#the519

Wells walked up Church Street as the Church-Wellesley Village shimmered in full Pride colour.

Rainbow flags hung from windows. Banners stretched across storefronts. The summer air already carried that familiar charge: music, movement, anticipation, and people preparing to be seen.

Coach Stone would be arriving soon. So would the Drones and the Bros. Wells was looking forward to Toronto Pride: gold, black, colour, brotherhood, and the whole team standing together.

Then he passed The 519.

Beside it, at Cawthra Park Square, the memory caught him. Toronto’s 2SLGBTQ community had once gathered there for a candlelight vigil after the Pulse Nightclub massacre, standing together in grief, love, anger, and solidarity.

Ten years ago today, forty-nine people were killed at Pulse Nightclub in Florida. Forty-nine people who had gone out to dance, breathe, flirt, laugh, and feel safe beneath music and lights. Forty-nine lives stolen from a community that should never have had to fight just to exist.

Wells slowed beneath the flags.

Pride was joy, yes. But it was also memory. It was resistance. It was every Golden Bro and every Drone standing together so no brother had to walk alone, no brother had to hide, and no brother had to be forgotten.

He looked down Church Street, shoulders squared beneath the summer sky.

Today, he would remember. Tonight, he would dance in defiance and in memory of those lives lost.

From the candle light vigil for the victims of the serial killer Bruce McArthur at the519 this past winter. 

Text reads: “You don’t owe a disclosure of your identity to anyone. You are who you are with or without external validation. If it’s not safe for you to be out, you don’t have to be out. If you don’t want to be out, you don’t have to be out. Not being out doesn’t mean that you are not queer. You are yourself, with or without the validation of others, and that’s the best thing you can be.”