Toronto. Sunday July 3, 2016. Pride. Parade. Photos. Controversy. Any questions?
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Earlier today, I posted a pre-game show photo diary, on the days and hours preceeding the parade. What follows below is about the parade itself, on the afternoon of Sunday July 3, 2016.
tonight’s feature presentation: Toronto Pride 2016
Without further ado, let’s get to the sights and sounds of the recent Pride parade in Toronto.
We joined up with old friends who live in Toronto, and took up their usual position on Yonge St. Looking northward, the view includes this interesting condo building under construction at Yonge and Bloor. Various rooftops in the surrounding area had spectators waiting for the parade to start.
Directly behind us, 17 stories up on a condo rooftop, some random spectator looks down. Others would join him later. Yes, I was using a long zoom.
Directly in front of us, these people were more down to earth, only 2 and 3 stories up.
Leading off the parade, as always, Dykes on Bikes. A separate event, the Dyke March, was held the day before. And a Trans March took place on Friday.
The first actual float was led by a banner “ORLANDO We march for those who can’t”.
The names of the Orlando victims were paraded individually. I couldn’t capture them all.
The Prancing Elites. They surely did prance.
I don’t recall specifically what this represents, other than the joy of marching.
I’ll bet it was hot under all this.
Black Space Matters.
Immediately followed by 2016 Honoured Group, Black Lives Matter.
After BLM passed by, I caught my first glimpse of the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. His father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, held the same office in disjointed terms between 1968 and 1984.
There were many police officers marching later on in the parade, as Pride participants. The uniformed cops and plain-clothes agents hovering around the Prime Minister were on active duty. Some of them wore backpacks. The ones with extra long backpacks might have been carrying rifles, but they didn’t offer to let us look in.
The TD Bank says #WeAreOrlando and #ForeverProud.
And they have dancing bankers, or something.
Some happy aerobics enthusiasts.
I said to Partner, “hey that’s the place we ate at the other night”. We had picked this ramen restaurant randomly based on their location within walking distance of our hotel, and their good reviews online. There was no indication that they were a gay-owned or even gay-associated business. But there they were in the parade. More on this later.
There were plenty of political parties and municipalities represented, starting with the Liberal Party of Ontario.
Toronto City Council.
Expat Democrats came out for Bernie and Hillary.
And not Drumpf.
Various religious groups marched or had floats. The face of Rev. Brent Hawkes, well known in Toronto, represents the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto.
Proud Anglicans were there.
Allah loves these people.
I’m pretty sure these are not the people that Hair Drumpf (allegedly) refers to as “My Jews”.
Hell, even the Satan worshippers showed up. Pun intended.
There’s a message about both Satan and Fred Phelps. Maybe they know each other.
Sharon, Lois, & Bram were a family/children oriented musical trio going back to 1978. Lois passed away last year, but the remaining duo are still around. The sign alludes to the name of one of their popular songs, which they also used in one of their TV series.
Several dogs marched in the parade, though they may not have known exactly the nature of the occasion.
A couple on board the Ontario Lottery and Gaming company float share an intimate moment in front of several thousand of their closest friends.
Police, fire, ambulance, legal, and other services were out in force (Pun intended? Left as an exercise). Some officers fired upon the crowds. In their defence, it was a hot day.
I think I photographed every cop car that went by. I won’t show them all, because this diary would almost double in size. I’m not kidding. Really, I’m not.
Corporations made up a big percentage of the parade. Including those guys that make the little blue pills.
Shopify. First time I’d ever heard of them.
Facebook.
teh Google.
Marshalls.
And Walmart. Really? Walmart? At least they were handing out cans of cold soft drinks. Much appreciated.
Northbound Leather, a local store.
And if you need a lawyer, this one vows to get you off.
Some random participants.
This parade has room for all ages.
This looks like a happy pair.
But OMG you walked in those shoes for four hours?
This fellow showed everybody why he is proud of his foreskin.
And finally: this was not the last group to march in the parade, but we will wrap things up on this note:
That’s just a sampling of what I shot that day. I’ve trimmed down this presentation already from the initial set, and even that is just a fraction of the photos I have. But we have to stop somewhere.
The parade took 4 full hours to pass by our position. Mind you, 30 minutes of that was idle time, so count 3.5 hours for the parade itself. We started to get a little antsy when things stalled just after PM Justin Trudeau passed us. The talk amongst ourselves was: hey, can someone on his detail tell the PM to move along rather than stopping to talk to every single person along the fence? Then we realised he was doubling back, and approaching our position once again. Odd. So we clued in that there was something happening (or not happening) up ahead, that had ground things to a halt. We all had our phones with us, but didn’t check any news or social media at that time.
That something, we learned hours later, was Black Lives Matter.
They had staged a protest sit-in just down the street from us, but beyond our view. This brought the entire parade to a halt, including the PM, which explained his lingering and doubling back. In hindsight, I half-wondered why his team didn’t just toss him into the black SUV that had stopped directly in front of us and get the hell out of there. They were probably a bit nervous having the country’s top politician wandering aimlessly about, having been trapped by a traffic jam. Calmer heads probably realized they had as much control over the situation as they were going to get, and that making rash moves could be counterproductive.
BLM refused to budge until the Pride Committee agreed to their list of demands, which included that no police floats would be allowed in future Pride parades, and no police booths would be permitted on the Streetfair on Church St. over the course of the weekend. Once the committee agreed to and signed off on all demands, the parade continued.
Oh and by the way, the committee backtracked the very next day, saying they only agreed to the demands in order to get the parade moving, and wouldn’t necessary honour them.
I’m not going to go in-depth in this space as to the politics involved, but a quick overview might be instructive.
Janaya Khan, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Toronto chapter,
claims that Canadian police, media, and society at large are inundated with anti-black racism.
That’s her viewpoint, and as a white Canadian guy I suppose my opinion doesn’t matter. But it seems that we certainly have less of a racism problem in Canada than we see in the U.S. No doubt I’m wrong on that, I expect to be told. You can read the link above to see how Janaya makes her own case.
An opposing view is expressed by Mark Jamieson, a gay black man. He is clearly pissed at both BLM and the Pride Committee. He makes the point that Pride has always been about inclusion, but BLM has explicitly demanded, and (maybe) received, exclusion of a significant group of participants.
That view is reinforced by Chuck Krangle, a gay cop.
What I observed on both Saturday and Sunday was a community coming together with law enforcement. No group is perfect of course, but at least groups seem to be working together. But no, that’s no longer allowed. We are over here, you stay over there. Perhaps that is not a helpful attitude, despite the claim that you have been wronged by one group or another.
The whole episode is much more complicated than how I’ve just explained it. If you want to explore more deeply, you can read more here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Or Google “Black Lives Matter Toronto” and take your pick.
But this leads me to a broader topic.
Where, in this parade, was actual gay pride?
It’s been about a dozen years since I last attended Toronto pride, as my partner and myself have been living elsewhere in the interim. We made this trip back to Toronto to visit friends and take in the sights and sounds. As this parade progressed, I started to wonder (out loud): where are the floats from the local bars? The clothing stores? The (ahem) erotic stores? The baths?
The parade as I remember it was a celebration of being gay, of being out, of seeing the parts of the community that you know about, along with the many supporters who are not gay themselves, but very gay-friendly. Sometimes it was a bit tawdry. Sometimes it was cliché. And yes, the entire Gay Pride movement has its roots in activism, in part but not exclusively a result of the Stonewall riots.
My, how things have changed. This parade was all about corporations. This parade was all about cops (I appreciate their being there, but Jeebus there were a lot of them). This parade was all about schools, engineering societies, libraries, hospitals, transit services, airlines, banks, politicians, religions, on and on and on. This parade was all about companies and people with a product to promote. This parade was all about people with some other axe to grind. For hour after hour after hour. And a half.
They are gay-friendly. I get that. They spent money to be there. They are supportive. They are our friends. I like all of that.
But the local businesses? None of the bars. Very little “gay” business presence of any kind. Our friends told us that the Pride Committee banned them from participating, for reasons that our friends didn’t go into. Our friends don’t like the committee, or its members. The committee, we are told, are just shills for corporate money, charging $3000 for a small booth on the Streetfair, and imposing ultra-strict rules on any company or group that does go along with paying the price. The “little guys” can’t compete with that. They can’t afford to participate. $3000 is just the starting point of what it costs to have a presence. And they are, allegedly, not welcome with open arms.
Northbound Leather, as I remember it, used to have a big float in the parade each year, blaring music, dancing, the whole works. Now? It’s a small handful of guys carrying a banner. The flamboyant characters are (mostly) now either on, or attached to, corporate floats.
Touhenboku Ramen? We ate at that restaurant (it’s a small local chain, as it turns out), randomly, having no idea whether or not they were gay-identified or gay-friendly. But there they were with a truck in the parade. Followed by at least a couple of dozen people marching behind, wearing the restaurant’s t-shirts. I certainly don’t begrudge them being there, but where were the businesses that we actively patronize because they are active and visible in the community? Any of the dozens of businesses that line Church St. They’ve either been shut out, or priced out, of participation.
It seems that Gay Pride, like everything else in this world, isn’t for gays anymore. It’s for the corporations and politicians, and straight people with something to promote.
Welcome to 2016.
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