Brent Nicholson Earle: The Rainbow Run for the End of AIDS

An interview with Brent Nicholson Earle at Terry Fox Plaza, B.C. Place Stadium, just after finishing The Rainbow Run for the End of AIDS.

Sounds of traffic, laughter, and cheering as Brent Nicholson Earle and other runners jog through Vancouver streets towards B.C. Place. They arrive at their destination. Earle greets friends, family, and the media in front of the original Terry Fox Memorial. 

Earle: “Many have asked me why I was compelled to run again after having run all the way around America. During the nearly 20 months of the American Run for the End of AIDS I lost 25 friends. In the little more than two and a half years since the run came home to New York City, I have lost another 51 friends and colleagues. I feel besieged as if in battle I see my comrades falling all about me.

How could I come to Vancouver and celebrate at Gay Games III and Cultural Festival with a broken heart?

All of us have our own way of dealing with our grief. This has been my response. I have run the Rainbow flag as an AIDS memorial from San Francisco, the site of the original Gay Games, to Vancouver, British Columbia, for Gay Games III. I have run in memory of all the friends who cannot be here with us at Celebration ’90. And I have run in honour of two great leaders of the lesbian and gay community who were world leaders as well – Dr Tom Waddell, Olympic Decathlete and founder of the Gay Games, and Keith Herring, world famous artist and activist. To me they symbolize the inestimable losses that have been suffered by the lesbian and gay community through the first decade of the AIDS pandemic and our losses are the whole world’s losses.”

A group stands around the Rainbow Quilt as Earle recites the names of people who have recently died from AIDS.

Earle: “Lloyd Jenkins. Don Artman. Steve Herbert.  Jim Johnson. Tom Cook. Tom…” (sound and image fades)