With the inaugural Jasper Winter Pride weekend coming up (Feb. 5 -7), Jasperite Thomas Argue told his best friend about the events – his excitement and joy bursting from within.

“Her first response was, ‘I think it’s really retarded.’”

Not quite the response Thomas was hoping to get, he asked why.

“She said, ‘do you ever see straight people getting up and holding events like this. Do you ever see them on parades and floats?”’

For Thomas, who’s been ‘out’ since May 2009, the weekend is more than events, parades and a flaunting of sexuality.

“If you don’t understand it, you should still think it’s ok,” he said. “Just on an everyday basis, you do run into people who are either homophobic or they’re not accepting. They’re tolerating – there’s a big difference.”

Though Thomas may have sought refuge from his ‘home’ town, Jasper’s residents are not without their prejudice, he said. He’s encountered homophobia within the community, being told that homosexuality is ‘weird’ and seeing hurtful graffiti in the community. He cites a time where the title of a jar of fig jam was changed into a homophobic slur in a place he was sure to see it.

“Sometimes I have to put up with a lot of gump. Not just because of me being gay, but just because there are gay people in the world.”

Thomas comes from a tiny town in New Brunswick – Plaster Rock – where he was raised a devout Pentecostal and brought up in a church of about 450 people. He is just one Jasperite that knows the cold truth of homophobia.

“I went through hell on earth. They have a very slanted look at people who are different – like a black person, or a foreigner, or a gay person – if you’re different you don’t belong,” he explained. “So growing up in that type of place, I definitely did not fit in.”

Despite the fact he’s known for “as long as he can remember” Thomas pretended to be something he wasn’t – hiding his sexuality from his community.

“The worst secret of all growing up in that type of place, was not only did you know that to the world you were a very different person because of your religion and life, but also because you’re a foreign person in your own world,” he said.

“In the little tiny world I knew as a Pentecostal youth, I was foreign to them. I was ostracized, I was very much the black sheep.”

After years of knowing nothing but little Plaster Rock, Thomas decided to visit family in Jasper.

Waking up that first morning in Jasper, Thomas recalls his brother opening the curtains of his bedroom to display the grandeur of the mountains around him.

“I fell in love with the place right away,” he said noting that it wasn’t just the landscape he loved. The array of people he met while in Jasper had a huge impact on him. “It’s incredible that you have so many different backgrounds and it makes people open minded.”

But, that was just the beginning.

Still battling to tell the world his secret, Thomas left again and didn’t return to Jasper until 2007 when he came back for the summer.

He wishes he knew then, what he knows now.

“I was still coming to grips with a lot of stuff in my life. I would have known then that we had something like this, it would have made a big difference to my summer,” he said.

Thomas is talking about OUTJasper – a local support group for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer (GLBTQ) community of Jasper.

While the organization is in its early days, Thomas hopes that events such as Winter Pride will ensure others in Jasper struggling with their sexual identity will find a safe place full of support and understanding.

“As a gay person, when I came to town a couple years ago, I didn’t know that group existed... and I was very much on my own, in so many different ways,” he said.

“I think it’s important to show that we have a group... and for it to be publicly known that there is a group. For it (Winter Pride) just to be a gathering together for support, not because people are trying to flaunt it, and make an extra buck for a business in town, but it’s about support. And that, in a place like Jasper, is very needed.”

Thomas hopes that by helping Jasper to become a destination for anybody in the GLBTQ community, he can help others.

“Me being a part of OUTJasper is important for me, but every bit as important for the next person that joins after me and me being a friend to them,” he added.

Once Thomas had told Jasper his truth, he decided it was time to tell his home. So he hitchhiked back to his little east coast town and boldly spoke the truth.

Already disowned by much of his family, Thomas was now left alone, run out of town for simply being gay.

Returning to Jasper, Thomas appreciates OUTJasper and the understanding they have for one another. Some have run away, like Thomas. Others are just Jasper residents. Either way Thomas hopes the Winter Pride weekend will see an expansion.

Though in its first year, Winter Pride in Jasper hopes to attract 150 people.

Working closely with HIV West Yellowhead is Mountain Park Lodges, which is participating in the event.

“We mostly just wanted to get our feet wet,” said Jordan Tucker, sales and catering manager for Mountain Park Lodges. Hopefully, he said, the weekend will help to promote Jasper as a GLBTQ friendly community and will continue to grow over the years.

Attendees will have a private welcome reception on Friday evening, where tickets to a Linkomatics show will be sold exclusively to this group. However, after the welcome reception, anybody will be able to purchase tickets.