Pride

As Toronto marks the fiftieth year of its first gay rights march comes this celebration of those who march with pride.

Toronto’s inaugural Gay Pride March took place in 1974 when a hundred people gathered to march from Allan Gardens to Queen’s Park, calling on lawmakers to include sexual orientation in the Ontario Human Rights Code. The march helped lay the groundwork for what has become one of the largest gay pride festivals in the world. In Pride, Lambda-award-winning writer Michael Rowe brings this history, and the challenges the gay community has faced since, into sharp focus while Toronto photographer Angel Guerra captures his city’s pride parade on a human scale. In 120 photographs, Guerra zooms in from the glorious spectacle to the small scenes and single participants, shining a light on moments of joy, strength, ferocity, resilience and love. At a time when 2SLGBTQI+ rights are under renewed threat throughout the world, Guerra and Rowe’s work captures the power of a movement that contains multitudes.

Michael Rowe is the award-winning author of three novels, two books of essays, and a book of interviews. His nonfiction has appeared in the National Post, The Globe & Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, the Huffington Post, SHARP, and The Boston Globe, among other venues. Between 2001 and 2009 he was a contributing writer to The Advocate. He won the 2008 Randy Shilts Award for his second essay collection, Other Men’s Sons (Cormorant Books, 2007), and has been a finalist for the GLAAD Media Award, the National Magazine Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. He lives in Toronto, ON.

Angel Guerra is a writer, visual artist and designer. In 2002, he founded Archetype, an art and design studio, in downtown Toronto, focusing on the cultural industries. He is the winner of the Alcuin Prize in Book Design and has been named among the country’s top five book designers by the National Post. Guerra lives in Toronto, ON.