Church-Wellesley

The ArQuives
34 Isabella Street
The ArQuives were originally established in 1973 with the intention of recovering and preserving the history of the LGBTQ2S+ community in Toronto. Its mandate is to acquire, preserve, organize, and give public access to information and materials in any medium, by and about LGBTQ2S+ people, primarily produced in or concerning Canada, and to maintain a research library, international research files, and an international collection of LGBTQ2S+ periodicals. It holds the world's largest collection of LGBTQ2S+ periodicals, with over 9700 unique titles in circulation.

Former Glad Day Bookshop and Sign
598A Yonge Street
Glad Day Bookshop is the first Canadian and oldest queer bookstore in the world, originally opened by Jearld Moldenhauer in his Annex apartment in 1970. Moldenhauer started the shop after making the realization that important emerging gay literature was impossible to find in Canada. The bookstore later relocated to this location at 598A Yonge Street, where it remained a community mainstay for the next 27 years. The store moved to its current location at 499 Church Street in 2016.

Barbara Hall Park & John Kuna Mural
519 Church Street
John Kuna Mural
A small park named after former Mayor Barbara Hall, who was in office from 1994 to 1997 and was the city's first mayor to march in the Pride Parade. The park features an AIDS Memorial installed in 1991. The park also features a splash pad and an off-leash dog area. A mural painted by John Kuna can be seen on the side of the neighbouring 519 community centre that pays tribute to the activism of the LGBTQ2S+ community in the Church-Wellesley community.

Patrick Fahn 'Aids Memorial'
Within Barbara Hall Park - 519 Church Street
This touching public art memorial can trace back its origins in an article in Xtra Magazine authored by Michael Lynch in 1987 regarding the stigma surrounding those suffering and dying from AIDS and the lack of commemoration and recognition of their lives. During Pride celebrations in June 1988, a temporary memorial was set up in the park to honour the 1,000 people who had died of the disease in Canada by that time. Thousands of people came to visit the temporary memorial, generating widespread support for the creation of a more permanent installation. The structure seen today was installed in 1991, designed by architect Patrick Fahn. Each year during Pride, a vigil is held at the memorial to honour the lives of those who have died of AIDS, and to increase awareness and reduce stigma surrounding the disease.

The 519
519 Church Street
This heritage-designated building was constructed in 1906 as part of the Granite Curling Club. The building was purchased by the City of Toronto in the 1970s and became the first centre where programming was controlled by the community through a volunteer board of directors. In the late 1970s, Lesbian and Gay Youth Toronto started holding weekly meetings here, and since that time, the building has become a major hub of the 2SLGBTQ+ community in Toronto. Some of the important services offered here to the community include counselling services, queer parenting resources, trans programming, and seniors support. The basement of the building is also notable as the very first location of Mark Breslin's Yuk Yuk's comedy club, which opened in 1976 and over the years has helped launch the careers of famous comedians such as Jim Carrey and Howie Mandel.

Rowan Red Sky 'POWER' Mural
564 Church Street
Rowan Sky is a multidisciplinary artist, activist and educator. Their work uses a variety of mediums and materials including illustration, textiles, performance, music, poetry and printmaking. They were awarded the publications program medal upon graduation from OCAD University for their work in community-engaged publishing in 2015, and they were the recipient of the Xpace Summer Residency that same year.

Meera Sethi 'Intersections' & William Craddock Mural
66B Wellesley Street East
Found around the northwest corner of Church Street and Wellesley Street East are two beautiful works of art by artists Meera Sethi and William Craddock. The colourful 4-storey mural seen on the building right at the corner painted by Meera Sethi is known as 'Intersections'. It utilizes the textile histories of South Asia to celebrate queer and trans South Asian communities in Toronto. In an alleyway on the western side of the building is a mural painted by William Craddock. It depicts many political activist pins that were found in the collection of the ArQuives on Isabella Street. The pins represent a very diverse range of dates, events, causes, organizations, identities and beliefs.

Former AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) Offices
66 Wellesley Street East
The second floor of this building once housed the very first offices of the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT). ACT was first started in 1983 as a grassroots community organization intending to provide reliable information about AIDS to members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, as knowledge of the illness at this time was much more limited than it is today. They became an institution well-known for their bold leadership and honest and occasionally graphic awareness campaigns regarding HIV and AIDS, some of which were run with funding support provided by the City of Toronto.

Blockorama Site
15 Wellesley Street East
This Green P space is mainly a lifeless parking lot for much of the year, but during Pride festivities it is transformed into Blockorama, one of the biggest parties of the year. Blockorama was organized as a response to a realization among many in the Black Queer and Trans communities that they were not well-represented at Pride celebrations each year. It was modelled after a Caribbean-style block party featuring food, entertainment, and people from the community coming together. The event continues to occur in the Wellesley parking lot each year organized by the Blackness YES! committee and attracts thousands of people each year. Some of the noteworthy artists who have performed at Blockorama have incuded En Vogue and Diana King.

Former Garrett Theatre and Trax/Alibi
529 Yonge Street
This heritage-listed building dates back to 1876. A small 30-seat theatre known as The Garrett was located on the second floor of this building from 1967 to 1970. The theatre was founded by a Toronto playwright named John Herbert, who became prominent for writing the landmark play 'Fortune & Men's Eyes', which is based on his experience of being victimized by the police and placed in a reformatory for visiting a local bar in drag. 'Fortune & Men's Eyes' originally premiered in 1967, and went on to be presented in over 400 productions in 100 countries in over 40 languages. The building also housed a popular gay bar known as Trax in the 1980s and 1990s, which later became another club known as the Alibi later on.

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
12 Alexander Street
This building housed an alternative theatre company founded by George Luscombe called Toronto Workshop Productions from 1967 to 1988. It became home to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre - the world's largest and longest running queer theatre company, in 1994. Buddies in Bad Times was co-founded in 1979 by Sky Gilbert, Matt Walsh, and Jerry Ciccoritti, with its first production being Gilbert's 'Angels in Underwear'. The company has continued to produce many notable plays throughout the its long history, many of which were political, pro-sexual, and anti-establishment. Buddies in Bad Times also hosts the annual Rhubarb Festival - Canada's longest running theatre festival featuring all new works.

Nadijah Robinson and Elicser Mural
508 Church Street
This mural depicts and celebrates historic Church Street entertainers.

Canada's National Ballet School
400 Jarvis Street
The National Ballet School was founded in 1959 by Betty Oliphant and Celia Franca, originally housed in a building on nearby Maitland Street, where the school would be located for the next 46 years. It moved into this current complex in two phases in 2006 and 2007, which included the renovation and inclusion of two heritage buildings. Some well-known alumni of the school include dancers Karen Kain, Rex Harrington, and Veronica Tennant, as well as actress Neve Campbell. It is the only ballet school in North America that simultaneously provides professional dance training, academic instruction, and residential care on the same campus.

Former Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT) Meeting Space
342 Jarvis Street
*Private property. Please observe from the street only. This heritage-listed house dates back to 1875 and was designed by architects Langley & Langley, who also designed many other buildings in Toronto from around that time. By February 1977, the building became home to the Lesbian Organization of Toronto (LOOT), intended as a place where lesbians could meet and support one another. It also became a place where a community of women musicians developed, including bands such as Mama Quilla. Some of the organizations subsequently founded by members of LOOT included Superbia Press, Lavender Publishing, and the Womanly Sound and Production Company. They also hosted the first bi-national lesbian conference in 1979, which was attended by over 400 women from across Canada.

Maple Leaf Gardens
50 Carlton Street
Originally built as the home for the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, Maple Leaf Gardens opened in 1931. The building was the largest arena in Canada when it opened, and remained one of the foremost venues for sporting events, concerts, rallies, and political events in the country throughout its history. Some of the numerous famous musical acts it hosted over the years include The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, and many others. The Maple Leafs played their last game in the Gardens before moving to the newly-constructed Air Canada Centre (now Scotiabank Arena) in 1999, and the space was renovated and reopened as an athletic centre and retail space in the early 2010s. A red dot inside the grocery store at the base of the building displays where centre ice used to be for hockey games, and the inner eastern wall at the entrance displays a blue maple leaf made up of old seats from the arena.