2012 May 6
OLGCC News
2012 May 4
Anti-Discrimination Event
2012 May 4
Toronto Leather Pride 2012
2012 Apr 25
Coffee with the Cops on the Corner!
2012 Apr 10
Vote for your Favourite Village Business
2012 Mar 8
Nominations for 2012 Inspire Awards
Welcome to Church Wellesley Village! Toronto’s largest LGBT neighbourhood.
The Church Wellesley Village is one of Canada’s most vibrant communities.
An international destination known around the world for its electrifying street events, shops, bars and services but mostly for the many different types of people that attend it streets.
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 gay scene centered around various bathhouses and bars around the city that were not exclusively gay establishments and were mostly catered to the male population.
Following the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids, an event that galvanized the gay and lesbian community in the city, Church Street started to become a predominantly gay area and the centre of gay life in Toronto. In the 1980’s the 519 Church Street Community Center became the meeting place for numerous social and political groups and became well known as an LGBT friendly space.
A strip of gay bars opened along the street and many LGBT people rented apartments, joined residential co-ops or purchased condos close to Church and Wellesley. The area became what it is today, a safe and progressive friendly environment where people could not only be open but celebrate the very nature of their sexual orientation.
