Virtual Pride: Online party hits a quieter tone than annual parade,
About 1,400 people streamed lively event, which featured cameos
For the first time in its decadeslong history, Toronto’s Pride parade was held online.
Despite some occasional technical glitches — lagging audio and spotty video for some viewers — the online “parade” on Sunday afternoon was a joyful substitute for the real thing, bringing together a mix of dancing, live performances and montages.
A few minutes into the presentation, Pride Toronto said, jokingly, on Instagram that there was “too much pride!
“Our website traffic is over the rainbow and causing technical difficulties with our server,” reads the post. The livestream steamed ahead, ironing out an audio issue along the way.
City Coun. Kristyn WongTam gave a welcome speech, saying, “when this pandemic is behind us, we will come together once again to fill the streets: the restaurants, the bars, the dance floors, the civic squares — and when we do, it will be the loudest, most colourful, most fabulous pride celebration this city has ever seen. I look forward to that day with you.”
Toronto comedian Brandon Ash-Mohammed hosted the 90-minute-long event, which featured cameos from Halsey and Alanis Morissette, Cozmic Cat, a Toronto-based DJ, Jully Black and more.
The parade’s start time was moved so it wouldn’t overlap with a “teach-in” taking place Sunday at Nathan Phillips Square beginning at 2 p.m., organized by the No Pride in Policing Coalition, a group of “queer and trans people (supporting) all the demands that Black Lives Matter Toronto raised at the 2016 Pride Toronto parade,” according to the event’s Facebook description.
Pride Toronto said on its event page that the rally at Nathan Phillips Square was “a teachable moment for all of us, and the beginning of a larger global change to support the Black and BIPOC communities.”
According to Pride Toronto’s annual report, around 150,000 people attended the parade last year, which made it the biggest on record.
Virtual attendance this year was a fraction of that: The Facebook stream of the event peaked at around 500 people, while the livestream, on twitch.tv, had around 1,400 viewers.
You can rewatch the virtual Pride parade at pridetoronto.com/virtualpride/.