The parade was canceled on Sunday morning, just hours before it was due to start. In an interview with CBC Montreal’s Daybreak host Sean Henry, Simon Gamache said that was when he learned that “about 100” security personnel needed to monitor the parade route had never been hired. “It never happened,” said Gamache, executive director of the Montreal Pride. “It’s something we’ll be looking into. As you can imagine, we’re taking it very seriously. I don’t want to speculate at this time,” he said. “Obviously, I’m the executive director of this organization, so ultimately I’m in charge of it.” With tens of thousands of expected spectators and participants left disappointed – some holding impromptu events of their own – Gamache is left to explain what went wrong, why and what it all means for the organization’s future. Gamache, who has been the organization’s executive director for less than a year, said the Montreal Pride had enough resources to complete the recruiting process, but for some reason the project was overlooked. Sunday’s march would be the city’s first large-scale pride parade since the start of the pandemic. Initially, Montreal Pride 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 only by the organizers. Crowds braved the rain at the Esplanade du Parc Olympique on Sunday afternoon to watch the rest of the festival’s events. (Sean Henry/CBC) The cancellation stunned many people, including Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante. “If we had realized the lack of staff or anything else, [we] he would put in the necessary energy,” the mayor said during a press conference on Sunday. “My disappointment this morning is that I realized 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 abrupt 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 paraders gathered there to walk down Ste-Catherine Street. “We were promised a place for our voices to be heard and now it’s been taken away,” said Salem Billard, a queer activist who planned the protest. “Now we live through so much violence, we even go to Pride events… And we want to take this place back as our home and not as a corporate festival [event].” It was impossible to salvage the event since so many people would need to be hired and trained in just a few hours, Gamache said. “There is a set [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. When asked how the cancellation will affect his future as executive director of the Montreal Pride, Gamache said “I’m not the one to decide.” “I want to stay. I was hired last September to restructure this organization and that takes several years to do,” he said.
