#PrideMonthInterview with UR Pride’s Executive Director Ariana Giroux

For Pride month REM caught up with Ariana Giroux, the Executive Director of UR Pride. UR Pride was established in 1996 and has grown to support the community through an anti-oppressive framework in equality, fairness, social equity, respect, and social acceptance regardless of social circumstances. They have created safe spaces for many of Regina’s residences and in our conversation with Giroux she expanded on her story and how UR Pride creates these special safe spaces.

What is your story?

I was born and raised here in Regina, went to school here, graduated from high school here, etc. Right after high school, I went to Halifax for an audio engineering degree, which is actually my educational background: the soundboard, making the music happen, live shows, and music for films. Somehow here I am doing nonprofit work. I went to Nova Scotia for a couple of years and Halifax was the first place where I was able to explore my sexuality in a free way, away from family, and away from people in my life at that time. After school, I moved back to Regina because when I left, Regina had this thriving successful music and audio industry. We had tons of movies work happening here, we had CBC studio with 50 engineers, then I came back and within 6 months CBC Studio went from like 50 people to 6 people. It was the wrong time to move to Saskatchewan for audio work, so when I moved back to Regina I ended up not landing in the audio industry, but I ended up taking that as an opportunity to focus on myself, my identity, and my music and work from there. Over the next couple of years, I started to get more and more involved in both local and online activism. I do open-source software development, so I was doing stuff there as well as working to really try to organize things socially for the trans community online. I was very chronically online at the time, so a couple of years of that, as well as starting to get involved in an organization here in the city called Crash Bang Labs. It was an organization in the city that was the first and premier maker space and I think, to this day, the only privately operated maker space. We were a nonprofit organization and community-run. We were early enough in maker spaces that we were part of the research for the first free printer which was really cool. As part of that project, they sent something out saying “Hey, help us prove that this is possible, and it’s easy to do. Here is all of the schematics, make a 3-D printer”, and we still have that 3-D printer in the storage locker. I worked with Crash Bang Labs for about 6 years, I was everything from the president to secretary, to member. We did a lot of fun work there and we started to get involved in the right to privacy and the right to repair through that organization. This gave me the connections locally to start being involved a little more locally, so somewhere in that time I started getting involved with queer stuff here in the city. I started bartending at Q Nightclub and Lounge,  I bartended there for about 5 years, bartended, did the door, made events, djing, you name it! I had a lot of fun there. I joined Queen City Pride, I was on the Pride board for a number of years and that was really eye-opening. I have a passion for not only making queer people feel like they have a space to be in and that they can be themselves and safe in the space, but also I have a passion for trying to make the world a little bit better. I think in a bio that I used recently I said, “I have a passion for making the world a little bit less spiky for everyone”. That’s how I found myself here. A lifetime of stumbling about, and randomly talking to queer people in the community. I would start DJing for drag shows because I was bored and had the skills, then all of a sudden I am being knighted the “Devine Diva of the DJ” and I always like to say, I am some schmuck and I don't know how I managed to get here, but here I am.  

What led you to be involved with UR Pride?

Through my queer work in the city, in a number of different facets, one of the things I started to see is that UR Pride for a long time was a basin of trans safety and trans visibility. They were one of the only organizations in the city trying to do something about BIPOC inclusion and reconciliation. They were stepping up and really doing the hard work. I ended up working a lot with UR Pride through my work with Queen City Pride and the Q, and I got to know those folks really well. I’ve done lots of work for UR Pride in the past with programs or whatever. I left Queen City Pride and Q Nightclub at the same time in about 2019. I was attacked for being trans in the street, and I just wasn’t feeling up to it after years of fighting for rights, being publicly and visibly trans, and using that as a platform for activism. I couldn’t do it anymore, so I retreated into myself, then the pandemic hit. It was perfect timing to have some time to sit and reflect. Throughout the pandemic, UR Pride’s previous Executive Director left the organization and someone told me to apply for the Executive Director position, and I said no, I don’t want to do queer activism, then one day I decided to throw in my name for a different position and I got into the interview and I got into the staff force and knew every name I was working with. Before long I ended up in the Executive Director Position. It feels like a natural progression with myself and UR Pride, to go from always wanting to support this organization that is fighting for justice for all to slowly making my way onto that side of the community. I went from doing bartending, DJing, and social events to the political action and social justice part, and it feels very natural to me.

What do you find most important that UR Pride is doing for the community?

Were in the middle of a transition right now, until recently we had a space downtown called SPACE which was the brick-and-mortar, dry, sober space. We had harm-reduction materials and you name it. It was a space where people would come and not have to be around alcohol or intoxicants. Which is a big call for the community, for me, I am an ex-alcoholic. I struggle with intoxication and a lot of folks in the community struggle with substance abuse so having that space for folks was huge. SPACE unfortunately has recently closed, now I think the thing that is really most impactful is the youth group work that we're doing. I’ve always said when people ask me “Why are you an activist?” and I always say “I need to see a world that 16-year-old Ari needed to see”. I need to see a world where the young woman who was literally afraid for her life if I came out, if I came out in Regina I don’t think I would be alive, I don't think I would be here today. Things have changed drastically since I came out. I want to make a world that little young me can exist in and believe in herself.  Seeing these 16-year-old kids or 13-year-old kids learning about themselves and being able to figure out that “maybe I’m pan” or whatever. Having a space where we can talk about it and the youth come in and one might be part of the furry community or one might be disabled have support and have friends that know who they are is so amazing. Just creating that space where people who are struggling the way I was struggling can find some respite from it. I would love to talk about all the amazing political work, and all the amazing education work, we have so many mental health things we help out with, but realistically UR Pride at its core is having that space because I know that it heals people, previous generations and future kids that are going to use it. Knowing that the space is available and you can show up at any time and have a good time. It warms my heart.

Programs and Initiatives:

One of the things I love about UR Pride is we are trying to serve the community as a whole and widescale as possible. Not only do we have youth programming, but we have a lot of support spaces and support groups. We have our resilience support group, and we're looking to bring back Sprout, which is a trans youth and trans minors support group, and that should be back sometime this summer. We also have but is on temporary hiatus is queer addiction group which is harm reduction in nature, you can come in and share your experiences about hate and sometimes it sucks but nobody there is going to tell you you're a bad person because you use, which is something that I think is helpful and people need. One of our biggest sections of the organization is education and outreach folk, so we do regular workshops with any organization in Saskatchewan that is interested in learning to create a space that is safe for queer folk and how to run an organization through an intersectional lens, through an informative justice lens. We do training with the city, we do training with the government, so we do it with anybody. When you asked about what’s the most important part of this work, its hard to answer because yes the programming, but also the education may be the thing we do that affects the most lives on a large scale. We do work that helps the world be more inclusive for queer folk, we do work that is making organizations be more open, and for example why it's important to have gender-neutral washrooms. We also have our 55+ club that runs a queer community garden on campus and they do a lot of work with peer support, and queer seniors. There is a lot of research that shows that queer seniors are very isolated and have little to no ability to find people within the community or spend time with people in the community. We also do political outreach and policy work, we work with groups all over Saskatchewan. We run a queer summer camp called Camp Firefly, unfortunately, Firefly 2023 isn’t happening this year. We also help organize a summit for GSA’s and the QSA’s across Saskatchewan every year, which is one of my favourite days in the year, it’s just a blast. We touch so many parts of the community in an attempt to make sure there is something for most people in the community. The only real programming gap that we have is for people aged 30-55. Folks my age, we don’t really do anything, but folks my age are also the most privileged and we have our own stuff going on in the community, but we will figure that out in a bit of time.

What has been the most inspiring moment you’ve seen in the community with UR Pride?

Camp FireFly, the youth camp that we run has a tradition of what we call happy boxes, so throughout the week everyone is supposed to go write little messages and put them in a happy box so 6 months from now you can open it up and get the warm fuzzy because here are these amazing people I met at camp, showing that people care, love you and you have a purpose in this world. Opening that up was amazing, my first time at camp I was mainly making sure people had resources when they needed them, logistics stuff, and hiding in the corner typing away on my computer to make sure stuff happened. That’s all I was doing, I wasn’t really interacting with folks. When I opened up my happy box, the number of messages from youth that were all talking about thank you for camp and making it happen and whatnot was really heartwarming. The one message that I got said “I’m disabled, I’m neurodivergent, I’m trans” etc., and this message was a heartwarming letter thanking me for being an example of strength and positivity. Knowing that by just existing, and me being there that there was someone who saw that they could exist in this world. There was someone who saw that there was actually a bright future ahead of them. That makes me cry, on a regular basis. In 2023 there are over 450 anti-trans bills, Florida is now a place that if I travel to I may never leave, I may be held criminally. Kids have to deal with that. Imagine having to know that at 14 or 15 [years old] that there are places you cannot go because you simply exist. Knowing that a kid who knows all of that and is working through it was able to say “No, it doesn’t matter, I can exist, and I can have a happy, fulfilling life. I can go out there and change the world and I don’t need to be anybody, I just need to show up”.

What do you want Regina to know about UR Pride?

It’s an interesting question in the context of SPACE just closing. That was the downtown location. Number one, I want the city to know that we're still here and were still doing amazing work. We haven’t lost any of our programs or services, and were looking to come back with bigger and better things come September, Stay tuned! Given the world we live in, where there are all these anti-trans bills, where the premier of New Brunswick was recently quoted saying how drag bans should be implemented in New Brunswick. We’ve got people calling for drag bans here. The Greater Saskatchewan Catholic School System released that the teachers aren’t allowed to send the kids to a tent. The release about The Rainbow Tent at the children's festival was based on a description, they didn’t even do the research, but the description of the event was “Drag Queen Story Time”. The Catholic School System telling kids that there not allowed to go to these events is rank trans misogyny and rank drag queen phobia. If I could have a megaphone and shout at city hall for a month, what I would shout about is paying attention and standing up to form concrete allyship now, whether that is standing up for your friend that is being misgendered or the city creating queer specific funding streams, or new policy or whatever, because we need it more than ever. We will not make it through this tide of queerphobia unscathed unless we have our city around us supporting us. We are here. Members of the queer community are undeniably a part of every single aspect of Regina, and you need to show that we matter.

What is the biggest barrier facing queer people in Regina?

Access to mental health care and physical health care. We were running a Monarch Mental Health outfit, and unfortunately, it had to go on hiatus back at the end of 2021. I was a service user before I joined UR Pride, and I think that is the biggest barrier here in Regina and Saskatchewan. I am a conversion therapy survivor, and I had a conversation with a member of the NDP, we were talking about how we need governmental support for these healthcare issues, we queer folk can’t do it on our own, we need governmental support. I chatted about needing competent care and support. There are queer-specific issues like the trauma of conversion therapy, and finding support to cope is very difficult. We know that mental health problems for the queer community are different from the mental health problems of the nonqueer community. Like how do you work with a trans femme who worries about using the bathroom without being put in harm's way, without having that shared experience or understanding that experience? The fact is that we don’t have that. There are maybe two or three mental health places in Regina that are specifically targeted toward the queer community, which is shocking. We don’t have enough. Those are also quite expensive, they’re not free. Along with mental health care is physical health care, especially for trans folks. For access to gender-affirming care, there is only a couple of doctors in the city who are really competent and it’s not because they are some kind of specialist, it’s because they started taking on clients and learning and figured out how to provide basic health care because things like HRT or surgery recovery are basic health care. Because they did the work and learned now they are considered specialists, but they're not, they are regular family practitioners who went out of their way to learn the importance of this on their own. The government needs to start supporting that and putting out money for trans initiatives. We have the trans health navigators in Saskatchewan which is a project where they train doctors and help trans people get access to health care and advocate for trans people, and they’re privately funded. The government doesn’t want to fund them, even though they are a critical piece of medical infrastructure in the trans community. When I need to see my doctor it takes me three months, and when I tell CIS folks about that they are usually shocked because it takes them a week to see their doctor. There are just too many trans people going to too few doctors, and it's shocking.

What is the future of UR Pride?

Our priority right now is bringing back Monarch Mental Health, it’s our short and medium-term goal. It is to be able to provide that service again, and my long-term goal for the organization is to be able to help address the queer houselessness problem in Saskatchewan. Saskatoon has Pride Home, which is one of less than ten queer-specific housing initiatives in Canada. That’s my long-term goal, if you ask me where we’ll be in ten years, we are going to be able to have housing alleviation for queer folk.

What are the long-term consequences if we ignore the voices of the 2SLGBTQ+ community?

We are already seeing it in the States. The denial of queer rights which are in many ways the right to bodily autonomy, the right to privacy, and the right to congregation. Ignoring queer people’s fight for those rights and equity in the long term is going to see a world where people don’t have privacy, people don’t have autonomy over their own bodies, and where people aren’t able to make decisions for what’s right for them. We are already seeing it, the fall of Roe V Wade was not just an anti-abortion move, it was also an anti-queer move, an anti-black move, an anti-disabled move, so many things were based on Roe V Wade. At the end of the day when you silence queer voices, when you silence equity-seeking voices, it comes down to everyone losing their rights. We're not fighting for special rights, the right to transition isn’t something special, it is the right to choose what I do with my own body. I have the right to choose to put a spike through my lip if I want, why can’t I choose to get a trans flag tattoo, or to take HRT, those are my choices and my body. So if I lose my bodily autonomy, do you lose it too? Everyone loses their rights and safety when queer voices are silenced, and in the long term if we continue to see this privileged ignorance we’re never going to see a world where kids are able to go to school and just have fun and learn. Queer kids are going to exist, I’m queer and I was queer when I was a kid. They are always going to exist, I would rather see a world where that kid is able to show up to school and learn and be a human than worry about going to school and if they will survive the day.

Anything you want to add?

Get involved! Show up to the protests, show up for your friends, be an active ally, and support your friends.

UR Pride walking in 2023 Regina Pride Parade