Pride flag, banned by local government, will fly at Norwich school

You won’t find the Pride flag flying on any civic property in Norwich Township, not after a divisive flag flap there ended with a ban last month on all but government banners.

But it won’t be the same at the lone public school in Norwich, the rural township’s main community where the rainbow flag will fly next Wednesday and again throughout Pride Month.

Southwestern Ontario’s largest school board will raise the Pride flag at all 161 of its schools, including at Emily Stowe elementary school in the Oxford County township that’s become a regional flashpoint for backlash to the symbol celebrating the LGBTQ+ community and inclusion.

The area Catholic school board, meanwhile, is leaving it up to its schools to decide whether or not to fly the flag—a disappointment to one advocate, who praised the public board for its stand.

“I think they are on the right side of history, moving forward,” said Tami Murray, head of the LGBTQ+ umbrella group Oxford County Pride.

The top official at the Thames Valley District school board left no doubt what the flag-flying means.

“First and foremost, we want all students — no matter how they identify — to feel safe and secure in our schools,” education director Mark Fisher said Wednesday.

“It’s really important to fly and recognize that the Pride flag is a symbol of equity and inclusion and is consistent with our core values ​​as a (school) district.”

The flag, emblematic of the LGBTQ+ community, will fly at all Thames Valley schools May 17, International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, and again in June for Pride Month.

All board schools and administrative buildings will be required to fly the rainbow flags on their poles, parents were told in a memo sent out by the board.

Any vandalized or stolen flags will be replaced “immediately,” Fisher said.

But while the inclusive salute will unfurl where kids get educated, that’s in sharp contrast to all civic buildings and property in Norwich Township, whose council has come under widespread criticism both for restricting flag-flying on its turf to government banners, effectively banning Pride flags , and for rejecting one politician’s move to designate June as Pride Month.

Pointedly, the original council motion to restrict flag-flying at first explicitly cited the Pride flag before that was changed to ban all special banners.

In the fallout, a human rights complaint has been filed and many people and groups have criticized the move, including a social agency that helps kids — Big Brothers Big Sisters of Oxford County — that’s offered to return a small grant from the township in protest.

Norwich isn’t the only pocket of Southwestern Ontario where there’s been pushback against visible signs of LGBTQ+ inclusion. But a rash of Pride flag theft and vandalism there last summer, along with one man’s address to the township council in which he compared Pride to something out of Nazi Germany, have thrust the issue under a harsh public spotlight in the Oxford enclave.

Fisher said he recently visited the elementary school in Norwich and was “very impressed with positive attitudes and the movement towards equity, diversity and inclusion demonstrated by all the students and staff that I encountered.

“To be honest, the culture and vibe in the school was extremely positive — not what we were hearing from some adults in the community,” he said.

Fisher’s board encountered apparent parental pushback at one of its largest and most diverse elementary schools, Eagle Heights in London, when about 400 kids — roughly one-third of the school’s population — stayed home when the school marked Rainbow Day, celebrating its diversion and inclusion , in February.

Fisher called the large absence that day, noticed by many in education circles, the result of “a miscommunication.”

Some sources have suggested some Muslim families may have kept their kids home to avoid taking part in Rainbow Day events, part of a designated Everyone Belongs month in which the children had been reading the book Where Oliver Fits as they learned about their differences.

The book follows Oliver, a puzzle piece who looks to find a place to fit in. The book celebrates inclusion, including LGBTQ+ communities, the board has said.

Murray said the Thames Valley board has been “very progressive in flying (Pride) flags,” but questioned why such visible inclusion doesn’t extend to the London District Catholic school board, where it’s up to schools to decide whether or not to fly the rainbow flag.

“It’s disappointing that it’s sporadic from the Catholic school board, considering our public taxes pay for that. I’m not sure why that isn’t across the board,” she said.

Schools “may choose” to celebrate Pride Month in different ways, based on the diverse needs of their communities, the Catholic board said in an emailed statement.

“For outdoor flagpoles, the practice at the LDCSB is to fly only the Canadian flag,” the board said.

Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce this week said he strongly supports flying the rainbow flag at schools and related buildings in June, but won’t force boards to do so.

“I think school boards, parents, educators, government — we’ve got to come together, we’ve got to depoliticize an issue that is actually about the mental health and safety of children,” he said.

Public schools in the Sarnia and Chatham-Kent areas will also fly the Pride flag in June, and trustees with the Lambton-Kent District school board voted unanimously to observe the May 17 day.

Chatham-Kent council dealt with its own flag flap the same week as Norwich Township, after a social on its council tried conservative but failed to get a motion passed to restrict all flags to government banners, one that would have effectively banned special flags.

Defenders of the government flags-only approach often argue it reflects everyone and frees politicians from having to decide on potentially divisive special flag requests as they come up, a stance some critics argue is cover for not wanting to show support for LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Pushback against gay pride declarations and the rainbow flag have flared in pockets of Southwestern Ontario for decades, most infamously in the mid-1990s when Dianne Haskett, then mayor of London, refused to issue a Pride proclamation or allow the rainbow flag to be raised at cityhall.

Two years later, the Ontario Human Rights Commission ruled Haskett and the city had discriminated against the LGBTQ community and fined the city $10,000.

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