The co-chair of Pride Toronto has resigned following a no-confidence vote at the organization’s annual general meeting on Tuesday.
Co-chair Erin Edghill confirmed the resignation to CP24.com on Wednesday morning.
"I have spent the last 14 months doing my best to serve my community and this membership," Edghill wrote in a statement to Pride Toronto's membership on Tuesday night.
"To whoever comes next on this board, I hope you are able to do the work I was not able to finish, that Pride can move forward in ways that prioritize those among us most disadvantaged and marginalized, and to the membership, please continue to hold Pride Toronto accountable."
Speaking to CP24 on Tuesday night, Beverly Bain, a member of the No Pride in Policing Coalition, said many people at the meeting on Tuesday night were upset with the executive director and other members of the board over their position on police involvement in the Pride Parade.
She said members of her coalition were there to make sure that the decision to exclude police from the parade was not overturned.
After a two-year ban, the board of directors for Pride Toronto recommended last year that uniformed officers be allowed to march in this year’s parade but the membership rejected the recommendation in a 163-161 vote earlier this month.
“I’m here as well as the rest of us are here to reaffirm our non-confidence in the executive director of Pride and also numerous members of the board for undermining and for insisting that the vote that already took place in 2016, 2017 twice, to not have police in Pride had to be done all over again,” Bain said.
“What we have seen is that people have again voted no and we are here to ensure that that stands.”
The relationship between the LGBTQ community and police has become increasingly strained over the last few years in part due to the Bruce McArthur investigation and the police service’s handling of a number of missing persons cases.
The annual general meeting was held on the same day McArthur pleaded guilty to eight counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of several men with ties to the LGBTQ community.
“People in our community knew that men of colour were disappearing. Their friends tried to do things about it. The police shut them down saying there was no serial murderer,” Gary Kinsman, another member of the No Pride in Policing Coalition, said Tuesday. “The police are not welcome in pride.”
The ban has prompted strong responses from the head of the Toronto police union and Mayor John Tory.
“I hope that the pride board and the pride membership will continue to examine this issue in the very short term and I mean weeks; not months or years,” Tory told reporters following news that uniformed officers would again be excluded from the parade.
“I think we have to keep working at this. I am not prepared to accept this decision as being a decision that we should just accept. We have to keep working and keep demonstrating good faith on all sides.”
