The Leap to Activism
Pride season is fast approaching for 2023, and this year is promising to be even bigger (and busier) than ever! It makes me start to reminisce about the first pride events that I joined as an organizer, which was the Nanaimo Pride Festival in 2016 in my hometown of Nanaimo, BC.
Despite being a large urban center on Vancouver Island, Nanaimo did not have any notable pride events while I was growing up there. The pride events every year consisted of a small flag raising at city hall, followed by a gathering at a local LGBTQ+ coffee shop. Often, my partner and I were the youngest people in attendance at the flag raising, as the pride group at that time were adults, and we were in our early teens. We made a point to attend this event, as we faced considerable discrimination and bigotry at our highschool and by the surrounding community. (Even in 2016 in a large town, there was still a lot of homophobia and hate that was expressed openly!) As a teenager and into my 20s, my friends and I would travel to the nearby city of Victoria, BC to attend huge pride parades and festivals. In Victoria, thousands of people lined the streets as the parade went through the downtown core, and after the last float passed (which was headlined by a local drag queen) the crowd would jump into the streets and dance after the parade as we were lead to the fairgrounds, where there were vendors, food trucks, and a large stage waiting to entertain us for the whole afternoon. This was always an extremely fun event that we would look forward to all year, and we would make the 2 hour road trip back home exhausted and sun-burnt, but knowing that we were not alone.
Well, by 2016 and at 26 years old, I was seeking a more active role in supporting Pride. After attending pride festivities every year since I turned 16, I wanted to help ensure these types of events would continue to embrace and inspire future generations. I decided to join the Nanaimo Pride Society, which was on the verge of something big. The small group had new leadership under the only drag queen in the city (at the time) — Vicki Smudge, and they were planning to host the first actual pride parade and festival that the city had ever seen. My motto is “Say Yes to Everything!” so when they asked for volunteers to help run the Pride Festival, and nobody put up their hands, I said yes!
I ended up working with a wonderful person named Lauren Semple, who was the lead organizer for the Pride Festival (and went on to serve as Vice-President of the Nanaimo Pride Society). My duties were to help procure food trucks, washroom services, on-site first-aid attendance, among other things. It was quite a task for my younger, introverted self! Alongside this, I also helped as a volunteer for the Pet Parade and the Pride Dance that had happened earlier that week, and I will never forget the wonderful praise and encouragement I received for my leadership abilities from my fellow NPS members, as it was my first time ever helping lead community events!
Here I am at the welcome booth!
On the date of the event, we set up the site and the main greeting area, directed the vendors and food trucks that were arriving, decorated the expansive Maffeo Sutton Park, and organized parking. The parade was en route to us, and was leading the crowd of onlookers through the city and to our festival location. We did NOT expect what was about to come next… as the parade rounded the hill and started snaking down Front St towards us, we had a crowd of over 10,000 attendees heading our way!!
The rest of the day was a rainbow blur. Lauren ran off to direct the incoming parade floats to their breakdown area, and I was engulfed with a massive wave of 10,000+ festival-goers! Lauren and I spent the day overseeing the festivities, directing people on where to find what, and ensuring the festival ran as smoothly as possible considering the unprecedented participation!
Festival attendees congregating near the main stage as the first act was preparing to begin.
It was an amazing experience, and a fantastic turn out for the first ever Pride festival in Nanaimo, BC. It set the expectation that a city of that size had the ability to support city-wide Pride festivals, and even more importantly, that the community supported it.
Nanaimo has gone on to host Pride events every year since (excluding the COVID years, of course) and they have only gotten bigger and better. I would have loved to have been able to continue working with the fantastic and driven group behind Nanaimo Pride Society, but sadly fate led me elsewhere. Shortly after this event, I made the move from my home province to the small, remote town of Fort Frances in Northern Ontario.
But this was nowhere near the end of my journey to support the LGBTQ community — the amazing experiences that I gained from working with the Nanaimo Pride Society served as the starting point for my journey into activism!