I don’t know about you, but I had a lot of fun at the Montreal Pride Festival this year. I was able to screen two films thanks to its grant program. I saw representatives of Montreal Pride come to present themselves at each event organized by our communities.
I attended, with 30,000 people, free shows on global phenomenon who are the stars of Rupaul Drag Race. I saw the Festival pay homage to Montreal icons who have shaped our vie de Nuit and award prizes to activists of the present.
I have seen our stories told in exhibitions, in dances, in conferences. I met hundreds of organizations and volunteers during community days. I participated in the trans walk. I saw how Montreal Pride carries the current demands of our movements, showing clearly, like all those people who remind us of the importance of the parade for our city, that LGBTQ2S struggles are still necessary and multiple.
We are often led to believe that the parade is the heart of Pride, because it commemorates the Stonewall Riots. We may forget the other origin of Montreal Pride in its current form, when, in 1990, people marched to La Fontaine Park to hold concerts against the police brutality that our communities had suffered after the arrests from the Sex Garage. It was in commemoration of this that Divers/Cité was born in 1993. I was there in 2007, when Divers/Cité wanted to separate the concerts and the parade, because its tourism studies showed that people who attend shows are not the same that come to the parade. After several attempts (night walk, change of route), the organization thought it was already time, at the time, to celebrate in different forms.
If we look at the Montreal Pride program today, we can clearly see that it was impossible for one person to do everything, to be everywhere, as the programming was so rich and diversified, reflecting our communities.
It’s true that I experienced, like everyone else, the cancellation of the parade with a lot of emotions, I who have been walking there for almost 20 years with various contingents. I am a strong advocate for its importance to young people, minorities kinks, families, community organizations. In all honesty, I may be one of the few queers who would rather dance in the streets in a parade than march chanting slogans in a protest.
All this to say that, whatever its scope and its aura, it is no longer true that a parade, or a march, is the only way for our communities to express our demands and to be political. This is not the only event that draws crowds (and tourists) to Montreal and allows us to come together and make ourselves heard.
All week, I saw artists and activists advocating self-love, talking about their difficult journeys, and offering catharsis and messages of hope on different platforms.
The most moving moment for me was hearing Sandy Duperval last Sunday evening. To the public who had marched in anger all day and still made it to the Olympic Park esplanade, she apologized for Montreal Pride and mentioned that a lesson had been learned that day: the Pride is not all these events, Pride is us, it’s 365 days a year. Then, we held the traditional minute of silence, all together, before shouting our joy.
While many criticize Montreal Pride for having let us down and argue that many Conservative speeches use this story to attack the credibility of our demands and our organizations, I wonder this: what if it was us who were abandoning Fierté Montréal and its political message?
I therefore call on everyone to share their most beautiful moments of this Pride week to also remember its beauty! #ThanksMontrealPride