By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

On July 14, PRISM will hold Halton’s second annual Pride Parade on Main St. in Milton.

After starting as a Facebook group 10 years ago, Prism hosted the first-ever pride parade in Halton last year.

Melanie Tremills, founder and chair of PRISM, spoke about the origin of the group.

“We started it because we saw the need out there, especially for the youth of the area,” Tremills said. “I work in a school, and I see the need is quite intense for some of the youth. There’s nowhere for them to go.”

In 2018, PRISM organized its first flag-raising, which Tremills said was attended by about 10 people. Tremills said their last flag raising drew over 100 people.

Tremills said they always have guest speakers at the flag-raising and more recently have had youth speakers as well.

“I normally give them a theme of what we’d like them to speak on, and it’s good to have the youth direct what they need, and [tell us] what they see is a need, because sometimes we don’t see that view,” Tremills said.

Tremills said that they had almost 250 participants in the parade itself and that this year they are hoping for “bigger and better” things.

“It’s a need for the community to see that we are there for them,” Tremills said. “There are people around. They get to find that sense of community for the LGBTQ+ community themselves. It is a need and a necessity.”

On the decision to host the parade in July instead of Pride Month in June, Tremills said that it comes down to trying to avoid conflicting schedules.

“It’s a very busy time of year for Pride events,” Tremills said. “So our view is, we take it to July, and it just extends it that bit further and it doesn’t clash with other things people may want to do. You don’t want people to have to choose between this parade or that parade or this event.”

Tremills recalled a story at last year’s parade where a young person was delighted at the prospect of marching at the event.

“[It was] 10 minutes before the parade was ready to set up, everybody was lining up,” Tremills said. “And some people had been milling around, just hanging out with everybody while we were getting ready. And they were just sitting there and I was just making sure that we had everybody lined up and everything was ready to go, and I spoke to them and I said ‘Are you going to go watch the parade?’ And they said, ‘Well, you know, maybe.’ They just seemed to be a little down. And I said, ‘Did you want to walk in the parade?’ And this person just cried. They said, ‘I never knew until this day there was a community here for me,’ and they were great, had the best time and were incredibly thankful just to see that the community is there.”

Tremills said that there will also be a drag show the night before the parade, as well as a drag show afterparty following the parade.

The parade has support from all the Halton MPs, and Milton MP Adam van Koeverden will be marching in the parade, as he did last year.

RBC, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, and the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation are all platinum sponsors of the event.

Halton Catholic District School Board and Halton District School Board will also be participating in the event, as well as Pflag, Queer@ROCK, SAFE Halton, South Asian Dance Group, and Norval United Church.

Pride Halton’s Pride Parade will take place from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Main St. in Milton on July 14.

Correction notice: the list of participants in the Pride parade has been updated to reflect the most current information. Our apologies for any inconvenience.