THUNDER BAY — Five years ago, the Rainbow flag was nowhere to be seen around Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board schools.
Today, the flag is flying high at Catholic schools in the city, and as a result of efforts made within the school system, students in the 2SLGBTQIA+ community feel a sense off allyship in the hallways, coming from teachers, students and staff.
It’s made a world of difference for many students, including St. Ignatius High School’s Via Kembel, who felt comfortable enough to come out to a teacher, while working up the courage to tell her parents that she was part of the rainbow community.
“(My teacher) really was my first supporter when I did come out,” Kembel said, after watching the Pride flag raised outside the board’s Victoria Street offices on Friday afternoon.
“It wasn’t until recently that I came out to my parents and she had always been the first person that I’d told.”
Not every Catholic board in Ontario is taking the same approach.
The York Catholic School Board voted 6-4 against flying the Pride flag at its schools, leading to students walking out of the classroom in protest.
Kembel said it's refreshing to know her board and its employees are allies.
“I think it is amazing. I’m at a loss for words. Five years ago I would have been in elementary school and this wasn’t happening. I didn’t know about that, but knowing now what I do know, I think it is something we take for granted and we don’t realize how big of a deal this is,” she said.
“You can look on the news and see everywhere everything that happens, but I think seeing this at our own school board sets a precedent for other people and other school boards, especially being a Catholic school board and being able to be comfortable in our schools and with our peers and our teachers.”
Katie Matthews, the mental health leader at the Catholic board and co-chair of its Pride committee, said with community backlash growing in other cities and south of the border, it was important to give students a voice and a place to be part of Friday’s ceremony, but to also ensure teachers and staff to hear directly from students about how important it is to them.
There’s still a long way to go for society as a whole, she added, but her board has made great headway over the past five years.
“I’m so proud to work for the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board, because we have been such a leader in the province on this. It really comes down to recognizing our gospel values, so all of us belong, all of us are created perfectly and all of us deserve respect and dignity,” Matthews said.
“I think that in Thunder Bay, being a smaller city, maybe sometimes it’s easier to create that community around we are everybody’s friends and neighbours and hockey coaches, so it really is difficult to leave us out of any of the conversations.”
Jason Veltri, president of the Rainbow Collective, said the students who spoke on Friday are the future leaders of Thunder Bay and beyond, and the school community has helped lead the way.
“It has come light years from where we were in 2018, when there was no flag being flown,” Veltri said. “Then, when we got involved in 2019, we raised the flag at the board office, and it started this domino effect, this groundswell that students were finally starting to feel comfortable at a Catholic school being gay or lesbian or gender fluid or gender queer. Now we’re here where there are hundreds of students and every school has a progress Pride flag flying for the first year, with the inclusion of trans and racialized communities.”
