Summer camp: Pride edition

In the summer of 2014, Toronto was picked to host World Pride. During this frenzy RDS hosted a three-day summer camp offering people a more critical and creative alternative to a corporate and sanitized version of Pride. The first day of the summer camp started off with a radical walking tour of the Church/Wellesley area with researcher and activist Rio Rodriguez. Day two focused on remembering our histories and envisioning the future with creative writing facilitator Aruna Boodram. Day three was an art-making day where participants had the opportunity to create time capsules with the help of multidisciplinary artist tings chalk, which were then installed all over the city.

*We were honoured to receive a message of encouragement from Gary Kinsman, a radical queer activist and co-author of The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation with Patricia Gentile, who was one of the organizers of the Bathhouse Raid Riots in Toronto in 1981. This statement was read during our radical walking tour of the Church/Wellesley neighbourhood.