Surrey’s Pride and Joy

Local Pride event brings fun, awareness to Holland Park

Starting on June 26, Holland Park proudly showcased its colours as the venue for the 16th annual Surrey Pride Weekend and Festival. The three-day celebration of events included live entertainment, food and activities open to all members of the community.

Culminating on Sunday, the final one-day event, countless groups and families came out in support of the Surrey Pride society’s message of humility. Shared by the LGBTQ communities across British Columbia is the sincere hope to raise awareness about issues affecting these communities, here and around the world.

Children could be found playing in an oversized tiger-shaped bouncy castle, sporadically leaving to get their faces painted or to relax beside their parents on lawn chairs or picnic tables. Overhead, a gigantic rainbow flag provided the perfect backdrop for the various musical performers and bands.

For Shawn Ewing, the current president of the Surrey Pride Society, part of bringing the event to the Surrey community is about awareness. “There’s some education I think that needs to go on,” she says. “For some people, they don’t realize that the maps on the side of the pride tent show the various LGBT communities in the Lower Mainland. People just make an assumption that what we have here is what exists everywhere.”

This year’s event also included a diverse range of sponsors and vendors offering their unique wares—from jewelry and books to eccentrically tailored clothing—while food trucks provided hot meals and cold desserts from an array of multicoloured tents.

Ewing considers both herself and her wife very lucky to be a part of the Surrey community. “It’s been a long road to get here, and there’s so much more that still needs to be done. We need to have that ability to be able to celebrate, to recognize what has been happening with our past. This is what pride celebrations are really about because for the rest of the year, sometimes it really sucks.”

As Ewing argues, strides that have been taken for the rights of lesbian, gay and bi-sexual individuals are a great step, but recent concerns about transgender issues also need our attention. With support from other organizations across B.C., Surrey Pride hopes to continue its awareness campaign and to provide reciprocal support to other Pride festivals and events around the Lower Mainland.

“I’m continually optimistic that we’re going to grow,” Ewing says. “Will we look like Vancouver Pride? New West Pride? Fraser Valley Pride? No. Will Fraser Valley, New West or Vancouver Pride look like us? No, and that’s the really cool part. There’s a uniqueness to the area that we are in and that’s what we are trying to bring forward in the Surrey Pride.”