This year, Pride Hamilton’s outdoor event will include vendors, performances and a beer garden
Pride Hamilton is hosting their annual pride event on Sunday, Aug. 27 at Pier 4 Park between 12:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. The outdoor event will include vendors, food, a beer garden, performances as well as family and youth activities
In Dec. 2022, Pride Hamilton reached out to the community via Instagram to ask for suggestions for an accessible and inclusive location for this year’s festivities. Some of the considerations factored into their selection include safety for 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals, accessibility transit and mobility devices and accessibility to shaded areas.
The location for this year’s event was shared on Instagram in May 2023. Pride Hamilton detailed in their caption that Pier 4 Park is accessible by HSR, accessible to mobility devices and offers parking.
Shortly after they announced their location, Pride Hamilton announced this year’s vendors, which include local businesses such as OWL & Crafty Beaver, Sugar Daddies Bakery and Coco Blossoms.
In addition to their large event in Au- gust, Pride Hamilton has hosted and promoted several events throughout June 2023, including yard sign fundraiser and a pride comedy festival.
For more information on Pride Hamilton and this year’s pride events, visit the Pride Hamilton website.
C/O Daniel James, Unsplash
Pride Hamilton was back in person, though with mixed responses from the community
After two years of virtual Pride celebrations, Pride Hamilton is officially back in person. According to the Pride Hamilton website, Pride celebrations have been happening in the city since 1991. However, the Pride Hamilton organization was only officially formed in 2018, hosting their first official Pride in Gage Park in 2019.
After this initial celebration in 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Hamilton Pride online for the next two years. The digital Pride events of 2020 and 2021, featured a variety of 2SLGBTQIA+ speakers, musical performers, dance performers and drag artists.
In 2022, Pride Hamilton was in-person once again. The weekend featured numerous vendors, as well as performances by Nicky Doll, host of Drag Race France.
However, Pride Hamilton 2022 also saw some changes from the 2019 experience. Traditionally held in June, Canada's pride month, Pride Hamilton was instead held indoors at the Hamilton Convention Centre on the second weekend of July.
These changes were announced in an Instagram post by Pride Hamilton on April 23, 2022.
“Planning Pride is not easy. There are so many moving parts and so many groups within the community that have voices and ideas that need to be acknowledged. When the government announced the lifting of restrictions, it gave us the chance to go back to the drawing board and create something fresh that could finally reunite us,” said the letter, which was signed by Kiel Hughes, the chair of Pride Hamilton.
"Planning Pride is not easy. There are so many moving parts and so many groups within the community that have voices and ideas that need to be acknowledged. When the government announced the lifting of restrictions, it gave us the chance to go back to the drawing board and create something fresh that could finally reunite us."
Kiel Hughes, the Chair of Pride Hamilton in a Letter on Instagram
Many community members have left comments expressing feelings of confusion or loss, regarding the changes of date and venue to Pride 2022. However, many others have expressed excitement about a return to in-person celebrations on Pride Hamilton’s social media pages.
Norah Frye, director of the McMaster Student Union's Pride Community Centre, expressed excitement at being able to celebrate Pride in person once again.
While virtual events were necessary for Pride 2020 and 2021, Frye noted Pride is particularly difficult to celebrate online because a large part of Pride is existing together as a community in a comfortable and welcoming space.
“That's part of what makes Pride such a novel, exciting, exhilarating, love-filled experience. Because you can feel, in the most physical and literal way, love and acceptance around you. And that's something that's really hard to foster online,” said Frye.
"That's part of what makes pride such a novel, exciting, exhilarating, love-filled experience. Because you can feel, in the in the most physical and literal way, love and acceptance around you. And that's something that's really hard to foster online."
Norah Frye, director of McMaster University’s Pride Community Centre
Frye also highlighted the uniquely intimate experience of Pride Hamilton, as compared to larger Pride celebrations such as Pride Toronto.
“You have this level of intimacy that's just not always there when you do anything on a bigger scale; I think that's really exciting to be a part of,” said Frye.
Though unable to attend Pride Hamilton this year, Frye looks forward to plenty of Pride-related events at McMaster throughout the upcoming school year.
"Part of my goal for the PCC this academic year is to make up for all the time that we lost when we couldn't do pride in person,” said Frye.
"Part of my goal for the PCC [in] this academic year is to make up for all the time that we lost when we couldn't do pride in person."
Norah Frye, director of McMaster University’s Pride Community Centre
Though Pride 2022 did not take the form everyone in the Hamilton community hoped for, it was still exciting for many to not only be able to celebrate in person and as a community again but also to be able to look forward to future events.
By: Anonymous
What’s the difference between an angry yellow vest and an angry queer or 2SLGBTQ+ person?
Everything.
There’s no question of that in my mind, or in the minds of most other like-minded people in the 2SLGBTQ+ community, especially when it comes to the recent yellow vest attacks at Hamilton Pride . The question we’re asking is: why are there still people that don’t think so?
People who insist “both sides” have done something wrong. People who insist that if the queer community stopped being so “unreasonable”, there could be a productive discussion in which everything would be resolved. People who sigh with a sort of martyred world-weariness as they ask: “why can’t we all just get along?”
Countless Twitter posts and opinion pieces have been made touting those views, particularly by heterosexual individuals who don’t have our community’s lived experience. People who don’t understand this struggle, who just want things to be “peaceful”.
Has anyone ever considered that we are the ones who would very much like “peaceful”?
I, for one, would love the peace to celebrate my bisexuality in the park, proudly wearing as much blue, pink and purple as I could possibly fit on my body. There is nothing I would have liked more than to go to Pride Hamilton without fearing attack by religious extremists. Or to go to the “Hamilton for who?” rally without feeling my stomach drop as I read the words “Yellow Vest meetup point” written in chalk on the pavement just outside the bounds of the event space.
I’d love to walk around downtown Hamilton now without worrying about the yellow vest demonstrations at City Hall. Without wondering if, somehow, this will be the day the wrong person will sense that I am a queer woman. Without tensing my entire body every time I see a flash of neon yellow out of the corner of my eye.
The ones who don’t want things to be “peaceful” are the right wing extremists who attacked Hamilton Pride unprovoked. I don’t approve at all of the word “protest” in this context; that connects this group far too closely with legitimate community organizers trying to raise awareness for LGBTQ+, feminist, and environmental issues, among others. No, it was an attack, and so it should always be called.
More specifically it was an attack by a group that is anti-Semitic, anti-2SLGBTQ+, and Islamophobic, among other things. An angry queer or 2SLGBTQ+ person is angry because their right to celebrate their identity has been violated, and public institutions have been incredibly insufficient in protecting it. An angry yellow vest is angry because members of marginalized communities they hate dare to exist in public spaces.
Equating these two groups in their anger, especially in Hamilton right now, is harmful beyond belief. And no, the 2SLGBTQ+ community will not be “getting along” with people that consider it their “right” to attack them at their own celebration.
Furthermore, opening oneself to “reasonable” diplomacy is not the way to go. Hate groups do not act in good faith. They cannot be “reasoned” with. And if the community has to take a hard stance when the alternative is politely standing still to be hit with helmets, so be it.
Many of those who use these “both sides” arguments do not, or do not choose to, understand the social context behind these two different types of anger. It’s easy to not understand when it poses no direct threat to one’s daily life or existence. It’s easy to think of this as a homogenous “disturbance” when one doesn’t understand the demands these two sides are making.
The extremists want the 2SLGBTQ+ and queer communities to stop existing publicly and to live in fear.
The queer/2SLGBGTQ+ community would very much like to hold a Pride event in the park (which quite a few children and teens were at, by the way) without wondering if they’re going to make it home safely. Something that they currently cannot do.
I, for one, think the difference is as clear as crystal.
In recent years, Hamilton’s downtown core has changed rapidly, with many businesses closing down and new ones popping up, just as fast. While some may welcome these changes, many others point to a loss for the LGBTQA2S+ community, with many popular gay bars closing down as the city evolved.
In the early 2000s, there were five major gay bars people could go to: The Werx, the Rainbow Lounge, The Embassy, M Bar and The Windsor, all of which were located in Hamilton’s downtown core. Since then, all of these bars have shut their doors.
For James Dee, a McMaster alum and Hamilton resident since 2004, bars such as the Embassy were an important aspect of their experience with Hamilton’s queer community as a place where they could go without threat of violence.
“We maybe have a little bit of drama and be kind of mean to each other….But when the lights came on at the end of the night you know everyone was checking in with each other like 'text when you get home and so I know you're safe,'” Dee said.
While Hamilton’s queer scene thrived in 2004, it was not without violence. In that same year, Hamilton Police Services, among other municipal agencies, raided the Warehouse Spa and Bath and arrested two men for indecent acts. That raid was followed by protests from Hamilton’s LGBTQA2S+ community.
“It felt a lot more dangerous to be visibly queer in 2004,” Dee said. “I think it's easy to kind of romanticize the time when we had brick and mortar spaces but it's also easy to forget why we needed those spaces so much.”
Dee believes that, to some degree, places closed down due to a decline in need, but also points to the gentrification of Hamilton as another key reason these spaces disappeared.
“It's not just the story of queer Hamilton, it's the story of Hamilton in general… a lot of the places I used to enjoy hanging out [at] are now bougie coffee shops,” Dee said.
For example, following the shuttering of the Werx’s door, the building was converted into the Spice Factory, a popular wedding venue.
“All across the board, [the gay bars] catered to people with less money,” Dee said. “They don't survive downtown anymore.”
For Sophie Geffros, another long-time Hamilton resident and McMaster graduate student, the loss of brick-and-mortar spaces has meant a segregation within the community.
Geffros, who spent their teen years in Hamilton, had many of their formative experiences at bars such as the Embassy, where they met older members of the LGBTA2S+ community in addition to those their own age.
“There is still an isolation that I think that can only be combated by in-person interaction,” Geffros said.
“We're a little more fragmented. Like if I'm going out… I'm going to be going out with people I already know who are members of the community,” they added.
For Geffros, the loss of Hamilton’s queer spaces is especially harmful, as these spaces were often the most accessible hangouts for queer people living in rural communities that lack direct bus service to Toronto.
“Those are people who are particularly isolated, who are often closeted throughout the week and would come to Hamilton on the weekend to blow off steam and be amongst themselves. That's a real loss,” Geffros said.
While there are no longer any physical LGBTQA2S+ spaces, there are opportunities for Hamilton’s queer community to converge. Dee is one of the founders of Queer Outta Hamilton, a collective that runs monthly queer pub nights, typically at Gallagher’s Pub.
In addition, there are other organizations that offer workshops and events, such as Speqtrum Hamilton, the NGen Youth Centre, Pride Hamilton, the McMaster Students Union Pride Centre and others.
There are also many LGBTQA2S+-friendly bars and clubs, such as Sous Bas, which offers queer events, typically in partnership with Queer Outta Hamilton.
While Hamilton may have lost its major physical queer spaces, the community continues to support each other the best they can.
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