Hotels around Woodstock
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About Woodstock
Pride in Woodstock is run by Oxford County Pride, a volunteer committee based in the town that covers the whole of Oxford County. The committee describes its purpose as building inclusive, diverse and safe communities for LGBTQ2S+ people, and that framing shapes the programme.
The centrepiece is Pride Family Day, an outdoor celebration at Museum Square in the town centre. The municipality raises the Pride flag alongside the committee. Through the rest of the year the committee awards the Tyrell Maas Pride Leadership Award, runs the PRISM programme for queer young people in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and keeps a Pride shop whose proceeds go back into the work. Theatre Woodstock is among the local partners, and a printed guide goes out ahead of each season.
Scale is worth knowing before you travel. Woodstock is the seat of Oxford County, an industrial town built around a Toyota assembly plant and its suppliers. Pride here takes up one day and one square rather than a march through the streets, and that is also its appeal: you can talk to the people who put it together.
For a larger celebration, the neighbours deliver. London sits roughly forty kilometres west and Toronto about 130 kilometres east, both with full Pride weeks and an established venue scene. Dates and the programme go up on the committee's website each season.
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.