Type pride festival Headquarters Edmonton | Legal status active Website Edmonton Pride | |
Purpose To endeavour to unify and educate by celebrating gender and sexual diversity through a sustainable annual festival and year-round community outreach within our Capital Region. Region served Edmonton Capital Region | ||
Edmonton Pride is an LGBT pride festival, held annually in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The event is organized by the Edmonton Pride Festival Society, a non-profit organization, and is currently held in early June each year.
The main evening celebration is produced by Pure Pride, an Edmonton based production organization focused on lgbt community, featuring international and local talent.
Unlike many pride parades which are held at the end of their associated festival week, Edmonton Pride hosts its parade near the opening of the event, and the festival instead closes with a public brunch event. As well, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society frequently chooses to designate community groups, rather than individuals, as the grand marshals of its parade; in 2012, the parade was led by the trustees of the Edmonton Public School Board, and in 2013 the event was led by the Pride Centre of Edmonton, the city's main LGBT community centre.
History
The event has its roots in the protest movement against a police raid on the Pisces Spa, a gay bathhouse, on May 30, 1981. However, unlike Pride Week in Toronto, which also had its roots in police protests against Operation Soap, the parade did not become a regular feature of the event until the early 1990s.
The 2013 festival was opened with the raising of the rainbow flag at CFB Edmonton on June 7, the first time in Canadian history that the flag was flown at a military base. The parade on June 8 followed 102 Avenue between 107 Street and Churchill Square. An estimated 30,000 spectators turned out for the event. Performers at the parade event included singer-songwriters Rae Spoon, Jeffery Straker and Kim Kuzma.