Pride Week festivities in Regina kicked off this morning at City Hall with the raising of the Pride Flag.

Lisa Phillipson, co-chair of Queen City Pride, said there are still issues people in the LGBTQ community will place.

“Homelessness is definitely one of them,” she said. “There are still a lot of youth that are out there that are not recognized in their full queerness in their family and supported by them so we end up having a number of youth that end up being homeless.”

She said they do have some programming in place to try to help that but the programming is stretched thin and overworked. Pride has been out in the open in recent years, which hasn’t always been the case according to Phillipson.

“Thirty years ago, that wasn’t the case,” she said. “The first Pride Parade, people had to march with paper bags on their heads or wearing  masks because if their identities were known they might be fired from their jobs or ostracized from their families. And that is not the case.”

There are several in-person events happening, including a parade next Saturday. More events are in person this year than the previous couple of years.

“We are very happy to have everyone back together again,” Phillipson said. “We’re doing a bit of a hybrid still where we’re doing some events online as well as some events in person. The parade will be in person again this year and have no restrictions on numbers  because those have all been lifted.”

For an updated list of events that will be taking place between now and next Sunday, June 12, head to their website.