Biggest yet Pride parade gets early start
About 125 groups to take part; event kicks off at 11 a.m.
Organizers say they had a good reason for turning the clock back on the starting time for this year’s Victoria Pride Parade — the celebration just keeps getting bigger.
“It was just becoming so large and unmanageable,” said Victoria Pride Society president David Tillson. “The end of the parade was not arriving until after 2 p.m.” This year, the start time has been moved to 11 a.m. from noon, when the annual event traditionally got going.
This year’s celebration of the region’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit and queer communities is the biggest yet, with 127 community organizations set to march and proudly wave the rainbow flag.
“It’s 20 per cent bigger than it was last year, and that was 20 per cent bigger than the year before,” Tillson said. The longtime parade organizer expects thousands of spectators will take in the colourful event.
The parade is scheduled to get rolling at the corner of Pandora Avenue and Government Street, and continue south on Government to Belleville Street before turning west to Menzies Street.
The floats will then travel south on Menzies and turn west at Kingston Street before heading south on Oswego Street. The parade will end at MacDonald Park, at Oswego and Simcoe streets, longtime home for the Victoria Pride Festival.
The free-admission festival is a spectacle in itself, with two entertainment stages, food trucks, a children’s camp, vendor stations and a beer garden.
B.C. premier-designate John Horgan and Randall Garrison, NDP MP for Esquimalt-SaanichSooke, are among dignitaries who will march in this year’s parade.
They’ll be there to celebrate Bill C-16, the recent amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act, which adds gender identity and gender expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination.
The parade will also feature two transgender honorary marshals. As well, Laurie McDonald, a member of the Enoch Cree First Nation who identifies as two-spirited — a term that encompasses lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — is scheduled to speak at the post-parade festival.