Toronto, this weekend you proved why I speak so highly of you. I’ve been burnt out on you this summer, spending my weeks trying to find ways to spend my weekends away from you – at lakefront cottages, at homes close to cottages close to some body of water (at times I would have settled for a kiddie pool and a sippy cup full of alcohol if someone offered).

Anything to step momentarily outside the chaos and High Rises, the metal and ritualistic burning of money that accompanies summers here.

But then you go and have weekends like this one, so full of love and beauty and progress and pride that I wonder why I ever wanted to leave you.

Here’s the thing I’ve always known about you Toronto: you are not a city that is content on riding on the coattails of progress.

You define progress. You set precedent.

Toronto, you are only the multi-racial, multi-sexual city you are because you have not just accepted or accommodated differences, but have encouraged them. You have enveloped these people in all of their diversity warmly into your arms and whispered, “Welcome, you’re safe here. This is where you belong.”

And Toronto, you have PRIDE.

Yesterday you were beautiful. You were a city at its best, most enlightened self.

You were on fire.

Because Toronto, if it’s one thing I’ve always respected the fuck out of you for it’s this: you know love is hard enough to find and maintain without having to fight for the right to feel it.

You know that life can be cold and love is rare and when two people find it that should be celebrated for its rarity, not ridiculed for its existence.

You have understood, long before other cities, that the support of friends and family is important but so is the support of the larger community. That truly powerful cities, the ones with heart, will protect love in all its forms and allow it the possibility of thriving, rather than extinguishing it with declarations of, “That’s not the right kind of love.”

You are the city where my mother felt comfortable taking me to pride parades as a toddler. Where yes, I definitely have clear memories of naked old men marching and being beelined in the head with condoms being thrown from floats.

But  I also have memories of beautiful women holding hands, and men of all shapes and sizes kissing each other tenderly, and hoards of people laughing and dancing and strutting in celebration.

And because of that, because you are a city that holds one of the Top 5 Pride Celebration attendance records IN THE WORLD, and because I was raised in the thick of it, I got to grow up thinking what everyone now seems to be realizing:

That love is love is love is love.

You are a city that is part of a larger country that finally elected a Prime Minister worthy of the respect of the gay community; a man who looks at the residents of his country in all their diversity and represents their rights. A man who marched in the parade yesterday so unabashedly giddy that people screamed triumphantly and wept uncontrollably (or was that just me?)

Toronto, yesterday you were host to a pivotal moment in Canadian history – The 1st Canadian PM to march in a Pride Parade – how fucking cool is that?!

And sure, you’ve set aside a section of your city to celebrating the rights of LGBTQ citizens, but expression of this sexuality is no longer confined to that space. More and more people are feeling free to express love and affection across your neighbourhoods.

It is not a city block that plays safe haven to this community; it is the city as a whole.

Toronto, after the shootings in Orlando you saw such a swift outcry from your residents, and the city ran deep with raw, visceral emotion. Empathy wasn’t a rare commodity and anger and sympathy ran across communities. We were not segmented that day but instead stood together in support.

And in an action meant to strike fear, we stood fearless. The overwhelming sentiment wasn’t panic that this could happen here but a firm belief that we would NEVER let it happen here.

We operated with the knowledge that Orlando may have been the actions of one man, but that one man was raised in a society that gave this ideologies legitimacy; that somewhere along the line he found support for this hate.

And Toronto, we knew you had to be better than that. You ARE better than that. You know that these beliefs cannot be fostered but must be squashed- by love, by proper education and by teaching support over anger at every turn.

And hopefully, Toronto, we will never have to deal with the emotional ramifications of a mass shooting because we will have built a city that declares that behaviour so intolerable, so outside the realm of possibility that no one would dare mess with the 6ix.

You are a city that knows one day these won’t even be conversations, or debates or arguments or fights. You know that if we continue on this path, by the time our kids are our age they too will feel proud to have been raised in a city that is trying to get the world to see sexuality for what it is: endlessly fluid; as a glorious spectrum rather than two opposing poles.

A city that knows one day “gay” or “lesbian” or “transgender” will simply be a characteristic, not define someone’s character; a city where if we raise our kids properly, we will welcome into the fold more tolerant group of individuals capable of choosing kindness over prejudice.

We will be a city that helps mould a country. We will mould it until we won’t require a rainbow flag anymore because a pride flag and Canadian flag will be synonymous.

Gay pride is Canadian pride.

And Toronto, yesterday you showed me your Pride and for that I am so endlessly proud.

Thank you.

E.