The Capital Pride Parade on Sunday brought out thousands of spectators who lined the streets to witness the display of performers, floats, and activists who marched in support of the LGBTQ+ community.
Organizers estimate that this year’s parade had twice the amount of people participating from last year, according to Toby Whitfield, the chair of Capital Pride in a CBC Ottawa article.
The parade started at Bank Street and Gladstone Avenue and headed north on Kent.
Over 150 groups participated this year according to a press release on the Ottawa Capital Pride.
Capital Pride is a festival that takes place over one week, and includes different events, shows and workshops for the public to attend.
A two-day music concert was featured for the first time as one of many expansions of the festival that took place.
Each year, a specific theme is selected, and this year’s was “community.” Many families came to enjoy the parade including a mother-daughter duo.
“I like the community,” said Jen Roach, who came with her 18-year-old daughter Angelina Correia. “It’s a family tradition to come.”
But apart from the festive atmosphere, there was also a political tone to the party.
MAX Ottawa, an organization that aims to help gay men, facilitated a national survey to gather data to support changes to current Canadian Blood Services (CBS) policy that bans sexually active gay and bisexual men from donating blood.
Currently, CBS does not allow any gay or bisexual man to donate blood if that have had sex within one year of the donation date.
The SexNow Survey is the largest, national survey conducted bythe Community-Based Research Centre for Gay Men’s Health (CBRC) which consists of a questionnaire and dry blood sample, according to Roberto Ortiz, executive director of MAX Ottawa.
He said one of the objectives of the survey is to ensure that the screening process for gay men who want to donate blood is in line with scientific finding about sexually transmitted diseases.
“Top researcher as well as the CRBC has stated that this is discriminatory practice,” Ortiz said.
Another major issue that made its way to the parade is the repeal of the 2015 Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum by Premier Doug Ford’s government.
The repeal means teacher will now teach the 1998 curriculum, which does not discuss consent, gender identity and same-sex relationships. Ford however said the topic of gender identity will still be discussed.
Several signs at the parade criticized this changed.
Velvet LeClair, who has been an early childhood educator for 15 years, came with her seven-year-old son Simon, who sat in a wagon adorned with signs of protest, next to a small caricature of Ford.
“I came here today to raise awareness and to remind people that he’s (Ford) doing this. They’ve made a snitch line for teachers, if any teachers get caught teaching the old curriculum,” she said. “I’m encouraging people to send their own messages to the snitch line in support of the teachers and to shut down the snitch line and curriculum.”
LeClair said she will continue to teach her students to be accepting of same-sex couples.
“I think it puts the LGBTQ (sic) community at risk, and it divides our society and makes us less accepting of each other. Taking consent out of the curriculum just leads to more victims. I am multilayered on why his changes are bad,” she said about the repeal.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
