Thousands of people united downtown to celebrate Kingston’s 37th annual Pride Parade.
At 12:00 p.m. on June 13, the parade departed from the Memorial Centre and began their march to Confederation Basin in front of City Hall. Those who marched alongside Kingston Pride included community organizations like ReelOut Film Festival, the Frontenac Paramedics, and Kingston Roller Derby. As the parade marched down Princess St., pride flags soared through streets, smiles lit up from sidewalks, and loud cheers signaled the start of a proud day for Kingston.
Queen’s parade participants included the Gender and Sexualities Alliance (GSA), who carried their Faculty of Education banner, and Queen’s University Association for Queer Employees (QUAQE), a group who holds a historic legacy at Kingston Pride by marching with the same hand stitched banner that won “Best Banner” twenty years ago when QUAQE marched in the Kingston Pride Parade for the first time.
“[Marching in the parade] really makes you reflect on all the work our predecessors did to create spaces for us, to carry the same banner that their hands carried down the same street, 20 years ago.” QUAQE wrote in a statement to The Journal.
Kingston Trolley Tours drove down the road with a trolley decked out in Pride flags, with Kingston Transit‘s Pride bus trailing behind as “Happy Pride” flashed on its destination display.
After the Pride parade, speeches were delivered by Josie Vallier, the Parade Marshal, and Bee Dupuis, the Chair of Kingston Pride to thank supporters, organizers, and volunteers, and to speak on this year’s theme, “Resilience and Liberation in Action.”
“Whether this is your thirty-seventh Kingston Pride festival, your first parade, or anything in between, let me say something very clearly: you belong here. You belong in this community. You belong in this city. And you belong — and are loved — exactly as you are. You make us possible — and we are resilience and liberation in action,” Vallier stated in her speech.
Vallier was nominated by the community to serve as this year’s Parade Marshal for her work with TransFamily Kingston, a grassroots community organization for gender diverse people and their loved ones.
“It is one of the biggest honours of my life. To be able to represent our community as chosen by the community to lead us in our march means the world to me,” Vallier shared in an interview with The Journal.
For Vallier, “resilience and liberation in action” is a reminder that Pride wasn’t always a celebration.
“Pride started as a protest. It was one brick and we have come from there. We haven’t stopped being a protest and people tend to forget that. They see the party, they see the celebration, and they see the dancing. They forget that we couldn’t do this fifteen, twenty, thirty years ago. The very fact that we are doing it is a protest,” Vallier explained.
After the speeches, thousands arrived at the Basin by 1:00 p.m. to carry celebrations over to the Community Fair, where everyone gathered to connect with the community.
Gay pop boomed on the speakers, Chappell Roan‘s “HOT TO GO!” and Hayley Kiyoko‘s “Girls Like Girls” pumped everyone up as they all coursed through crowded alleys. Booths stretched from Springer Market Square all the way to the Waterfront Pathway, offering attendees everything from sweet treats to prideful art to community resources.
At the Sexual Health Resource Centre (SHRC) booth, passionate volunteers distributed free condoms, pins, and informative pamphlets about the resources their centre offers.
“We are an open space so people can come up and talk to us and literally ask anything. We make sure we are accessible to everybody, especially the Pride community,” SHRC’s Events Coordinator and former Internal Educator Olivia McPherson, LifeSci ’27, said in an interview with The Journal.
A few booths down, the Yellow House Student Centre for Equity and Inclusion invited attendees to interact with their collaborative community mural and receive face paint to commemorate their experiences at Pride.
Along the fair’s artist alley, artisan vendors tended the booths, as they celebrated Pride by selling art to raise donations.
Queer Collage Collective, a queer-led, anti-oppressive arts collective sold colourful Pride themed prints and re-imagined vintage buttons, raising a total of $300 dollars to support Palestinian refugee families in Lebanon.
After an eventful afternoon, crowds dispersed around 5:00 p.m. to continue their Pride elsewhere, with some lingering around the Basin for Kingston Pride’s fundraising cruise to watch drag and burlesque along the St. Lawrence River.
As proven by Saturday’s turn out, standing together as a community is how Kingston uses resilience to create liberation. The crowd’s countless displays of camaraderie is why thirty-seven years of Kingston Pride and counting has been made possible.
Tags
Josie Vallier, Kingston Pride, Pride, Pride Parade, QUAQE, SHRC
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