Pride month celebrations in the Lac La Ronge region rounded off this past weekend with a festival of sorts, a parade and back-to-back drag shows.
While Pride month is in June, the final celebrations in La Ronge are usually held at the beginning of July.
The final events included a festival in Patterson Park on Saturday featuring live local artists and performers.
The annual parade was held Sunday.
Colin Ratushniak, a member of the Pride committee and mayor of La Ronge, said it was great to see so much support this year.
“The community always comes together to support, and I’m so proud of the allies that come out and support these events because they’re important as we strive for equality,” he said.
Ratushniak said even though La Ronge is mostly accepting, there’s still work to be done to ensure acceptance and equality.
“I’m always struck by certain comments like, ‘who cares?’ or ‘why does it matter anymore?’ And what I’ve realized is as far as our community has come, we still have a lot more educating to do,” he said. “(That’s) evident when you see different things posted on social media or the stories that you hear from family members, allies or LGBT youth. You hear that people are still going through bullying, people are still being oppressed.”
He also said this work to educate is needed due to lack of acceptance and equality around the world.
“If you look on a bigger scale, there’s still over a hundred countries that you can be criminalized just for being gay and that means that we still have work to do.”
The final events of the month-long celebrations were two drive-in drag shows with performers from YXE Drag Collective.
Although the shows were free, donations amounting to over $1,400 were raised and given to local Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs and reconciliation organizations.
(PHOTO: A Pride festival was held in Patterson Park in La Ronge on Saturday. Photo courtesy of Colin Ratushniak.)