How Toronto’s Glad Day is Curating Queer Community in a Pandemic
Diverse Innovations aims to stimulate discussion related to emerging technologies and their greater implications within global affairs and design. In this month’s publications, we aimed to explore inequality in the digital age. In light of the protests for justice in the brutal murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, and countless others, DI is even more committed to lift up, listen to, and amplify the voices of the Black community (especially the BIPOC community at Glad Day). We would like to link Black Lives Matter for you to preview the resources they have created. Additionally, please refer to this link to find more resources and places where you can donate and meaningfully contribute.
Black Lives Matter.
Even in normal times, Glad Day bookshop is an intensely creative and inclusive space. Part cafe, part bar, part event space, part oldest-queer-bookshop-in-the-world, the Church and Wellesley establishment is an important feature of Toronto’s LGBT+ community. On an average Sunday, it’s not uncommon to be stopped on Church Street by a towering Drag Queen bursting out the Glad Day doors, straight into traffic and mid-Adele. Hello, indeed.
When the COVID-19 pandemic forced Glad Day to close its doors in mid-March, all the events that usually take place (75 a month on average) were cancelled. This stripped the venue of a desperately needed source of cash revenue for performers, bartenders, DJs and artists. To further complicate matters, Glad Day itself is a small business with a large rent, making its operational viability as uncertain as any other Toronto establishment in the time of COVID-19.
Like many other groups, the queer community has been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 crisis. Sheltering-in-place can be impossible for someone who isn’t welcome in their family home, and with a recorded 25–40% of homeless youth in the city identifying as LGBT+, precarious living was already a crisis. Usually, in times of uncertainty and loneliness, Glad Day is the space to feel welcomed, accepted, and creative.
This was the challenge presented by COVID-19: how could a bookshop support the Toronto queer community financially and emotionally when it’s very survival is far from guaranteed? How do you curate a community in a pandemic?
Cable TV for the digital age
As with so many plans during COVID-19, Glad Day transitioned online to continue programming. Drag shows, book readings, community meetings — everything was transferred to Glad Day TV, a single zoom platform with a rotating lineup. This is cable TV for the digital era; anyone can drop in and see what’s happening, or plan ahead through the online schedule. Presenters receive pay from Glad Day, and viewers can send extra tips through Venmo or Paypal.
But Glad Day TV was only the second part of Glad Day’s COVID-19 response. Stage one was the overnight creation of the Glad Day Lit fund, which raised money for the artists and community members that Glad Day plays host to. Weeks before the release of the Canadian federal government’s CERB application, Toronto’s queer community already had a sizeable fund at the ready, created almost entirely through small donations. Anyone can apply, and to date, Glad Day has provided emergency support to 400 people with no other way to pay rent and buy groceries.
DI spoke to people in various roles at the bookshop to get a better sense of how the digital transition impacted Glad Day’s community, and to understand how each was finding creative ways to organize and maintain a community in difficult times.
For a staff member turned TV producer…
Sharing the helm of Glad Day TV is Tianna Henry, Glad Day’s Community Outreach and Event Coordinator. Starting with Glad Day as a bartender two and a half years ago, this March Henry found herself responsible for holding together a traumatized and isolated community. “I realized we needed to be first responders and care for our community,” Henry said, “because no one else was going to do it”.
Functionally, Glad Day TV operates with the same mission as the physical space. The organizers focus on content made by community members of colour and those identifying as trans or nonbinary. Some existing acts could transfer over with relative ease, while deep community ties made it easier for Henry to find new zoom-ready content already being created. A trivia night that began as a party game became part of Glad Day’s lineup. A puppet show was added for family audiences. A drag king reads bedtime stories.
An emerging drag performer….
Meanwhile, Flora Tang had just begun trying out live performances as the drag king Jack Shit before the pandemic struck. Glad Day’s open stage at the ‘House of Kings’ event was a safe venue for them to try out a new passion, and it remained that way in the transition online. “It forced me to work on different aspects of performing,” they said “instead of concentrating on audience involvement or dance moves, I’ve been using more props to be creative.” Their performances on zoom have taken place on a bed, a sofa, a car…all with signature teen heart-throb energy.
While others in the drag community feel the lack of audience energy and camera focus just isn’t for them, Tang has found the freedom to adapt to the home surrounding as a way to bring a different, innovative energy to their performance and character. “Literally anything I see can become part of the performance now,” Tang says.
And a passionate event coordinator…
And for months, Rachel Kelly has voluntarily coordinated ‘Sapphic Sundays’ at Glad Day. It began as a weekly viewing party for the L-Word reboot, but has grown into an inclusive queer movie night. In the online world, the comedic pre-show is done over Glad DayTV, and movie viewers are sent the link for Netflix Party, a chrome extension that allows simultaneous viewing of the same show for a large group.
There have been some upsides to hosting the events online: attendance is higher and more reliable, introverts can be more involved in the Netflix party chat, and the pre-show itself has become much more relaxed and conversational. But it’s no substitute for the real thing. “We’re all tired” she says, “people just want authenticity.”
“Queer people are really good at this”
When it comes to curating an online community, LGBT+ people and organizations across the world have adapted with remarkable grace to creating space in the realities of COVID-19, even with the cancellation of June’s Pride Month. It shouldn’t be that surprising…how many times has the word ‘transition’ been used in this piece?
“Being online was always a skillset in the queer community,” Kelly explains. Online spaces have provided an important gathering place for decades as a way to distribute ideas, discuss culture, and experience being ‘out’ anonymously. Online dating apps like Grindr or Her are also a part of this dynamic, providing a safe space to meet people, when exposing one’s sexuality in a physical bar can be a dangerous risk.
The transition online has also provided an opportunity to showcase Toronto artists to a wider audience, and a way to bring people in remote areas into the vibrant city community. “I go through cycles of worry that I’m not promoting enough,” says Kelly, “but I’m also trying to cut myself some slack”.
Redefining community space post-COVID
As Glad Day looks into the uncertain future, consideration of community support takes absolute precedence over economic success. “We need the community as much as they need us,” says Henry. It’s an unconventional way to approach business, but one that feels refreshing in times where some corporations are forcing employees back to work without proper precautions. Then again, if the community doesn’t show up, there won’t be business at all. At Glad Day, both need each other equally.
“I’ve had to let go of Glad Day as a physical space,” says Kelly, “and know that if they are forced to relocate, they will still survive”. For her, this pandemic has driven home the importance of a physical space for gathering, especially since such inclusive spaces are few and far between for the queer community.
“Glad Day has literally kept this community together,” said Tang. “It’s a place to feel like home”. Online programs like Glad Day TV and the Emergency fund, are ultimately just placeholders until the physical thing is safe again, wherever that location may be.
When asked what Glad Day means on a personal level, Henry got quiet and said, simply, “oh wow….what doesn’t it mean?”
You can donate to the Glad Day Lit fund and support Toronto’s LGBT community: https://www.gladdaylit.ca/
Buy books from the store: https://www.gladdaybookshop.com/
Or tune into Glad TV: https://www.gladdaylit.ca/gdtv
