.The Queer History.
.of Hanlan's Point..
Early
1900s
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
1970s
Since the early years of the twentieth century, nearly one hundred years ago, Hanlan’s Point has been a gathering place for Toronto and Canada’s queer community.
In those early days, gays and lesbians sought a respite from the persecution and bigotry of a society where homosexuality and queer life was illegal. That trip across the water to the island was an escape from institutional prejudice, police harassment, and judgement.
Long before gay bars and dating apps, Hanlan’s was the only social space for queer people in Canada’s largest city. The beach and the lawns provided people with the opportunity to make new friends and find dates by being able to open a conversation or pull up a towel without fear of reprisal.
It wasn’t long before the cottages along the shoreline became the homes and summer rentals of gay people, contemporaneous with Fire Island and Provincetown.
While the queer gathering space may not have been fully understood by the broader population of Toronto, to those in decision making capacities it was known as a hangout for “undesirables” and “sinners,” but to the people for who this space was a vital lifeline in an ocean of hatred, it was simply known as “the pink beach.”
In the 1950s the cottages were torn down and in the 1960s many of the trees on the lawn were torn up in an effort to reprogram the space away from the community that had taken hold there. Yet the community persisted and continued to gather in the safe space that they had created.
In 1971 the Gay Day Picnic, Canada’s first ever 2SLGBTQI+ Pride gathering, took place at Hanlan’s Point, blossoming into Canada’s queer liberation movement and the fight for human rights protections in employment, housing, and healthcare took shape.
Throughout the 1970s up until 1999, Toronto Police conducted mass arrests of hundreds of gay men and queer people at the site of Canada’s first Pride, using technicalities and undercover stings to entrap, harass, and cause institutional harm to those who gathered there. Despite this, Hanlan’s Point continued to be instrumental in gatherings for queer racial justice groups, gay and lesbian rights organisations, and community groups dedicated to fighting for adequate AIDS healthcare.
In the 1980s, another plan to reprogram the space took shape with Metro Council looking to pour cement over a large portion of the beach to create a mechanised wave pool and raze the dunes at the southern end of the beach to create an urban farm. The plan was met with pushback by the queer community, emboldened by the queer liberation movement and the AIDS epidemic to fight for their community. After years of struggle, the plan was ultimately abandoned when the developers backed out.
In 1999, a gay lawyer named Peter Simm crafted a plan to revive the clothing optional status of Hanlan’s Point Beach and, after an extended pilot project, the designation became permanent.
In 2023 a plan for an outdoor concert venue at Hanlan’s Point once again galvanised Toronto’s queer population, and through education and co-operation the community was able to work with decision makers to reverse the plan and assert the importance of queer history at Hanlan’s.
While some parts of Hanlan’s queer history, like the destruction of the gay summer colony or the arrests of hundreds of queer people, can’t be reversed, we can make sure that the same injustices don’t happen again by shining a spotlight on the importance of queer history and placekeeping and making sure queer people are educated about their own erased history in Canada’s oldest surviving queer space.