After a unanimous decision by Sundridge’s town council, the village is acknowledging Pride Month. The celebration began with the raising of the Pride flag on June 1st.
The motion to fly the flag was introduced by Councillor Fraser Williamson.
“Although many strides have been made forward to educate people’s biases, there’s still much work to be done in correcting adversity toward the LGBTQ2S+ communities,” Williamson said during a proclamation. “Therefore be resolved that the Village of Sundridge does hereby proclaim June 2024 as Pride month and encourages residents to commit to continuing awareness, inclusion and acceptance for all members of our community regardless of gender, identity, race, age and beliefs.”
In May, a Pride flag at Central Algoma Secondary School was taken down and lit on fire. The suspect was caught on camera. In a news release, the OPP said after this incident, “on May 21, there were two typed notes turned into to school staff with hateful messaging towards LGBTQ2+ community.”
During an interview with 705BLACKFLY.COM, Williamson acknowledged that there has been some protest to raising the Pride flag Sudridge.
“Those that are against it have their right too, to voice their concerns but my gathering from the community is the majority, and especially with the attendance today at the flag raising, the majority is in favour of this.”
We were introduced to an Almaguin couple, Randy Kenrick and Victor Belyea, who have been together for 28 years. Sadly, they say discrimination toward the 2SLGBTQ+ community has made a resurgence.
“We’ve gone through a lot of hate and that kind of stuff prior to this in the seventies and eighties” Randy told us. “And we’ve fought that in the seventies and eighties, and we thought that we were sort of through that by now, but unfortunately we’re not.”
“Everybody knows that we’re gay in the community,” Victor adds. “And everybody in the community up to this point has accepted us as who we are. It’s just the last year, yeah, we’ve had an awful time the last year.”
For more from our interviews, check out our video of the Pride flag being raised in Sundridge.
