Vancouver & Saskatoon: Chosen Family, a Quiet City, and the End of an Era

The World Traveller Series — Entry No. 9

by Brett Hayhoe

There is a particular kind of friendship that only the Pride movement produces. It happens fast — faster than almost any other kind of friendship — and it runs deep in a way that geography cannot diminish. You meet someone at a conference on the other side of the world, and within forty-eight hours you are finishing each other’s sentences. Within a week you are making plans. Within a year, you have a room.
Not a couch. A room.

That is the story of Alan. I met him at an InterPride AGM and World Conference in Vancouver, and we became something close to best friends almost overnight. It was not long after that meeting that I asked — tentatively, as one does — whether it might be acceptable for me to sleep on his couch during an upcoming trip to New York City. My first trip there, as it happened. His reply was brief: “No.” A pause. Then: “But you can stay in my spare bedroom.” A spare bedroom that would, from that point forward, be referred to simply as your room.

I could write an entire series on Alan and our New York adventures. I probably will. But that is a story for another entry — and another city. For now, we are in Vancouver. And Vancouver deserves our full attention.

VANCOUVER: THE CITY THAT TAKES ITS TIME

Canada is a beautiful country and its people are, without exception, genuinely warm. Canadians have a particular quality of friendliness that does not feel performed — it simply is what it is, offered freely and without agenda. Vancouver embodies this perfectly.

It is a quiet city. Not in a dull sense — never that — but in the sense of a place that is entirely comfortable with itself, unhurried, possessed of a calm confidence that many larger and louder cities would do well to study. Framed by mountains on one side and the Pacific on the other, it is one of the most physically striking cities in the world, and it wears that distinction without any apparent effort.

As always on a first visit to any city, I did the tourist things — all of them. I make no apology for this. The tourist circuit exists for a reason: it gives you the shape of a place, its bones and its landmarks, the context from which everything else is understood. Stanley Park, Granville Island, Gastown, the waterfront. Vancouver laid itself out generously and I accepted every offering. The perspective it gives you is invaluable — and in Vancouver’s case, the view from the tourist trail is spectacular enough to stand entirely on its own merits.

THE GIFT OF THE MOVEMENT

One of the most overwhelming aspects of a life spent involved in the global Pride movement is the friendships it builds. I have said it before in this series and I will say it again, because it bears repeating: there are very few places on earth where I would not have at least one friend and, more often than not, somewhere to stay. That network — built conference by conference, city by city, handshake by handshake over more years than I care to count — is one of the great privileges of my life.

Alan is one of those friends. Vancouver is where it began. New York is where it flourished. But the movement itself is where it was made possible, and that is worth acknowledging.

SASKATOON: THE LAST CONFERENCE

My final InterPride AGM and World Conference was held in Saskatoon. If Vancouver is the polished Pacific gateway, Saskatoon is something altogether different — and all the more interesting for it. Cold in a way that means business. Low on the skyline. Wide, wind-swept streets down which the prairie air moves with a particular insistence that makes you understand, immediately and physically, the nature of the landscape surrounding it.

Walking through Saskatoon, I kept thinking of western films. The proportions of the place, the straightness of the streets, the way the wind comes through unimpeded — it has a cinematic quality that is entirely its own, and entirely unlike anything I had encountered elsewhere in my travels.

The conference itself carried a weight I had not anticipated. There was a sadness in the air — not a heavy or unhappy sadness, but the particular kind that accompanies endings. I was leaving the operational structure of InterPride after many years, and the organisation and its people had long since ceased to be professional colleagues and become something far more than that. A chosen family. That is the only phrase that fits, and it is one I use deliberately: in the Pride movement, chosen family is not a metaphor. It is a lived reality.

The well-wishes of so many of the attendees elevated what could have been a difficult farewell into something more like a celebration — of what had been built, of the people in the room, of the movement that had brought us all together from every corner of the world. I am grateful for every one of those moments.

I did remain on the WorldPride committee for several years after Saskatoon, continuing to contribute in the way I could. And then came an honour I had not expected: an invitation to serve on the Emeritus Council. It is the kind of recognition that stops you in your tracks — a reminder that the work mattered, that the years meant something, that the chosen family you helped build is one that remembers its own.

A NOTE TO READERS

Canada is not finished with this series. Not by a long measure. Toronto and Montreal both deserve entries of their own — and they will get them. Two cities, two very different stories, both essential to understanding this extraordinary country.

Watch this space.

THE SUMMARY

Where: Vancouver, British Columbia & Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
When: Multiple visits across the InterPride AGM and World Conference years
The highlight: Meeting Alan in Vancouver — a friendship that would define a decade of New York adventures (coming soon in a future series)
Vancouver in a word: Unhurried — and all the better for it
Saskatoon in a word: Cinematic — prairie wind, low skyline, western soul
Don’t miss in Vancouver: Stanley Park, Granville Island, the waterfront — do the tourist trail without apology
The emotional truth: The Pride movement does not just build events. It builds families. Chosen, global, irreplaceable ones.

What’s next: Toronto — Entry No. 10 — followed by Montreal

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. 8 — Brussels, Ghent, Amsterdam & Paris — is available now.