Toronto’s mayor, Rob Ford is infamous for refusing to attend pride events in the city known as one of the most international cities in the world. Not once, not twice, but event after event he declines.

And yet, out here in the hard-bitten west, where a man is a man and a woman is a woman and other crap like that, where Calgary and Edmonton struggle to create an impression of international credibility, the mayor of the booming metropolis Lethbridge not only has officially attended the opening ceremony of the Lethbridge Pride Fest twice, he even raises the rainbow flag at city hall!

And, he was attending this event before he was mayor, sent as official representation for Lethbridge’s previous mayor who was not available to attend but wanted to be there.

Heather Chomos, Chair of the Lethbridge Pride Fest Society, comments, "He’s incredibly supportive of our community, and allows us a great deal of leniency in terms of having the flag fly all week: that’s a big thing in a small community like this!

"We are in the bible belt here, if not on the outskirts, and so our first year (in 2009) we thought we’d get maybe 50 people for the entire weekend, and we got nearly 1,000 people. And it’s grown exponentially since then."

Exponentially?  Well perhaps a slight exaggeration, we can’t quite expect there to be a quarter of the planet in Lethbridge from June 16th to 23rd this year.  Nevertheless, the lineup of events is impressive.

Regarding the Youth Pride Dance in June 16th, Chomos says, "For years we’ve had young people asking if they could attend our dance, but because we were serving alcohol, they could not. And that did, in some ways, alienate the younger members of our community who wanted to come out and celebrate. So this is our first year for this."

For the flag raising on June 18th, she says, "[The time of] six o’clock allows people to leave work, go home, get ready, and maybe some of it is my own desire to allow the most people possible to attend, making sure that we are not excluding anybody."

She comments on Blues Night, June 20th, "It’s the middle of the week: you can relax, there is an event happening if you want to come out... It’s not going to be an overly-flamboyant, attention-grabbing thing, where some of our events are."

The main attraction of the week is Out in the Park at Galt Gardens on Saturday, June 23rd.  "This is really what our parade would be if we marched down the street: really it’s just an event to show the diversity of our community and really celebrate who we are." This is followed by the Imagine Pride dance at the German Canadian club. "For me, this is one of the greatest events, because I get to see people having fun and enjoying themselves: cutting loose."

"Having this diversity of events allows as many members of our community as possible to attend the events that they feel they belong at...I can’t go anywhere with all these events going on without someone thanking me or appreciating that Pride is happening... We’ve been very responsible with the Pride Society and our roles in the community, and making sure that the events that we have (for example the Sunday event which respects people of faith) helps people to know that we love everybody.

"Gay or straight, we want you to join us in celebrating who we are. If ten years from now there’s no need for there to be a gay pride anywhere in the world, we’ve done our job!"