I think I have now had a run of at least ten Pride®s in a row without notable incident. (Ask any of the old guys: There’s always a Pride Day incident in our past.) Now I even know of a shady spot from which to watch the parade.
I never seem to make it to the Toronto police, OPP, and similar recruiting booths. Nonetheless, the man a senior fire-department battalion chief once confirmed is the only out gay fireman on the force, Keith Maidment, was seen to repeatedly kiss his male homosexualist partner unit, Michael Battista, while perched on the back of a ladder truck. A bit risqué, perhaps.
(“We have several out lesbians,” the battalion chief had hastily added. Well, of course you do. Who else is gonna sign up?)
It no longer shocks me gormless to see the UofT engineers “marching” in the parade. (“We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!” LISA: “You do this every year. We are used to it.”) In fact, their Weblog advertised the date and time when face and body painting would take place.
And while the homosexualist UofT engineer who got this whole thing rolling was a ginger, he wasn’t the much more strapping, copper-haired, purple-painted, overall-wearing ginger depicted below.
Who isn’t necessarily an invert, or susceptible to charms, or anything. Necessarily.
Update
(2006.06.30) We’ve got more pictures from the other guy on the firetruck. Also, was this one way in which the Icelanders were yet again ahead of us?
