" It was about 40 people walking down Whyte Avenue," recalls Michael Phair, "15 of which were wearing bags over their heads." City Council had been denying requests from GALA (Gay and Lesbian Awareness Society) since 1984 for recognition. There would not be a pride parade until 1991 and it was not until Jthat Edmonton’s Pride Parade was officially recognized by the Mayor and City. Previously, there are undocumented reports that there was a campfire and baseball game event with 75 people in 1980.
The gay pride committee was made up of organizers from GATE, Dignity/Edmonton, Gay Fathers, the Privacy Defence Committee and Womonspace and others. While before, queer groups in the city operated independently, for the first time Edmonon’s gay community came together to organize out of a sense that they had to do more. The raid and aftermath of the trials sparked outrage and protests, effectively mobilizing the Edmonton queer community. David MyersĮdmonton holds its first Gay Pride Weekend June 24-27 in 1982 at Camp Harris with a theme of “Pride through Unity” in the aftermath of the Pisces Bathhouse Raids. A few people took up the offer but most didn't. We told people if they were afraid of coming out but wanted to come out, they could wear paper bags with holes in it for eyes. In the lead up to the parade, hate literature was handed out in Burnaby and Port Moody and the queer community faced heightened harassment but that didn’t stop more than 1,500 attendees from showing up. After years of being turned down by the city, a new municipal government was elected under the leadership of Mike Harcourt who followed through on election promises to the queer community for a proclamation and parade permit. It would not be until 1981 that there would be an ‘official’ Pride Parade. The August 1973 edition of GATE's newspaper, Gay Tide, features coverage of "Gay Pride Week '73.", and was followed shortly thereafter by their first Pride parade in 1978. Vancouver's earliest Pride celebrations began when the Gay Alliance Toward Equality (GATE) organized a picnic and art exhibit in Ceperley Park. In an effort to get the crowd to disperse, police rode their motorcycles into the crowd, clubbing protestors, who in turn threw beer bottles at the police. to protest what had happened on the previous night. The very next day, 2,000 people took to the streets, blocking the corners of Ste. They were also forbidden from calling their lawyers. The men who were arrested were crowded into holding cells for more than eight hours, and forced to take venereal disease tests. This raid was more of a military operation then a normal police intervention: 50 police officers, wearing bulletproof vests with guns (including machine guns) drawn, went in and arrested 146 patrons, all homosexual men, as part of what was at the time the biggest mass arrest since Trudeau had declared the “War Measures Act” during the October Crisis. 22, 1977, Montreal police raided Truxx and Le Mystique, two gay bars on Stanley St. This resistance to the Olympic ‘cleanup’ set the stage for the massive protest which would occur in 1977.
It was organized by CHAR and protested pre-Olympic cleanup raids. On Jun 19, more than 300 queers and supporters joined in one of the largest demonstrations up to that point. "In late May and early June, all the baths in Montreal were closed…For a lot of men in Montreal, their first experience of the great Olympic ‘clean-up’ was the sight of a policeman’s axe crashing through the door of their room at the baths." The Body PoliticĪn organization called the Comité homosexuel antirépression/Gay Coalition against Repression (CHAR) was set up with representatives from various Montreal gay groups bringing together French and English-speaking activists, lesbians and gay men, with sections of the left and the feminist movements. From Feb 1975 to June 1976, Police raids ramp up at Club Baths, Neptune Sauna and across gay and lesbian bars in Montreal's Stanley Street gay village, this event was widely perceived as mayor Jean Drapeau's attempts to "clean up" the city in advance of the 1976 Summer Olympics.