This has been the hardest Publisher’s Column I have had to write. I rewrote parts many times as new information arrived, also trying not to offend people I know in the community. In the end, there will still be some who won’t be happy. I can’t bring up everything I want to either, or it would be at least twice as long as it is now, so you will see lots of links to prior articles we have done as reference.

My personal experience with CPS has been mostly positive. Constable Andy Buck had been writing for GayCalgary since March 2013 (http://gaycalgary.com/a3381) and his replacement, Constable Dyana McElroy, has stated she will continue writing the community safety column for us over the next couple of months. Andy was writing for us to provide a friendly face for the CPS who people in the community could talk to. Prior to Andy we worked with Constable Lynn McDonald, who also was easy to deal with. We interviewed her back in October, 2009, for the article "The Police Service: Are GLBT Trust Issues Unfounded?" (http://gaycalgary.com/a1414) as well as in July, 2009, for the article "The CPS Diversity Resources Unit: Keeping us Equal in the Eyes of the Law" (http://gaycalgary.com/a1324).

Prior to Lynn, officers who were put in charge of the LGBT diversity portfolio were nice enough to stand for photos, but nothing much else. For the first several years of running the magazine I requested several times to sit in on a meeting with the gay and lesbian police advisory board, and was constantly turned down. Andy disclosed, in our August 2013 edition (http://gaycalgary.com/a3615), who was on the board at the time, but I feel that most of what they do has been kept behind closed doors.

Rob and I once needed to file a police report at the CPS office downtown. The officer we dealt with kept laughing and smirking while we were dropping off the information. For us, this was a serious situation, but he decided to not act professional. As we often get prank phone calls and threats, Rob and I would sometimes call in and let CPS know. We were not always taken seriously. In the end, we stopped phoning and talking to officers other than Andy or Lynn.

During the 25 years of doing Men for Men and GayCalgary, I remember CPS walking through the gay bars, and both staff and customers being on edge. You never knew if they were coming in to shut the bar down, arrest someone, or intimidate. When we are at events, I find that officers become more approachable when they are out of uniform.

When I have my camera gear on, I am working, not drinking or partying. The gear becomes my buffer. I’m not a prude, I’m just in my work zone. Once the camera is put away, then I can have a drink and enjoy myself. So, when I see a police officer in uniform, regardless if they are the LGBTQ Liaison officer or not, I know they are professionals in their zone, not just there to hang out.

My first experience with VOICES was not a pleasant one. I wanted to attend one of their meetings, which seemed like it was ok prior to showing up. But when I arrived, I was kept outside the meeting room and told 20 to 30 minutes later that they were uneasy having me in the room because of my white male privilege. I was pissed off that they were unwilling to meet with me because of my skin colour and left. For several hours, I stewed on my anger. I did not post anything on Facebook and only discussed it with close people around me.

As I cooled down, I started to understand why my access was refused. Yes, I have white male privilege, but my mom and dad came to Canada as Hungarian refugees, which there are many of in VOICES. People in the group have been treated poorly by people of privilege and did not want racist or bigoted dialogue to happen. Being able to reflect on myself and what others go through daily made me understand what VOICES was about.

One of GayCalgary’s writers was allowed into the meeting. The article ran in the August 2016 edition, "Privilege and Pride – VOICES: The Coalition of Calgary’s POC Demand Equality" (http://gaycalgary.com/a5224 ). As pointed out in the article, people that are part of VOICES identify, to name a few, as Indigenous Canadians, Filipino-Canadian, Afro-Americans, Afro-Caribbean, Africans, Mexicans, Chinese-Canadians, and second generation Canadian immigrants. They discussed police involvement with Calgary Pride, as well as missing aboriginal women, domestic violence, systemic racism, modern slavery and police/authoritative harassments.

The list of demands ran in the article unedited and in its entirety. It included:

The complete list was also announced at Calgary Pride 2016 at the Street Festival by Rae Spoon, also the Grand Marshal. VOICES started both the Calgary Dyke and Trans March 2016, as well as the Calgary Pride 2016 March. They let people know they existed more than a year prior to Calgary Pride 2017, but people in the LGBTQ+ Community took it as they just came out of nowhere. They had discussions with Calgary Pride and CPS a whole year before the press releases came out. Even Andy Buck wrote about these conversations in his February 2017 column (http://gaycalgary.com/a5476). It was expressed in his article that because of these talks, they brought a member of VOICES onto the advisory board

I can fully understand concerns about the Calgary Police walking in the Pride Parade in complete uniform. If you are coming from a country where it is illegal to be gay, or where there has been a military takeover, seeing someone marching, armed with a gun, in what is meant to feel positive can send a mixed message. I have callers, several times a month, new to Canada who think they need to be registered, acquire a license, or be classed as a sexual deviant to be gay here. They phone asking for the Gay Card.

We now know with certainty that people of colour are questioned by police more than those who are white. Transgender people have issues with being called the wrong pronoun, or by their former name. The Indigenous community of Treaty 7 also have issues with the police, and want pride to be more inclusive; to include the two-spirit community which has gone through a lot of white washing by the Christian missions across North America. We have written three articles on this topic and will be adding more. "Two Spirit are Not Gay! Part One: Men" (http://gaycalgary.com/a4303), "Two-Spirit are Not Gay? Part two" (http://gaycalgary.com/a4599), and "Transgendered, Two Spirit, First Nations: Who are They?" (http://gaycalgary.com/a5376).

The origin of Pride goes back to the Stonewall riots of June 28, 1969. Police raids of gay bars and establishments were extremely common in the United States and parts of Canada. To help keep Stonewall Inn and other gay bars off police radars, an officer would stop by once a week to collect envelopes of bribe money. At the raid that happened on June 28, 1969, the police were not fully ready to deal with the arrests. Two trans women of colour – Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera – threw the first brick and bottle at the police, inciting other patrons to do the same. The first Gay Pride parade happened on June 28, 1970, which marched from Greenwich Village to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park.

In Canada, years prior to the Stonewall riots, Pierre Trudeau – while still Justice Minister – introduced legislation to decriminalize same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults on December 22, 1967. In 1969, it was passed into law. In August, 1971, the first gay rights protests occurred in Ottawa and Vancouver and a year later Toronto held their first Pride celebration.

This year, Calgary Pride celebrates its 27th anniversary.  All 27 years have had their own controversies. Some have been small, like getting the Dykes on Bikes to cover their breasts, approving mainstream straight sponsors and venues for Pride Dances, or changing dates from June to September.

In December, 2002, the bathhouse in Calgary was raided. Keith Purdy, who was chair of then called Pride Calgary, spoke against it. He believed that the Calgary Police service had crossed a line in the gay community and that the charges were unusual. The LGBTQ+ liaison officer did not even know the raid was going to happen. Members of the LGBTQ+ community thought that Pride Calgary should not have spoken out against the raid on behalf of the community, and voted to replace the board at the next AGM following Calgary Pride 2003.

I attended that AGM and, sadly, it was not pleasant. They lambasted the board for using ‘straight mainstream media’, which was FFWD, as a sponsor and Pride guide for 2003. GayCalgary was also a sponsor, but advertising was only on the GayCalgary website, computer terminal displays and TVs at some of the gay bars. FFWD provided both advertising and the guide for free; local gay media was wanting to charge to cover their costs.

The board was completely replaced with members of the community, which included other gay bar owners and management. I decided to join the board too, because I could see that if you were not on the Pride board, you were excluded. I also announced that GayCalgary Magazine would launch within a month and continue its sponsorship with Pride Calgary as well as provide space in the magazine for their Pride Guide gratis. Although I had given thought to doing a magazine before, it took a very heated Pride Calgary AGM to finally push me to launch GayCalgary Magazine.

I soon realized that being on the board was a conflict of interest, and resigned. People have asked Rob and I to join other non-profit group boards, but if we sponsor the event through GayCalgary, we can’t sit on the board because our business could be seen as benefitting from it.

The bathhouse reopened just over a month after the raid and continues still to run. In February, 2005, the charges were stayed with the Crown’s concession that there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction, due to changing community standards of tolerance. We had articles written about this in the magazine going back to our second edition, (http://gaycalgary.com/a2015) and in September 2004, "Here We Go Again: Further Attacks on Gay Space" (http://gaycalgary.com/a401).

Though police start and sometimes end the Pride parade, September of 2009 was the first time I saw police have an actual entry in the parade, including three police vehicles: a Smart Car and two vans, driven by uniformed officers. September, 2010, Lynn MacDonald was the sole officer who walked the parade in uniform, alongside the same three police vehicles as the year prior. Eventually the number of officers in the Calgary Pride Parade grew to 80, not including the ones acting as security, in 2016.

Calgary Pride put out a press release for Pride 2017 on July 26th: "Calgary Pride Parade and Law Enforcement Participation" (http://gaycalgary.com/n2471). The same day VOICES put out one of their own: "VOICES - Statement of Support to Calgary Pride on Police Participation" (http://gaycalgary.com/n2472); and Calgary Police Service followed suit: "Calgary Police Service to Participate in Pride Parade" (http://gaycalgary.com/n2473).

Calgary Pride outlined the following conditions:

The Calgary Police Service press release stated the following:

All three press releases were run on the GayCalgary website, and mainstream media should have received the same. But from the VOICES press release, there were headlines and confusion generated that the Calgary Police were totally barred from the Pride Parade, which was not the case. Calgary Pride clarified that the Calgary Police would be in complete uniform at the Street Festival at their booth; this condition of no uniforms was specific to the parade, which is symbolic of the early protest marches of gay pride.

I knew something was up when these press releases came out. A mainstream TV station called me around noon, pressuring me to go on camera. I asked whom else would they be interviewing. When they explained it was going to be a specific provincial politician, who has nothing to do with the gay community, the local police, does not participate in gay pride parades and does not live in Calgary, I asked, "Why would you want to interview him?". Well he always has something negative to say about the gay community. I declined all interviews.

I knew that media were going to use this to create conflict and click-bate to drive traffic to their websites. Those types of articles began getting posted, which fueled the conversations all over Facebook and social media. People were no longer seeing the whole picture; they thought that Calgary Pride was barring the Calgary Police from the parade.

Calgary Pride has needed to put their foot down on entries before. First of all, they have limited space and funds. With 150 floats, the parade is already going for two hours. Entry is first come first serve, so if organizations don’t sign up in time, they usually miss getting in.

Secondly, allowing conservative politicians turned out to be a big mistake. Liberals and NDP, both federally and provincially, will always have representation in the Pride parades, but PCs will only try to enter when it’s an election year. The last year they were part of Pride, the provincial conservatives made grand statements of support for the LGBTQ+ community. The crowd cheered. When it came time to vote on gay rights’ issues, they still voted against GSAs in schools on the provincial side, and transgender rights on the federal side. After that, Calgary Pride and most other prides across Canada now require them to sign a waiver that they fully support gay rights, and Pride organizations will check their voting history and how the party reacts to members who post anti-gay messages.

Then people within our community went on the attack. People of colour, who are not part of VOICES, were getting Facebook messages on how their people had destroyed Pride. Lots of racist comments were being posted all over the place. People made assumptions that VOICES had just come out of nowhere.

I have been in heated conversations where someone told me that VOICES are not a legit organization because they don’t have a website, or phone number; that they sit around a living room for their meetings and no one is accountable. I know from running the magazine that a lot of LGBTQ+ groups don’t have phone numbers or, even if they do, they don’t have someone to answer all of the time. A lot of them meet in living rooms, especially when they are new. Just think of what all Pride organizations started out as. They didn’t want to be posting phone numbers publicly, just to be harassed. They kept meetings in safe spaces: bars or people’s homes. VOICES, just like ARGRA (Alberta Rockies Gay Rodeo Association), Calgary Pride, ISCCA (Imperial Sovereign Court of the Chinook Arch), Miscellaneous Youth Network, and Apollo Friends in Sports, started out of humble beginnings and with a focus on the LGBTQ+ community and our LGBTQ+ rights.

I was told that VOICES should be classed as a terrorist group because some of their members, who were at a "Defense of Christianity" demonstration (which was being run by an anti-gay church) hit one of the protestors from the anti-gay church who is constantly protesting the gay community. I remember seeing something about this alleged altercation come through my Google Alerts. It was on an extreme rightwing, pro-Christian website that claimed, as the confrontations escalated, the ‘anti-fascist’ group started several mixed martial arts fights with their group. Did the gay community forget to tell me that we are training in mixed martial arts? There were no charges laid.

With the amount of conflict surrounding this Pride, GayCalgary will run several letters to the editor. Once things have calmed, GayCalgary will do a survey of the outcome from the weekend. It would be good to see how many people did not attend the Pride parade because of this specific issue, and how many people attended because they did.

I know that there are proud LGBTQ+ officers and allies out there who think this is a slap in the face of progress with the LGBTQ+ community. But this conversation had to happen at some point. Some of us assume we have complete gay rights. You might assume it because you are an adult gay white male/female, but that is not the case with our gay youth, our transgender community, Indigenous members and other people of colour. It feels like a lot of us rode the bus of gay rights and drove off feeling content, but it’s time we go back and pick up the rest of the community. Calgary Pride has helped start facilitating these conversations with Calgary Police just as gay Prides across Canada help facilitate the conversations about gay rights we need to have with our politicians.  Remember, we are not just marching for ourselves, we are marching for those who can’t.

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Contributor Steve Polyak |

Locale Calgary |

Topic Calgary Police | Calgary Pride | Community | Gay Pride | History | Publisher's Column | VOICES | Constable Andy Buck |