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More than 200 march in Coast Pride parade

Coast Pride
pride
Parade marshals Jackson Berger and her wife Kathy Lewis led the crowd of 200-plus people in the Pride Parade on June 19.

Pride on the Sunshine Coast has been growing steadily since it started almost 10 years ago at the first Pride Dance in the Roberts Creek Hall – but this year things took a big leap forward at the inaugural Sunday in the Park with Pride on June 19.

More than 200 people carrying rainbow pride flags and wearing flamboyant colours came out to the Davis Bay Pier and marched to Mission Point Park last Sunday. It was way more than organizer Laurie Lesk was expecting.

“I would have been happy with 12 people and one youth,” Lesk said. “It’s not that I set my sights low, but it would have been worth it.”

Self-titled proud lesbian Jackson Berger was at the front of the parade with her wife Kathy Lewis. The two carried a memorial banner for the victims of the shooting in Orlando.

“They gave us the honour to carry the banner for Orlando,” Berger said. “Which I think has made it even more meaningful for us to come together in solidarity. And to have all of the support and allies here is huge.”

For Lesk, having support in the community can save lives.

“I don’t know whose or when,” she said.  “But I know that it will save somebody’s life by seeing the community around them and knowing that there are people there. So if one youth was there and a dozen people – for me that would have made a difference. But 200? Oh, my God.”

It did make a difference for at least one queer youth on the Coast. Al Verhulst is a high school student in his last year at Elphinstone. Verhulst joined his school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) in Grade 8 and has been an active member ever since.

“I never knew how many LGBTQ people there were on the Coast until this Pride,” Verhulst said. “Seeing all of the older generations – and the other generations – of people I never even knew existed, it was really cool, but it was also eye opening. I used to feel really alone. Young people feel really alone and [they feel] that this is all new, but it’s not. There are a bunch of people out there – you just have to find them.”

Sunday in the Park with Pride was a family-oriented event with music, food, games and workshops. It kicked off Pride Week on the Coast, which included – among other events – the Refraction art show, running from June 1 to July 3 at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre, the raising of the Pride flag in the Town of Gibsons and the annual Pride Dance that started it all.

Berger has been an active member of the LGBTQ community on the Coast since the first ever Pride Dance sold out the Roberts Creek Hall back in 2007. According to Berger, they ended up having to turn people away. She said it’s been like that every year since for the dance.

“Every single person who would buy a ticket to the dance or volunteer or sponsor the event – that got it to where it is today,” Berger said. “It’s been an evolution on the Sunshine Coast. There’s been LGBTQ up here forever, but it was a question of how do we bring everyone together as a community? Pride felt like it was the best opportunity to do that.”

While there are GSAs at the high schools and LGBTQ issues are gaining more mainstream attention, Berger and Lesk both agreed that the LGBTQ community on the Coast is fairly isolated into small pockets. The goal this year was to bring people together and open things up to the greater community.

“When [Lesk] pitched the idea she said to me, maybe we’re going to get seven people,” Berger said. “I said that’s OK because we’ll march with pride. When we showed up at the pier and people kept on coming and coming and coming and we realized there were over 200 people, [Lesk] just gave me a hug and started crying.

“It was lovely to see,” Berger said. “There were people from everywhere, not just in the LGBTQ community. There were our neighbours, people we work with and our families were there with us. For me it was very moving.”

Pride Dance, which is a 19+ event, is on June 25 at Roberts Creek Hall. As of Wednesday, tickets were still available at locations around the Coast and online at www.sunshinecoastpride.com

See more photos from the day's events in our online photo gallery.