Glad Day Bookshop, recognized as the world’s oldest surviving queer bookstore, is facing a financial crisis, and its team is calling on Toronto to show up during this time of need.
Founded in 1970, Toronto’s Glad Day Bookshop started as a means of bridging the gap between 2SLGBTQ+ people and literature that reflected their lived experiences. Tianna Henry, Glad Day’s events and social outreach coordinator, explained that the shop was born when a man named Jearld Moldenhauer responded to the lack of available queer literature by carrying materials around the city in a backpack and sharing them with community members.
“The store began as a combined mail order service (with a small catalogue) and as a bookseller’s table at various gay meetings,” Moldenhauer’s website reads. “I simply carried the books around from one meeting space to the next in a knapsack.”
The shop eventually found a physical space at located at 65 Kendal Ave., before bouncing around multiple locations and landing at the iconic Yonge and Wellesley shop, where it remained from 1981 to 2016, before reopening at its current location in The Village.
“I get people coming in all the time who tell me that Glad Day saved their lives at a time when they didn’t know there were people like them,” Henry told Queer & Now.
She explained that the shop has served as a physical location for activists to gather in the fight for queer liberation, including during the response to the Toronto Bathhouse Raids. Additionally, Glad Day also faced police raids, had shipments of books searched and seized, and even had employees charged for selling “obscene” materials, and relied on community support to cover legal fees, Henry shared.
“I would say Glad Day has always been at the pulse of queer Toronto history, and very much on the frontlines of our liberation movements here.”
From hosting singles events and drag brunches to exclusively selling books and art created by 2SLGBTQ+ community members, and providing queer people with a safe space to gather, Glad Day has stayed constant in the value it has offered 2SLGBTQ+ people for the last 50-plus years.
“Glad Day is a pivotal queer space in the city. It carries with it a legacy of queer history, activism, organizing and the dissemination of queer materials,” Henry said.
She explained that while the majority of booksellers feature a 2SLGBTQ+ section, Glad Day only carries titles by queer authors.
“It’s important to have a space that centres our voices, and our events, and our interests.”
As a bookshop, gathering space and bar, there really is nowhere like Glad Day, and patrons who attended a fundraiser on Monday night emphasized the shop’s relevance to the community.
“It’s important for queer people to have spaces to gather, spaces to be in community,” Kate told Queer & Now.
“It’s important to have historically queer spaces so that we can come here and acknowledge the people who’ve come before us,” Brianna shared.
“It’s nice to have a space that’s been here throughout history, lots of different things have happened (at Glad Day) at different times.”
“Glad Day is important to me because I’ve been able to come here and show up as who I am. I think it’s important to have queer spaces because queer people deserve and have the right to show up safely and be celebrated at the same time,” Britta added.
“It holds so much culture and history and it’s important that we keep this space alive.”
Henry added that people from around the world, and across Canada, come to Glad Day and find themselves spellbound to be in a space filled with materials, merchandise and art that reflect their own lived experiences as queer people — something that is rare for many 2SLGBTQ+ people.
GLAD DAY IN CRISIS
While the bookstore is no doubt a crucial space for queer people and an iconic piece of global queer history, Henry shared that it has never “thrived financially.”
Henry explained that post-lockdown, Glad Day never saw its levels of patronship return to what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think it’s indicative of a lot of our community members [not having] the resources that they had before. A lot of our community members have been rent evicted and have been pushed out of Toronto so they’re no longer around, so there are a lot of factors that have contributed to the change and the loss.”
“So many queer businesses have closed in the city… and it’s so important to preserve these spaces.”
However, it became apparent that the Church and Wellesley shop was in danger when Glad Day posted a call for help on its social media in May, alerting the public that it was at risk of closing after taking on debt every month for two years. The shop then launched a fundraising campaign online, aiming to raise $300,000.
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“We’re certainly at a do-or-die moment and we are asking our community to support us so we can just buy some time to figure out what our next steps are,” Henry explained.
“That might look like moving to a smaller space that’s more sustainable. That might mean restructuring how we do things here. But we are relying on mutual aid, which is what queer and trans people have always relied on.”
Henry explained that mutual aid is where community members support one another, regardless of how much money individual members have, or what they’ll receive in return, especially within marginalized communities. This can include donating money, or donating services, like grant writing or social media promotion.
“In the queer and trans communities’ history, often the state hasn’t helped us, so we’ve had to help each other.”
And mutual aid has arrived for Glad Day. The store received a whopping $112,000 in donations from more than 1,900 donors in the first four days of the campaign. These funds allowed the shop to avoid a July eviction by paying a lump sum of $100,00 to its landlord. As of July 15, the campaign has surpassed $160,000 in donations.
“It was such a resounding show of solidarity and support. Folks we thought had forgotten about us were reaching out, people were and still are doing offsite fundraising and sending us the money, people are doing their own auctions and their own promotion,” Henry explained. “People are doing so much supportive work.”
QUEER TRUE STORIES TOLD LIVE
While the immediate crisis has been avoided, the bookshop is still working towards its $300,000 goal. As per the shop’s Instagram page, the additional funds will be used to hire a fundraiser, pay more to artists and authors, increase accessibility and hold community consultations.
On Monday, five queer storytellers took centre stage at the shop’s fundraiser, which was hosted by True Stories (Told Live) (TSTL), a show produced by Toronto-based storytelling coach Marsha Shandur, with compelling real life stories shared by community members whom she coaches. Shandur explained that storytelling has always been an important tool.
“It’s how we preserved history, not just before we had the internet, but before we had books. It’s how we passed along information.”
Shandur explained that the concept of hosting a TSTL show to fundraise for Glad Day was born when Sally, one of the storytellers she coaches, reached out to her with the idea.
“Glad Day is a bookstore, right? It’s a whole store full of stories. So, to me, it makes so much sense to have a true storytelling show inside a space that is stuffed full of true stories,” Shandur explained. This is something Sally, who shared a personal story on Monday, echoes when asked about her inspiration for the event.
“Storytelling is one of our most ancient practices of community building. If we look back on generations upon generations [of] culture, we keep those things alive by storytelling.”
Sally also highlighted a unique perspective on the importance of Glad Day and the value it brings to Toronto.
“We talk a lot about mental health and what that means, and the queer community is not shy to the ramifications of poor mental health… Glad Day is a spot for folks to feel comfortable, to connect with each other, so we’re not so isolated.”
“I think it’s mental health support, it’s suicide prevention. It’s a place for folks [where] they can intrinsically be themselves and get support. So, I think representation, but also mental health support, is why Glad Day is a super fundamental part of the city,” Sally explained.
Monday night’s event was sold out, with dozens of people packed into the space to hear heartfelt accounts from queer storytellers. With 100 per cent of the show’s proceeds donated to Glad Day, Sally shared that several people who didn’t attend the show still purchased tickets to support the store.
NEXT STEPS FOR GLAD DAY
After raising their initial goal of $100,000, the shop is currently safe from eviction but continuing to raise funds for their other goals. Despite these troubling times, one thing is clear: you can’t get rid of Glad Day.
“You can’t rent evict the idea of Glad Day, we will exist in one iteration or another,” Henry explained. “But it’s about having some time to consult with the community and see what their needs are and what we can best do to facilitate those.”
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