What A Canadian Pride Parade Can Teach Us About The United States

How do we put this hate fearing maniacal genie back in the bottle? A good place to start would be to look north to a country that has opened its hearts and hands to the less fortunate on this planet
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There is something wrong with the United States. It's like a Monet. The longer you stare at it, the clearer it becomes. The change is subtle, taking place over time and requiring outside perspective. This became clear to me as I returned to the US after spending a long weekend in Montreal, where I have been vacationing for twenty years.

I was in Montreal, on August 14th, to celebrate gay pride. I have attended the New York pride parade every year and this year I wanted to experience a Canadian rendition. There are stark differences between both events. And I now see how the United States has chosen a path of fear and isolation while Canada has chosen hope and integration.

In New York, like in many cities around the United States, the people in the parade and those watching from the sidelines are predominantly part of the LGBT community. However, Montreal has an additional group of attendees often missing from a United States pride parade: straight people. Husbands and wives with children in strollers; old women with their daughters and tourists from across Canada. These weren't people who had a gay son or daughter marching in the parade. These were people who had come out to support minority members of the larger Montreal community. To embrace the French motto of liberté, égalité, et fraternité.

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The other stark difference between the New York pride parade and Montreal's was the security; or lack thereof. At the New York gay pride parade barricades line every street separating attendees from participants. There are even barricades set up on streets where the parade doesn't go, simply for crowd control. It's commonplace to see thousands of police officers some of which are in riot gear, flak jackets, and carrying semi-automatics; shutting down streets at a moments notice and barking orders to attendees to clear the way. This year I had to explain to an officer, who seemed stressed beyond a breaking point, that he had trapped my friends and I on a street that had already been closed at the other end.

In clear juxtaposition Montreal had a minimal police presence and lacked barricades separating attendees from marchers. The most shocking disparity came with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marching freely down the parade route, waving and smiling to an enthusiastic audience towering over his own security detail. It is true that as Senator Hillary Clinton has previously marched in the New York gay pride parade, but no sitting United States President has ever marched.

After the parade, I attended a free concert held in a park near Montreal's gay village. I was in line to enter and the girl in front of me fell to her feet. An old, white bearded security guard yelled out "Watch your step!" He wasn't there to pat her down or make sure that she went through metal detectors. He wasn't checking bags. He was only there to make sure the line kept moving. The outdoor event hosted tens of thousands of other revelers, gathered to listen to great techno music, watch Canada's drag queens, and celebrate the LGBT community. I had grown so accustom to security rifling through my bag that I actually felt uncomfortable when they didn't.

Canada isn't free from terrorism. In October 2014, the country experienced two shocking attacks that killed two officers and injured another. So why aren't they paranoid like us? Don't they know that the person sitting next to them might be carrying a knife or even an explosive?

Perhaps this is because Canada has made efforts to combat xenophobia and fear of terrorism. To date, Trudeau has contributed $100 million to the UN in order to aid the resettlement of Syrians to Canada. He doubled the amount of immigrant applications for parents and grandparents in order to foster family reunification. Then he provided all of them with health care benefits.

Even if Donald Trump loses the upcoming election, he's created a climate of isolation and paranoia. So it seems, in the coming years, the United States will be more likely to increase our police presence at community events and arm those officers with weapons that much more resemble war than those needed to keep the peace. We have become a society that distrusts one another that watches our neighbors. Where paranoia is the norm.

How do we put this hate fearing maniacal genie back in the bottle? A good place to start would be to look north to a country that has opened its hearts and hands to the less fortunate on this planet. A country that celebrates its diversity and in return lives relatively free from the fear.

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