GLAD DAY BOOKS AND CAFÉ
FROM APRIL/MAY 2021 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
GLAD DAYS BOOKS AND CAFÉ
4 KENSINGTON AVE.
BEFORE IT MOVED TO CHURCH STREET, THE HUB FOR QUEER LITERATURE GOT ITS START IN A GARAGE IN THE MARKET
If you’ve walked down Church Street, you’ve seen it: the bright pink awning that stretches out over Glad Day Books and Café. The shop is a fixture of Toronto’s LGBTQ2S+ community, a hub for queer literature, performance, drag brunch, and so much more. To many, Glad Day is Church Street, the heart of the Gay Village. But what many don’t know is that Glad Day got its start in the West End.
Opened by Jearld Moldenhauer in 1970, Glad Day launched inauspiciously at 65 Kendal Ave., on a quiet street in the Annex, before moving to its second location: tucked away in an unheated garage behind number 4 Kensington Ave., in the middle of Kensington Market, where Moldenhauer used to walk the streets with books in his backpack from one meeting space to another, doing whatever he could to help bring queer literature to the people who needed it.
The garage also housed the offices of The Body Politic, one of Canada’s first significant LGBTQ2S+ magazines. (The monthly magazine would fold in 1987 when its publisher Pink Triangle Press began running a new tabloid, Xtra! Magazine.)
It was here that foundational groups like GATE (Gay Alliance Toward Equality) would gather, offering a haven for queer folks to congregate and discuss tactics for liberation. In 1973, GATE successfully lobbied city council to adopt a policy forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in their hiring practices. They were the first jurisdiction to make this historic change.
Their time at 4 Kensington wasn’t long. In 1981, after writer Gerald Hannon published a controversial article in The Body Politic about intergenerational gay relationships, both the book store and the magazine were evicted by their landlords, themselves gay men. After a brief stint in Cabbagetown, Glad Day would eventually move to 598A Yonge Street, where you can still see its old sign holding fast to the side of the building, black and pink against the brick. It would eventually vacate this spot to put its roots down on Church Street, and despite some close calls and financial hardships, Glad Day continues to sell online through the pandemic.