Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne Says Pride Is Both A Celebration And Political

Pride has a different meaning to everyone you ask, it could be about love, it could be about coming together as a city, it could be about acceptance. For the Premier of Ontario Kathleen Wynne, who went for a walk with our Damnit Maurie, tells us “Pride means that we are struggling as a society to be inclusive, it is not always easy.”
As we celebrate Pride 2017, the question these days is, Have we lost the true meaning of what pride is all about? Because of the protests and how corporate it’s become? Kathleen shares her thoughts “I think Pride evolves. I think it has evolved and I think that each of us as individuals have to take our own meaning from it. It is a celebration of inclusion. It is a celebration of diversity. Weather the private sector is involved or not it is a joyful time to just revisit that notion that we love each other no matter who we are.”

When asked if everyone should be welcome to participate in the pride parade, Kathleen says she always wants to err on the of inclusive “… thats the direction that we should be going, but I also know that there are groups within the community who feel that they have a particular perspective that they need to share, and I think the organization has to grapple with those perspectives. I’m not going to pre judge what the organization is struggling with, but I do hope that over time that we can include more groups and more people rather then fewer.”

But then why is pride about who’s invited and the police can’t be there “We can’t control all those factors, It is a celebration and it’s also political. Pride started as a political protest so we have to honour that, we have to honour that the politics of pride are going to continue to evolve and that’s why I say I take my hat off to the pride organizers because they’re dealing with the politics. They’re dealing with the politics of 2017, and those are different then the politics of 25 years ago but they are politics none the less, lets just hold them and lets go through this together so that we can continue this celebration”