Sault Ste. Marie’s 2024 AIDS Vigils takes place this weekend

A yearly vigil for those impacted by AIDS is taking place in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., this weekend.

A poster for Sault Ste. Marie’s 2024 AIDS Vigil on July 6, 2024 posted to social media on July 4, 2024. (Ontario Aboriginal HIV|AIDS Strategy/Facebook)

The event honours those who have passed while celebrating those who are still here.

2024 marks the fourth consecutive year of the vigil which is organized by the Ontario Aboriginal HIV|AIDS Strategy (OAHAS) and group health’s HIV and AIDS Resource Program (HARP.)

This year’s theme is ‘We’re Still Here’ and will include a lineup of artists, including local drag performers, poets and ‘AIDS warriors’ who lived through the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Caio Schuurhuis is the area’s peer engagement coordinator for OAHAS and said he and his noticed the lack of support health-wise for people living with HIV and helped start the annual vigil back in 2020.

“I’m a person living with HIV and I have been living with HIV for the past 10 years,” he said.

“My husband and I, we just decided that it was time.”

Lucia Luciani, a HARP support service outreach worker in the Sault, told CTV News that the group plans to use the event to educate people.

“A lot of people don’t know that if you are on treatment for HIV that you are undetectable and untransmittable – meaning that you cannot spread it to other people and that you can live a very fulfilled, happy, quote-unquote, normal life of someone living with HIV nowadays,” he said.

The free event takes place from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday at The Klub 2SLGBTQIA+ Community Centre on Queen Street.

“This is a free event,” said OAHAS in a social media post.

“Everyone is welcome to join us in celebrating the lives of those who fought against HIV/AIDS and continue the fight to end the stigma.”

The vigil’s organizers told CTV News that they are hoping for a large turnout at the event in order to bring together those with a personal relation to someone with AIDS or people educate people looking to learn more.