Photos from the Edmonton Pride Parade on August 23, 2025. Amanda Erickson/The Griff.

MacEwan’s first official Pride Week took place in 2017.

This year’s Pride week marks the ninth anniversary of official campus Pride events at MacEwan University. In 2017, Pride Week was organized by a small number of MacEwan volunteers and faculty, who wanted to bring LGBTQ2S+ recognition to campus. In the 9 years since, Pride Week has grown significantly, with multiple workshops, resource panels, and events beginning before the week to celebrate MacEwan’s LGBTQ2S+ community. 

What’s happening this year

On Monday at noon, MacEwan will kick off their opening of Pride week with a walk from Griffins landing to Allard hall, where opening remarks from campus leaders will be shared. 

Events through the week of March 9 will include events such as the Rainbow market celebrating local makers and artists, an online queer horizons speaker series on the 10th, queer research connections on the 11th, and a zine making workshop followed by a goth-glam themed Queer Prom on Friday the 13th to close out Pride Week. 

SAMU will also be joining the festivities with a Pride lounge on March 9 in the SAMU Lookout. The event will be hosted by DJ fredy.club, with free dirty sodas and line dancing lessons. 

Where it (kinda) began and where to next

In March 2017, MacEwan’s first official Pride Week took place. Organized by MacEwan volunteers and faculty who worked on the event as a passion project. Prior to 2020, Pride Week hosted small events throughout the designated week in March, which included a drag show, resource panels, and keynote queer speakers. Over the next four years, MacEwan’s Pride Week stayed consistent, with a small number of events throughout the week and an opening march throughout MacEwan. 

“When I started in 2020, there was one event a day over the course of the week, and we now have three to four events per day.”

— Jessica Scalzo, program manager of the MacEwan Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity

In 2020, Jessica Scalzo became the program manager for the Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity (CSGD) at MacEwan, and significantly shifted the contribution of MacEwan’s resources and aid in Pride Week. 

“When I started in 2020, there was one event a day over the course of the week, and we now have three to four events per day,” says Scalzo. 

Over the next five years, events and resources surrounding Pride Week spanned across the city. In 2022, the celebration became multi-institutional through the NorthSide Pride Collaborative Project with NAIT, Concordia University of Edmonton, The Kings University, and NorQuest College. In 2025 the CSGD officially led the YEG Campus Pride Network, and added the University of Alberta to their list of Pride Week collaborators. 

With the creation of the YEG Campus Pride Network, gaps in Pride activities and celebrations across Edmonton’s universities significantly lessened, creating a stronger community for Pride festivities. 

Since the development and increased interest within the YEG Campus Pride Network, MacEwan has been able to host pre-Pride events. This year, a drag show and a movie screening took place before Pride Week officially starts. 

However, why Pride Week is hosted in March, and why it only officially spans a week is worth noting. Scalzo says that Pride Week at MacEwan is only a week long due to capacity and budgeting. 

“It does take a lot of planning and coordination and we just don’t have the staff power to be able to do more than a week at a time.” 

Scalzo hopes to grow MacEwan’s Pride celebrations into two official weeks in the future, however a full month is not realistic for the CSGD due to the lack of staff at the center, she says. 

Pride week is widely celebrated in March as most campuses around Canada host Pride while the majority of students are still in school. “It’s held in March on many university campuses because Pride month in June, there’s no students around,” says Scalzo.