Gay Pride Parade

Attend a Parade
September 1, 2013



It's been a long time since I've been to a parade.  Calgary has three major parades to choose from: the Santa Claus parade, the Stampede Parade and the Gay Pride Parade.  This was an easy choice.

Though, it was made more difficult when Chris Hadfield was announced as the Stampede Parade Marshall.  I love space.  But the Stampede Parade is difficult for me to get to, what with it being held on a Friday morning during my busy season.

In any case, this picture pretty much sums up my feelings on gay rights:

Really, what I meant to say was 'human rights'

So, I was really excited for the Gay Pride Parade.  My beautiful friend, Jess, joined me and we took the train downtown (great idea, Jess).  The parade started at 12:00pm and we got there just a few minutes in advance.

We waited for David's Tea to open (a must!) and made sure to get in there right away.  While waiting inside, I made a comment to Jess about all of the great little rainbow flags that the other attendees had.  She said that the downtown Winners location was handing them out for free, which is fantastic.  I commented that it was too bad we didn't get there earlier to go down and get a couple of our own.  About 5 minutes later, one of the guys who had been in the tea store during our conversation came back in and offered me his flag.  He said that he'd heard us talking and had an extra, if we wanted it.  It was so sweet and really set the tone for the rest of the parade!

There were tons of people (around 30,000) and the energy was incredible!  People were constantly cheering, dancing and smiling.  People standing next to us were instantly our friends.  It was a very loving environment.


As for the parade itself, I guess I expected mostly colorful, fluff kind of floats, which there were, but I was surprised at the number of businesses and churches (yup, churches) that were involved.  It was really cool to see so much support, especially from unexpected places.

When the parade was over, attendees walked in the street behind the floats.  Of course, I was all over that. We walked all the way to Shaw Millennium Park, where they were holding a festival celebration.  There were a lot of exhibit stands, music and people dancing.  We didn't stay long, but really enjoyed the atmosphere.

It was an exciting and high energy experience.  I'm really glad I chose this parade!