Rainbow’s End

By most accounts this year’s gay pride parade in Toronto was a big success as well as a landmark event. It incorporated a host of participants from all over the globe who came to Toronto to attend the WorldPride Human Rights Conference. With something like 12,000 marchers, the parade was much larger than in previous years and went on longer. By its conclusion, as fatigue mingled with euphoria, the sudden and intense downpour of rain breaking the heat of the day came as a blessing. To the many who lingered on the steamy streets of Toronto’s Church Street gay village, the rainbow that materialized in the sky over their heads seemed entirely fitting, a bit of pathetic fallacy eagerly recorded on hundreds of Instagrams. The rainbow, symbol of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered (LGBT) movement made manifest in the heavens, had a rightness to it—especially in a city where, weeks before, a provincial election had returned to power a majority Liberal...