With sweeping changes to the sex-ed curriculum still unclear and a municipal election on the horizon, this year’s Fierté Simcoe Pride is an opportunity to influence people and policy, said the organization’s president, Brandon Rhéal Amyot.
“Over the course of Pride… I’m hoping we’ll be included in those conversations. While policy and legislation … is great, changing hearts and minds is what we want to do. (Pride) is a venue to a bigger conversation,” Amyot said.
“There’s a fine balance between the importance of celebration and advocacy. It can’t be one or another; it is, in fact, both.”
There are a variety of significant issues for the LGBTQ community that need to be addressed in the county, including sustainable funding for Pride and cultural organizations and for HIV/AIDS organizations and charities, as well as intersex surgeries, and the ban on gay men from donating blood unless they have been celibate for a year, Amyot said.
“We live, work and play just like everyone else does. We do exist in these communities, (but) just as easily for rights to be won, they can be lost. We have to maintain that balance,” Amyot said. “That work can’t keep on happening without the support of (government) at all levels.”
There is a trend around the world of “backlash” against the LGBTQ community, and trans and intersex people especially “haven’t gotten their fair share,” Amyot said. “Our work is never really done.”
Around Simcoe County, many communities have made big strides for the LGBTQ community, Amyot said.
Since starting Fierté Simcoe Pride seven years ago, all communities within the county, as well as Barrie, Orillia, Rama, Beausoleil First Nation and Canadian Forces Base Borden, recognize it with flag raisings or proclamations, Amyot said.
In 2016, the Town of Innisfil passed a new washroom and facilities policy so that people can use a bathroom for any gender with which they identify.
The new policy “is a means to having Innisfil put diversity and inclusivity into the forefront of our thinking so that being understanding and open to differences between people is an automatic, everyday occurrence.”
In Barrie, Grace United Church became an LGBTQ-affirming church a few years ago, but it is having a celebration during this year’s Fierté Simcoe Pride to help better connect people with the Pride organization, said Jeffrey Dale, the church’s youth ministries co-ordinator.
Becoming an affirming congregation means anyone in the LGBTQ community can have a safe, fun place to worship, he said.
“They know they will not encounter judgment,” he said, adding it was a “no brainer” to connect with Fierté Simcoe Pride.
“Simcoe Pride … connects every single community in Simcoe County, urban and rural. (It gives people a hope) one day that this world will break down the walls and (allow) people to see each other face to face.”
At Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital, a special committee has been working to break down health-care barriers for LGBTQ people.
The hospital’s LGBTQ Committee is working to establish a trans health hub in partnership with the Couchiching Family Health Team and other community partners, such as The Gilbert Centre.
The hospital is currently in the process of hiring a physician, nurse practitioner, social workers, administration support person, and a peer support person who is trans, with the goal to have the hub up and running by this fall, said Shannon Hunter, a nurse at the hospital and chair of the committee.
“Research is showing us that there aren’t a lot of services for trans people north of Highway 7,” she said. “Some of the barriers to access service is travel … and waitlists. We’re hoping people can access service closer to home.”
These services could include counselling, hormone therapy and assessment for surgery, she added.
Initially, patients will be referred to the trans health hub through their doctors, and eventually it will migrate to a self-referral system, Hunter said.
The hospital is also in the second phase of a project to make all of its washrooms gender neutral.
So far, the single-stall washrooms in busy areas, such as the lobby and emergency room, have gender neutral signs, she said. All other single-stall bathrooms are now in the process of becoming gender neutral, and then all multi-stall bathrooms are next.
“We want to make sure there’s a level of comfort for all patients who come to our hospital,” said Terry Dyni, the hospital’s director of community relations. “We want them to know they are certainly welcome in our hospital — excellent, compassionate care every day.”
OSMH received the Positive Community Organization award at last year’s Simcoe County Pride Awards, and Dr. Marissa Rodway-Norman, a trans physician who works in the hospital’s mental-health unit, is up for this year’s Person of the Year award. Orillia is also up against Bradford West-Gwillimbury for Community of the Year.
This year, Fierté Simcoe Pride runs July 30 to Aug. 12.
The Pride flag will be raised in Orillia on Tuesday at 11 a.m. in front of the Orillia Opera House.
