2025-01-26 Pride history talk

History Talk: Halifax’s Forgotten First Pride March

The front cover of the October, 1988 WayvesMagazine shows LGBTQ marchers on August 1, 1988, headed “Out of the Closets and into the Human Rights Act.” That first Halifax Pride March has been celebrated for decades. Only - it wasn’t the first.

The first Halifax Pride March was in 1987. The low budget, volunteer effort was coordinated by Dalhousie University student NathanElling, inspired by Pride Marches he had seen as a teenager in Chicago -- with one difference: choosing not to obtain a street march permit, the 1987 activists marched on the sidewalk.

Now retired from a California catering career and re-settled in Nova Scotia, Nathan Elling shared memories of our almost forgotten 1987 Pride March.

The full audio is here. (mp3, 68 minutes.)

Topics

(links will take you to that place in the audio)

• 00:24 “Gay” vs “2SLGBTQ”
• 00:53 Intro to Nathan
• 01:25 How did you come to be the coordinator of the first Pride March? Other organizers: AnneBishop, MaureenShebib, KevinCrombie, and MikeSangster - in his paper bag. LGRNS was involved. I was treasurer for GAE. I was treasurer for GaeGala - and involved in another 11 gay organizations - WordIsOut?, Wayves, CKDU, GLAD etc. Police parade permit denied. We walked on the sidewalk.
• 03:49 Reclaim The Night was already in existence; we always marched on the sidewalk.
• 04:29 AnneFulton saw me as “the patriarchy”
• 05:00 How I came to the idea of Pride. Context: Buchanan was in power. Constant violence - gay bashing. You could lose your job by being an “out" public figure. Interviews with CTV & CBC about EricSmith. My work? Yes totally affected - our group including my boss Carol -- an ally perhaps because she had a gay son -- got moved to a satellite office.
• 08:10 KevinCrombie - info that the Legislature was talking about having, more or less concentration camps for People With AIDS
• 09:00 Goal was to get people together, and show that we were normal.
• 09:30 I’d seen Pride in Chicago in 1981, and there was hope — lthough I was in the closet in high school. But I remember reading a story, “500 people dead. Gay cancer. We don’t know why.”
• 11:00 How was the march different here from the ones you’d seen in Chicago? Much bigger. The Mayor spoke at it. The drinking age there was 21 so there were things called “Juice Bars” to hang out at, a punk/goth one called Medusa's. But since so many bars were owned by the Mob you could bribe your way in.
• 14:39 So one BIG difference was the size. Halifax had 50 or 60 people, maybe 75. And, the level of political buy-in.
• 16:30 Violence on CitadelHill, police harassment. GLAD pamphlets, defacing, hundreds of the them.
• 17:28 Did you continue to work on later Pride marches? The '88 one, yes, but then I moved to Vancouver. How I lost my job during a cross country flight.
• 18:40 Did you work on other Pride parades? Yes - in LA: Film festival, Gay Games. "Lighthouse" a group for gay homeless kids.
• 21:10 The March has become the Parade with a less political focus. What do you make of this? We always wanted buy-in from the community. The Chicago mayor stood up to the KKK and said, “I am the mayor for everybody.” I went to a pride parade in Seattle and it was SO BORING. There were a hundred political candidates who contributed nothing to the parade - Performative political engagement.
• 24:08 We have a lot of good reasons to march, to have a parade these days. We've lost spaces. Rumours and The Turret as community sapces. The right always identifies a scapegoat - the trans community will be the current one. All of the sexual minorities get lumped together. Peter Polievre & Trump will be picking on us. We need to get back out in front of that. The right always uses a scapegoat, and right now that's trans folks.
• 29:30 Sometimes that oppression is a way to focus. I remember the Regan years and we did some of our best work then.
• 30:25 High school schoolmate killed himself; gay, football team. Being out in high school is complicated.
• 32:20 RobinMetcalfe: were you at that first Pride March? I will have to check my notes.
• 34:18 Robin: what was the date? Late in the year - it was really cold. Fall or early winter. It was after Reclaim The Night. Lesbian and Gay Rights Nova Scotia involvement.
• 37:58 ‘’’Did you call it a Pride March or a Pride Parade?’’' It started out with us saying, “We should have a march” but in solidarity with events elsewhere we ended up calling it a “Parade.” At GLAD we got a request from the School of Social Work to talk about queer life on campus.
• 40:28 ‘’’Was the Pride parade / march a part of one particular organization?’’' No. It was its own thing. I think we got money from GAE for the first one. We didn’t have banners, we had picket signs, and we bought some stuff.
• 41:37 Discussion of the route: Up spring garden, outside the gates of the public gardens. Then we had no place to go - it was Sunday and there was nothing open. ‘’’Do you remember the exact route?’’’ No. We started and ended at parks. JimDeYoung took photos, they should be in his collection.
• 45:00 GAE unrest, problems with bills not being paid, JimDeYoung, ScottMacNeil. "We didn't resign. we were fired." Was Scott the manager twice?
• 48:24 Organization level of that march / parade. Organizers were in the closet, worried about violence. Friend being disowned by his family because he was gay.
• 51:00 Discussion turns to Trump & right wing politiicans in Canada
• 52:35 What can we do to push back against oppression? 1) Move. 2) Combine groups who are likely to be oppressed. Become friends with members of other communities. Bring people together of effective political resistance. The things I’ve been successful with have been targeted - when you have a very specific goal and you put everything else aside, for example, with the kids on the street in LA.
• 57:39 Robin: things are not going to go on they way they are; things are going to be very, very bad. Fascism is alive in North America. We need to start locally. Nathan: I don’t know if we can stop Polieve from being elected but we probably can get the government that we want, here. Then: Canadian political discussion, and pushing back against fascism.