Pride 2006

June 25, 2006 - It's Pride week in Toronto and today I went to my first Pride parade. It's interesting how this is probably one of the most anticipated events of the summer, yet I have never gone! But hey better late than never!

The Parade is said to be one of the largest on the planet and is the highlight of Pride week. Earlier this weekend, Jason and I had already gone to a beer garden and a pride party (where I actually bumped into people I know!).

The crowd was massive! Jason and I met up with some of Jason's friends and my friend Ben at Yonge and College. We got there almost an hour before the parade started and already there were tons of people: men, women and children, lining up patiently along Yonge Street. Now I'm not a huge parade person - the last parade I actually went to was at Disneyland when I was 11, but it was actually fun being in a big crowd!

The parade itself was neat - there were of course drag queens, "dykes on bikes" and naked wrinkly old men, but there were also some serious eye candy: the hottest I thought was the hunky fireman kissing his boyfriend! now that was cool :) On the other hand, I also thought the parade was somewhat commercialized - there were a lot of corporate sponsored floats with splashy ads (though the one for Trojan condoms with Trojan men were fun to see). There were also lots of guys with water guns. Some of the drag queens got really upset when they got soaked. Overall, it was all good fun.

What impressed me the most was the number of families and straight couples who came out to support the event. In many parts of the world, Pride parades would never happen. So to have the entire community, regardless of age, sexual orientation, race, or gender come together and celebrate diversity is definitely something that you don't see everyday.

Jason took lots of pictures from the parade, but I'm not sure if he has linked them online. I will provide a link once I know where the pics are. Until then, click here for some of the highlights.