Pride parade Marshall, gay rights activist Ted Northe, in red leads procession from City Hall

Prince George, BC –  Hundreds of city residents came down to the lawns of City Hall to take part in festivities prior to the start of today’s 16th annual Pride parade through the downtown core…

Many more lined the streets to watch the colourful procession celebrating the city’s LGBT community, which featured participants including the Prince George Public Library, Positive Living North, The Fire Pit, the BC Nurses Union, Prince George District Teachers Association and CUPE local 1048 representing City employees. 

Some of the banners on display: "Straight, but not narrow’, ‘Peace Through Pride’, and the PGDTA’s Social Committee had a poster reading, ‘Do School Communities Include Everyone?’

UNBC’s Dr. Theresa Healy and her partner, Wendy Young, were one of five BC couples involved in the court case that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and legalized same sex marriage. 

Healy was on-hand for today’s parade.  "We were involved in Pride right from the beginning," she says.  "We were at the very first parade and, for me, this is so emotional to see so many people – the unions and businesses – that now join.  I think we had about 140 people at the first parade, so to see this is just so exciting and affirming."

Healy says the fight for gay rights continues on many levels.  Firstly, she says, is on the individual level, with "the individual striving to be strong enough to come out against everything society says you should be."

"And, then, for our legal, civil, and human rights – there’s all kinds of ways of fighting that," she says while pointing to the parade, "that is one.  The court case to win the right to marry is another."

And there is evidence the times are truly be changing.  While at a wedding for some friends a year ago, Healy says she and Young were publicly thanked during the ceremony for their fight which gave others the right to marry.  She says, at the reception afterwards, a young woman said, ‘Do you mean to tell me we didn’t have the right to marry?’.  Healy says when she queried the young woman as to how she didn’t know this, it turned out she had been ten at the time of the court challenge, so she grew up unaware that there was a time when gay couples had been denied the right to marry.