Innisfail town councillor Dale Dunham hadn’t had any particular plans to start a local Pride festival. After all, Innisfail—population 7,672—could hardly host a Pride event on the scale of Edmonton’s or Calgary’s. And the central Alberta town is close enough to Red Deer that it would be pretty easy to get to the annual Central Alberta Pride Week events held there each summer. And, if we’re being honest, most people probably don’t think of rural, conservative Innisfail as a hotbed of LGBQT+ rights or queer activism.
That all changed one Friday in April of 2021.
Dunham, who co-owns and operates the Coffee Cottage in Innisfail with his partner, Shaun Steen, was chatting with one of their employees. The woman told Dunham that her child, who identifies as trans, wished for a Pride festival right there in Innisfail.
Dunham was inspired. He remembered the way he had been bullied and beaten as a gay kid growing up in southwest Calgary in the 1970s. “I had a lot of shame and I hid who I was,” he says. “I lived behind a mask, because I didn’t feel worthy of love.”
He decided that no kid and no adult in Innisfail should feel that way. “I ran up to Shaun, who was working, and I said, ‘We’re going to hold a Pride!’ And he just said, ‘OK, honey.’ ”
Dunham rounded up volunteers and sponsors. He earned the unanimous endorsement of his town council colleagues. Two months later, in June of 2021, Innisfail held its first Pride, a one-day event, in the parking lot of the Coffee Cottage.
As Dunham acknowledges, that first year’s event was a little bit heavy on earnest speeches and a little bit light on entertainment. But it was a hit nonetheless. In fact, due to COVID restrictions, the organizers had to turn dozens and dozens of people away.
In June of 2022 Innisfail Pride was a two-day event in the Legion Picnic Park, with more food, more music and a celebrity drag show featuring not just visiting drag queens but a number of (very) straight local community leaders who put on drag for the first time and took to the stage alongside the pros.
I had the honour to speak at the festival kickoff—and I must tell you, there was a fair bit of apprehension before the events began. Organizers and civic leaders were worried about the homophobia kicked up by the Convoy movement and by the rising tide of anti-gay and anti-trans legislation and agitation around the world. Just hours before the Innisfail event, in fact, the news broke that a gunman in Oslo, Norway, had shot 23 people at a Pride event there, killing two of them. It took some authentic Alberta courage for people to turn out and to speak out.
But no protesters or hatemongers showed up at the Legion park that day. There was no anger, no violence. Just warmth and celebration and a sense of new possibilities.
As I drove back up the highway to Edmonton that night, I thought about my own prejudices, my own preconceptions about rural Alberta. It’s dangerously easy and dangerously lazy to assume that a small town like Innisfail might be full of homophobes, transphobes and racists. What I saw on display that day in that park, though, was a generous community taking pride and joy in its diversity and its inclusion.
It’s bad enough that people outside Alberta often see the rest of us as hateful and angry. As Albertans we ourselves have to celebrate and share real stories like that of Innisfail Pride—because they are absolutely a part of who we are. We mustn’t fall into the trap of letting a few angry, frightened voices define us to the world—nor indeed to ourselves.
“Society has evolved and the town of Innisfail is no different,” says Innisfail mayor Jean Barclay. “Unfortunately, central Alberta has been stereotyped.”
“People say, ‘Oh, Alberta. Crazy redneck Alberta.’ But belonging is an Innisfail value,” she says. “There will always be a few very loud, angry voices. But after all the division of the last three years, it’s important that we stand up to hateful rhetoric.”
I love the Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek, where big-city boy David Rose falls in love with small-town Patrick Brewer—and the two of them open a local business that becomes the beating heart of their community. That’s a TV show. But Dale Dunham and Shaun Steen have, in their own ways, made that fantasy a reality, sharing their love with the town they proudly call home.
“Dale and Shaun,” says Mayor Barclay, “give back to our community in so many ways. I am so proud to call them my friends.”
This year, Innisfail Pride is back—as a three-day event—from June 23 to 25. There are plans for an adults only, 18+ drag show on Friday night, and for more family-focused events including a talent show and carnival over the weekend. There won’t be a parade. It won’t be as flashy and loud as Pride in Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal. But it will be organic and homegrown. And it will be the pride of Innisfail.
Paula Simons is an independent senator and the host of the podcast Alberta Unbound. She lives in Edmonton.
____________________________________________
