Halifax Pride remains silent as the queer community questions the status of the 2023 festivities

Halifax Pride is less than two weeks away, but some members of the local queer community are beginning to question whether the parade will go ahead after hearing very little from the festival board in recent months.

Back in May, Halifax Pride announced that the festival would take place from July 20 to July 30with official pride events scheduled for the Garrison Grounds, and the parade for Sunday, July 23 at 2 p.m.

The organization has since given no further details about this year’s festival.

A community meeting scheduled for Monday was supposed to provide an update on “where things currently stand with the 2023 festival”. But it was postponed “due to unforeseen circumstances,” and the community was left with more questions than answers about the status of this year’s parade.

“We really don’t know because pride has been extremely uncommunicative,” says Daniel MacKay, who runs Queer Encyclopedia of Halifax and publishes Wayves magazine.

As of Friday, the meeting has not been rescheduled and there have been no public statements from Halifax Pride.

“A lot of people are looking forward to this as a really fun event, and we have hundreds of organizations planning to be in the parade … and to not know if they’re doing it or not is pretty disturbing,” MacKay said.

While the official event calendar for Halifax Pride remains blank on the organization’s website, MacKay is quick to point out that if the official parade doesn’t go ahead, queer people will still have plenty of grassroots-level pride festivities to choose from.

“If you look at the Halifax Gay Events Calendar, you already see 90 events scheduled for July, with more coming every day,” he said. “Everyone has pitched in and we’re going to have a fantastic time.”

Calls for transparency

Kevin Kindred is an activist and longtime member of Halifax Pride who regularly attends the meetings.

He logged on to the June virtual meeting, where he said the board shared details about this year’s parade route. But Kindred was surprised they didn’t yet have more specific details about this year’s planned events.

After this week’s meeting has been postponed, Kindred is increasingly concerned that the parade will not take place.

“It was really concerning that we were in July and still had no information from Halifax Pride about what the plans were. some serious alarm bells.”

Unusually high turnover

In September, Executive director and operations manager of Halifax Pride – the organization’s only two paid employees – both have resigned.

Neither position has been filled, Kindred said, and Halifax Pride now has an entirely different board of directors than it did last year at this time.

“I have to give credit to the board because they are brand new people who have stepped into Halifax Pride at a very difficult time, so I am not surprised they are struggling,” Kindred said. “But there is a lot of frustration about the lack of security so close to the festival.”

He especially wants the board to be transparent about what is happening.

“Right now they need to be open with everyone about what’s going to happen in 2023, for better or for worse,” Kindred said.

A spokesman for the Halifax Regional Municipality said the city was “under agreement to hold a parade on July 23 at 2 p.m.”.

Halifax Pride also has a booking for the Garrison Grounds, the city said, “but the council has no information on the exact programming at that time.”

CBC News reached out to Halifax Pride to ask if the parade and planned events at Garrison Grounds would go ahead.

As of 5 p.m. on Friday, the organization had not yet responded.