Toronto Pride 1981 - setting the historical record queer
By Gary Kinsman
This year is the 25th anniversary of the celebration in Toronto of queer pride at the end of June. This date is in memory of the Stonewall riots against police repression in New York City in 1969 that led to the eruption of the contemporary lesbian and gay liberation movements. In 2005 Kyle Rae is being given an award by the Pride Committee as the “Pride founder.” While Kyle Rae was actively involved in the organizing of the Pride events that first year it was not an individual but a collective event and he was involved in Pride organizing as a project of Gay Liberation Against the Right Everywhere (GLARE), a left-wing gay liberation group dedicated to fighting the anti-gay, anti-feminist, and racist right-wing. To focus on only one person as the “founder” does a real disservice to our histories. Here I attempt to set the historical record queer!
The Pride event in 1981 would not have taken place without the new political and social context created by the massive resistance that took place against the bath raids that year. Thousands of queer men, lesbians and our supporters took to the streets on a number of occasions, including taking over Yonge Street when it was against the law to march on Yonge Street. Many people of colour facing racist police repression came out in support of the struggles organised by the Right To Privacy Committee (RTPC) and we returned the solidarity. Many feminists came out in support of those arrested and in return the largest ever gay men’s contingent in the International Women’s Day march was organized that year by GLARE and the RTPC. Gay postal workers got the Metro Toronto and District Labour Council to come out against the bath raids. As a result the city was turned on its ear and the police raids backfired creating more queer visibility and mobilization in the city.
It was in this context that GLARE which had been organizing against the moral conservative right-wing in the city, and was involved in the resistance to the bath raids, decided as a group that it was time that there was a Lesbian and Gay Pride Day in Toronto at the end of June to commemorate the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The idea was to create an event that was not only a political protest against the social forces oppressing queer people but also to celebrate our lives and struggles. It was to be political and fun, celebrating a riot and being a carnival at the same time in the best of queer traditions. A number of people from GLARE were involved in initiating what became the Pride Committee including Brian Conway, Hugh English, Ian Lumsden, Jim McNeil, Brian Woods, along with Kyle Rae, myself and others. Other people got involved in the Pride Committee as it formed and the Committee worked with Lesbians Against the Right (a major lesbian formation active against the right-wing), the Right to Privacy Committee, and other organizations.
On the day itself more than 1,500 people came out to the festival in Grange Park. Keynote speakers were Lorna Weir from Lesbians Against the Right, and gay writer and activist Michael Riordon. There was entertainment and lots of tables on the activities of struggles of various community groups. More than 1,000 people joined the march that went along Queen, up Yonge, and across Dundas where we stopped in front of 52 Division of the Toronto Police for more than five minutes with people chanting “Fuck You 52!” and “No More Shit!” Only a week before in response to another bath raid thousands of people had again taken to the streets, blocking traffic at Yonge and Bloor, and fending off violent attacks from queerbashers. In this context the Pride event was very political and fun and the police were pissed off with people for stopping in front of the cop shop and violating our parade permit.
Although ‘red-baited’ by some in the gay scene since GLARE was a left-wing group, the first Pride Day at the end of June was a major success setting the stage for Pride to expand as a queer celebratory and political event over the next few years. Pride 1981 was a collective effort and there was no single “founder” of Toronto Pride Day.
Gary Kinsman was a member of GLARE, the RTPC, and the Lesbian and Gay Pride Day Committee in 1981. He is the author of The Regulation of Desire, Homo and Hetero Sexualities and the forthcoming The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation. He teaches Sociology at Laurentian University in Sudbury.