It was a groundbreaking event organized by Toronto Gay Action, the Community Homophile Association of Toronto and the University of Toronto Homophile Association, with around 300 people from neighbouring cities as far away as New York City and Detroit attending to show their support. In the summer of 1971, a group of gay and lesbian activists organized Toronto’s first Gay Day picnic at Hanlan’s Point Beach, the most westerly of the Toronto Islands (today known as Toronto’s unofficial “gay beach”).
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However, it wasn’t until the following year that Toronto started to join in. The following summer, picnics organized by LGBTQ organizations took place in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago to commemorate the Stonewall uprising. Leaders like Marsha P Johnson, Stormé DeLarverie, Miss Major and several other Black transgender and queer people were on the front line of those protests and violent clashes with law enforcement, and are ultimately responsible for starting a movement that slowly spread across the world and led to the LGBTQ rights that we have today. The riots began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, and continued for six days outside of the Christopher Street bar, in surrounding streets and in the nearby Christopher Park.
When was first gay pride parade series#
In 1969, a series of riots against police discrimination and police brutality took place in New York City. Here’s the story of how Toronto Pride began, and how one little picnic grew into the city’s massive celebration of the diversity of the LGBTQ community. This summer excluded, the Toronto Pride Parade is one of the largest Pride celebrations in the world, with Tourism Toronto estimating an annual attendance that tops one million.
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Toronto’s first “Gay Day Picnic” was held on the beach at Hanlan’s Point on Sunday, August 1, 1971…