Montreal’s mayor is not happy about the last minute cancellation of this Sunday’s Pride parade. In a recent tweet Valérie Plante, who was expected to attend the parade, explained that both the city and police force were ready to accommodate festivalgoers.
“The City and the SPVM were ready to host the Pride Parade. We had been waiting for it for 2 years, and we were looking forward to it,” said Plante in a tweet, adding that “questions remain” as she awaits answers from organizers.
La Ville et le @SPVM étaient prêts à accueillir le défilé de la Fierté. Nous l’attendions depuis 2 ans, et nous avions hâte d’y être.
Des questions demeurent autour de son annulation à la dernière minute par @FierteMTLPride. Nous attendons des réponses et un post-mortem. #polmtl
— Valérie Plante (@Val_Plante) August 7, 2022
She, like everyone else, heard the surprising news on Sunday morning when organizers from the Montreal Pride Festival announced that the parade would not be taking place “due to security concerns.”
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“A lack of sufficient staff to ensure security along the route has forced the organizers to cancel the event,” they said in a release.
In an interview with CTV News, parade organizer Simon Gamache took the blame for the mishap and admitted that his team “didn’t plan appropriately to deliver the parade.” Apparently about 80 volunteers were missing from a group of 200 workers.
The eleventh-hour cancellation of the event understandably left would-be parade attendees upset. But just because the official pride parade was cancelled, people still took to the streets to celebrate.
As pop-up celebrations took place amidst the heatwave, the City of Montreal also recycled a parade float and set it up with a DJ in Dorchester Square. Had everything gone according to plan, the 2.9-kilometre parade would have been Montreal’s full Pride parade since before the pandemic.
With files from Daily Hive’s Sarah Anderson
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