By John Corrado
The 2025 Hot Docs Film Festival runs from April 24th to May 4th in Toronto
Director Noam Gonick’s documentary Parade: Queer Acts of Love & Resistance, which opens this year’s Hot Docs Film Festival, looks at the history of gay rights in Canada, and the origins of our country’s first Pride Parades as a protest.
Gonick opens his film with Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s famous statement about the government having no right in the bedrooms of the nation, preceding the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969. It was a landmark event, but Gonick is interested in exploring a lot of what came after (some of this material was covered in the documentary Sex, Sin & 69, which focused specifically on the 1969 legislation).
The film looks at the early Gay Liberation Movement, including the We Demand Rally that took place in Ottawa in 1971. From here, Parade takes us through infamous events such Toronto’s bathhouse raids, and protests in response to how the government was handling the AIDS epidemic. The film finally touches on the BLM activists who controversially shut down Toronto Pride in 2016 to protest the presence of uniformed police (a decision still highly debated about, since others view police being allowed to march as progress).
The most insightful and engaging parts of the film are the perspectives of older activists who talk about what it was like growing up gay in Canada while homosexuality was still being criminalized, leading to arrest or hospitalization in a mental institution. Among the subjects is Svend Robinson, the first openly gay Member of Parliament in Canada, who talks about his office being vandalized after coming out in 1988. The documentary is backed up by a wealth of important archival footage, and a driving score by composer Ken Myhr. It’s a worthwhile and well-assembled historical document.
Film Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)
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