WATCH ABOVE: Calgary’s Pride shined through the clouds on Sunday. Thousands of people converging on downtown for the culmination of pride week. As Tracy Nagai reports, with even more new faces joining this year’s parade, the event has taken on a new route.
CALGARY – The sky might have been cloudy with overcast but the tens of thousands of people that wore all the colours of the rainbow walking down 9th Avenue for Calgary’s Pride Parade, brightened up the downtown core Sunday afternoon.
Many familiar faces from our city’s community showed their support to celebrate 25 years of Calgary Pride Week, for the biggest parade to date.
Calgary Flames President of Hockey Operations Brian Burke was chosen as the parade marshal.
“This is your chance if you live in Calgary to say this community is important to Calgary, it’s an important part of what we do,” Burke said. “Everyone’s welcome to play on our teams, everyone’s welcome to come to our buildings.”
“People outside Calgary probably still think it’s a cowboy town and we’re proud of that part too, but I think it’s an inclusive community,” Burke said.
Marching alongside Burke, was Mayor Naheed Nenshi, PFLAG Calgary, Calgary Olympic Team, The Flames, Roughnecks and many more Calgary sports teams, businesses and leaders.
There was a total of 120 entries in the parade, 40 more than last year so the route had to be changed to accommodate.
“We had to move from Stephen Avenue, all the way to 9th avenue for a wider street to accommodate all these great entries,” said Tansy Wong with the Calgary Pride Parade.
The parade marched down 9th Avenue, starting on 1st Street SE and finishing at Shaw Millennium Park for the Pride Festival.
“I loved going down Stephen Avenue precisely because it’s small and it felt closed in and there were tons of people. But the fire department tells me that’s not so good, so the good news is that even in this miserable weather, we filled up 9th Avenue well and I can just see this even growing every year from now,” Mayor Nenshi said.
WATCH BELOW: The full 2015 Calgary Pride Parade as presented on Shaw TV and globalnews.ca
Marianne Ryan, Commanding Officer of Alberta RCMP says they want people to know that they (RCMP) embrace diversity,
“So we’re really happy to participate. This is our first official in to Calgary Pride and we’re really happy to be here,” Ryan said.
“I hope the day comes when we don’t have a Pride Parade. Where there’s so much assimilation and acceptance that there’s nothing distinctive about this community,” Burke said.
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