No Pride in Happy Valley-Goose Bay this year
Happy Valley-Goose Bay is dealing with a lack of Pride this year.
The town's LGBT Pride Week has become a popular tradition since it was first held in July 2010, but with summer drawing to a close, people in the community have noticed an absence of the rainbow crosswalks and vibrant flags which normally signal the arrival of the annual event.
Adam Mesher lives in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and regularly attends the town's Pride celebrations. He says a conversation with his sister prompted him to start asking around about the status of this year's Pride activities.
"She asked me if there was Pride events. And like, I never even thought about it, but it kind of took me off-guard cause I was like, 'Oh yeah, there is no Pride yet.' The summer's kind of flying by. This month is usually when we do have Pride events," he said.
Mesher has volunteered during Pride events in the past, but decided to take a step back from being directly involved last year due to personal reasons. Having been involved for several years, he understands the events take a lot of time, planning, and organization to pull off, and said he wasn't blaming any single person or group for the lack of Pride activities.
That said, he admits he was "a little upset" to hear nothing had been planned this year.
"When it comes to Pride events, I look forward to it. People in the queer community, even allies too, do look forward to it.," he said. "It's just something that people have to collectively come together and agree upon and start. And you know, there's a lot of work to it, but I think we gradually got better throughout the years."
Despite his disappointment that Pride Week won't be happening this summer, Mesher still says it plays a valuable role in building the relationship between the LGBT community and their supporters, and hopes it will continue in the future.
"Pride events, for a lot of us, is just the event itself because we've been out for so many years. But we also have to remember that supporters … are more recognized now because it is more normalized. It's kind of win-win. We do it for us but it's also good for them."
In past years, the Labrador-based Safe Alliance group has overseen the planning and organizing the town's Pride Week celebrations. The group did not respond to CBC's request for an interview.
