Pride Week

Parade on August 15th culminates week of celebration

We’re in the middle of Pride Week in Montreal, which kicked off just days after the end of Divers/Cite. Only in Montreal can you have two distinct celebration of the gay culture.
Pride Week, or Fierite Montreal Pride, began on the 10th of August and culminates in the annual Pride Parade on the 15th. It will run through the heart of downtown into the Gay Village with all the colourful panache of Mardi Gras, with as many jiggling body parts, gaudily-decked out drag queens, and buff men in their Fruit-of-the-Looms and Doc Martens.

Turbulent times in Montreal’s Gay community in the late 1960s and early 1970s saw various events eventually develop into what became Pride Week and Divers/Cite, two happenings that crossed paths, but eventually diverged into two separate events with the same agenda, to counter harassment from Montreal's police and municipal government, to counter negative stereotypes, and to celebrate diversity. But that’s where the politics ended. Until now.

This year's upcoming parade is already dogged by controversy regarding the Middle East, of all places. A group calling itself Queers Against Israeli Apartheid has been given the go-ahead to march, banners held high, in the Pride Parade, protesting Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories. Ironically, Israel is just about the only place in the Middle East where gays are accepted, certainly the only place in the Middle East with a pride parade, held earlier this summer.

The group were initially barred from marching in Toronto’s pride parade, but were eventually allowed to attend. This will be the second year in a row that Queers Against Israeli Apartheid will be in Montreal's parade. Organizers, who reserve the right to approve any banners the group plans to wave, point out that the groups participation in last year's parade was without incident. Their position might be balanced by the presence of Jewish LGBTQ group Ga'ava (Hebrew for Pride). They have been quoted as objecting to the phrase “Israeli apartheid,” but they say they are more concerned with freedom of speech.

There may not be a lot of speech at Pride, but there is certainly plenty of freedom.

Divers/Cite, which ended just days ago, is the older of the 2 gay community festivals, but Fierite Montreal Pride is said to the bigger one. The difference between the two is that Divers/Cite has more of a LGBT inclusiveness, while Fierite Montreal Pride organizers tell me their event is the only real gay pride event in Montreal. At the end of the day there doesn't seem to be too much of a difference, which just means that Montreal's alternative lifestyle community gets more to celebrate than other major cities, with just a fews for rest in between.

Dan Laxer is an announcer at Montreal's CJAD Radio, a budding stand-up comedian, and a writer. He is Citeeze's entertainment writer.