The Quesnel Pride Society has organized an in-person celebration for the first time in a few years because of COVID.
Alison Prentice, the President of the Quesnel Pride Society, says they have a number of events planned.
“We’ve got the volunteer and appreciation youth bar-b-q this (Friday) afternoon at the Billy Barker. At noon tomorrow (Saturday) the pride parade, which starts from City Hall, so we’ve been making sure we’ve got everything organized for that for a rolling parade. Then tomorrow night is the Pride Party at the Occidental.”
Prentice says there will also be a party in the park at Lebourdais Park in between the parade the event at the Occidental.
She says there is a lot of excitement around this year’s events.
“Yes, absolutely. We’ve got t-shirts that we’ve been selling out ahead of time, I’ve had to increase ticket capacity at the Occidental two or three times now to accommodate requests, I’ve had to increase capacity for the youth barbecue because we finally have some youth coming out.”
Prentice says the theme for this year’s parade is “we’re not invisible.”
“That’s the whole reason behind the neon green and neon orange t-shirts that we created for pride this year. We are not invisible is a reminder that pride isn’t just a celebration of how far we’ve come, it’s also a protest on far we need to go.”
Prentice says an example of that is the recent attack on a Nanaimo youth who was beaten because he was gay.
She says it’s heartbreaking and disturbing to her that in 2022 somebody can still be beaten up for who they are.