To the queer valley community,

We created Valley Pride to help queer people in this part of rural Nova Scotia thrive. For them to feel seen and celebrated. But your safety is equally important to us, as is your right to transparency and self-risk assessment for our events.

That safety was compromised this past weekend. Valley Pride partnered with Cross Country Nova Scotia and the Town of Kentville on a queer community learn to ski event. A social media post promoting the event received multiple harmful comments, and one directly threatening comment that we felt needed to be addressed with local authorities. Through consultation with them and the town, it was agreed that we would cancel the event out of caution.

There are a few things we want to make clear:

We will always put safety first.

We will do our best to remain transparent.

And we will not be pushed back into the shadows.

Going forward, we are working on creating a safety plan for all our events. This will include things like registration for events that are held out in the open in public spaces, sending locations only to registered attendees, and turning off commenting on the Facebook Platform. We recognize that in some cases this may affect accessibility but we will do our best to find balance during this difficult time and look forward to consulting the community. 

We are committed to taking thoughtful actions so that when we are visible, we are also safe. It’s more important than ever that we continue to support one another and take pride in who we are. We will not allow our community to be pushed out of public spaces or silenced by those who wish to cause us harm. 

With love and solidarity,

The Valley Pride Board