Calgary church unveils new Pride flag to raise awareness about other marginalized groups

New kind of Pride flag flying high A new sort of Pride flag that promotes inclusiveness is now on display in time for Pride Week. Stephanie Wiebe reports.

To kick off Pride Week, Calgary’s Hillhurst United Church unfurled a new Pride flag on Sunday that adds new shapes and colours to the iconic Rainbow Flag to represent other marginalized groups.

The flag still contains the six rainbow colour stripes, but also includes five half-sized stripes shaped like an arrow. The light blue, light pink and white half-sized stripes represent members of the transgender community, while those that are brown and black represent people of colour and Indigenous peoples.

The Calgary church plans to have it fly year round.

Community advocates say there is still a lot of confusion about the intersectionality of identities and that the new flag helps foster a truer sense of belonging.

“I am not queer one day or indigenous the other,” Evans Yellowoldwoman told CTV Calgary. “I am one package. We are not where we should be at. There are folks in our community who are marginalized and racialized and are being left behind.”

The iconic Rainbow Flag was designed by artist Gilbert Baker and raised for the first time in San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza in 1978. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to public office in the United States, inspired Baker to create the now highly recognizable symbol.

The Museum of Modern Art acquired Baker’s original artwork for the Rainbow Flag for its permanent design collection in 2015.

The Calgary Pride Parade takes place next Sunday.

With a report from CTV Calgary’s Stephanie Wiebe