Queer History at Hanlan's Point Commemorative Plaque, 2024
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Resource ID
11641
Access
Open
Address
Hanlan's Point Beach
Credit Line
Heritage Toronto
Date of Creation
2024
Historical Themes
Program Category
Rights
Heritage Toronto
Time Period
Caption
Queer History at Hanlan's Point Commemorative Plaque, 2024
Description
Left side:
Hanlan’s Point has been a meeting and gathering place for Toronto’s 2SLGBTQIA+ community for more than a century.
From the early 1900s, people were drawn to the privacy of the beach, which was located on the city’s margins. Hanlan’s was an established queer space by the 1940s, and several cottages near the beach were owned by gay men. Over the next decade, a queer summer colony emerged. In the 1960s, the cottages were removed to create Toronto Island Park.
Queer people were subject to police harassment at Hanlan’s from the 1970s to the early 2000s, including a mass arrest of gay men in 1978 on charges of public nudity. Despite this and proposed changes to Hanlan’s Point, including construction of a wave pool and hotel in the 1980s, the queer community maintained a continuous presence at Hanlan’s each summer.
Beachgoers could legally swim and sunbathe nude at part of Hanlan’s from 1894 to 1930. In 1999, lawyer Peter Simm led successful efforts to restore this freedom, initially as a one-year trial. In 2002, the City of Toronto enlarged the clothing-optional zone and made it permanent. It was expanded to the entire
beach in 2023.
In 2023, the City of Toronto recognized Hanlan’s as the oldest surviving queer space in Canada. Hanlan’s Point remains a historically important space for the queer community.
Right side:
On August 1, 1971, about 250 people participated in a picnic at Hanlan’s Point. A call to protest and a celebration of gay pride, it was the first public event of its kind in Canada.
Until 1969, same-sex sexual activity was illegal in Canada. For decades, the law was aimed at men, but in 1954 the law was expanded to be gender-neutral. Although some private same-sex sexual activity was partly decriminalized in 1969, the law stayed very restrictive, and some queer people found themselves at
higher risk of prosecution.
Even after 1969, public expressions of same-sex attraction like touching, dancing, or kissing could lead to being arrested. People often kept their love private for fear of criminal punishment, violence, loss of work, or exclusion from families and friends. Organized by the Community Homophile Association of Toronto, Toronto Gay Action, and the University of Toronto Homophile Association, the 1971 picnic raised awareness and sent participants to the August 28 “We Demand” rally in Ottawa—the first major gay rights protest in Canada, which was vital to securing equal rights.
The 1971 picnic led to Toronto’s first Pride Week, in 1972, which included a protest march to Queen’s Park on University Avenue. The picnics on Toronto Island were repeated many times, growing in size, and laying the foundation for future Pride protests and celebrations.