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Stonewall TO Takes Pride Back To Its Grassroots

By Jaime Woo

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Stonewall TO marchers entering the Church-Wellesley Village Sunday afternoon.


“An army of lovers will never be defeated!” Stonewall TO march, commemorating the 1969 Stonewall riots that occurred after a police raid on a gay bar in New York City. An estimated 1,200 participants gathered at Queen’s Park and started walking east along Wellesley, making their way to the Church-Wellesley Village, and ending outside the 519 Church Street Community Centre. After stopping traffic along Church Street for about half an hour, many of the Stonewall TO participants moved to Cawthra Square Park behind the 519 for a relaxed gathering with music and food.


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Stonewall TO’s Sasha Van Bon Bon danced while stopping car traffic.

The march had a playful spirit: participants covered one another in silver and red glitter, artists had created placards bearing illustrations of prominent local queer activists like Will Munro and Sky Gilbert, a gentleman rode a bike decorated with flowers surrounding a portrait of filmmaker John Waters. It was, unsurprisingly given many recent events, also somewhat politically charged, with signs supporting students in the Catholic school system attempting to form gay-straight alliances (GSAs); demands to stop Mayor Rob Ford’s proposed funding cuts to queer-related services; and criticism’s of Pride Toronto’s dependence on corporate sponsorship.
The latter is one of the reasons Stonewall TO was started, and the inverse relationship between external funding and community ownership was on the mind of march co-organizer Sasha Van Bon Bon when we spoke with her in anticipation of Sunday’s event. “When you come to rely on funding from unreliable sources that don’t necessarily have the best interest of our very diverse community at stake,” she had said, “then we come to rely on funding that we have no control over in the end.” In contrast to Pride, the grassroots Stonewall TO was volunteer-based, and recouped costs by selling buttons and T-shirts.
The success of this year’s Stonewall TO will undoubtedly mean another edition; however, there may be a scheduling overlap as Pride Toronto is expected to return the Pride Parade to the end of June in 2012. (Traditionally, Pride celebrations around the world are held during the last weekend of June to mark the timing of the Stonewall riots.) There’s still a year to sort out what will happen, but for now, Toronto’s queer community can look to the glittery silver lining, showing that Toronto has a new way of demonstrating its pride.
Photos by Jaime Woo/Torontoist.

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  • Canadianskeezix

    I mentioned this already on the post this weekend on the 1981 bathhouse raids, but while I applaud people who marched this weekend, I'm not sure that Stonewall the most important event that needs to be commemorated by the LGBT community in Canada.   We should be marching to commemorate the 1981 raids or the 1968 decriminalization of homosexuality in Canada, two events that had far
    more impact on the gay rights movement in this city (and in this
    country) than Stonewall.
     
    We should work harder not to forget our own history, and should be influenced less by American media.

  • http://twitter.com/myownbloordale XX

    I had fun on the march, but there were a couple of things that came to mind. I hope they will be read as constructive criticism, as I love the concept of queers coming together, making noise and taking up space that the event represented.

    First, I agree with @Canadianskeezix that the Stonewall focus seemed… ahistorical?  Canada has it's own queer history — which I'm sure the organizers are better aware of than most.  I was also struck that the intense 'StonewallTO' branding of the event, complete with glossy posters and graphic design, made it feel kind of corporate despite its authentic grassroots beginnings.

  • rich1299

    I would disagree, the Stonewall TO posters were, in my opinion very well done and showed evidence that someone in graphic design created it, as well there wasn't the usual corporate sponsors listed on the posters because there were none. Just because the posters were professionally designed and printed on good quality paper doesn;t take away anything fro mthe grass roots nature of the event.

  • rich1299

    The Toronto bath house raids happened in February, do you really think Pride would attract so many hundreds of thousands if it were held in February instead of June/July? I certainly don't think so, February is a miserable time of year to be out for any large celebration. Its no accident that pretty much every summer weekend in Toronto there's some sort of festival or event, its because the winter months are just too cold and misrbale to hold any of them then.

    However this year to mark the 40th anniversary of the first large scale gay and lesbian rights demonstartion called “We Demand” that was held in August of 1971 in Ottawa and Vancouver and there's going to be an anniversary celebration of that event with an updated list of demands this August.

    Stonewall didn't just launch the modern LGBT rights movement in the US, it also had a huge effect on LGBT people in Canada who felt emboldened by it and started organizing to fight back on their own right here in Canada. Stonewall was an important event for LGBT people all across North America, not just the US.

  • Canadianskeezix

    I think you misread my comments.

    First, I don't think anyone (myself included) has suggested moving Pride, and its hundreds of thousands of revellers, to February.   That would be a silly suggestion, and I didn't suggest it.  I was talking about this particular political march, a separate event.  Protests and demonstrations like this one occur all year long.  And there is no rule that march has to fall on the date of the raid itself in order to commemorate the significant effect of that event.

    As for Stonewall, I also never said it was unimportant.  But the LGBT community was organizing to fight back in Canada before Stonewall.  There are more relevant events to commemorate in Canada that had a more direct effect on the community here.  There is a tremendous LGBT history in this country, and while Stonewall has its place and its importance, we should be working to remind all Canadians of their own queer history.