Website: https://www.gladdaybookshop.com/
Email: books@gladday.ca
Social media:
Instagram (@gladdaybookshop)
Twitter/X (@GDBooks)
Goals/mission:
- Supporting 2SLGBTQ+ artists and communities financially and affectively. Glad Day provided rent and groceries for 400 queer people during the COVID-19 pandemic and paid over $100,000 back to the community and artists.
- Protecting the marginalised of the marginalised. Trans & non-binary people, racialised queer people, and queer women of colour are significantly more institutionally oppressed; Glad Day seeks to function as a safe space that caters to them instead of perpetuating the privileging of cis gay white men.
- Promoting education, diversity, and allyship.
- Literary placemaking that facilitates connection and fosters relationships. Regular events include drag brunches, authors events and singles nights. The venue includes a performance space, a café and a bookstore.
- Sharing stories as a form of resistance to oppression.
- Standing as a form of history: Glad Day is the oldest queer bookstore in the world and intrinsically tied to Toronto’s queer history.
- Ensuring Queer Futurity.
Notable activities:
- Censorship battles: three employees have faced convictions (since overturned) for criminal obscenity.
- Naked Heart Literary Festival: one of the biggest queer literary festivals. Includes author events, writing workshops etc.
- Community support: regularly clothes and feeds Toronto’s homeless population.
- Regular literary and drag events.
Ways to get involved:
- Attend author readings, drag brunches, study in the café, and buy books. A significant source of income comes from these events, so any and all support is a great help.
- Converse with the staff. The staff love reading. Talk to them, ask them for recommendations, expand your reading horizons, and diversify your authors.
- Toronto Pride: started with queer activists strategizing at Glad Day after the bathhouse raids. Join Toronto Pride, have fun, and visit the bookshop on your way.
- Support queer joy! Be happy for your queer friends, and share their stories. Share your stories with them, and keep reading queer books.
Information compiled by Kieron Goh