Stratford Winter Pride returning with more than a week of exciting events

Stratford and area residents, as well as allies and members of LGBTQ2+ communities from across the region, will have plenty of reasons to spend time in the Festival City this winter as Stratford Winter Pride gears up for its fourth year.

Started in 2021 with just three small events in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to bring locals together to celebrate Pride in the middle of winter, Stratford Winter Pride has evolved and grown over the years to become the much-anticipated off-season series of events it is today.

“In 2021, when some friends and I put together the Stratford Pride Community Centre, which has now amalgamated with another organization, one of the things I wanted to do was winter Pride because a lot of research and interviews had been done back around 2020 about what it was like to live in Stratford as a member of the LGBT community,” said organizer Bruce Duncan Skeaff. “One of the things a lot of the people were saying to the interviewers was it’s terrific we’ve got a march in June and some other activities in June, but after that, then what?

“They were saying June is an opportunity for people to come together, but after that everybody goes back into social isolation. If you live in Rostock or Milverton or in any of these small places around here, it’s really difficult to meet other people. … The first year (in winter 2022) was small as we were just waiting for the end of lockdowns to come.”

In the following year, February of 2023, Stratford Winter Pride returned with a flashy cabaret show and a dinner at the Tom Patterson Theatre among other events, and it has just gotten bigger and more exciting since then.

This year, Stratford Winter Pride runs from Jan. 31 to Feb. 9, 2025. Winter Pride begins with an Opening Night Cocktail party with Stratford Mayor Martin Ritsma and other local dignitaries in attendance, and includes other events like a Drag Queen Storytime, the Rainbow Dinner and Dance, Drag Brunch featuring the Queens of TroyBoy Entertainment, a comedy night and an evening with the Stratford Festival called “What’s Queer This Year?” among many other exciting events.

One of the big-ticket events included in this year’s Stratford Winter Pride lineup is a 25th-anniversary staged reading of The Laramie Project, a play about the horrific 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, and the community’s response to the hate crime.

“Matthew Shepard … was beaten to death and left to die tied to a farm fence just outside of Laramie, Wyo. 27 or so years ago,” Skeaff said. “A theatre company wanted to do a play about it, so they went back to Laramie a couple years after the actual murder and did hundreds of interviews with townspeople about how this affected their town. This is a play that has been done in an interview style.

“ … It’s the first time we’ve ever done live theatre as part of Stratford Winter Pride. It’s marking an important date, particularly in Stratford considering the fairly broad gay population here and all the visitors who come here during the Stratford Festival. … The murder was an event that shocked not just Laramie, not just the United States, but the whole world with its brutality.”

While Skeaff said Stratford Winter Pride is mostly about celebrating Pride and bringing people together with other members of the community, it’s also important to remember acts of hatred and violence are still perpetrated against members of the LGBTQ2+ community around the world and close to home, and there is still much work to be done before people can feel safe in their own towns and cities.

Stratford Winter Pride this year also includes LGBTQ2+ displays in local bookstores from Feb. 1-9, Pride weddings and the opportunity to purchase Winter Pride t-shirts and hoodies. For those coming in from out of town, there are also deals at local accommodations businesses and ONEX bus discounts for ticketholders.

Now is the best time to purchase tickets to Stratford Winter Pride events. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit stratfordwinterpride.com.