Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began marching with participants on Bloor St. in the 39th annual Pride parade on Sunday, just after 2 p.m. and from then on it felt like the party had started.

The first big floats rounded the corner onto Bloor St. from Rosedale Valley Rd. and the whistling and cheering began from the crowds who lined both sides of the street six and seven rows deep.

More than four hours later, the parade was still going on, with the last of the floats turning the corner from Yonge St. onto Dundas St. as celebrations started up in the nearby TD stage in Yonge-Dundas Square.

It was the parade that Pride Toronto’s executive director Olivia Nuamah had promised — one of the biggest one ever.

More than 235 groups took part.

The Rainbow Railroad float was one of the first out of the gate, festooned with bright balloons and decals of flowers. It was followed by floats from major sponsors such as Bud Light, with participants dressed in angel-themed costumes fit for a catwalk. TD’s lime green float was followed by a massive contingent of marchers wearing similar coloured t-shirts.

“I love it,” said Zack Zabor, who came in from Niagara Falls to watch the parade for his sixth time. “The joy, the laughter. It brings people together.”

“It’s been great, very exciting,” said Heather, a bystander on Bloor St. who didn’t want her last name used. “Everyone is so happy. There’s such a variety of floats,” she said, noting that it was her first time at the parade.

“I just heard great things about it and wanted to see what it is all about,” she added.

Although it felt like a big celebration, there were still plenty of signs to remind people where the parade had its roots.

Marchers held signs that said “It’s a crime to be LGBTQ in 70 countries,” “You can be whatever you want to be,” “Safety for our global LGBTQ community,” and “There are over 65,000 people in Canada living with HIV.”

Mayor John Tory, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath and federal Green party Leader Elizabeth May were among notable politicians who also attended.

“I’m just happy to be out here,” said Tory before the parade began.

“The weather gods are with us this year. It’s going to be yet again, twice in one week,” he said referring to the Raptors’ parade on Monday. “Just a great coming together of a great city, celebrating who we are and what we are ... I think it’s fantastic.”

The parade was not only large, but slow moving.

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Casey House, one of the first floats in the parade — where muscular dancers in red shorts moved to the music blaring from on-board speakers — made it to the corner of College and Yonge Sts. at 3:35 p.m., an hour and a half after the start.

But crowds there were just as enthusiastic as the ones on Bloor St.

People standing on the median on Yonge St. cheered and clapped, and danced to the music. Constant cheers went up as a steadier flow of floats and marchers moved past.

Felicia Feather, waiting at the corner for a glimpse of her son on the Toronto Triggerfish water polo float, said “This is the best thing ever.”

“Doesn’t it make you proud of this city,” she added when she heard the parade had a record number of groups participating.

This year the festival is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, the birth of the gay-rights movement, when the community stood up to police after a raid of the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village. The raid set off a series of violent demonstrations by rights advocates.

“What Stonewall really represents is the fight for this community’s right to be treated as equally as everybody else,” said Nuamah earlier in the week.

“We’ve been really overwhelmed by the love and the support we’ve had this year,” said Nuamah. “You’re going to see that completely demonstrated in the context of the parade.”

There were reports earlier in the year that funding for Pride was down after the group voted to ban uniformed police from participating in the parade in 2017. Last year, police withdrew their application to participate. In a close vote in January, uniformed participation was again banned for this year’s parade.

Nuamah though, said her organization has raised nearly $3 million in private sector sponsorship and that grants had nearly doubled, from $1.2 million in previous years to $2.2 million. She expects this year’s bumper crowd, along with the great weather, to bring in more money for the city than last year.

Premier Doug Ford said he would not participate after Pride Toronto voted down uniformed police participation in the parade. Ford took York Pride’s organizers by surprise when he appeared and marched beside police on June 15.

Nuamah said that she’s “pleased that the premier has stepped up to any Pride. I think it’s important that our elected representative appear at Pride. And so we want him actually to be at our festival,” she said.

“In the sense that he was marching with the police, what we also want him to do is to use his authority to help us have a better conversation.”

The parade had a heightened police presence as well as private and volunteer security because of recent clashes in Hamilton between anti-LGBTQ-rights protesters and Pride parade participants, as well as a disturbance in Toronto’s Gay Village by a pro-Christian preacher earlier in June.

But the day was peaceful and there was no need to use the safety kits distributed by the 519 on Thursday, which contained messages of love, noisemakers and information on how to report a confrontation.

Correction - June 24, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly omitted federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May’s surname.

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