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Port Hardy Pride Day will arrive in September

Port Hardy will be celebrating Pride Day on Sept. 14 at Carrot Park.
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PORT HARDY PRIDE SOCIETY PHOTO If people want to help out with organizing pride events, they can send a message to the Pride Society’s Facebook group.

Pride Day celebrations have found an official date to take place in Port Hardy.

Originally, The Port Hardy Pride Society had requested that Aug. 17 be the date for the festivities, but it has been changed to Sept. 14 due to conflicting with OrcaFest in Port McNeill on the same weekend.

The Port Hardy Pride Society’s media spokesperson Che Zaw noted there was “a lot of feedback from the community that there was a conflict with OrcaFest, so we said ‘yeah, let’s find a way to make this as accessible to as many people as possible’.”

So now, on Sept. 14, there will be a pride march down Market Street to Carrot Park, musical performances, drag performances, rainbows and glitter, and lots of activities for families. There will also be an adults only drag performance later that night at the Quarterdeck Pub.

Zaw added there will be a Storytime Drag performance at the Port Hardy Library on July 20 at 10:00 a.m. and that if the pride flag raising at North Island College last month is any indication, she’s expecting a great showing for Pride Day in September.

“The flag raising at NIC went super well — lots of attendance, excitement, and lots of youth present which was awesome to see. It makes us feel really good about how the community feels about LGBTQ2+ issues and we’re pretty encouraged because of it.”

If people want to help out with organizing pride events, they can send a message to the Pride Society’s Facebook group.

As for Zaw, pride is a personal matter. “I came out here, this (Port Hardy) is a meaningful place for me in that regard, and what’s really been unique about the experience of putting the Pride Society together is that a lot of people have joined in who never felt like they had a place here in the community, so it’s meant a lot to give them that safety.”


@NIGazette
editor@northislandgazette.com

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Tyson Whitney

About the Author: Tyson Whitney

I have been working in the community newspaper business for nearly a decade, all of those years with Black Press Media.
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