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'Pride Week' is an event held in Toronto, Ontario during the last week of June each year. It is a celebration of the diversity of the LGBT community in the Greater Toronto Area. It is the one of the largest organized Gay Pride festivals in the world, featuring several stages with live performers and DJs, several licensed venues, a large Dyke March, and the Pride Parade. The epicentre of Pride Week is the city's Church and Wellesley village, and both the Dyke March and the main Pride Parade are primarily routed along the nearby Yonge Street, Gerrard Street and Bloor Street.
Pride Week is organized by Pride Toronto, a non-profit volunteer organization. A small number of staff support 20-30 volunteer committee coordinators, each responsible for an aspect of the festival or of the organisation's year-round activities.
Main events of Pride Week include the Dyke March and the Pride parade, the latter having 1,200,000 in attendance in 2004 according to the Toronto Star newspaper. The Festival is often touted as being one of the largest cultural festivals in North America. With all of it taking place on city streets, traffic comes to a virtual stand-still in the downtown core.
Toronto's Pride Week evolved out of the mass protests that followed the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids, and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2005. In the 2005 parade, newly appointed Toronto police chief Bill Blair became the first chief of police in the city's history to personally take part in the parade. He marched alongside politicians of all parties, including several federal and provincial cabinet ministers and the mayor of Toronto.
Toronto Pride Week has not been without controversy, as the massive growth of the event in recent years has led many to question whether it has become an overly commercial enterprise at the mercy of its sponsors and business interests. Toronto's incredibly diverse queer community has also demanded (and received, to the most part) programming that includes all races, communities, and gender identifications.
Like many successful Pride events worldwide, the official events are suplemented with non-officfial events. The result is to make Toronto Pride Week a massive city-wide event. One of the largest such events is PRISM Weekend, a multi-day "circuit" party. The Prism parties reached their peak in 2003 with a total attendance of over 7,000 people, making it the largest gay dance party in the country. In recent years, the decline of the circuit scene and a perceived lack of freshness in programming has seen participation dwindle.
In 2006, Pride Week was held from June 19 to June 25. The 2006 theme for Pride Week was "Fearless". In 2007, Pride will take place from June 15 to June 24. The theme is "Unstoppable!".
Other large Pride events include Montreal's Divers/Cité, San Francisco, California's Pride event, Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, and Parada do Orgulho GLBT de São Paulo.

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See also

External links

See also

★ Divers/Cité

External links

★ Pride Toronto (official site)

★ GayGuideToronto.com 2007 Pride (photo gallery)
Coverage by n8n media group

★ 2007 Pride (photo gallery)

★ 2006 Pride (photo gallery)

★ 2005 Pride (photo gallery)