Family Day will include an event in Centretown to celebrate GLBTQ families.
The First Annual Rainbow Family Day is being organized to give diverse families a safe space to celebrate the provincial holiday on Feb. 21.
“The most important aspect is . . . to create a safe space so people can come and celebrate family diversity and family day regardless of how their families are composed," says Rainbow Family Day Community Association events co-ordinator, Morris Rothman. He began organizing it in December.
“I’m not trying to define what constitutes a loving family. I'm just giving people the opportunity to come and celebrate."
“Whenever a community is marginalized (and) there’s an opportunity to create safe spaces where there is automatic respect and acceptance of diversity, those opportunities are so powerful and . . . empowering,” says Cherie MacLeod, executive director of PFLAG Canada, a national organization that creates programming to educate people in issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The organization is sponsoring the event.
“It’s an opportunity for people who are struggling to understand LGBT diversity. To see our community . . . is just like everyone else,” adds MacLeod, who says the event is for people who want to celebrate diversity but it’s also a chance for people who are “questioning” to see there is a place to belong and for the allies of diverse families to get involved.
The event, which will be held at the Jack Purcell Community Centre, is expected to include live entertainment from local performers, an exhibit from the Pride Committee of Ottawa and a community fair. The entire facility is rented for the day, including the skating rink and swimming pool.
There will also be access to the dog park behind the centre.
Rainbow Family Day began as an idea of Rothman's when he recognized a need for family-oriented events in the GLBTQ community. The idea later developed through community involvement.
"They say it takes a village to raise a child, well it takes a community to take an idea from birth to maturity. It's because of the people in the community that this whole thing is happening in the first place," says Rothman, who has volunteered and organized events in the GLBTQ community in the past.
"It's become something greater than I imagined it. As a result of community participation . . . it's sort of morphed into something much larger."
The event is free, relying on a mix of volunteers and donations to pay for the facility. Any leftover funds will be used to create a permanent association to plan Rainbow Family Day every year.
Sponsorships from organizations such as PFLAG Canada, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s National Capital Region Council have helped to fund the event.
“(It’s) a great sounding event and we were immediately interested,” says Claudia Van den Heuvel, executive director of Pink Triangle Services.
Rothman approached the organization in January to sponsor the event, and Van den Heuvel says PTS will help with promotion and will provide volunteers for activities such as a youth lounge.
“I think it's an important way to recognize that there are families within the queer community,” she says.
“I thought it was a wonderful initiative, something that’s long overdue,” says MacLeod, whose organization at the national level doesn’t usually involve itself in community events.
The national office creates programming across Canada, while local chapters handle community events.
“(Nationally) we had to be part of that because this is something that we felt other communities really needed to think about doing. We felt it was an idea that would grow and spread across Canada.”
Rothman says he hopes it does inspire other GLBTQ family-oriented events.
“If it’s really successful, that will probably address the need for more events (like this) in the future,” adds Van den Heuvel.
“It’s kind of interesting to be a part of creating something that’s never existed before,” observes Rothman.