Hot on the heels of Halton’s first Pride festival last month, comes Halton’s first Pride Parade, taking place in Milton on Aug. 20.
Milton PRISM, a social media-based group for Milton’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community, is organizing this important first. The parade will begin at 2 p.m. from the rainbow crosswalk on Main St. and Brown St. and continue up Main St. to the second rainbow crosswalk at Main and Charles streets.
“A short parade for the first year…but we’ll move on from there,” says PRISM’s Melanie Tremills, whose aim is for the parade to move to other Halton municipalities in years to follow. Tremills has been excited to see the support from local businesses. “Most sponsors are local Milton businesses,” she says, listing La Rose and Milton’s Finest Cleaning Services as high-level sponsors. Other generous sponsors include the Downtown Milton B.I.A., Woodbine Mohawk Park, Staged Well, the Ivy Arms, and Bliss.
Also gratifying have been the people who have signed on to march in the parade, including PFLAG Halton, Milton Public Library, Free Mom Hugs, a group of Milton firefighters and one of their trucks, MP Adam van Koeverden, two dance groups (including Our Haven Studios from Burlington), and more. Sustainable Milton and the Water Store are providing a free water station for parade-goers to refill their water bottles, which will be found on the lawn of St. Paul’s United Reform Chuch.
And let’s not forget the drag performers: drag queens Karma Kameleon, Kamilla Flores Kameleon, drag king Dallas Ryder, and host Geri Atrick.
These performers will also entertain the crowd at the Pride Parade Kickoff Drag Show on Aug. 19 at Pretty Rad in Milton. While the parade itself is a family-friendly event, the kickoff event is 19 years and over (as there will be alcohol available to purchase at the bar).
The parade has been in the works since January, and it has been a learning experience for Tremills: “You don’t realize the layers needed until you start planning — [and then] it just spreads like a spiderweb.” She says the town has been helpful in going through all the necessary steps with her, things like walking the parade route to ask all the businesses along the way “if it’s okay with them…because it’s a new event, [we] have to see if it’s viable.”
Some organizations who are participating in the parade were already friends of PRISM; Conservation Halton, Milton Community Resource Centre, and Milton Public Library have helped with providing space for smaller PRISM events before.
But this is the first big public event that PRISM has organized. Previous events have just been for PRISM members.
PRISM itself began seven years ago on Facebook, as a place for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth to connect. Tremills works in a Catholic school, and saw a gap. There were youth — and some adults — who “feel that no one else is around.” Wearing Pride and trans flags buttons on her school lanyard led to connections with students who were just looking for someone safe to talk to — even if the conversation never went directly into matters of identity. And so PRISM was born, as a grassroots group for people in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community to connect, and they’re now on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok as well as Facebook, with over 300 members — mostly from Milton.
After a few smaller events, like Pride picnics and walks, PRISM is going bigger with the Pride Parade. “There were no Pride parades in Halton before, so we thought we’d try,” explains Tremills. So far, Tremills says that during the organization and promotion of the event, “more than anything, we’ve had positivity” from the community. It’s taken an excellent group of volunteers, a committee, and “taking each step as it comes,” says Tremills, describing it as “exciting, but nerve-racking.”
Though, of course, Pride parades have been happening elsewhere in Ontario for many years (the first Pride Parade in Toronto was in 1981), it is a definitive positive that Halton’s first Pride Parade is now almost upon us. As Tremills states, “Diversity needs to be seen…and every step forward is good.”
And so far, says Tremills, “It has been incredible to see the community coming together.”
To join in the first-ever Halton Pride Parade, head to Main St. in Milton this Sunday, Aug. 20; for tickets ($15 each) to the Aug. 19 drag show, email miltonprism@gmail.com.
Sources:
The Canadian Encyclopedia. 2019. Pride in Canada. Url: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/world-pride-2014-toronto (accessed Aug. 13, 2023).
