Vancouver Pride celebrates with ‘decentralized’ parades
Posted August 1, 2021 4:31 pm.
Last Updated August 1, 2021 4:32 pm.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — With the COVID-19 pandemic taking away the iconic Pride parade for another year, people are celebrating in different ways this year.
Andrea Arnot, from the Vancouver Pride Society, says they’re holding a “decentralized” parade today.
“We’re encouraging people to celebrate Pride in a way that’s meaningful and safe for them,” Arnot says. “So, whether they’re sitting in their backyard and having a picnic, or if they want to march down their own sidewalk with flags, but to take up space and be out and loud and proud because that’s what the parade is about.”
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Arnot notes that the parade usually takes up the entire downtown core, showing “the rest of the community that that we’re here and there’s still work that needs to be done.”
Arnot says people mostly understand why the usual parade can’t go ahead again this year.
“If we would have held the parade, it draws crowds and hundreds of thousands of people, and that is outside of where our provincial health guidelines are for stage three,” she says. ” And I think also, people don’t realize how much planning goes into putting on the parade, it takes a whole year for our little staff teams.”
