We were out of the house at 9:45AM enroute to Dan's & Ed's for their annual Pride Day cum anniversary brunch, picking up some ice-cream along the way as our contribution to the feast. We departed about 1:30PM, with David & Evan, for the parade, leaving the subway at Yonge & Bloor and walking through the Village - quiet as most had moved over to Yonge Street for the parade - to Yonge and College where we waited for an hour outside College Park for the parade and then two hours for it to pass. After the parade, Wellesley and Church were again packed with people and where we lost David & Evan in the crowd. We headed to Dundonald Street for the annual Frontrunner's beer stop at Mark Mitchell's and rested for about an hour. We took one more stroll down and up Church Street before catching the subway home. Dinner was at the new Swiss Chalet on Woodbine and by the time we got home it was almost 9:00PM!
Frankie and I both thought the parade was dull - there were no church street business sponsored floats and the few commercially sponsored ones were national corporations probably funded from the HR-diversity budget (IBM, banks, Air Canada) rather than from marketing. Most of the revilers at Pride were over 30 yo, prompting Frankie to wonder whether the young generation supports Pride. Where we were the parade seemed more popular with straight couples and Chinese families.
I talked to Hazen after we got home - he had participated in the Pride & Remembrance Run on Saturday and the MCC street church on Sunday before marching in the parade with MCC - who had the pleasure of showing Pride to a "newbie" - his new bf, Alex, had, of course, seen nothing like it in Mexico. Hazen was a bit less cynical about the event than we were, but he is much younger and "in love" so that may make a difference.
Today the media report attendance in a range from 125,000 (CTV/Globe and Mail) to close to a million (CBC). My guess that both estimates are way off. It was not as busy as the peak years in the late 1990s but certainly half a million. Food stalls and commercial vendors out-number community groups on the street and spirit seems lacking, but that's a personal opinion and a bit subjective. For the 25th anniversary it was very tame and the future of the event seems questionable.
