It’s amazing how much a few stripes of paint can say.
Take a walk down to Columbia Street and see for yourself. Just this week, city crews installed a rainbow-coloured crosswalk on the city’s main downtown street, just outside the Heritage Grill. The crosswalk, of course, is part of the city’s efforts to salute New West Pride Week and the LGBTQ community.
Mayor Jonathan Cote tells us it’s an idea that arose during a recent council meeting, when members discussed ways to recognize Pride and its significant growth over the past six years.The location was chosen because of the high foot traffic and because that particular spot is seen as the “heart and centre” of the Pride festival, as Cote noted. Kudos to council for getting this one so very right.
As a project, it wasn’t much - just a few stripes of colourful paint, really, when you get right down to it.
But as a statement, it was enormous. With a city that’s becoming ever more diverse, it’s important for our civic leaders to take steps to demonstrate inclusivity. Which is why we can’t help but smile every time someone in New West takes a photo of the crosswalk and sends it out on Twitter and Facebook.
To be sure, not everyone in the community was happy about it. On Monday, the newly unveiled crosswalk was vandalized and a 91-year-old man arrested in connection with the incident. But we’re not going to dwell on the naysayers. It’s clear there’s a great deal of support out there for the rainbow-coloured sentiment. As Mike T tweeted: “This is a proud day to be @New_Westminster Resident and @newwestpride Board member.”
“Way to go #NewWest,” chimed in the Queen’s Park Residents’ Association. And on and on it went, as happy citizens shared their photos of the colourful crosswalk that says so much about the kind of city we live in.
Here in the Record newsroom, we kinda like to pretend to be cynical journalists with no hearts. But we’ll make an exception for this one. So we’ll proclaim it loud and proud: We couldn’t be prouder to live here.
Long live the rainbow.
