Pride on colourful display at ‘great’ annual parade
The Victoria Pride Parade rolled out Sunday, fluffed up with rainbow-coloured boas, sparkles and dancers in a column estimated to stretch three kilometres.
Rolling floats featured dancers moving to music played over loudspeakers. Marching contingents represented groups as varied as Quakers for Diversity, unions, the B.C. SPCA, the City of Victoria, the Young Communist League and the Times Colonist.
The event attracted thousands from Victoria’s LGBTQ2+ community and their supporters. The crowd lined sidewalks along Government Street from Pandora Avenue to Belleville Street and continued on through James Bay to MacDonald Park where the Pride Festival was in full swing.
The first Pride Parade in Victoria was in 1994.
Brittany Kohn, event co-ordinator and a director of the Victoria Pride Society, said the annual event has not just grown but has undergone a transformation to become something for everybody and all ages, from kids to seniors.
Kohn noted there are still edgy, explicit signs of sexuality in the parade but, overall, the spectacle is a less aggressive and more joyful. Nobody ever instructed marchers to change. It just happened.
“We let the community be selfaccountable and this is how they all showed up in such a great way,” she said.
“We are an all-ages event and an age-appropriate event,” said Kohn. “And it’s great because everybody is still free to be who they are.”
“On a day like today, everybody can show up and be exactly who they want to be in that moment,” said Kohn. “The end goal is that maybe this day can spread out to 365 days.”
The biggest cheers from the crowd always seemed to come in support of the most flamboyant marchers, the slinky drag queens or bearded men dancing in rainbow-coloured taffeta tutus.
Many onlookers sported rainbow colours, some men wore high leather boots and some women appeared with breasts clothed in nothing but glittery sparkles.
Gord, a litte white dog belonging to Victoria couple Christina Haltner and Ben Trumbley, was sporting a Pride-appropriate lavender dye job across its head to show support.
Bob Crane, 81, watching with his wife, said he is not quite at ease with the whole spectacle but added that he thinks he’s getting there. “It’s about time society accepted all of them as they are,” said Crane. “It’s long overdue.”
“But I’m not going to march,” he said. “I guess it just takes time to change one’s perspective.”
In the spirit of diversity, the festival offered a beer garden on one side of MacDonald Park and a bouncy castle for children on the other.
Jo-Ann Bohn and husband Alex Wellen have been bringing their twins, a boy and girl now aged 11, for several years to the Pride Parade.
Bohn said it’s just a happy day, with music, fun and great exposure for the children.
“It’s just a really good day,” said Bohn. “And it’s a great day to teach them about diversity.”
She said some of the racier outfits have provided good instructive moments.
“My daughter was saying ‘Oooh, I saw her so and sos,’ and I just have to say ‘Yes, dear, and we all have them,’ ” said Bohn.