Dyke March 2014 Accessibility Information

ABOUT ALLAN GARDENS

Dyke Day starts off with yoga, sign making, and a rally in Allan Gardens. Allan Gardens is a large park that takes up the block between Jarvis and Sherbourne Streets and Carlton and Gerrard Streets. There is a fenced off-leash dog park, a conservatory, flower gardens, a children’s play area, paved pathways and lots of shade. Allan Gardens is also home to some amazing murals. Click here for a sneak peak and more information!

The nearest accessible subway stations are Dundas and Bloor-Yonge. The closest transit line is the 75 Sherbourne bus that runs south on Sherbourne Street from Sherbourne station (Sherbourne station is not accessible).

PRIDE TORONTO’S ACCESSIBILITY HUB

The Accessibility Services Hub will be located at the northeast corner of Maitland and Church, Friday, June 27 (open 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.), Saturday, June 28 and Sunday, June 29 (open from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.). Our hub is a social and information centre equipped with water, a shaded seating area and an accessible washroom. Visit our hub to access our: wheelchair and walker lending service; American Sign Language (ASL) interpreting service; festival information in alternative formats for those who are blind, partially sighted or print restricted and mobility assistants and/or shade & water for service animals.

SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETING SERVICES — ENGLISH

ASL is confirmed for the Dyke Day Rally in Allan Gardens. Due to the unique nature of our performers, ASL may not be provided for all performers. There will be an “Accessibility Zone” marked off in front of the stage for folks who need to see the interpreters and for those who are using mobility devices. This will be marked with pylons and/or chalk.

ASL interpretation will be available at the Accessibility Services Hub during regular hours of operation, roaming throughout the festival site, and during certain events. Please visit the Accessibility Services Hub for a complete list of ASL-English interpreted events.

MOBILITY DEVICES FOR LOAN

There will be an “Accessibility Tent” in Allan Gardens on Dyke Day hosted by Pride Toronto’s Accessibility Team volunteers. These volunteers will assist or accompany folks who wish to use a wheelchair provided by Pride for the March.

Wheelchairs and walkers will be available for loan on Saturday and Sunday from 10AM – 10PM. To sign out a wheelchair or walker, please bring a piece of photo I.D. such as an LCBO card, Driver’s License or Passport. During peak hours, wheelchair and walker loans will be limited to 2 hours at a time. Please visit the Accessibility Services Hub for more information.

RIDE AN ACCESSIBLE TTC BUS IN THE DYKE MARCH!

The TTC bus will be at Allan Gardens at 1:30 p.m. and will drive folks along the Dyke March route. No registration required! Please feel free to board as needed.

ACTIVE LISTENERS

There will be trained active listeners after the Dyke March in George Hislop Parkette for folks who need support or want to debrief about their March experience.

ACCESSIBLE VIEWING AREAS AND ENTERTAINMENT STANDS

During the Trans and Dyke Marches as well as the WorldPride Parade, raised wheelchair and scooter-accessible viewing stands will be available along the parade route. A street level seating area will also be available for those who are blind or partially sighted at Wood St.

Viewing stands are offered during the marches and parade at the following locations:

TRANS MARCH – Friday, June 27

• Isabella St., east side of Yonge St.
• Wood St. (street level seating), east side of Yonge St.

DYKE MARCH – Saturday, June 28

• St. Mary St., west side of Yonge St.
• Isabella St., east side of Yonge St.
• Maitland St., east side of Yonge St.
• Wood St. (street level seating), east side of Yonge St.

WORLDPRIDE PARADE – Sunday, June 29

• St. Mary St., west side of Yonge St.
• Isabella St., east side of Yonge St.
• Gloucester St., east side of Yonge St.
• St. Joseph St., west side of Yonge St.
• Maitland St., east side of Yonge St.
• Wood St. (street level seating), east side of Yonge St.
• Elm St., west side of Yonge St.
• Edward St., west side of Yonge St.

At our largest entertainment stages, wheelchair and scooter-accessible viewing stands and areas will be available.

Each of these areas will be shaded from the sun, will have chairs, viewing area/stand hosts as well as water and an accessible washroom. They will be available for those who cannot stand for the duration and a partner or companion. The stands and viewing areas will be non-smoking and will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

It is recommended that people arrive early for performances and/or to watch the Trans March, Dyke March and/or Parade, as seating and access is limited. Additionally, our seating area located on Wood St. will offer live audio description during the Pride Parade for those who are blind or partially sighted.

SERVICES FOR BLIND AND PARTIALLY SIGHTED VISITORS

An audio version of the 2014 Pride Guide will be available online and on CD leading up to the festival in June 2014. The Audio Pride Guide will also be available at the Accessibility Services Hub during the festival weekend. Here, you’ll also find:

• Braille companion to the Pride Guide available at the Accessibility Services Hub and every Welcome Centre
• Tactile maps available at the Accessibility Services Hub and every Welcome Centre
• Shade and water for working animals

For more information, please contact the Accessibility Team at accessibility@pridetoronto.com.

LIVE AUDIO DESCRIPTION

Live Audio Description of the WorldPride Parade will be available at the viewing area located on Wood St. during the parade.

TTC WHEELTRANS

Pride Toronto has worked with WheelTrans to designate specific drop off locations for WorldPride 2014 Toronto. You can book WheelTrans to drop you off at the festival site at the following locations:

• Charles West (30 CHARLES ST WEST)
• Charles East (90 CHARLES ST EAST)
• Breadalbane (7 BREADALBANE ST)
• Maitland (near the Accessibility Services Hub at 100 MAITLAND ST)
• Allan Garden (CARLTON WEST OF SHERBOURNE)

Please Call WheelTrans (416) 393-4111 for more information.

COMING FROM OUT OF TOWN? 

Tourists with disabilities who visit Toronto may use WheelTrans service for a two-week period per year. Tourists registered with the specialized transit where they live (ie. wheelchair and scooter users) may access WheelTrans services through their existing registration. However, tourists who are not registered with the specialized transit where they live must register in advance with WheelTrans.

Tourists attending WorldPride should confirm with WheelTrans their eligibility for the service in advance. Please call WheelTrans after 12:00PM at (416) 393-4111 with any questions.

You can find more information and post questions through our Facebook Page, Emailing and calling. All links are embedded below. You can also call Pride Toronto at(416) 927-7433. For TTY users, please use Bell Relay Service (BRS). accessibility@pridetoronto.com

Contact Us:

Email: dykemarchto@gmail.com
Facebook: DykeMarch Toronto
Twitter: @dykemarchTO
Instagram: @dykemarchto

Get excited for Dyke Day 2014!

Dyke Day is Saturday, June 28, 2014. That’s this week! The Dyke March Team couldn’t be more excited. Here’s what’s in store for you:

Meditation Mob led by Salimah Kassim-Lakha
11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Allan Gardens

“A free form, free flow, free love groove thing.  Imagine a warm day and a silent gather of souls to a designated spot in Allan Gardens.  Not a word is spoken.  The vibe starts with a drum beat and then silence as hundred gather to pay homage to spirit, to self and to community.  The event is 60 mins in length and ends with a respect for the 4 elements, the four direction and the 4 ages.  A powerful beginning to a powerful Dyke March.”

Sign Making with the Dyke March
12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Allan Gardens

Show your pride, rage or joy with a sign! Demonstrate why you participate in the Dyke March with a #wemarch sign! All materials provided.

Dyke March Rally
1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Allan Gardens

Join us for a spectacular line-up of rally speakers and performances! To learn more about the rally speakers, click here.

Dyke March
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Allan Gardens to George Hislop Parkette

Performance by RAW!
3:00 p.m.
George Hislop Parkette

“Raging Asian Women Taiko Drummers (RAW) plays big drums! And hard! RAW is a community arts collective of East and Southeast Asian Women in Toronto. We exist as a critical response and challenge to both systemic and internalized oppressions. Through performance, education, and community outreach, we seek to challenge, redefine and represent ourselves. Through collective membership, artistic creation, and active development, we carve space for self-expression, authentic engagement, community, and healing.”

We hope you join us for the best Dyke Day ever!

Questions? Contact us!

Email: dykemarchto@gmail.com
Facebook: DykeMarch Toronto
Twitter: @dykemarchTO
Instagram: @dykemarchto

2014 Revisited: Beer Craft

The Dyke March threw it’s annual party and fundraiser on June 13 at the Gladstone Hotel. It was a night full of crafts, music, readings, Roller Derby, and giveaways! Relive the magic with these photos!  
Photos by: Carol

For more great events, check out our Dyke Guide to Pride!

Share your top picks for WorldPride with us!

Email: dykemarchto@gmail.com
Facebook: DykeMarch Toronto
Twitter: @dykemarchTO
Instagram: @dykemarchto

 

 

2014 Unveiled: Rally Line-Up!

The Rally is the big kick-off to the Dyke March, and we are so excited to announce our phenomenal line-up! We know these speakers and performers will give you all the energy, motivation, rage, and joy you’ll need to get ready for the Dyke March.

Natalie Nox is a Dyke identified, Queer multi-instrumentalist, performer and activist. She has worked in multiple initiatives to improve the lives of LGBTQI immigrants and refugees. Her resilient advocacy for the rights of queer and intersex immigrants ensued revisions and amendments to federal immigration policies regarding, employment, gender markers and name adjustments, making them accessible to non-permanent residents, refugees and protected persons with gender variant or gender neutral identities. Some highlights of her work include the development of workshops on servicing queer newcomers in partnership with Access Alliance. Serving as an advisory board member for the Among Friends Initiative as well as being a founding member of the Breakthrough Network; a program offered by the 519 community center to provide information, networking and a safe space for queer immigrants. She has co-facilitated workshops for Supporting Our Youth, OCASI, The People Project and financial institutions. She filmed a short documentary featured as part of the 2009 queer digital video project, sponsored by the Inside Out LGBT film festival. She is a member of the Face It campaign, created to showcase the visibility of LGBTQI Latin Americans living in Ontario, with the purpose of promoting inclusion in their cultural communities. As a musician, she is working to improve the lack of presence of queer women voices in heavy metal music and the inherent misogyny they are subject to. Natalie was awarded the 2009 LGBT Youth Line award for outstanding youth visibility and the 2010 Catherine Parr Trail Award for newcomer women.

Sharp Dopler is of Sauk/Fox/Cherokee and Irish descent, born in Newfoundland and living in Ottawa since 1992. Sharp is the Ottawa Regional Outreach/Support Services worker for Oahas – it’s great work to serve the Aboriginal community and to be paid to talk about sex! Sharp identifies as agokwe-nini, and ogichidaa – serving the community as a Helper, Drummer/Singer, Pow wow dancer and much more. Sharp is a retired veteran with 16 years’ service in the CF Reserves, an MA in Canadian Studies/Women’s Studies, a diploma in Social Service Work and a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Taekwon Do.

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer cis femme mixed raised working-class Sri Lankan writer, performer, educator and curator, and sick and crazy genius. The author of the Lambda Award winning Love Cake and Consensual Genocide (TSAR) and co editor of The Revolution Starts At Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities (South End Press.) Her work has appeared in the anthologies Dear Sister, Undoing Border Imperialism, Stay Solid, Persistence: Still Butch and Femme, Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don’t Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Femme and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World.

With Cherry Galette, she co-founded Mangos With Chili, North America’s performance incubator for Two Spirit, queer and trans people of color performance artists, and is a lead artist with Sins Invalid. In 2010 she was named one of the Feminist Press’ “40 Feminists Under 40 Who Are Shaping the Future” and she is one of the the 2013 Autostraddle Alternative Hot 105. She has taught, performed and lectured across North America, Sri Lanka and Australia and co-founded Toronto’s Asian Arts Freedom School. Her third book of poetry, Bodymap, and first memoir, Dirty River, are forthcoming. A longtime member of the Allied Media Conference family, she is deeply invested in transformative, disability and healing justice work and believes that art and culture are prayers for transformation and healing.

Staceyann Chin is a fulltime artist. A resident of New York City and a Jamaican National, she has been an “out poet and political activist” since 1998. From the Nuyorican Poets’ Cafe to one-woman shows Off- Broadway to acting in Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe and performing in both the stage and film versions of Howard Zinn’s Voices of a People’s History of the United States, to starring in the Tony nominated, Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, Chin credits the long list of “things she has done” to her grandmother’s hard-working history and the pain of her mother’s absence.

Eagle Woman Singerz is a female hand drum group based in Toronto. Their lead drummer is Aboriginal from Piikani Reserve, Alberta. She a 2-spirited Blackfoot and has been singing, dancing, and performing since she was old enough to walk.

You can preview their amazing-ness here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/eaglewomansingerz/videos

And our host, Kim Katrin Crosby (Milan)!

A daughter of the diaspora, Arawak, West African, Indian and Dutch, hailing from Trinidad and living currently in Toronto. Kim Katrin Crosby (Milan) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, activist, speaker and educator. Addressing audiences at Princeton, in Montreal at the International LGBT Film Festival and University of Texas in 2014 alone, her work has taken her across North America speaking on equity, liberation and care.  She is co founder and executive director of The People Project, 8 years in the making; a movement of queer and trans folks of color and our allies, committed to individual and community empowerment through alternative education, art activism and collaboration. This year she was recognize by ‘The Root’ the premier news, opinion and culture site for African-American influencers as a young. Black feminist to watch as well as one of Autostraddle’s 100 LGBT Black Women to know sharing the list with Angela Davis, Marsha P. Johnson & Mia McKenzie. She has completed a residency both under D’bi Young and Buddies In Bad Times Theatre and has curated exhibitions, cabarets events and performed at stages across Canada. She is currently producing and co-curating the Buddies In Bad Times Cabaret Insatiable Sisters with Gein Wong. She also engages in community based healing initiatives including teaching Queer and Brown Girls Yoga, and hosting yearly healing retreats for femme identified Folks of Colour and Indigenous Folks.

It’s a Rally you won’t want to miss!
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Allan Gardens 
1:30 p.m.

Questions? Contact us!

Email: dykemarchto@gmail.com
Facebook: DykeMarch Toronto
Twitter: @dykemarchTO
Instagram: @dykemarchto

 

Toronto Fierce Femme Organizers III

Sedina (pronounced Seh-deh-nah) Fiati is proudly femme, queer and of Ghanaian/Trinidadian descent. Her name means a gift from God in the Ghanaian language Ewe and she hopes to be that to the world. Born and raised in Tkaronto (where the tall trees stand, where 3 rivers meet, recognizing the Mississauga of New Credit as the current keepers of this land) she is a performer, creator, producer and activist for the stage and screen. She was a member of the R3 Collective and an artist and administrator at b current performing arts. Most recent appearances include: Les Femme Fatales burlesque show, Heels on Wheels Toronto Show, WriteOn Open Mic Black History Showcase, Queer Futures at the Rhubarb Festival (co-curated and performed), hosting Unapologetic Burlesque Showcase and Right 2 Dance Showcase, Last Dance (one person show) and Driftwood Theatre’s The Odyssey. She is currently working on a project with keiron lyn to create an artist run centre for queer people of colour called The Building. Upcoming, she is producing 30 People Watching at the Aki Studio in October/November 2014 and her one person show, Last Dance in 2015. Sedina believes firmly that no one is free unless all of us is free and hopes to be a good ally/fighter in the struggle for a socially just world. She loves cookies, children, high heeled shoes, shaking it like nobody’s business, and glittery people and things. She can sometimes be found working the door at Cherry Bomb, a monthly party for queer women and friends. Check her out at www.sedinashow.com.

A daughter of the diaspora, Arawak, West African, Indian and Dutch, hailing from Trinidad and living currently in Toronto. Kim Katrin Crosby (Milan) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, activist, speaker and educator. Addressing audiences at Princeton, in Montreal at the International LGBT Film Festival and University of Texas in 2014 alone, her work has taken her across North America speaking on equity, liberation and care.  She is co founder and executive director of The People Project, 8 years in the making; a movement of queer and trans folks of color and our allies, committed to individual and community empowerment through alternative education, art activism and collaboration. This year she was recognize by ‘The Root’ the premier news, opinion and culture site for African-American influencers as a young. Black feminist to watch as well as one of Autostraddle’s 100 LGBT Black Women to know sharing the list with Angela Davis, Marsha P. Johnson & Mia McKenzie. She has completed a residency both under D’bi Young and Buddies In Bad Times Theatre and has curated exhibitions, cabarets events and performed at stages across Canada. She is currently producing and co-curating the Buddies In Bad Times Cabaret Insatiable Sisters with Gein Wong. She also engages in community based healing initiatives including teaching Queer and Brown Girls Yoga, and hosting yearly healing retreats for femme identified Folks of Colour and Indigenous Folks.

http://kimkatrincrosby.squarespace.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kim.k.crosby

Twitter: @KimKatrinMilan