Pride month, for the LGBTQ+ community and their families and friends, began with Pride marches in the 1970s in major cities across North America.

The event was sparked by 1969 police raids of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, New York. This raid, followed by riots, formed a watershed moment in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement and became the impetus for organizing pride marches on a much larger public scale.

In the US, President Bill Clinton declared June “Gay & Lesbian Pride Month” in 1999, and Pride Week started to be celebrated in Canada in 1973. Here, it became a national LGBT rights event in several Canadian cities, including Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatoon and Winnipeg.

Although Vancouver will hold its annual Pride parade on Aug. 6 this year, June is considered the International Pride Month. To learn more about supporting LGBTQ+ youth, Vol. 11 No. 2 of the Children’s Health Policy Centre Research Quarterly, provides a primer.