Church and Wellesley is an LGBT-oriented enclave in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is roughly bounded by Gerrard Street to the south, Yonge Street to the west, Charles Street to the north, and Jarvis Street to the east, with the core commercial strip located along Church Street from Wellesley south to Alexander. Though some LGBT-oriented establishments can be found outside this area, the general boundaries of this village have been defined by the Gay Toronto Tourism Guild.
Pride Toronto is an annual event held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in June each year. A celebration of the diversity of the LGBT community in the Greater Toronto Area, it is one of the largest organized gay pride festivals in the world, featuring several stages with live performers and DJs, several licensed venues, a large Dyke March, a Trans March and the Pride Parade. The centre of the festival is the city's Church and Wellesley village, while the parade and marches are primarily routed along the nearby Yonge Street, Gerrard Street and Bloor Street. In 2014, the event served as the fourth international WorldPride, and was much larger than standard Toronto Prides.
A gay bathhouse, also known as a gay sauna or a gay steambath, is a public bath targeted towards gay and bisexual men. In gay slang, a bathhouse may be called just "the baths", "the sauna", or "the tubs". Historically, they have been used for sexual activity.
This is a list of notable events in the history of LGBT rights that took place in the year 1981.
Arthur C. Eggleton is a retired Canadian politician who served as the 59th and longest-serving mayor of Toronto from 1980 to 1991. He was elected to Parliament in 1993, running as a Liberal in York Centre and served as a member of Parliament (MP) until 2004 when he declined to seek re-election. Eggleton held a number of cabinet positions from 1993 to 2002 including Treasury Board president, minister of infrastructure, minister of international trade, and minister of national defence. He was appointed to the Senate in 2005, serving until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 2018.
Roland Roy McMurtry was a Canadian lawyer, judge and politician in Ontario. He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1975 to 1985, serving in the cabinet of Bill Davis as Attorney General and as Solicitor General. After leaving politics, McMurtry was High Commissioner of Canada to the United Kingdom between 1985 and 1988. He became a judge in 1991 and was appointed Chief Justice of Ontario in 1996. McMurtry retired from the bench in 2007 and returned to the private practice of law.
Kyle Rae is a Canadian consultant and former politician. Rae was a member of Toronto City Council from 1991 to 2010, representing Ward 6 in the old city from 1991 to 1997 and Ward 27 Toronto Centre-Rosedale following the municipal amalgamation of Toronto in 1997.
George Hislop was one of Canada's most influential gay activists. He was one of the earliest openly gay candidates for political office in Canada, and was a key figure in the early development of Toronto's gay community.
Emanuel Jaques was a Canadian 12-year-old boy who was murdered in Toronto. The sexual assault and murder of Jaques sparked outrage in Toronto, resulting in the conviction of three men: Saul David Betesh, Robert Kribs, and Joseph Woods for murder, and the regeneration of the city's Yonge Street downtown area.
The Libertarian Party of Canada ran a number of candidates in the 1993 federal election, none of whom were elected. Information about these candidates may be found here.
John Wesley Ackroyd was a prominent Canadian Chief of Police and high level Ontario civil servant. He served as the chief of the Metro Toronto Police Force from 1980 to 1984. Known as an ideas man, and 'kind cop' he introduced community policing when he was the deputy chief. Though later, during his term as the chief, the biggest mass civilian arrest since the Second World War occurred in Toronto's Gay district. Following his retirement from the police force, he was head of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario from 1984 to 1990, where he modernized the retail operations and its marketing.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in Canada. For a broad overview of LGBT history in Canada see LGBT history in Canada.
The Brunswick Four were four lesbians involved in a historic incident in Toronto, Ontario in 1974. The four were evicted from the Brunswick House, a working-class beer hall on Bloor Street, and subsequently arrested, and three were later tried in Ontario Court for obstruction of justice. Two of those three women were acquitted in May 1974, but one, Adrienne Potts, served three months probation.
Club Baths was a chain of gay bathhouses in the United States and Canada with particular prominence from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Ken Popert has been involved with Pink Triangle Press (PTP) since 1973 when he began contributing to The Body Politic. In 1986 he was appointed interim publisher of PTP, and he served as the executive director until April 3, 2017, when he was succeeded by David Walberg. An established queer liberation activist, Popert has been fighting for sexual liberation for almost 40 years. Popert lives in Toronto and is partnered with Brian Mossop, an activist in his own right for his 1993 case against the Government of Canada. In addition to his role at PTP, Popert serves as a board director of OUTtv and The ArQuives: Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archives.
Public protesting and demonstrations began one week ahead of the 2010 G20 Toronto summit, which took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on 26−27 June. The protests were for various causes, including poverty and anti-capitalism.
This article gives a broad overview of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) history in Canada. LGBT activity was considered a crime from the colonial period in Canada until 1969, when Bill C-150 was passed into law. However, there is still discrimination despite anti-discrimination law. For a more detailed listing of individual incidents in Canadian LGBT history, see also Timeline of LGBT history in Canada.
Peter Maloney is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, activist and former politician, most noted as one of the first Canadian political figures ever to come out as gay and as a prominent builder of Toronto's LGBT community in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Right to Privacy Committee (RTPC) was a Canadian organization located in Toronto, and was one of the city's largest and most active advocacy groups during the 1980s, a time of strained police-minority relations. The group focused on the Toronto Police Service's harassment of gays and infringement of privacy rights, and challenged police authority to search gay premises and seize materials. At the time of the 1981 bathhouse raids, RTPC was Canada's largest gay rights group with a mailing and volunteer list of 1,200 names. People associated with the RTPC include Michael Laking, Rev. Brent Hawkes, John Alan Lee, Dennis Findlay, Tom Warner, and George W. Smith.
The Pussy Palace Raid occurred on September 14, 2000, when Toronto police raided a lesbian bathhouse known as the "Pussy Palace" during the "2000 Pussies" event. Two undercover female police officers attended and investigated the event prior to the raid. Five plainclothes male police officers then entered and searched the club, including private rooms. There were around 350 women in attendance at the time, many of whom were nude or semi-clad.
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