Activities all week long culminate with festival and parade to celebrate Pride (2024)

Pride Week kicked off Monday with several events ranging from drag shows to museum exhibitions, leading to a festival and the annual parade this weekend.

“There’s always a variety of events for whatever anybody might like,” said Anna Kinderwater, Calgary Pride’s manager of communications.

The first in a line of draws is an exhibition at the Central Library on the “Purge,” referring to the period between the 1950s and ’90s when the Canadian government investigated, harassed and expelled LGBTQ+ members of the Canadian Armed Forces, RCMP and public service.

Article content

Thousands of people lost their jobs because of their sexual orientation, but LGBTQ+ Canadians launched a movement that changed such policies and led to protections under Canadian human rights law.

Some of these stories are featured in a travelling showcase called Love in a Dangerous Time: Canada’s LGBT Purge — a precursor to a much larger exhibition in 2025 at a national museum in Winnipeg.

The Central Library event is to include a talk at 6:30 p.m. Monday from Purge survivors — Nancy Miller, a founder of Calgary Pride; Wayne Davis, who was forced out of the RCMP after 18 years of service for being gay; and Michelle Douglas, whose 1992 lawsuit ended the government’s Purge policy. Balancing the mood is a drag show at The Attic Bar and Stage, featuring several artists, also slated for Monday evening.

The week will be punctuated by a skating event at the Olympic Oval on Wednesday that will give way to the organization’s flagship attractions over the weekend.

The Pride Festival will be held on Saturday and Sunday at Prince’s Island Park and will feature marketplace vendors, a beer garden, food trucks and adult-only entertainment, including burlesque and drag performances from 5 to 10 p.m.

Article content

Article content

On Sunday, the Pride Parade, which boasts a variety of performances, will march on 9th Avenue from 6th Street S.E. to 5th Street S.W. The event will begin at 11 a.m. and last until 12 p.m., with participants then continuing northbound on 5th Street to the festival grounds on Prince’s Island. Sunday’s festivities are to include a family-friendly zone with age-appropriate performances and activities, such as a scavenger hunt.

Political parties excluded from parade

This year, political parties won’t march in the parade, a decision that Kinderwater said wasn’t taken lightly.

It isn’t the first time certain groups are barred from the annual parade. Uniformed Calgary Police Service officers and the United Conservative Party have been restricted from joining the parade in the past.

Then in 2022, Calgary Pride allowed political parties to apply to participate in the parade after cancelling such celebrations in 2020 and 2021. However, their applications were first vetted by a jury of LGBTQ+ community members.

The UCP was again turned down from participating in 2022, though members of the Alberta NDP and federal Liberal Party of Canada were approved to walk in the parade. Kinderwater said the political climate wasn’t as corrosive in 2022 as it currently is regarding LGBTQ+ issues in Alberta.

Article content

Alberta has introduced provincial policies that require students 15 and younger to have consent from their parents to change their preferred names or pronouns at school, ban medical treatments for some transgender minors and ensure there are sports leagues only for biologically female players. These rules are poised to take effect in the fall semester.

In a statement from March, the UCP said it respects Calgary Pride’s decision and “supports fostering an inclusive environment for everyone.”

Kinderwater said the jury began vetting applications, but later realized the process was consuming a disproportionate amount of their time and energy.

“We found to be very draining of our resources, and when we really sat and reflected with it, it wasn’t going towards the right reasons,” she said.

Kinderwater said the group values “more than ever” the space they’re able to take up during the week, especially as attacks against members of the LGBTQ+ community have climbed in recent years.

“We fought really hard to get to place where instead of 150 people, some of them masked to hide identity out of fear of losing jobs or housing or family members, to a stage where we’ve got 100,000 people who show up for the parade, and we’re loud and ruckus and full of absolute joy,” she added. “That was hard won, and that’s something that we don’t take lightly.”

— With files from Scott Strasser and The Canadian Press

Article content