Celebrating lives lost to HIV/AIDS (6 photos)

Sault Pridefest 2019 wrapped up a week of celebration by honouring those who have lost their lives as the result of HIV and AIDS with a candlelight vigil at Bellevue Park Sunday night. 

“I believe these were the people who laid the ground for us nowadays - I mean, we’ve come a long way with being accepted into the greater community, not only of Sault Ste. Marie, but Canada as a whole,” said David Cartner, who has been organizing the Pridefest vigil for three years now. “We’re very fortunate to live here, and I think that the people that went before us, they fought long and hard for us to be here, and it’s important for us to honour those people that went before us.”

“Plus I think it’s a very healing situation here when a group of people come together to honour not only people that died of HIV and AIDS through the epidemic, but we’ve had some amazing people within our community that have recently passed away. We want to honour them too.” 

Cartner says the event is intended to celebrate, and not to mourn. 

“It used to be called the AIDS vigil, but as within other cities like Toronto, they’ve moved past that, the stigma of that name, and decided that we should be celebrating the lives as opposed to mourning the lives,” he said. 

The vigil takes on much personal meaning for Cartner, who knew a lot of people from working the bars in Toronto who have died from HIV/AIDS. 

“My list of friends and people that I have known is in the hundreds,” said Cartner. “So these celebrations of life are also a remembrance, and lets us honour those people.”

“In the early ‘80s, a lot of these people - a lot of these young men - were dropped off on doorsteps of hospitals and hospices, and family just left them there,” said Cartner. “We became their family, so this is a way for us to celebrate our family.”