A greetings, and a call to action.

Hello and welcome to the WalkTheRainbow blog . After a period of a hiatus this blog has now fired back up and is ready to roll to showcase and discuss the concerns , challenges and progress of the LGBTQ+ community within Winnipeg and the world at large.

 A brief introduction of myself , I am the new Director of Research for WTR and I will be overseeing this blog. I will be using this medium to discuss anything and everything related to the community for the betterment of folks who walk our path, present and future. This is not at all a one person show. I look forward to gaining knowledge, experience and increased camaraderie with those within the community (allies always welcome too) as we work as a collective for a fair and just society for the community. Our research team will always be more than happy to have an additional happy and hard working face!

Folks, rather we like it or not we are living through history in these unprecedented times. Around the world. 2025 has been a very challenging time for our community to put in the most mild terms. More than ever we need to have the backs of each other. If you live in Winnipeg as I do, you can feel a sense of relief in the knowledge that (if nothing else, since politics is nuanced) we have a pro-LGBTQ+ Premier and provincial government leading our province as well as a pro-LGBTQ+ Prime Minister and federal government leading the country. However, nothing is ever stagnant. This especially applies to politics and society at large. There are malevolent and frankly straight up evil forces hard at work trying to pull the strings to ensure we are misunderstood at best and legally marginalized and held in extreme social contempt at worst.

I say all this not to produce undue stress and fear, but as a call for action. Dr Martin Luther King famously said ''The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice'' and while that can be true, it requires the forces of good to use every single tool in our toolbox to make that the case. It must be said that gravity and wishful thinking alone will not produce those much needed results.

I will conclude on a brighter note, that going forward I will pledge to both you and myself something and that this blog and the organization will be among those forces of good and of justice. We will promote and advance our causes as much as possible while exposing the bad faith actors and those who plan to cause harm and mass discrimination. I too have a dream, and that is for a brighter, better and more just society. Lets get er done!

-Ashley D