From: Jennifer Hanson, thenorthbaybay.ca staff
NORTH BAY — Following the success of a completely volunteer funded effort to paint two Main St. crosswalks, an impressed City Council announced Monday evening that they would be funding the further “rainbowfication” of North Bay to the tune of $1.2 million dollars.
“I see these crosswalks downtown and I think they’re amazing!” said Councillor Vic Tikus Monday evening. “If a small group of volunteers has the incredible courage and determination to not only fund themselves, but to also assemble a team to gain permits and support, then what can we, City Council, do?”
“What that group did was selfless, brave, and inspiring. And I want to continue what they started by using our entire road maintenance budget to paint even more rainbows everywhere.”
“I’m guess that group raised about $300 to paint those two crosswalks. That money might have filled one pothole, so just imagine what we’ll be able to paint with the entire road maintenance budget!”
Still, Tikus did to point out that the entire road maintenance budget was “only $800 000,” but Councillor Grey Terrence was quick to offer up an additional $300 000 to help out.
“I had it earmarked to help Indigenous women and our veterans, but this is much, much more important.”
“I know there’s some people out there who will ask why we can’t do both,” said Terrence. “Why can’t they be mutually exclusive things? Why can’t we help Indigenous women, the LGBTQ community, and our veterans? And my answer is ‘we can’t.’ It’s literally one thing or the other. If we help our vets we can’t help the women, and if we help the women we can’t help anyone LGBTQ.”
“That’s just the way it is.”
Heterosexual Backlash
North Bayites can expect to see almost all of Main St., much of McIntyre, and parts of Worthington in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet within the next month.
But the outpouring of LGBTQI2+ support has ruffled some feathers. A new group called “Heterosexual Pride! (No Gay Stuff)” has popped up on Facebook. The group calls for the removal of the rainbow crosswalks, the organisation of a “Straight Pride Parade,” and the immediate acknowledgement of the “burden of being straight,” along with the horror of never being persecuted in any society, ever.
Spearheading the group are “proud straights” Erin Deplante and Bob Sanders.
The group currently stands at two members.
Why on earth would our city waste 1.million dollars towards our Gay scoioity? I don’t fully agree on wasting money like that we can do better with out the chaos.
and work on our actual needs like fixing our roads instead! Get more involved with the community, better clinics, we need to improve our city just by and talking and taking action the right way.
there are other worlds out there that need actual money to help improve their needs Like building a well adopting a child or even fostering. Let’s do good for our community first! By being kind to one another. And not going overboard with gay pride. I don’t want to sound rude or harsh but I personally think it’s a waste of money.
First off why does anyone want the whole city painted in rainbow, thatd be horrid. Leave it at just the two crossroad(it shows that we accept them enough we dont have to blast it all over town( i thought we were trying to include everyone in the town by doing the rainbow but by the city doing all rainbow is excluding the striaghts in town.
Secondly, your going to use the entire roadmaintenance budget, do you not rmeber that one of our roads was named one of the worst roads in canada. Come on gov your smarter than that use the money for what its meant. Dont go and blow it all on arts and crafts for yourself. We all know itll just end up with us paying more fixing our vehicle and in taxes that youll most likely raise to maintan the roads in which you already had a n alotted maount for but you went and blew on stupidness.
And thirdly, “I had it earmarked to help Indigenous women and our veterans, but this is much, much more important.” is just an idiot thing for anyone to say ecspicially someone in power. It is your job to help everyone out not just one group. As a parent to four children if i had one box of cookies, i couldnt/wouldnt/shouldnt just give it all to one, i would split it evenly so everyone got a fair portion and no one was left out. Ontario really needs smarten up because the way this province is going is scary and horrible.
I see the satire of this article is lost on some commenters. Interesting.
Ahahahaha. Some of you commenters are priceless good ol’ Northern Ontario.
Money being wasted when there are far more important areas where this money could be spent.