As I write, I can hear Toronto’s Church St rocking like it does only on Pride Day – umph, umph, umph. The 2010 Pride parade, though, is done.
It was a long, hot march and the crowd was huge but the energy was high. We’ll have scads of pictures and video in the coming hours and days. But for now a brief update…
The chief controversy this year, about the presence of Queers Against Israeli Aparthied (QuAIA) in the parade and Pride Toronto’s initial effort to ban the group, did not go entirely unnoticed. The Kulanu (Jewish gay group) contingent and the QuAIA contingent were staged only about 75 metres apart on Bloor St. Each group was much larger than last year. There was some shouting and posturing back and forth and police stepped in briefly. They asked a small group of people wearing Jewish Defence League T-shirts to get back to their group. We’ll have a detailed account soon.
But in the end everything worked out fine.
There was also a huge contingent (about 300 strong) for the Pride Coalition for Free Speech.
That’s John Caffery urging you to bring back gay.
We’ll have more (pictures, videos, written accounts) in the coming hours and days. Check out Xtra videographer Michael Pihach’s report from Bloor and Yonge:
For now, you can check out Xtra‘s Twitter account for photos that we took on-the-fly at various Pride events this weekend.
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