North Bay PRIDE added a new flag during this year’s painting of two courtesy walks on Main Street as lead up to Pride week activities July 17-July 21.
In addition to the rainbow flag, one courtesy walk has been painted white, pink and blue to draw attention to the trans community.
“Our focus this year is family, so we did have quite a number of people come out with their youth and take part in the painting,” said Trevor Monahan Pride co-chair.
“The response also was good in the sense that we did the trans flag this year which is entirely new for us. Last year we focused only on the rainbow flag. Our group in the city is very diverse, but not everybody is joined together as one voice. So, by doing the trans flag we were hoping that we could bring everybody together in a bigger way than we did last year. Quite a few people who do identify as such came out and there has been a good response from everybody.”
Nick George co-chair of North Bay Pride 2019 explains that it is for everyone in the community to be recognized and accepted.
“We’re working really hard towards inclusion, including everybody because we’ve had some blips over the last couple of years where we have forgotten a certain part of our community, so we’re trying to make up for that.”
Krysta Parks brought her two children to help with the painting as their way of showing support.
“I want my kids to feel free to be themselves regardless of what that means for them. We have a lot of friends that are part of the community and we wanted to show them that we care,” said Parks.
“We’re a straight family, but my kids have a few different family dynamics in their friend group and are supportive of all the different ones. I just want to make sure that they feel comfortable in choosing whatever kind of family they want in their future without any kind of judgment and just nothing but love.”
The painting was lead up to PRIDE week activities which begins with the official flag raising ceremony Wednesday, July 17 at 4 p.m. at city hall and Pride march/walk on Saturday, July 20.
“The march will start at noon. We ask people to gather after 11 a.m. so we can get everything organized. We leave from city hall, we’ll go down Main Street to Memorial Drive and end at the waterfront,” said George.
“Last year I’m guessing we had between 2,000 and 2,500 people. Most of our participants are from North Bay but we had people come from Sudbury, Toronto, down south. We’ve even had people come from the United States.”
A free family barbecue will follow at the waterfront hosted by the North Bay and District Labour Council.
