Q&A: Organizer talks planning Halifax Pride in light of rising discrimination, pulled funding

Halifax Pride kicks off next week and dozens of events are scheduled across the city, including the Pride parade on Saturday.

This week, Fiona Kerr, the organizer of Halifax Pride, sat down with Information Morning Nova Scotia host Portia Clark to discuss what's on the radar for Pride this year. Their conversation touched on the effects of rising anti-queer rhetoric, political involvement and what's coming for Halifax Pride in the future. 

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What can people expect from Halifax Pride this year, aside from the parade? 

There's a ton of new events. I think we're doing 33 events this year, and about a third of them are new. We're hosting a 'gaylidh,' which is a gay ceilidh, at Neptune Theatre. There's new educational programming with the Wabanaki Two-Spirit Alliance. They're going to be hosting some programming on the festival site that's open to the public. So folks can come learn about the two-spirit identity and some of their Indigenous cultural practices.

You left the Halifax Pride organization and came back. What do you think of the health of the organization now, Fiona?

I think we're doing really great. Not to toot my own horn, but I've seen our organization go through a lot in the last 10 years and I think this is the best place we've ever been in. I think our board is really great and has done a lot of work over the last year to restabilize us. If anyone wants to join the board, there's a great foundation now. Our staff team is growing —  things are really looking up.

Our premier, Tim Houston, skipped the parade last year and said the RCMP told him it could be a security concern for him. Other provincial leaders attended. Are you expecting Mr. Houston this year?

Not as far as I know. I will say the PC party did apply to be in the parade, but they missed our parade deadline. We filled out pretty quickly this year, so whether or not he intended to be there, I don't know. But they're on the waitlist with quite a few other groups who missed the deadline.

There's a waitlist?

Yeah. We usually get quite a few people who missed the deadline. We have a certain length for the parade, 2.5 kilometres. We know about how many entries, floats, people we can fit in those 2.5 kilometres. And, usually, we try to move queer groups up to the top of the waitlist because we do want to prioritize their presence. So there's quite a few in front of them, unfortunately.

This year we had more interest than we've ever had in the parade and unfortunately the size of our parade can't grow very much because the size of the streets of Halifax are not growing. 

It's really great to see how much support people are showing. I think as things are shifting in the South very rapidly, more groups, people and companies are thinking about how they can show support.

Some companies like Home Depot, Nissan, Clorox, Google have pulled funding for Toronto Pride and that's led to a $900,000 shortfall. Is there anything like that happening with Halifax Pride?

We lost two longtime sponsors this year. They didn't give us an explicit reason, but we made the assumption because they're both American-owned. I won't name them because they didn't put their reason in writing. But I think we can read the room at this point. It wasn't a huge impact. Most of our sponsorships are not the same amount of money that some bigger Prides are bringing in. In total it was about $12,000 [lost].

Are you worried other American-owned sponsors will do the same?

It's definitely a conversation we've been having, but it really hasn't come to fruition in the way we were worried about. We don't do business with a lot of companies who work over the border. Most of our sponsors are local or regional. A lot of them are small businesses.

We have seen posts on social media from rural Pride organizers reminding people how to stay safe during Pride because anti-queer hate is on the rise. Is safety a concern for Pride events here in Halifax? 

I think it's a concern for everybody. We're very lucky here in Halifax that it is a relatively safe place. Our events are usually safe. We haven't encountered a lot of anti-queer rhetoric around our events. But it's something that's on everyone's minds, with anti-queer hate rising in the South and in bigger cities here. It's something everyone is talking about, but I wouldn't say it's a particularly large concern for us.

The federal government announced $1.5 million for a community safety fund to help support 2SLGBTQ+ organizations such as Halifax Pride. How are you using that money?

We mainly use it towards the increased costs of our existing safety measures, so we have some increased security. We've increased our first-aid presence at a lot of our events. And, the cost of everything is going up. So the funding is really great help with things like traffic control for our parade. It's mainly covering the cost of inflation.

Halifax Pride is going to host Canada Pride, the national event, in 2027.  What's that looking like?

It's going to be amazing. We bid on that event last year after Vancouver hosted it, and we're just really excited to see it come to the East Coast. It's never been farther east than Montreal. We've got, tentatively, 50 events planned for it. So people will see some of our festival-standard events and lots of new partnerships. Lots of events are for tourists because we want to bring people here. We want people to come see Pride on the East Coast. So there will be something for everybody.

How are you reflecting on the spirit and purpose of pride this year? 

I don't think pride has one single purpose. I think we all kind of struggle narrowing it down to one thing. Because when we narrow it down to 'just a party,' 'just a protest' or 'just educational,' we're only serving one faction of our community. Pride is very multifaceted. But it's rooted in political protest and we want everyone to remember that. I think creating queer spaces, wherever you are, is radical no matter what. Our city is gaining more queer spaces, more queer businesses. Creating space for queer people is what is most important.