Quesnel, B.C. – Despite threatening skies well over 100 people turned out for today’s second annual Pride Parade in Quesnel.

Photo courtesy CUPE

Mayor Bob Simpson says the turnout was greater than last year when weather conditions were near perfect.

He believes it’s a sign the community continues to become more and more inclusive.

“Like all smaller communities we need to evolve and I do believe we’re evolving rapidly. I would say that it started with our Aboriginal Days and the celebration of our aboriginal community,” says Simpson.

“We’re a community with a long history of having the Chinese presence here and our Indo-Canadian/South Asian presence when they came to work in the mills. So we do have diversity in the community and this is another level of diversity I believe the community is ready not just to recognize but to also embrace.”

That’s not to say there hasn’t been any grumbling in the background.

“I got a couple of phone calls last year with people asking ‘you know why would we enable this’ and my response was we weren’t enabling anything it was the community that was coming together and the community wanted it. So I would say it was very, very minimal.”

Simpson says there was no negative reaction to the City’s decision to raise the rainbow flag either.

“We raised the flag for the first time today and we heard nothing from the community in the way of grumbling about us doing that.”