Celebrate life with Sault Pride on July 22

NEWS RELEASE
SAULT PRIDE
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Nearly four decades ago, a different kind of war started when AIDS hit the world.

No one knew what it was, how it was spread, or how to fight it. Only that it had a nearly 100 per cent mortality rate, and the death toll rose steadily.

It touched us here in Sault Ste Marie along with communities around the world.

The LGBT community was hit especially hard, and is all too often scapegoated for it’s spread.

As doctors, scientists, and activists worked to find a cause, a preventative treatment, or even just isolate the virus and develop a test, we lost a lot of our friends and neighbours along the way.

In response, yearly AIDS vigils were held the world round to honour the fallen.

This year, during our 5th annual Pridefest, Sault Pride is choosing to honour our friends a little differently than in the past.

We’re living in a time they only dreamed of seeing. There’s not only a wide variety of testing and an incredible amount of research, but a vast variety of treatments and preventative medications for HIV/AIDS, and those living with the virus enjoy the same life expectancy and quality of life as those without.

That’s worth celebrating. We wouldn’t have come this far if not for those who came before us.

Their lives were not in vain.

This year, while we mourn the fallen, we celebrate how far we’ve come along the path they blazed. We celebrate the legacy they left us and the war they ultimately won.

Join Sault Pride for this year’s Celebration of Life during our 5th annual Pridefest, hosted by HARP and the Sault Pride Committee, to be held at the Bellevue Park south gazebo on the waterfront, Sunday, July 22, at 7 p.m.

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