In Montreal, the police's attempts to clean up the city for the 1976 Olympics, the raids on Bar Truxx in 1977 and on Sex Garage in 1990, for example, illustrate how the police haven't exactly been friends to the LGBTQ community. Pride Winnipeg Festival promises more inclusive events, unveils new theme LGBTQ police officers' group calls it 'unacceptable' for city to fund Pride Similar events characterized the Canadian queer milieu. The 1981 protests against the Bathhouse Raids were organized by a coalition of anti-racist and queer groups opposing homophobia and racism from the city. In Toronto - as in Stonewall, in New York - Pride began as a protest against discriminatory policing.
The relationship between the police and LGBTQ communities across the country has always been tense. The union representing police officers in Toronto are expectedly unhappy, however, and its internal LGBTQ committee has just called for the city to pull Pride funding over the ban. That's why banning uniformed officers from Pride events will actually make it more inclusive: those who have been reticent to come to Pride before are more likely to attend when they aren't being made to celebrate the police.
