Photos from the 2011 Trans March.

NOW Magazine’s offer to send a float plane to Mayor Rob Ford’s cottage this Pride weekend has set off the kind of media storm that usually only happens wehen we have someone naked on our cover.

Pride festivities are now over 30 years old, so theoretically they’ve reached adult status.

The year is 1987, and i’m sitting on the steps outside the old Second Cup coffee shop at Church and Wellesley with a gaggle of new queer friends. Earlier that day I’d marched in my first Pride parade. Along with gay professionals, pinko unionists, drag queens, leather daddies, muscle Marys, twinks, grizzly bears, handsome butches, high femmes, trans folk and just about everyone else who stands on the outside looking in.

I do not define “queer” in terms of lgbt identities, but as a lifestyle that does not mesh with the hetero-normative model. Queer pride to me is not the same thing as gay or even trans pride.