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Vancouver Pride Week 2012: Official proclamation, queer panel discussion, and the Queen!


by Craig Takeuchi on July 31, 2012 at 4:13 PM


http://www.straight.com/article-744051/vancouver/vancouver-pride-week-2012-official-proclamation-queer-panel-discussion-and-queen



Mayor Gregor Robertson read out an official proclamation for Pride Week in Vancouver, prior to raising the rainbow flag at Vancouver City Hall.        Craig Takeuchi


At the official launch of Pride Week at City Hall on July 30, just prior to the raising of the rainbow flag, a panel of representatives from Vancouver's queer communities assembled to address the current state of affairs.

When reverend Gary Paterson, an openly gay minister at St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church who moderated the panel, introduced Robertson, he talked about how Toronto mayor Rob Ford did not attend Pride parades there and showed up for a raising of the rainbow flag unexpectedly (on the International Day Against Homophobia in May, although he failed to show up for Toronto's Pride Week flag raising in June).

"But that is completely opposite to the mayor that we have in Vancouver who has always supported this community," Paterson said. "And I know that when he decided to run for mayor, I didn't even have to ask him whether he would be supportive. That would have been an insult to ask Gregor Robertson that question."