sponsors and police participation and how that might trigger victims of trauma.
He said the Victoria Pride Society is sponsoring an annual $1,000 bursary for a University of Victoria student who identifies as a member of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, twospirited, queer, questioning and ally (LGBTQQA), intersex and gender non-binary communities.
“We’ve spent so many years building relationships and community allies. We wanted to do something else to give back,” he said.
The University of Victoria Pride Society has refused, however, to participate in Victoria Pride events.
The society described Victoria Pride as mainstream and “a space in which white, able-bodied, neurotypical, middle-class/upperclass, and cisgender homosexual men are represented as the default and most acceptable queer identity” and are favoured over marginalized communities such as persons of colour, people who are transgender, gender variant, intersex or neurodivergent, and people with disabilities and low incomes.
The Victoria Pride Parade and Festival begins at 11 a.m. Sunday at Pandora Avenue and Government Street. It will feature two transgender honorary marshals as well as Indigenous and twospirit marshals.
Parade-watchers can join the procession to MacDonald Park, at the corner of Oswego and Simcoe streets, where there will be entertainment, food trucks, a vendor market, a beer tent and a children’s camp.