Pride Toronto

Several Toronto City Councillors taking part in the 2006 Pride Parade.

Two men dressed in faux Royal Canadian Mounted Police costumes celebrate their wedding.

CANFAR float in the 2006 parade

Pride Toronto is an annual event held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in June each year. A celebration of the diversity of the LGBT community in the Greater Toronto Area. It is one of the largest organized gay pride festivals in the world, featuring several stages with live performers and DJs, several licensed venues, a large Dyke March, a Trans March and the Pride Parade. The centre of the festival is the city's Church and Wellesley village, while the parade and marches are primarily routed along the nearby Yonge Street, Gerrard Street and Bloor Street. In 2014, the eventserved as the fourth international WorldPride, and was much larger than standard Toronto Prides.

The event is organized by Pride Toronto, a non-profit organization. A small complement of seven staff support the work of 19 festival teams and six advisors; each team is responsible for an aspect of the festival. Each team is administered by two or three volunteer team leads. The long-term vision for, and strategic oversight of, the organization and the festival is managed by 12 volunteers on the board of directors.

For most of its history, Pride was a seven-to-ten day festival centred on the final week in June, with the parade falling on either the last weekend in June or the first weekend in July depending on the year's circumstances. As of 2016, Pride is now declared as the entire month of June, with a program of events throughout the month leading up to the parade.

The organization's current executive director is Olivia Nuamah.^[1] She was appointed in February 2017 to succeed Mathieu Chantelois, who led the organisation from 2015 to 2016.^[2]

Festival overview

Main events of Pride Week include the Dyke March and the Pride parade. Although a definitive count of attendees cannot be determined, estimates in recent years have ranged from 500,000 to over one million for the entire week, and about 100,000 for the parade itself. The festival is often touted as being one of the largest cultural festivals in North America and the 22 city blocks that make up the festival site is closed to vehicular traffic.

History

Toronto's Pride Week evolved out of the mass protests that followed the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids, and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2005. In the 2005 parade, newly appointed Toronto police chief Bill Blair became the first chief of police in the city's history to personally take part in the parade. He marched alongside politicians of all parties, including several federal and provincial cabinet ministers and Mayor David Miller.

A theme is selected for each Pride Week that reflects the current context of the queer community and helps shape the festivities. Previous themes included "Fearless" (2006), "Unstoppable!" (2007), "Unified" (2008), and "Can't Stop. Won't Stop." (2009).

Controversy

Toronto Pride Week has not been without controversy, as the growth of the event in recent years has led to allegations that it has become an overly commercial enterprise dependent on corporate sponsors and business interests, to the detriment of local community groups and political activism.^[3] Although Pride officially defines itself as inclusive of all races, communities and gender identifications, many such groups within the LGBT community have alleged that their events and communities and issues are increasingly marginalized in favour of a commercialized agenda.^[4] For example, many smaller community groups have indicated that they can no longer afford the increased fees required to place a marching contingent in the parade, which is increasingly dominated by corporate-sponsored advertising floats; and many LGBTQ-owned small businesses which historically depended on vendor booths at Pride Toronto for publicity have indicated that they can no longer afford the increased fees for inclusion in the vendor area.^[5]

As early as 2010 the Blackness Yes! committee, which organizes an annual dance party called Blockorama for LGBTQ people of colour, was raising the alarm that their program was being involuntarily forced to move from its traditional space, the Wellesley Stage across from Wellesley subway station, to unsuitable spaces such as the smaller parking lot in front of the Church Street Beer Store, the unpaved and unsuitable-for-dancing George Hislop Park, or the far too small Alexander Street Parkette.^[6] An appropriate space for Blockorama became one of the nine demands highlighted by Black Lives Matter in the 2016 incident discussed below.

In 2015, Pride Toronto was forced to withdraw applications to trademark the phrases "Dyke March" and "Trans Pride", both referring to events which are organized by outside groups on Pride weekend as a reaction to lesbian and transgender people's concerns that their issues and needs are not adequately addressed by Pride.^[7]

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

In 2010 there was a controversy over Pride Toronto's decisions regarding the participation of the group, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). Initially, Pride Toronto agreed not to allow the phrase "Israeli Apartheid" as part of a deal with the City of Toronto (which had suggested that funding would be reviewed if the group was included). However, Pride Toronto subsequently reversed that decision June 23 (after it had received the funds from the city), allowing the group to participate. Several Pro-Israel groups also attended the event.^[8][9]

Pride Week's decision to reverse the ban on QuAIA after it had received funding from the city (which was done on the condition that QuAIA not be allowed to participate) drew sharp criticism from several sources. Rob Ford, who was then a mayoral candidate (he was subsequently elected several months later), stated that: "I want to express my disappointment and disgust with Pride Toronto's decision to allow this hateful group to march." Giorgio Mammoliti, who was also running for mayor, announced that he would introduce a motion at the city council demanding that Pride return the $250,000 it had received from the city to reject all of Pride's future funding requests.^[10] In an editorial, the National Post called for both the City of Toronto and corporate sponsors to halt all funding to Pride Week, arguing that: "Anti-Israel bigots are free to have their own parade – but not on the public dime. The City of Toronto, whose councilors already have explicitly denounced QuAIA’s “apartheid” propaganda, should prepare to cut funding. Corporate sponsors should do likewise."^[11]

In March 2011, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has said that he will not allow city funding for the 2011 Toronto Pride Parade if organizers allow QuAIA march again this year. “Taxpayers dollars should not go toward funding hate speech,” Ford said.^[12] However, on April 13, 2011 the non-partisan Toronto city manager released a report for the city council's executive committee concluding that "the participation of QUAIA in the Pride Parade based solely on the phrase 'Israeli Apartheid' does not violate the City’s Anti-Discrimination Policy. The City also cannot therefore conclude that the use of term on signs or banners to identify QuAIA constitutes the promotion of hatred or seeks to incite discrimination contrary to the Code."^[13] Ford indicated that he plans to defund the parade regardless of the City Manager report.^[14] On April 15, 2011, QuAIA announced that it would withdraw from the 2011 Pride parade; however, councillor Giorgio Mammoliti responded that he would still introduce a motion to withdraw city funding from Pride Toronto if the committee did not explicitly ban the group from participating.^[15]

In June 2012, the Toronto city council voted to condemn the phrase "Israeli apartheid," as part of a resolution recognizing the Pride parade as a “significant cultural event that strongly promotes the ideals of tolerance and diversity.” The resolution said it slams the term "Israeli apartheid" for undermining the values of Pride and diminishing “the suffering experienced by individuals during the apartheid regime in South Africa.”^[16]

Black Lives Matter

At the 2016 parade, the Toronto chapter of Black Lives Matter, who had been selected by Pride as the honoured group, interrupted the parade for approximately half an hour to call attention to a number of demands addressing racism in the LGBTQ community.^[17] The demands included Pride providing stable funding and space to events for LGBTQ people of colour such as Blockorama, Black Queer Youth and the South Asian stage,^[18] which had seen funding cuts and repeated relocation to less convenient or suitable venues in recent years, as well as increasing diversity in the hiring of the organization's staff and board — however, media coverage focused primarily on one explosive demand: that Toronto Police officers be barred from participating in Pride while in uniform, in response to ongoing police harassment of people of colour and transgender people.^[18]

Executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed BLM's statement of demand, but later asserted that he had signed it only to end the sit-in and get the parade moving, and had not agreed to honour the demands.^[19] Following criticism of his handling of the incident, he resigned as executive director of Pride approximately six weeks later on August 11.^[20]

Debate over the action focused primarily on the question of whether banning uniformed police from the parade represented an abdication of the organization's stated values of diversity and inclusivity,^[21] largely without regard to the matter of whether not honouring the demand, thereby alienating racialized and transgender members of the community, would also be an abdication of those same values.^[22] Some media analysts claimed that BLM was an outside group with no connection to LGBTQ issues at all, and thus should not have been invited to participate in the first place, even though the all of the demands related directly to Pride's handling of transgender and racial issues, and BLM leaders Janaya Khan and Syrus Marcus Ware are both queer-identified.^[23] Pride staff have reaffirmed on more than one occasion that police were not barred from participating in the parade at all, but were simply being directed not to march in uniform.^[24]

At Pride's general meeting in January 2017, the organization's members voted to affirm the motion that police not be permitted to march in uniform.^[25] Some opponents of the motion have falsely claimed that the meeting, and the resulting discussion about the police motion, were conducted in secret even though the meeting was scheduled and advertised normally and widely publicized by the media.^[26]

Following the meeting, Toronto Police chief Mark Saunders announced that the organization would voluntarily withdraw from any attempt to challenge the Pride membership's vote or participate in the parade.^[27] He affirmed, however, that the police service would continue to hold its established annual Pride reception,^[27] and would raise the rainbow flag at Toronto Police Headquarters.^[28]

The decision led Toronto City Council to debate withdrawing its Pride funding for 2017.^[29] The motion to withdraw funding, put forward by councillor John Campbell, failed on a vote of 27-17.^[30] A small group of Toronto residents organized a competing event with the theme of "first responder unity", which is scheduled for the same time as the main Pride parade but is located in another part of downtown Toronto.^[31] The First Responder Unity event made unauthorized use of Pride's logo on its website, as well as making deceptive marketing claims in an apparent attempt to portray itself as the "real" Pride event, calling itself one of the world's largest LGBTQ events and claiming a million attendees — Pride's usual attendance figures — months before the Unity event's actual attendance figures could possibly even be predicted.^[32] On June 19, however, Saunders publicly indicated that Toronto Police officers who wished to attend that event were also not permitted to do so in uniform.^[33]

Financial difficulties

2009

On June 15, 2009, before the 2009 Pride Week festival, it was announced through the office of then Minister of State Diane Ablonczy that Pride Toronto would receive a $400,000 federal grant under the Marquee Tourism program.^[34] Shortly after this announcement, Charles McVety's Institute for Canadian Values issued a public statement titled "Conservatives Announce New Program to Fund Sex Parades," which condemned Stephen Harper's Conservative government for granting Pride Toronto the award and conflated the festival with sex abuse against children.^[35] It was later revealed that the Conservative government stripped Ablonczy of responsibility for the Marquee Tourism program within days of the announced funding for Pride Week, with the Institute for Canadian Values statement and the ensuing uproar reportedly playing a role.^{[36] [37]} Conservative MP Brad Trost was quoted as saying, "The pro-life and pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy."^[37]

May 2010

In May 2010 it was revealed that Pride Toronto would not receive further federal funding under the Marquee Tourism program,^[38] despite having received a favorable review for its grant application.^[39] Toronto City Councilor Kyle Rae commented on the announcement, saying "Reading the political tea leaves from last year, and Diane Ablonczy being shoved aside, I think all of us saw that this was going to happen."^[38]

July 2010

In the late summer of 2010 it was reported that Pride Toronto was facing severe financial difficulties because of the withdrawal of future funding from corporations and the City of Toronto due to the decision to allow QuAIA(Queers Against Israel Apartheid) to participate in the parade. Pride Toronto executive director Tracey Sandilands stated in an interview that "the fact that we might not be able to count on city funding next year, and existing sponsors who have given us notice in writing to say that unless we resolve the issues to their satisfaction, they will no longer be sponsoring us next year. So next year looks very bleak at this point.”^[40]

Audited financial statements released on January 25, 2011, indicated that Pride week had a $431,808 operating deficit for 2009/2010 (ending July 31, 2010), up from $138,605 in 2008/2009. Pride Week's bank indebtedness had increased significantly, from a surplus of $219,296 in 2009 to a deficit of $155,232 in 2010. In the 2009/2010 financial year, sponsorships, which were identified as the primary source of financial difficulties, increased by 17% over 2009 (from $1,225,044 to $1,469,027). However, the total value of the grants Pride Week received declined from $971,800 in 2009 to $709,025 in 2010.^[41]

World Pride 2014

At the 28th annual conference of InterPride, held in October 2009 in St. Petersburg, Florida, the InterPride membership voted to accept the bid of Pride Toronto to host WorldPride 2014 for the first time in North America. In the first round of voting Toronto won 77 votes compared to Stockholm's 61. In the second and final round of voting Stockholm was eliminated and Toronto won 78% of the vote, fulfilling the 2/3 majority needed to finalize the selection process. WorldPride 2014 in Toronto included an opening ceremony with concerts at Nathan Phillips Square; an international human rights conference; a variety of networking and social events including Canada Day and Independence Day celebrations, and an exhibition commemorating the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.

Pride Toronto officials said that Pride Week 2009 drew an estimated one million people to Toronto and contributed C$136 million to the city's economy, and state that they expect WorldPride to be significantly bigger.^[42]

Awards

The Pride Week event received the Top Choice Award for Top Event of the year 2007/2008.^[43]

Third-party events

Like many successful Pride events worldwide, the official events are supplemented with non-official events, including the Prism Festival, now in its seventh year and featuring international DJs and all-night dance parties. As well, the Writers' Trust of Canada presents its annual Dayne Ogilvie Prize, Canada's only literary award for LGBT writers, during Pride Month.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pride Toronto.

• Pride Toronto
• Epic Weekend