Gay Pride 2006: Toronto

It was a perfect day on Sunday for Toronto Pride, which, with an estimated 1.2 million attendees, was the largest Pride celebration in Canada and one of the largest in North America. The parade down Yonge St. had a nice mix of colorful queens, community groups, shirtless guys of all shapes and sizes, and lots of house and dance hall beats. And let’s not forget the Super Soakers. We managed to protect our camera from the water gun toters long enough to snap some photos of the parade, which you can check out after the jump.

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We also wandered around the festival along Church St. (the Toronto Gay Village) and saw some interesting characters, including some gay mounties. We’re sorry we missed the Dyke Parade on Saturday, but we were still nursing a hangover from Friday night. If anybody has photos, please send them in!

Our day ended at Big Primpin‘s “Get Busted” party at the Courthouse, where we danced away every last drop of energy that hadn’t been sapped by sun, beer gardens, and crazy queens.

Hundreds of thousands turn out for Toronto’s Pride Parade [CBC]

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We loved these two ladies, one of which was representing our favorite nude beach in Toronto, Hanlon’s Point.

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This was our favorite float in the parade. Built by the folks at Buddies, it was a giant sparkly banana that shot confetti out the tip. Classy!

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We aren’t quite sure who the elderly gentlemen in the carriage are, but they seemed to be enjoying the ride.

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Potheads crop up everywhere trying to get their point across, and at Pride they did it by pasting little jewels on their breasts. We thought some of them looked like lesbians, or maybe bisexuals.

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Toronto Mayor David Miller getting all wet from the water guns and still having fun.

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This was our favorite moment of the whole day: a big beefy fireman making out with his boyfriend on top of the fire truck. An instant classic.

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The Green Party of Canada got fancy with their float this year and had lithe, young drag woodland fairies dancing on a leafy platform. It reminded us of that movie Ferngully.

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These were two guys dressed up as Mounties, one of which was wearing a costume made out of felt. These aren’t the two you’ve read about, but we suspect the guy in the authentic uniform was a real Mounty and his husband wanted to dress up, too.

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One of the corporate-sponsored floats that we decided to include just for the sheer flexibility of that dancer. We were impressed.

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This queen was really working the crowd and we loved every minute of it.

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Yikes. This guy was amazing.

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What’s better than a tall, sexy man with a blonde afro wig? An even taller sexy man with a blonde afro wig.

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Please don’t yell at us for giving free advertising to Trojan. We just really liked this little puppy. A lot.

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We are reminded of a recent Olay commercial that never made sense to us until now: ribbons really do make everything beautiful!

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I couldn’t resist.

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