“You can't move forward unless people are moving forward together.” Nanaimo celebrates tenth annual Pride Parade

It was a double anniversary for the society as along with celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Pride Parade, the Nanaimo Pride Society celebrated its 30th anniversary. (Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7FM)

Over the weekend thousands of people came out to celebrate the tenth annual Pride Parade in Nanaimo.

The parade run by the Nanaimo Pride Society featured community groups, local businesses, and elected officials. Over 70 different floats were in the parade that marched around the downtown area to Maffeo Sutton Park where the Pride Festival was taking place.

It was a double anniversary for the society as along with celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Pride Parade, the Nanaimo Pride Society celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Lauren Semple, current president of the society spoke to CHLY ahead of the parade.

“I got involved in 2015,” Semple said. “It was Rick Meyers, past president, who took over the presidency at that time from the late and great John Lee, and he was the one who actually got me involved.”

Semple had been helping organize the parade since it began in 2016. But before the Nanaimo Pride Parade Semple remembers attending their first Pride Parade in Vancouver only three years earlier.

“I did not have an easy coming out experience, so I wasn't very connected to the community,” they said. “I didn't have a lot of what we call ‘bridges into these community spaces.’ So for me my first Pride parade was actually the Vancouver Pride Parade.”

They said attending their first parade in Vancouver was a life changing moment for them.

Lauren Semple (left) and Rick Meyers (right) help open the Nanaimo Pride Parade for 2026 (Lauryn Mackenzie / CHLY 101.7FM)

“I just was just in this process of figuring out myself and my own identity and kind of my own queerness and where I fit and how that felt,” she said. “Then to show up and I mean Vancouver Pride, it was just this massive parade, just being able to see community members living so authentically and so visibly as their out and proud selves, and just seeing all of these different identities and diversity within the community on display was absolutely incredible.”

She said attending the Vancouver Pride Parade showed her the importance of pride societies and Pride celebrations, inspiring her to join the Nanaimo Pride Society.

“I hoped that if we could create an event that made community members feel even a fraction of what I felt going to Vancouver Pride in 2013 if I could create a space and be a part of that, the group of people pushing that forward,” she said. “I just thought that was a really special gift.”

They said putting on that first Pride Parade in Nanaimo felt like a gift they were building with the community, for the community.

“It took a lot of people, so it was very daunting, but it was a very, very exciting time,” they said. “We just knocked on the doors of local businesses and organizations and community leaders, and just said, ‘Hey, this is what we want to do, will you support us?’ And the amount of yeses we got, the amount of people that came on board, it was really heartening.”

Now as president, Semple said the society continues to work hard on making sure they acknowledge the intersections within their community and host events year round that work for all diverse groups.

“From families to sober folks, to adults, kids, youth, making sure we got indoor or outdoor events, loud, quiet events,” Semple said. “It's just about acknowledging just how diverse and big the community is, and really opening up the Nanaimo Pride Society to make space for all. It's one of the reasons why we've been focusing so much on accessibility and increasing the ways that people can experience and access our festivals.”

She said she is proud to have made spaces and events where the community can feel safe and welcomed, just like she did for the first time at the Vancouver Pride Parade.

“Just being able to help create those opportunities for connection and those safer spaces for authentically living and expressing and being oneself,” they said. “We know how much in community that that means to mental health, and that means to our overall well-being, how safe and welcome we feel in our own communities, it's very important to be a part of that.”

Rick Meyers was president of the Nanaimo Pride Society when they kicked off the first ever Nanaimo Pride Parade in 2016. Started in 1996 as the Vancouver Island Rainbow Association, the group later rebranded to the Nanaimo Pride Society in 2015. Meyers said his inspiration to step up to the role of president came following the last ever phone call he had with long time friend and founder of the Rainbow Association, John Lee.

“The night before he passed, he called me and told me it was time that I stepped up and started doing something for the community with the platform that I had. I didn't think much of it. We were both drinking wine, it was late at night, that's the way our conversations went,” Meyers said. “Then that was unfortunately the last time I ever spoke with John Lee, and I took his words to heart, and decided to step up and continue his work, and we started [the Nanaimo Pride Society].”

From there Meyers, along with volunteers, board members, and community groups, put on the first official Pride Parade and festival in the city under the Nanaimo Pride Society banner. He told CHLY about the stressful yet exciting planning of the first parade and festival.

“You can't Google how to throw a parade together, so you had to sort of look at other people that are doing parades, how they were doing it,” he said. “As soon as we said we wanted to have a parade and a festival–wanted all these things–volunteers came out of the woodwork. Everybody wanted to see Nanaimo Pride go.”

While a buzz carried throughout the community awaiting the first parade on June 13, 2016, on the morning of the first ever Pride Parade in Nanaimo, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community woke to a tragedy. On the evening of June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire at Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando, Florida. Forty-nine people were killed with many more injured. Meyers remembered that morning.

“We got up in the morning, and the televisions and the radios were all talking about what happened in Florida, and we had to drive and go to the assembly area for the parade, knowing that,” he said.

But following the news, the society knew the parade had to go on.

“I was kind of freaked out about that, but to walk down the streets of Nanaimo, where I was once scared to walk down to see all these people waving their flags and smiling and cheering and clapping was a pretty amazing feeling,” he said.

Now a decade later, Meyers said the need for community is just as important as it was ten years ago.

“It's about bringing everyone together. One of the things I've noticed over the years that’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, and I don't think queer and trans people are anywhere without them, is the allies,” he said. “The allies just seem to keep growing, people keep coming out and supporting.”