For the second year in a row, Surrey will host the Vancouver Pagan Pride Day on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., bringing Wiccans and Druids to Hawthorne Park.

Kerr Cuhulain, organizer of the 17-year event and a Wiccan for the past 43 years, sees the pride day as a way for pagans to express themselves openly and show their involvement in the community.

"It's an opportunity for people who are followers of neo-pagan beliefs to publicly display our pride and show people who we are and that we are a force to be reckoned with," he said.

Cuhulain said there are a lot of misconceptions about pagans that events like this try to overcome.

"If you go back several decades, the impression people had was largely put out there by certain elements of the religious community," he said. "Their stance was that if we weren't Christians, we were by default Satanists.

Surrey-Whalley MLA Bruce Ralston will be in attendance at the Surrey event.

Organizers invited members of Surrey city council, but were told many are unable to attend due to vacations and other events.

Cuhulain said Mayor Dianne Watts has sent him an address to read to the crowd in her absence.

Coun. Marvin Hunt said the city hasn't received any complaints about Pagan Pride Day, but would not say whether the city supports it.