After eight years, the Edmonton Pride Festival is returning to Churchill Square on June 25.
A new team is organizing the event this year.
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It will be a free, public, family-friendly event with entertainment, “Rainbow Road” (an LGBTQ2S+ market and organizations that provide support services and advocacy to the LGBTQ2S+ community), and a licensed beer garden.
“We are thrilled to bring back Edmonton PrideFest to Churchill Square this June,” said Josh Arsenault, event manager with Edmonton PrideFest. “Our team is excited to take on this project and we know it’s been greatly missed by the community.
“It has been whole four years since the last Pride event in our city.
“We are excited to bring this safe and inclusive space back to Edmonton, and the event will be a chance to advocate, educate and celebrate our LGBTQ2S+ friends and allies,” Arsenault said in a news release Monday.
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In 2019, the Edmonton Pride Festival Society cancelled the event, citing a lack of funding and volunteers as well as a belief the organization was “not fulfilling our mission this year, which is to unify our community.”
The year before, the parade was halted for more than half an hour by demonstrators demanding organizers uninvite Edmonton police officers, the RCMP and military personnel from the event, amid a country-wide debate over the presence of police in Pride parades.
Demonstrators also asked that the Edmonton Pride Festival Society have more BIPOC and trans folks on its board and staff, more acknowledgement of Pride’s history as a stance against police oppression, and more inclusion of and spaces for people of colour and trans folks in the festival.
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Performers at the 2022 event will include international recording artist Virginia to Vegas, Edmonton’s Neha Batra, and several local and internationally recognized Drag Queens.
Gates will open at 11 a.m. and will run until 10:30 p.m.
The Edmonton PrideFest Association describes itself as “a local non-profit with the mission of establishing one of Canada’s largest and most exciting Pride festival in the heart of Alberta.”
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