As Pride month comes to an end, a local Stratford group is ensuring members of the LGBTQ+ community have a safe space year-round.
The Stratford Pride Community Centre aims to create a central hub for LGBTQ+ and queer events and resources in the Festival City and Perth County, working to advance the community as a “progressive and welcoming place to live, work, visit or do business.”
“We are about building long-term community,” said Bruce Duncan Skeaff, president of the Stratford Pride Community Centre. “People want a place to call their own home.”
The newly opened physical space, located at 24 Downie St., features two community rooms that can be used for gatherings, screenings, presentations, talks and art exhibitions. Members of the community can book the space to use.
Also included inside is an LGBTQ+ library featuring books that centre queer authors and characters.
In addition to the brick-and-mortar location, the Stratford Pride Community Centre has created an online Stratford Pride Guide – a listing of businesses, organizations, service providers and professionals that are inclusive to the queer community. The guide includes everything from stores to real estate agents to mental health counsellors.
“People in town can find it very difficult to get information on what is going on and where there is something going on,” said Skeaff. “A hub, and an online information hub is something that’s missing, and something we can do.”
He hopes the guide aids not only locals, but tourists and those looking to move to Stratford.
Information on accessing emergency queer phone lines and lines for LGBTQ+ youth is also available.
Skeaff explained the community centre was partially inspired by the research of Dayna Prest, who completed a PhD at Western University focusing on the LGBTQ+ sense of place in the Stratford area.
During Pride month, Skeaff said events are typically held in various locations as one-off functions, but that permanent safe spaces where members of the LGBTQ+ community can “come and be themselves” aren’t yet fixtures in the city.
He added recent events south of the border, including threats to disrupt a Pride weekend in Idaho, proposed legislation to ban drag queens around children in Texas, and even Toronto Pride announcing heightened security measures for this past weekend’s parade, highlight the need for more LGBTQ+ safe spaces in all communities.
“Those examples, that’s why Stratford needs a queer community centre,” Skeaff said, adding the centre will benefit many other nearby rural areas, including Goderich, Clinton and Zurich, which also lack queer safe spaces.
In early July, the Stratford Pride Community Centre will announce a host of events and programming for the summer and fall. Some events include non-alcoholic wine and cheese nights, viewings of OutTV shows like Rupaul’s Drag Race, drag queen storytime, drag brunches, along with art shows and author readings.
The organization is also partnering with the Little Prince Micro-Cinema for movie nights, with plans to screen both modern and historic queer classics.
“Could you imagine, finally in Stratford, on a random Wednesday night, people coming dressed as Joan and Bettie from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? What a hoot!” Skeaff said. “And that is a large part of why we want to do things like that, to help address part of the social isolation.”
A marquee event in September will be a talk given by activist Matt Ashcroft, who led the movement to ban conversion therapy in Canada.
Starting in July, the centre will begin partnering with the London Regional HIV/AIDS Connection, hosting the organization one day a month for outreach.
Winter Pride – which the centre first hosted this March – will also return next year.
As the centre continues to grow, Skeaff eyes adding additional resources, including job counselling and housing services to help local members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“If we can get into all that through one entrance, we can make a difference in an awful lot of peoples’ mental and physical health,” he said.
