Why Halifax Pride?

The Board and Staff of Halifax Pride are excited and optimistic about the long-term growth of the organization, and see Canada Pride as a stepping stone of development for our community based festival.

With the existing community partnerships we have, Canada Pride would be an incredible opportunity for the rest of Canada to see how we do Pride on the East Coast, and to take the Halifax Pride Festival to the next level.

Many of our largest government and financial supporters have already put their support behind the event, and are just as enthusiastic as we are to see the event come to Atlantic Canada.

Our PROPOSED EVENT

The Halifax Pride Festival is an eleven day event taking place in the Halifax Regional Municipality. In recent years, we have seen up to 50,000 guests attend the festival, across forty community-focused events, and we expect Canada Pride would bring over 150,000 additional attendees to our city.

Some of our proposed events:

• MelaNATION: A QTBIPOC Showcase: what started as a small, community organized showcase of QTIBPOC talent in a queer bar has now expanded onto our TD MainStage with an audience of 5000 people.

• Human Rights Conference: We have a world-class conference venue at the Halifax Convention Centre. We hope to host a large human rights centred conference right in the heart of Downtown Halifax.

• East Coast Pride Showcase: We want to show the rest of Canada the best of the East Coast! In collaboration with other Atlantic Prides, we want to showcase talent from around the maritimes.

• Gay-lidh: There is nothing more east coast than a ceilidh (a gay one, of course). With queer talent like Ashley MacIsaac, this event will let attendees take part in a maritime tradition.

• The Pride Parade: the largest parade in Atlantic Canada, attracting over 20,000 people to Downtown Halifax.

The Canada Pride Festival would give us the opportunity to showcase how we do Pride here in the maritimes. We want to show queer folks across Canada and the world our classic East Coast hospitality with events like Pride Night on the Silva on the Halifax Harbour, a local lobster dinner at The Cable Wharf, or by taking in a Wanderers FC game right across the street from our Festival Site!

Many of our existing community partnerships would allow us to host a robust festival with programming that focuses on local and national talent, youth support, healthcare, and Indigenous rights.

We are ecstatic about the opportunity to host on Canada Pride. We would love to chat about how we can all ensure an East Coast edition of this event will bring success to not only Halifax Pride, but Halifax as a city.