There’s a group of people in Fernie, Sparwood and Elkford who are working to create the Fernie Pride Society.
“We are not in operation yet, we are working on funding and getting ourselves together as a nonprofit society,” said Sara Funk, who along with others is spearheading the society. “It’s really important that we do this as a society for continuity so that anything we start – none of those balls get dropped.
“We just feel like it’s time for Pride in Fernie and in the Elk Valley. We have these great small towns and we just want them to be a little bit more progressive so that there is better visibility for LBGTQ people living in these towns.”
Funk said that although they are in the beginning stages of creating the society, they have a few really good ideas and they hope to be on the ground running fairly soon.
“We are hoping to do small weekly or monthly events,” she said. “Like queer coffees, so we can have a place for the LGBTQ community to come in and meet on a regular basis and get to know each other for support and inclusiveness.”
Then they are hoping to do some bigger events like the drag show that was put on by Funk and Chantel Vincent, owner of Freyja, earlier this month.
“We want to do big events to bring in allies so the LGBTQ community here in the valley can have the support of all the allies,” said Funk. “Then we want to work on things that are a little bit bigger than that; perhaps we will address gender friendly bathrooms in town or other things like that.”
Anyone that is interested in volunteering or has questions or is just excited to see what they are going to do can send emails to Ferniepride@gmail.com.
