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About St. Albert
Pride in St. Albert takes the shape of a park festival rather than a street parade. That is a deliberate choice, and it fits a city of roughly seventy thousand people sitting just northwest of Edmonton along the Sturgeon River.
Two volunteer groups carry the programme. The local PFLAG chapter runs Pride in the Park at Lions Park on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue, billed as a free, all-ages event with musical performances, drag acts, art vendors, community resource tables and food trucks. Outloud St. Albert organises its own Pride days, held at Rotary Park on Rodeo Drive. Outloud focuses on 2SLGBTQIA+ children, teenagers and young adults along with their parents and siblings, and its reach extends past St. Albert into Edmonton and the surrounding communities.
What the day offers is a stage, a lawn and a few hours of company. Families come with strollers. Teenagers who would be turned away from a licensed venue can spend the afternoon somewhere they are expected rather than merely tolerated. Local organisations set up tables and answer questions that are hard to ask anywhere else.
Visitors should know that St. Albert has no bars, clubs or bathhouses of its own. Anyone looking for queer nightlife drives the twenty-odd kilometres into Edmonton, where the venues and the larger Pride celebrations are. St. Albert's contribution is different in kind: a small city that puts its Pride on the grass, in daylight, and invites the whole neighbourhood along.
Nearby Prides
From the magazine
First Aid at Pride: How to Prepare Before You Go
Pride is a long, hot, crowded day. Most incidents stay minor — if organizers provide proper medical cover and attendees know when to ask for help. A practical guide to preparation, heat illness and dense crowds.
Christopher Street Liberation Day 1970: The March That Started Pride
One year after Stonewall, on June 28, 1970, a few thousand people walked up Sixth Avenue in New York behind a banner reading CHRISTOPHER STREET GAY LIBERATION DAY 1970. Here is how that first march became Pride.
Germany's First Pride (1979): From a Nervous March to a National Tradition
On June 30, 1979, about 450 people marched in Berlin for the first time on the anniversary of Stonewall. A look back at the start of Germany's Pride tradition, the fight against Paragraph 175 and the road to a mass demonstration.