- Capital Daily
- Posts
- July 6 - Pride today: Where & when
July 6 - Pride today: Where & when
Week's top stories. Summer water safety. 6 cideries to check out.
Capital Daily Team
July 06, 2025
Good morning !
It's another summer weekend full of festivals, with Pride, Phillips Backyard, and the Strawberry Festival all on today. Learn about those events, and more, in this Sunday newsletter.
— Cam
Today’s approx. read time: 4 / 7 minutes
🌡️ Weather Forecast
Today: ☀️ 23 / 13
Tomorrow: ☀️ 24 / 13
Tuesday: ☀️ 24 / 14
NEWS
70K expected to attend 31st annual Victoria Pride Parade
Photo: Victoria Pride Society / Colin Smith
About 140 floats will start moving just after 11am when the Songhees Nation and other Indigenous and Two-Spirit guests of honour open the procession at Pandora and Government. It will wend down Wharf around the Inner Harbour, with the floats ending at Superior and participants continuing through James Bay to MacDonald Park.
Find more info here (and a map of the route).
The festival in the park
Today’s event will have 130+ vendors, a food court, a bar, a non-alcoholic drink bar, an area for kids, and a Chill Zone Tent for some calm downtime. The main stage gets going at noon and will feature drag, music, a traditional welcome and ceremony, and speeches.
Today's headliners are:
Bad Shah, the “Bollywood Drag King of Canada”
Moscato Sky, the “Them Fatale of Drag & Burlesque”
Queer As Funk, a Motown-soul-funk band
One of the most prominent 2SLGBTQ+ communities in Canada
Pride Week was held in the city as early as 1981, a few years after Pride events in Canada's big cities. Per the 2021 census, Greater Victoria has Canada's highest percentage of nonbinary residents and second-highest percentage of transgender residents. UVic also houses the world’s largest collection of works by and about trans, nonbinary, Two-Spirit, and other gender-diverse people; professor Aaron Devor has led research in the area since the early 1980s.
A time of celebration in a troubled year
The annual celebration comes in a year marked by increasing government hostility to 2SLGBTQ+ people south of—and at—the border. The Eves of Destruction roller derby players, who will take part in the parade, cancelled their US games this season out of concern. The biennial Moving Trans History Forward conference had far fewer attendees this year, with Devor saying Trump-related border concerns were the main factor.
Victoria Pride Society President Nick Luney told CHEK that the changes in the US have had locals concerned. It has been a “reminder of the world that we’re living in currently”—but also, Luney said, a reminder of why Pride matters and why it began as, and continues to be, a protest.
⚠️ Capital Bulletin
Pride Parade road closures from 7am to 1:30pm today.
Renfrew-area wildfire now categorized as “being held” at approx. 5.8ha. [Latest updates]
UV index Very High (8) today.
Sun & some cloud this week, with highs in mid-20s.
Temperatures cooler where winds blow ashore, by 5-6 degrees. Wind about 20km/h today, but up to 50 at Juan de Fuca Strait.
Driving today? Check the current traffic situation via Google.
