The reasons behind the shocking last-minute cancellation of the Montreal Pride festival can be boiled down to a simple but glaring mistake, according to the event’s lead organizer: not hiring security personnel.
The parade was canceled Sunday morning, just hours before it was set to begin.
In an interview with CBC Montreal’s Daybreak host Sean Henry, Simon Gamache said he learned at the time that “about 100” security officers needed to monitor the parade route had never been hired.
“This has never been done,” said Gamache, executive director of Montreal Pride.
“It’s something we’re going to investigate. As you can imagine, we’re taking it very seriously. I don’t want to speculate at this point,” he said.
“Obviously I’m the executive director of this organization, so ultimately I’m the person responsible for this.”
With tens of thousands of expected spectators and participants left disappointed – some holding impromptu events themselves – Gamache must explain what went wrong, why and what it all means for the future of the organisation.
Gamache, who has been the organization’s executive director for less than a year, said the Montreal Pride has enough resources to complete the hiring process, but for some reason the task has been neglected.
Sunday’s march would have been the city’s first large-scale pride parade since the start of the pandemic.
Montreal Pride initially tweeted that the decision to cancel the event was made in cooperation with Montreal police. The organization later corrected its statement, saying the decision was made solely by the organizers.
Crowds braved the rain at the Esplanade du Parc Olympique on Sunday evening to catch the remaining festival events. (Sean Henry/CBC)
The cancellation caught many people off guard, including Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante.
“If we were notified of the lack of staff or anything else, [we] would have put in the necessary energy,” the mayor said during a press conference on Sunday.
“My disappointment this morning is the realization that it looks like decisions have been made but we’ve never been informed and that’s disappointing.”
In a tweet, Montreal police stressed that they were not involved in the decision to cancel the parade and that they were ready to help secure the event.
The organizer says it was too late
As a result of the sudden cancellation, members of Montreal’s 2SLGBTQIA+ communities immediately began coordinating off-site events.
A sit-in at Place Émilie-Gamelin in the city center was planned to protest the cancellation. A crowd of would-be parade-goers gathered there to march down Ste-Catherine Street.
“We were promised a place where our voices would be heard, but now it’s been taken away from us,” said Salem Bilar, a queer activist who planned the protest. “Now we experience so much violence, we even go to Pride… And we want to reclaim this place as our home, not as a corporate festival [event].”
It was impossible to save the event because so many people had to be hired and trained in just a few hours, Gamache said.
“There is a whole [set of] logistics around this event. It’s not simple. And we felt we couldn’t provide a safe parade for the community,” he said.
Asked how the cancellation would affect his future as Montreal Pride executive director, Gamache said, “It’s not up to me.”
“I want to stay. I was hired last September to restructure this organization and it’s taking a few years,” he said.
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