The scene inside
Bakeshop is as
natural as the ingredients found in
its food. An “industrial farmhouse”
space, concrete floors, subway tiled
and salvaged pine walls house
butcher block tables and French oak
bread racks.
Pride Week in
Toronto takes place in late
June, and is one of the largest
LGBT festivals in the world, it
typically attracts more than one
million people from around the
world. Toronto is a major centre
for gay and lesbian culture and
entertainment, and the Gay Village is located
in the Church and
Wellesley area of
Downtown. The American version
of the British television series
Queer as Folk was filmed in the
Church and Wellesley area and
most notably at
Fly Nightclub.
The annual Pride Week
celebrations includes over
90 floats along with an enthusiastic
crowd. The Pride
Parade is always on the last
weekend in June. The parade runs
southward along Yonge Street.
The Dyke March is a woman-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.
Toronto's 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 neighborhood 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
neighborhoods of The Annex,
Cabbagetown, St. James Town, St.
Lawrence, Riverdale and the
Garden District.
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.
Though some gay and lesbian
oriented establishments can be
found outside of the Church and
Wellesley area, the
general boundaries of this
village have been defined by the
Gay Toronto Tourism
Guild.
In Time is a science fiction thriller
film starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian
Murphy, Olivia Wilde, Matt Bomer, Alex Pettyfer, Johnny Galecki,
and Vincent Kartheiser. The Rum Diary
is directed by Bruce
Robinson and stars
Johnny Depp.
Puss in Boots,
a computer animation
film, stars Antonio
Banderas, Billy Bob
Thornton and Salma
Hayek.
Anonymous dramatizes a fringe theory, unsupported by any
historical evidence, that the works of Shakespeare were
written by an
Elizabethan
aristocrat, Edward
de Vere, 17th Earl
of Oxford.
Toronto's 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.
