"Good evening! My name is Bradford McIntyre.
On behalf of AIDS Vancouver and sponsoring organizations, welcome to the 30th Vancouver International AIDS Candlelight Memorial.
In Solidarity: A Musical Tribute to People Infected and Affected by HIV and to those we have lost to AIDS.
Here with me, for American Sign Language interpretation is Lisz Keallen.
I would like to extend a warm welcome to those who are attending for the first time.
First we, would like to acknowledge that we are gathering on the Traditional and unceded Coast Salish Territories of the Musqueam,
Squamish and the Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and for that we are very grateful!"
Here in Canada, there are an estimated 78,000 infections. With infections among our women, our youth, our aboriginal communities,
our seniors and we are seeing an increase of infections among our GLBT communities. One in four gay men in Vancouver are unaware
they are HIV+. HIV Infections here are approximately 8,000, and climbing.
We are not done fighting yet. Today in many places around the world, there are people going through what myself and others went
through in the beginning of the epidemic here in Canada.
The International AIDS Candlelight Memorial, coordinated by the Global Network of People living with HIV is one of the world's
oldest and largest grassroots mobilization campaigns for HIV awareness in the world.
The first memorial was held in San Francisco, in 1983, when HIV and how it was transmitted, was still being discovered. Knowing
they would die within the year, four young men (Bobbi Campbell, Bobby Reynolds, Dan Turner and Mark Feldman), put a face on
the disease by coordinating the memorial, behind a banner reading, "Fighting for our Lives".
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A special thank you, to TERRY DAVID SILVERCLOUD for videotaping the 30th Vancouver International AIDS Candlelight Memorial and
creating the videos.
