White Rock Pride Week celebrates belonging<\/p>\n
Published 3:00 pm Thursday, July 23, 2026<\/p>\n
The City of White Rock and White Rock Pride Society officially launched Pride Week celebrations at city hall on the afternoon of July 17, with the traditional annual Pride flag raising.<\/p>\n
Mayor Megan Knight and Pride Society president Rob Christensen did the honours \u2013 hoisting a newly redesigned international Pride flag up the pole adjacent to the main city hall entrance.<\/p>\n
Describing it as \u201ca powerful reminder of who we are,\u201d Knight said that Pride Week (July 18-25) is a celebration of diversity \u2013 and noted the participation of the White Rock RCMP detachment and White Rock Fire and Rescue, whose members are wearing a specially designed Pride badge during the week.<\/p>\n
Christensen also noted a strong turnout, among the more than 100 attending the flag raising, of members of the White Rock Pride and 2SLGBTQ+ community, but also families and \u201callies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The week celebrates love, hope, diversity and belonging, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPride has always been about one simple idea,\u201d he added. \u201cEveryone deserves to belong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among guest speakers, Denise Darrell, retired executive director of Sources Community Resources, said the event brings together people of different faiths, cultures, identities and lived experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes we may see the world differently, but we have common ground of believing in safety, dignity, kindness and respect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
As a lesbian identifying as she\/her, Darrell remembered fondly how her daughter Angela and son Tony supported her, and \u201chow fiercely they stood up for their two moms.\u201d<\/p>\n
The need today is to establish \u201ca welcoming community for everyone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe must speak up when we hear words that are wrong,\u201d she said, but also \u201cmake room for every voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is better when you show up exactly as you are,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The flag raising was followed in the early evening by the White Rock Pride Ride car parade, where rainbow and flag-festooned gathered at Centennial Park before following a loop route that included an east to west trip along the city waterfront.<\/p>\n
Other events included in Pride Week are lighting the pier in rainbow colours, Family Day (which took place on on Saturday, July 18 at Miramar Plaza), the White Rock BIA Pride Mingler on Monday, July 20 at Morrison Caf\u00e9, the Thursday, July 23 Concerts at the Pier free event at Miramar Plaza with Doug and the Slugs, and the sold-out White Rock Pride Love Is Love gala at Hazelmere Golf Course on Friday, July 24. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"White Rock Pride Week celebrates belonging Published 3:00 pm Thursday, July 23, 2026 The City of White Rock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-821989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}