Church and Wellesley - Overview

Overview

Church and Wellesley is home to the annual Pride Week celebrations, the largest event of its kind in Canada with over 90 floats and an enthusiastic crowd that numbers in the hundreds of thousands. The Pride Parade is always on the last weekend in June. It runs southward along Yonge Street. The Dyke March is a women-only parade that runs on Saturday afternoon and has a smaller parade route. There is also a weekend-long community fair that closes off Wellesley between Yonge and Church and also goes into Church Street. The community fair includes tables from a wide variety of groups involved in or associated with queer culture.

The 519 Church Street Community Centre is the meeting place for numerous social and political groups and became well known as a LGBT-friendly space. "The 519" as it is most often called, is a City of Toronto-run recreation centre that has been adopted locally as the Queer Community Centre, though its programming is not exclusive to LGBT groups and organizations. In 2007, a new wing was opened, and upgrades to the existing spaces were completed in 2009.

While the neighbourhood is home to the community centre, parks, bars, restaurants, and stores catering to the LGBT community (particularly along Church Street), it is also a historic community with Victorian houses and apartments dating back to the late 19th and early 20th century. Many LGBT people also live in the nearby residential neighbourhoods of The Annex, Cabbagetown, St. James Town, St. Lawrence, Riverdale and the Garden District, and in smaller numbers throughout the city and its suburbs.

Church and Wellesley is also home to the AIDS Memorial, located in Cawthra Park, where the names of members of the community who have been lost to AIDS are etched into bronze plaques. A memorial candlelight vigil is held each year at the AIDS Memorial, during Pride Week.