Moore says going to the police to get a permit for the parade was also a big hurdle. We were met with some acceptance and a lot of no acceptance and a lot of not knowing.” “We went around to businesses, told them we were going down the street on a Saturday. We gave letters to all the houses in the residential area we would be passing through, explaining it and being welcoming and asking people to join us. “We worked hard on getting our allies on board. “We might just get five people, we had no idea,” Moore says. The organizers had no idea how many people would march. The decision, and the application for a street banner, prompted many articles and letters to the editor in the Nelson Daily News, some in favour of the parade, most against.Īt left: Christopher Moore, photo by Bill Metcalfe But they decided, after much difficult discussion, to go ahead.
Moore says there was an approximately 50-50 split on whether to have the parade or not. “The discussion was about safety, about people who were there afraid of losing their jobs - teachers, people who worked at the college, jobs where people were afraid of being outed.” In fact, there was a lot of disagreement about whether to have a parade at all.Ĭhristopher Moore, one of the organizers of that parade and the one coming up on Sunday at 3 p.m., says there was a lot of fear. In 1996, about 50 gay and lesbian people met at the Women’s Centre to talk about whether to have Nelson’s first pride parade.
