The Medicine Hat Pride guys (Adam, Brandon, Paul, Dane and others too numerous to mention in this short space of time) are making it happen! Despite the fact that nine days ago the fourth annual Medicine Hat Pride organizers said they wouldn’t be able to get it up in time(!), this collection of hometown boys and their accomplices are going to make it so!

"We’re having the Pride flag raising at noon at Veteran’s Memorial Park tomorrow (Saturday)... when we will fill everyone in on the schedule of the day," says Brandon. "There will be some keynote speakers there (MLAs and local notaries), and our big showcase [at the Park] will be Netty Mack, from 1:45 to 2:45 [though there are lots of other events and entertainers, as you can see in the schedule]. And the festival ends at 5pm, in the park, and we have our dance starting at 8."

Brandon, who has been commandeered to pass on this information, mentions that the festival is going on basically as originally arranged by the original organizing committee.

"What happened is the Medicine Hat Pride Association (MHPA) said that – due to a lack of timing and volunteers and stuff – they didn’t see that the Pride Festival would be able to happen... So a couple of us in Calgary, who were involved in the Medicine Hat Pride initially, asked to see if there was anything we could do to make this happen.

"So they gave us their resources, and we have a couple of the members on the Board helping us out as well... We all (Brandon, Adam, Paul, Dane, etc.) believe that this needs to happen, and there are many people from Medicine Hat that have contributed greatly as well."

Brandon notes that – if you weren’t watching the Facebook notices carefully – you might not even have noticed the Pride had been cancelled, as they began running with it the same morning that the association mentioned its cancellation online.

"We’re still going off of the same framework that the MHPA has done for the past three years... The festival has [always] gone over very well; it’s all-inclusive [and] we encourage everyone to bring your family down.

"Personally, I believe in the festival. I love seeing families coming down, and I love seeing that there are all these resources out there, and that [community members] are not alone, because I know it can be quite an isolating feeling."

Brandon notes that, regarding the current schedule, "an amendment would be that at 12:10pm we have Bob Wanner MLA and speaker of the house making an address, [and that] for our drag queen performers we have Argentina and Elektra Kute – both from Calgary. Throughout the day we will be playing music pre-recorded by DJ Dopamine."