Montreal: The City That Stopped, and the Moment I Will Never Forget

The World Traveller Series — Entry No. 11

by Brett Hayhoe

There are cities you visit and enjoy. There are cities you visit and admire. And then there are cities that do something to you — that reach past the polite business of tourism and touch something deeper, something that stays. Montreal is that third kind of city. It has been, across all of my travels in Canada and indeed across all of my travels full stop, the most welcoming, the most diverse, the most genuinely inclusive place I have ever had the privilege of standing in.

It is also the city where I experienced the single most emotional moment of any Pride event, anywhere in the world.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

A CONFERENCE MAGNIFICENTLY RUN

My first visit to Montreal was for an InterPride AGM and World Conference — and if I have attended many such conferences over the years, Montreal’s stands apart. It was run magnificently. Precisely organised, warmly hosted, attended by a spirit that felt different from the moment you arrived. There is something about Montreal — its particular blend of French and English cultures, its long history of artistic and political radicalism, its deep and unapologetic LGBTIQA+ identity — that means it does not merely host events like this. It inhabits them.

The conference itself was everything it should have been. But it was what happened outside the conference halls that I will carry with me longest.

MARCHING IN FIERTÉ MONTRÉAL

Fierté Montréal — Montreal Pride — is one of the great Pride events of the world. I say this not as flattery but as fact, established by experience and comparison. The numbers of participants are staggering. The energy is something that you feel physically, a kind of collective joy that builds and builds as the parade moves through the streets and the city turns out to receive it.

I marched in it. Awe-inspiring does not quite cover it, but it is the closest word I have.

At the media reception associated with the event, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in attendance — a moment that spoke to exactly the kind of political recognition and genuine allyship that the movement has fought for across decades. His presence was not ceremonial window dressing. It felt earned, and it felt right.

And then came the moment.

Without announcement, without warning — the entire parade stopped.

The music fell silent. The crowds fell silent. Thousands and thousands of people, in the streets and on the footpaths and watching from windows above, all of them silent at once. A minute’s silence, observed in honour of the pioneers of the 2SLGBTQIA+ movement — those who fought before us and made everything we now have possible. In memory of the countless lives lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In commemoration of the victims of anti-LGBTQ+ violence and oppression, past and present, across the world.

I have marched in Pride events on multiple continents. I have experienced moments of great joy and great solidarity and great collective defiance. But I have never experienced anything like that silence. The weight of it. The shared understanding of what it meant and who it was for. The knowledge that in that moment, thousands of people were thinking of the same things — of loss, of struggle, of those who did not make it to see what we had built.

It is the most emotional moment I have experienced at any Pride event, anywhere in the world. I do not expect that to change.

THE BID, THE CONTROVERSY, AND C’EST LA VIE

After the conference, I was approached by the management of Fierté Montréal with a question: if they were to nominate to host a WorldPride, would I support them?

I said yes. Emphatically and without hesitation.

Montreal deserved it. The organisation, the infrastructure, the culture, the community — everything about the city said WorldPride. I believed it then and I believe it now, without qualification.

The bid process was not without its controversy. Montreal’s competition was Sydney, Australia — represented by the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, one of the great Pride institutions of the world. My support for Montreal did not go down particularly well with the Sydney delegation. These things happen in organisational life. Positions are taken, lines are drawn, and not everyone ends up on the same side. C’est la vie — quite literally, in this case.

Sydney won the bid.

I did not attend the Sydney WorldPride.

And yet.

ALAN COMES TO MELBOURNE

There is a footnote to the Sydney WorldPride story that matters far more to me personally than the outcome of any bid process.

Because Sydney won, Alan — my dear friend from New York, the man who had given me a room in his home across so many visits and so many adventures — finally had a reason to make the journey to Australia. He came for WorldPride. And on his way, he came to Melbourne. To my home.

It was a wonderful couple of days. Quiet, warm, and long overdue. For years Alan had been the host and I the grateful guest — his spare bedroom becoming my room, his city becoming a second home. To have him here, in my city, in my home, to be able to offer him even a fraction of the hospitality he had shown me across all those New York years — it meant more than I can easily articulate.

Some things come around in the end. Even the ones you didn’t plan.

THE SUMMARY

Where: Montreal, Quebec
When: InterPride AGM and World Conference, and the WorldPride bid period
The city: The most welcoming, diverse and inclusive city in Canada — and among the finest in the world
Don’t miss: Fierté Montréal — march in it if you possibly can; experience the minute of silence; let it affect you
The political moment: Prime Minister Trudeau at the media reception — allyship at the highest level
The bid: Montreal deserved WorldPride. I stand by that. Sydney won. C’est la vie.
The silver lining: Alan came to Melbourne. Some things work out exactly as they should.
The emotion: That silence. Those thousands of people. All of us, together, remembering. Nothing has come close.

The World Traveller Series is published in Q Magazine and on Ask Brett at bretthayhoe.me, where each entry is also available as a podcast episode. Entry No. 10 — Toronto — is available now.