Toronto's Pride parade is meant to be a celebration. But some participants say there's ‘a sense of heaviness'

Toronto Star

12-06-2025

Lee Dizon remembers last year's Pride parade in Toronto well.
He, along with other members of SIBOL Filipino-Canadian Pride Network, danced and waved Filipino flags as they marched through the downtown streets. Crowds of people cheered from the sidewalks while music from other groups marching echoed between the surrounding skyscrapers.
'It was really a pivotal moment,' Dizon recalled, noting SIBOL was the first-ever Filipino organization to march in Toronto's annual Pride parade. It was also the group's one-year anniversary.
Marching was also memorable on a personal level.
'We marched last year, yes, as a group,' Dizon said, 'but then we felt like each of us had our own stories to tell.'
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SIBOL will be part of the Pride parade this year on June 29, but Dizon said there is 'a sense of heaviness' amid the excitement to march again.
With Toronto's annual Pride parade and festival around Church Street just under three weeks away, news of corporate sponsors pulling their funding as they simultaneously roll back DEI programs have put a damper on the spirits of Dizon and others in the city's LGBTQ community during what is typically a time of celebration.
Corporate sponsors turning their back on Pride is partially why Pride Toronto says it has $900,000 less this year compared to last.
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Headlines coming out of the U.S., along with some from elsewhere in Canada, on governments targeting and pulling back protections for trans and gender-diverse people have also not helped people's moods.
'It feels like things are moving in the wrong direction,' said Curran Stikuts, director of advocacy and strategic communications for The 519 community centre in the Village.
Since February, multiple past corporate supporters of Pride Toronto have pulled their funding, including Nissan, Google and Adidas. Meanwhile, The Abnormal Beauty Company (owned by Estée Lauder) and Tim Hortons lowered their contribution amounts.
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For its part, Pride Toronto says this year's festivities won't be noticeably different, even as the organization has fewer corporate sponsors and higher costs associated with running a large-scale event.
'We are moving ahead full steam,' Kojo Modeste, executive director of Pride Toronto, told the Star last week.
But if the organization is not able to make up this loss of funding, Modeste warned that the 2026 celebrations will be affected.
At a press conference Wednesday, the director noted that some have stepped up to fill the gap — including the City of Toronto, local businesses and individual people who have donated more than $10,000 — but Modeste appealed for more help.
'This is an opportunity,' he said, 'to come and support to make sure that Pride remains a staple in the city of Toronto.'
Millions of people come to Toronto every year for the Pride festival at the end of June, and Pride Toronto says its event is the largest in Canada and second biggest in the world. This year's festival will start on June 26, with most of the events and parades taking place from June 27 to 29.
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Queer people from around the GTA told the Star that news of corporations pulling back their support in Toronto and elsewhere is concerning, but that it has reminded them of Pride's origins as a resistance movement — which dates back to the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969.
'For some it is a party,' said Alyy Patel, founder of Queer South Asian Women's (QSAW) Network. 'But that party has always been grounded in very political roots.'
For Patel, Pride has always meant coming together with other queer people, particularly women of colour, to feel liberated in a 'powerful space.'
Jansher Saeed added that this year's Pride is an important reminder that the queer community can't become too dependent on corporations for support.
'It's more crucial for us to think of Pride as a protest,' he said, 'as a space where we can build community and where we can support one another, especially in a hard time.'
There has been a 'real hunger' from community members at The 519 for these opportunities to be around other queer people, according to Stikuts.
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'We recognize as a community the need for that joy in these moments that feel a little bit more perilous,' he said, adding that people just want to 'play and have fun.'
As SIBOL prepares to march in its second Pride parade in a changed cultural climate, Dizon said corporations and governments turning their backs on the queer community shouldn't stop him and others from celebrating their identities in public.
If anything, it's a reason to keep making their voices heard.
'The fight doesn't stop here,' Dizon said, 'We have a long, long way to go. So continue fighting and continue moving.'