Church and Wellesley History

Fast Facts

• Largest gay oriented community in Toronto
• Also called the "Gaybourhood" and the "Gay Ghetto"
• Home to the annual Gay Pride Week celebrations
  
  

Planning On Visiting? Check These Out.

GayToronto.com (Bars and Clubs)
GayToronto.com (Restaurants)
New York Times Travel
TorontoTourism.com

"The portion of the neighbourhood bounded by Yonge, Jarvis, Maitland and Carlton Streets was once the estate of Alexander Wood, a merchant and magistrate in Upper Canada who was at the centre of a gay sex scandal in 1810. His lands were derisively known as "Molly Wood's Bush" in the early nineteenth century; molly being a contemporary slang term for homosexual. In spring 2005, a statue of Wood was erected at the corner of Church St and Alexander St (the latter named for Wood), honouring him as a forefather of Toronto's modern gay community. (*See "The Street" page)

Church Street and the area around it has been familiar to the Toronto gay community for many decades. Prior to the 1970s there had been an underground (mostly male) gay scene centred around various bathhouses and bars around the city that were not exclusively gay establishments but were known to be frequented by homosexuals. Allan Gardens, just west of Church Street on College, was a well known cruising area for gay men. The most notable bar for the gay subculture was the St. Charles Tavern at Yonge Street (one block west of Church) just south of Wellesley. There were also a number of gay oriented businesses on St. Nicholas Street, a laneway just west of Yonge in the same area. The Glad Day Bookshop, for many years the city's only gay oriented bookstore, opened on Yonge Street near Wellesley in the mid-1970s.

Church Street started to become a predominantly gay area, and the centre of the gay life in Toronto, following the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids, an event that galvanized the gay and lesbian community in the city. George Hislop, a gay businessman and co-owner of one of the raided bath houses, ran for city council with his campaign headquarters located at Church and Wellesley.

In the 1980s, the 519 Church Street Community Centre became the meeting place for numerous social and political groups and became well known as a LGBT friendly space. A strip of gay bars opened along the street and many LGBT people rented apartments, joined residential co-ops or bought condos close to Church. The area became known as a friendly environment where people could be open about their sexual orientation."

Information taken from Wikipedia