Montreal's Pride parade will proceed on schedule this weekend, the organizer of the city's LGBTQ+ Pride festival said Saturday as he reassured prospective attendees the event would not fall prey to the sort of abrupt cancellation that unexpectedly derailed last year's festivities.
The 2022 edition of the parade was called off just hours before it was supposed to begin in downtown Montreal, prompting Mayor Valérie Plante to call for an independent inquiry tasked with determining what went wrong. It concluded the cancellation was due to a misunderstanding among Montreal Pride festival personnel after they discovered 96 of the 200 volunteers needed to work security for the parade were never recruited.
But Montreal Pride Executive Director Simon Gamache said there will be no such complications for 2023. He said the organization has since fixed all of the problems that scuttled last year's parade and this year's event will take place on Sunday as scheduled, barring any uncontrollable situations.
"If there's a tornado, I have no control over that. But yes, there will be a parade tomorrow. Absolutely," he said in an interview Saturday, assuring residents that Montreal Pride has all of the staff members and volunteers it needs. "We're very ready. We've been ready for months."
The inquiry's final report, released last October, laid out a series of miscommunications that plagued the 2022 parade.
"Confusion" between two "key" unnamed organizers led one of them to declare the event was cancelled without Gamache's knowledge, the report said. On-site volunteers, personnel, security agents and police subsequently disbanded, which compelled the festival to publicly confirm the event would not proceed.
The report also identified systemic communication and governance issues within the festival organization and recommended 13 reforms to address them. They included additional oversight of parade planning by Montreal Pride senior management, an update to the organization's emergency response plan and more training for staff.
"We were extremely proactive as soon as we received the report, and we drew up an action plan (to quickly address its recommendations)," Gamache said.
The process also offered an opportunity to revisit the organization's structure, he added.
"Montreal Pride was created in 2007 and then it developed quite organically," Gamache said. "We reached a point where maybe we needed to make everything we were doing more operational, better, more professional. And that's what we've done."
Gamache suggested the stakes are particularly high this year, and not just because of expectations for a successful parade.
"We live in a very particular societal context," he said. "There's a lot of hate right now, a lot of it on social networks ... In this context, we need to ally. We need to ally with each other more than ever."
"The parade is a fine example: it's not just the (LGBTQ+) communities that march, our allies do too, in the streets and on the sidewalks."
"So that's really what we're hoping for."
Montreal was already buzzing with Pride revelry — and anticipation — Saturday afternoon. In the city's Village neighbourhood, the historic centre of the local LGBTQ+ community, Ste-Catherine Street has become a kilometre-long showcase of local businesses and organizations, each with info booths manned by employees and volunteers.
Among those engaging with the hundreds of passersby on the pedestrianized commercial artery was Alex Valiquette, who plans to attend the parade on Sunday.
"After it was cancelled last year I think a lot of people in the community were disappointed," he said. "So I think the expectations are pretty elevated."
Valiquette believes the event offers an important opportunity for the community.
"I think right now ... there's some people that are opposed to our rights as queer people and they want us to not to be able to express our rights," he said. "It's important to respond to that hatred with pride and with engagement and with love, and I find that this pride walk is something that's really encouraging."
For André-Yves Rompré, the parade is a critical social touchpoint. Rompré is a board member for a non-profit that serves gay seniors.
"Being part of a senior organization, it's important for us to be there because we've been there before," he said from the group's Ste-Catherine street booth. "There is a transmission of information, of knowledge to younger generations that we can pass on. And that's important."
Aurélie Dauphinais also plans to participate in Sunday's parade. She said she was disappointed that Montreal Pride relied so heavily on volunteer labour for the 2022 parade. She also thinks the event should put a greater emphasis on LGBTQ+ advocacy given what she called "the rise of anti-queer violence everywhere in the world."
The parade, she said, "really needs to be more of a political (statement)."
"Showing yourself is an important thing to do for visibility, but I think we need to be asking (for) more radical political action."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 12, 2023.
Thomas MacDonald, The Canadian Press