It was a sunny day in Sarnia (I’m now the second Sarnia boy featured here). I chose to check out the City’s Pride Parade during a summer home, after an invitation from a friend in a liberal religious group, the only in the City to marry gays. I knew them through environmental activism and local Green Politics. Upon arrival I realized it was one of those little parades where everyone walks – not watches.
And so I’m now walking at the head of the Pride Parade, one with good spirit but mostly neutral to unsure onlookers. This was a parade in which in recent years, a councilor tried to deny a street permit. I’d also heard that stones were thrown at participants the year before.
After filing into a park for further celebrations, I was asked to say a few words on behalf of my friend who had to leave early to officiate a wedding. So with a kiss and a “he’s cute” from the drag queen emcee, I said a few words on rights – on same-sex marriage, in a spirit of celebration at what had been made legal earlier that year.
The awkwardness of the whole situation – unexpectedly walking, leading, speaking – is that I was not out myself, still figuring things out about who I was.
A good friend still jokes how I came out to her – “her” at the time, whose gender identity and orientation had changed as well – a few days after getting that transformative kiss from a drag queen.
Reflecting, I now see that identity and politics have been always intertwined for me.
I have since walked annually in the Toronto Pride Parade with the Green Party and once as an activist VP of the UW Federation of Students, enjoying the celebration and representing the personal political perspectives I bring. Toronto’s Pride must continue to be a place for proud, uncensored, political voices, or it will lack purpose and depth.
Now in Toronto, I’m still working on sustainability and food issues, along with trans rights. Having today returned from a political conference where a group of rural and urban Greens age 20 to 80 didn’t bat an eyelash at the idea of explicit human rights protection on gender identity, I wonder why it can’t be the same for the governments in power. I believe this will soon change because of the hard work of activists.
As a Sarnian, I now share some of my upbringing story with the gay author of Fruit. But Sarnia’s not the smallest or least tolerant of places. There is much work to do on rights and health today, in those small towns and cities across Canada and in many countries throughout the world. I hope we keep shakin it up.
