The Evolution of Pride

🌈 Pride Month is around the corner and it always gets me thinking.

In 2014, I wrote my Master's thesis on the evolution of Toronto Pride.

Re-reading it in 2026 is strange because the conversations and debate haven't changed all that much.

Back then, I wrote about how Pride had been evolving “from the closet to the mainstream,” becoming increasingly commercialized and dependent on corporate sponsorship while also gaining unprecedented visibility.

I interviewed early organizers of Toronto Pride who talked about the complicated feelings that came with that growth. One organizer described Pride as “celebratory defiance.” Another said the growth of Pride was both a “salvation and a danger.”

This tension started to be named within a decade of the first annual Pride march. And it still defines Pride.

In the summer of 1981 the first annual Lesbian and Gay Pride Day march involved only a few hundred people and the rally attracted around fifteen hundred people from Toronto’s gay and lesbian communities.

The event was a response to the violent police raids on gay bathhouses across the city of Toronto that had taken place in February of that year (Operation Soap) and was organized by various grassroots gay and lesbian organizations.

We’re still debating corporate sponsorships. Still asking who Pride is actually accessible to. Still arguing about whether queer liberation can survive being packaged into branding campaigns. Still watching companies celebrate queerness when it’s profitable while backing away when it becomes politically inconvenient.

Leading the way, as always, racialized people, particularly Black women, disabled people, and trans folks continue to demand more of the larger #LGBTQ rights movement.

#BLM Toronto brought #Pride to a halt in the summer of 2016 and held a sit-in to voice their demands to Pride Toronto, including the exclusion of police at Pride, a commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staff, and to prioritize the hiring of Black transgender women and Indigenous people.

LGBT+ communities started Pride because of ongoing, relentless police harassment, and we must recognize this fight continues for BIPOC communities of all sexual orientations and especially those who are members of LGBT+ communities.

Pride is both a celebration and a protest. Both of these elements have been integral from the beginning. It’s about celebrating how far we have come, taking up space, and demonstrating how far we still have to go.

‼️ We must continue to challenge #PinkWashing and #RainbowCapitalism and ask companies with rainbow logos in June, "Do your policies protect us when it’s politically costly?"✊

We will never settle for acceptance and tolerance. We will not accept anything less than liberation for all. Pride isn’t Pride without Black women, trans folk, enby folk, ace, and two spirit people. It’s for all of us or it’s for none of us. It’s political or it isn’t Pride.