Tens of thousands filled the streets on Sunday for Toronto’s Pride Parade, waving rainbow flags, throwing confetti and blowing bubbles. For Pride weekend, the city closes off several blocks along Church and Yonge for local artists, street vendors and for hundreds of floats to pass through.
But in 2025, many activists “reject” this vision of Pride.
Toronto’s first ever Pride was a political march following a series of bathhouse raids. In February 1981, the Toronto Police raided four bathhouses, known as “Operation Soap,” arresting approximately 286 men. People gathered in Grange Park that year to commit to a better world for queer people in Canada. Now some 40 years later, people are doing just that again.
Toronto Police cleared 13 encampments last week at Barbara Hall Park, on Church Street, to make space for a Pride fundraiser, which activists argued went against Pride’s core principles— “to stand in solidarity with the most marginalised members of our community.”
Our station went out to that counter-protest in Grange Park on Sunday morning, to hear from criminal defence lawyer Arash Ghiassi and activist and journalist Desmond Cole, who demand that police participation in Toronto’s Pride festivities be abolished for good.