Long Blog 4 — Thunder Pride

4 min readApr 13, 2021

The city of Thunder Bay has continuously been active in promoting modern ideas and implicating them throughout the city. This being said, the city has also run into some issues over the years. Primarily, the most evident issue is Thunder Bay’s involvement and incorporation of the LGBTQ+ community. The most active group in the city promoting the queer community is “Thunder Pride”. This group promotes and shares important concepts and issues within the LGBTQ+ community. Recently, they convinced the city to promote their ideals and the city painted a crosswalk with the colours of the LGBTQ+ flag. However, the city had a poor execution of the “Thunder Pride” vision and the queer community is extremely dissatisfied with their work. The issue behind the execution of the crosswalk is important to this community and me because as a member of this community I wish to see this community represented with the same care that other communities receive. The issue people feel behind this speculation is the idea that there was less time and effort put into this project which can have many implications towards how the city views this community. “Thunder Pride” made sure their voices were heard and were able to convince the city to fix their mistakes. However, there was another crosswalk painted with the colour representations for the transgender people within the city’s LGBTQ+ community. Where the original crosswalk was fixed, the transgender one was not. Which again, has many implications as to the city’s opinions towards this community. An example for the way people feel, from an article about the issue it explains many of the feelings emitted by this issue. An example is through the quote, “LGBT community member Tracy Pollard said while she was ecstatic that the initiative happened, the result left her trans and non-binary friends feeling like an afterthought.” (Thunder Bay LGBT community disappointed by trans crosswalk, insists on repairs). This is an easily solvable issue if the city were to provide more effort and care into the queer community in the city. If the city were to listen closely to what this community is asking then all these issues would be resolved. The outcomes of the crosswalks were nowhere near the original plans and the queer community feels disrespected and disappointed. It was such a small factor to implicate within the city that would have made such a huge impact on the LGBTQ+ community making a more inclusive city and because of poor workmanship, it is now a topic of frustration and feud. Although the city’s government is the spawn of issues within the community, local stores and restaurants are not afraid to show their pride. However, the city is moving forward and working towards resolutions because they do understand the importance. The question remains as to whether they care because of the repercussions from their actions or if they truly understand the importance of the stand the queer community is taking. I do believe that our city is motivated enough to focus on inclusivity and I strongly believe and hope they can resolve this issue because it is so important to me that I live in a city that is aware of the LGBTQ+ community and not only supports them but welcomes them. Also feel free to check out the “Thunder Pride” Facebook page for all the recent information on this issue as well as their continuous support for the queer community! Thunder Pride | Facebook