WELCOME TO THE BEST OF GAY TORONTO!

We have officially launched! And we'll be filling this site with lots of new information over the coming weeks!

 Toronto is a thriving Mecca for Canadian gays and International tourists.
The Gay Village, galleries, theatres, nightclubs, gay marriage and more!

Let us be your guide to everything gay and gay-friendly in Toronto and also show you some things off the beaten path, that only the locals know about!

We’ll be covering it all!   THE BEST OF GAY  TORONTO!



For advertising information and SEO perks for your business, contact us today!

Michael Snell and  Derrick  Sorles   (773) 878-5323       or  e-mail us!

Well known to nudists in Canada, Hanlan's Point Beach is situated  on Hanlan's Point near Toronto, on the shore of Lake Ontario. Part of the beach was officially recognized by the city in 2002 as being clothing optional. For those who don't care for nudity, there is a wide adjacent stretch of beach where bathing attire is required.

Hanlan's Beach can be reached most directly by taking the Hanlan's Point ferry at the foot of Bay Street at Queens Quay. The ferry cost is currently $6.50 CAD per adult for a return trip and the schedule varies depending on the day of the week and season. After the fifteen-minute trip, it is necessary to walk or cycle another ten or fifteen minutes along a paved path. The beach is shielded from the path by a stand of natural brush and trees. There are designated wooden walkways through this natural area to ensure that foot traffic does not degrade it. Aside from the cost of the ferry there is no admission fee.


Toronto Island is a must see and it is basically free, an oasis in the middle of the city. The island is a like a large peaceful park with beaches (there's the nude beach, gay beach as well as regular beaches), rollerblading, biking and walking paths, and even an amusement park and free petting zoo for children.

The Best of Gay Toronto  and the New Gay Travel Guide

June is  GAY PRIDE month around the world!

It is traditionally celebrated the last Sunday of June, in most cities. Pride celebrations stemmed from the Stonewall Riots in New York City.

The Stonewall Riots were a series of violent conflicts between LGBT people and New York City police officers that began during a 28 June 1969 police raid, and lasted several days. They were centered at the Stonewall Inn and are widely recognized as the catalyst for the modern-day movement towards LGBT rights.

Gay pride or LGBT pride refers to a world wide movement and philosophy asserting that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Heterosexual people have sometimes asked me, "Why do you have to have a  pride day? Why are you so proud? We don't have  straight pride day?" - It's about not feeling ashamed of who we are. It's about showing people our numbers, that we are in fact EVERYWHERE. We come in all shapes, sizes and colors.
Gay pride is about appreciating yourself and other members of our community for being different. GAY PRIDE means accepting yourself and celebrating who you are.


     

Gay pride advocates work for equal "rights and benefits" for LGBT people.  The movement has three main premises:
 
 - that people should be proud of their sexual orientation and gender identity,
 
 - that sexual diversity is a gift,

 - and that sexual orientation and gender identity are inherent and cannot be intentionally altered.

Someone at Cedar Rapids Pride said, "Often the hardest person to come out to is yourself.  GAY PRIDE doesn't just happen. It is hard work to overcome the profound effects of abusive religion and cultural abandonment that afflict all minorities. Self-esteem is the greatest achievement that you can reach in life. Your sense of self-worth is so valuable, that you work hard all of your life to find and express it. To reach your goal of self-esteem and happiness requires knowledge and positive experience."

Jed Ryan from Lick The Web says, "So, what is "Gay Pride?" It may not be so important that we find a universal definition. What's more important is that all of us feel positively and lovingly about being who we are-- in our case, definitely including but not limited to being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered-- at least for one moment in our lives and hopefully more. And that can be in June or any other month, at the Parade or any other location, or whether you're 17 or 70. Ultimately, the real and most important meaning of "pride" is in within each one of us."

Marches celebrating Pride (pride parades) are celebrated worldwide, and every year, the number of gay people and their supporters grows bigger and bigger! We're here, we're queer, you'd better get used to it!


Michael  Snell
New Gay Travel Guide

 

JUST WEEKS  AWAY!     WILL YOU BE THERE????

A week long of Pride - June 20-29th, 2008!

GAY PRIDE TORONTO

Pride Toronto has been in existence in various forms since the late 1970's and annually since 1981. Over the years, what began as a statement on the existence of lesbians and gays, has evolved into an inclusive and award winning arts and cultural festival.

Today, Pride Week in Toronto is one of Canada's premier arts and cultural festivals recognized as a "Signature Event" by the City of Toronto, and is one of the largest Prides in the world. An integral part of Canada’s history as an open and diverse society, Pride Week in Toronto is a one-of-a-kind event featuring ten days of dynamic arts and culture, community activities and fabulousness.

If you have never been, Toronto Pride is A MUST!

Daytime events, nighttime events with Prism Toronto,  live perfomances and much much more. Over 1,000,000  celebrate pride day in this gay friendly city.


Pride Week features 10 days of world class arts and cultural programming, community activities, one of the world's largest street festivals, Pride Parade and Dyke March, Family programming, and much more.

VISIT PRIDE TORONTO for complete details and schedules!




The Best of Gay Toronto!

When Woofstock launched in 2003, the Toronto Star called it “the summer of canine love”.  What else can you call 140,000 dog lovers and their four-footed friends coming together each year for this wildly popular doggie love-in!

Woofstock is the largest outdoor festival for dogs in all of North America. Last year it was beamed around the world on CNN for the entire weekend. (There is also a smaller Woofstock in California)

Quirky and fun, Woofstock is a free admission non-stop party that takes place at the  hip, newly expanded location, the historic St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood, home to the world-famous food market as well as the dog-friendly Sunday Antique Market.


It grows and grows every year! 2 days of jam-packed fun, events and dogs dogs dogs! 

June 7 & 8. 10am-6pm.

WOOF !   WOOF !





The Best of Gay Toronto

The 10th ANNUAL TORONTO INTERNATIONAL WINE FESTIVAL  MAY 5-10th, 2008!

Santé is the ultimate wine and culinary festival experience designed to appeal to all wine lovers - Oenophiles to enthusiasts. Get set to experience one of the world’s truly outstanding wine festivals that features amazing vintages, world-famous winemakers, celebrity chefs and spectacular cuisine in a wide range of entertaining events at spectacular Toronto venues.  -  While this is not an exclusively gay event, it does draw its fair number of gay and lesbian wine lovers.

Santé: Toronto International Wine Festival celebrates its tenth anniversary with a new name, exciting new events and a glamorous focus on new world wines from sun-drenched Australia and California.

Santé at 10 blends festival classics such as the Ultimate Winemakers Dinner and Sip Savour and Shop with fabulous new events showcasing up and coming vintages and tomorrow’s top celebrity chiefs.

Forty-two international wineries will be visiting Santé for the very first time! These debuts will add to the total of seventy-four participating wineries.

There is so much to see and do - and taste! Don't miss it!


I'll drink to that!

The Best of Gay Toronto

Toronto's most popular queer event outside of Pride is fast approaching. The 18th Inside Out film fest, running thru, May 15 to 25, is set to have a banner year with a strong program of Canadian and international works and plenty of new twists.

"In addition to presenting 250 works in the festival what excites me are a number of new initiatives this year," says Jason St-Laurent, director of programming.

The fest expands to include art shows at five galleries, the Queer Here! Queer Now! international symposium and the new offsite screening program called Video Village. "That's something I think the community will really like," says St-Laurent, "taking works to the people, screening shorts by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay in Church St bars, storefronts and a special window projection at Church and Wellesley."

View the schedule and get your tickets now online!


The Best of Gay Toronto!

YONGE STREET - The Street With Soul - 

                                      By Brent Ledger of  Toronto Star / The Star.com


Yonge St. is flaming again, at least for a few days, but greed is encroaching on its gritty truth...

On Saturday, May 3rd, journalists Jane Farrow and Gerald Hannon will lead a tour of historic gay Yonge St. It may not be a moment too soon.

Before Church St. "arrived" in the late 1980s, Yonge St. was the centre of gay Toronto and home to bars like the Quest, the St. Charles and the Parkside.

Those landmarks will live again, however briefly, during the "Yonge St. is Flaming" tour next weekend, one of 50-odd looks at Toronto's history scheduled to take place during an annual ode to urbanist Jane Jacobs / Janes Walks.

But what about the future?

With massive condo towers announced for both Yonge and Bloor and Yonge and Gerrard, and Ryerson planning to put a library (a library!) on the pivotal site of Sam The Record Man, I wonder how much longer my favourite street has got.

It's not like I object to towers in general or the siting of these towers in particular. Allowing Ryerson, an institution with an alarming record for ugliness, to expand onto Yonge St. is depressing, but the condos will replace nothing more exciting than a parking lot and some forgettable small buildings, so no great loss there.

What worries me more is the signal these developments send, the message that the street is – oh hideous phrase – "open for business." Meaning available for demolition.

We've already lost University Ave. to oversized institutions, Bloor St. to homogenized high-end shopping, and Bay St. to condos (was there ever a deader strip of street?).

Can Yonge St. be far behind?

People who don't go downtown much probably think of Yonge St. as just the place where pervs seek porn and people get shot.

For me, it's the place where the city is most alive and where I grew up.

I spent Saturday afternoons in adolescence walking up and down the strip with a friend, gawking at records and munching on Harvey's hamburgers.

I got my second gay proposition there – in the old A&A Records, looking at Dvorak, if you must know – and I found my first gay bar there – the old Parkside Tavern, at Yonge and Breadalbane, now a Sobey's.

But more than any personal associations, I love the rough-and-tumble of the street, its mix of muddle and confused coherence. Different styles, eras and functions all mingle here, giving the place a complex, layered feel.

A Starbucks huddles in an old fraternal lodge (Odd Fellows Hall, at Yonge and College) and the ghost of a gay bar (the St. Charles) lurks beneath a 19th-century fire hall tower.

Farther north, a Thai restaurant and a sexy clothing outlet find shelter in a lovely Victorian commercial block designed by Old City Hall architect E.J. Lennox.

Anchored by Morningstar at the north and Monster Records at the south, the 10-unit block at 664-682 Yonge shows what the street does best. Detailed enough to interest the eye (check out those dapper dormers) but not so massive as to overwhelm the street, it's a comforting presence that's open to all comers, respectable or not. This – and not the bureaucratically imposed developments to the south – is the real Yonge St.

Unlike the windswept plain of Yonge-Dundas Square or the tank- like facade of neighbouring Toronto Life Square, old Yonge St. was built for people, not advertising.

This city is in love with the glitzy and the grandiose and leaps at the chance to erect anything that smells of money. But it's in places like seedy old Yonge St. that you'll find Toronto's soul. And in an era of reckless development, we need it more than ever.

Brent Ledger appears every second  Saturday. You can reach him via e-mail at  The Star


The Best of Gay Toronto

It's going to be a hot summer for concerts! George Michael has just announced his first tour of North America in 17 years. PLUS a new album. After performing 80 shows in 12 European countries for a staggering 1.3 million fans over the past year alone, legendary superstar George Michael will be bringing his smash 25 LIVE tour to North American Arenas in the summer of 2008 in support of his new retrospective record.  The new record, titled Twenty-Five, will be released April 1st and is a 29-song, 2-CD set featuring six new songs (including duets with superstars Paul McCartney and Mary J. Blige and a song from the Eli Stone finale, “Feeling Good”) in addition to many of Michael's iconic songs from both his solo and WHAM! career. In addition, a companion 2-disc DVD of 40 videos will also be made available.
 
The 25 LIVE tour broke several ticket sales records, most notably in Copenhagen. Michael's concert at The Parken Stadium sold over 50,000 tickets in the matter of minutes, shattering the previous ticket sales record at the venue, formerly held by U2. On the 25 LIVE tour, Michael left both fans and critics alike in awe:
 
"It was a master class in pop genius." - The Observer
 
"George proved he is simply one of the best vocalists this country has ever produced. A stunning performance." - The Sun
 
"Worth waiting for. The show was, in every single meaning of the word, perfect." - De Morgen
 
"A tremendous singer, a complete showman, all George Michael needs is a mike, his songs, and the magic on stage is instantaneous." - La Parisien
 

The North American leg of the 25 LIVE tour will kick off in San Diego on June 17th and will continue through San Jose, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, New York and several other major cities. The tour will incorporate 22 shows over the course of seven weeks and Michael will perform material taken from the entire span of his career, including some classic Wham! tracks. Michael has recently teamed up with iTunes and Ticketmaster to produce an innovative media package which allows fans rare access to Michael’s videos, songs, and tickets to one of his North American 25 LIVE concerts. The package goes on sale on iTunes on March 25th. Tickets to the 25 LIVE tour will go on sale to the general public the weekend of April 6th. 
 

George Michael has enjoyed one of the most successful and enduring careers in the history of pop music, selling more than 85 million records globally and encompassing seven US No. 1 singles, two Grammy awards, three American Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award and two prestigious Ivor Novello awards for songwriting. His record "Faith" has sold over 20 million copies alone. In addition, Michael has garnered 11 British No. 1 singles and seven British No. 1 albums. He recently was declared the most played British artist on radio over the course of the last 20 years. On March 27th, Michael can be seen making his American acting debut on the new hit ABC series, Eli Stone, in which each episode is titled after one of his songs.
 
For more information about the George Michael tour visit his site.

 
 
OFFICIAL 25 LIVE U.S. CONCERT DATES:
 
6/17    San Diego/San Diego Sports Arena
6/19    San Jose/HP Pavilion
6/21    Las Vegas/MGM Grand
6/22    Phoenix/US Airways Center
6/25    Los Angeles/Great Western Forum
7/2     Seattle/Key Arena
7/4     Vancouver/General Motors Place
7/7     St Paul/Xcel Energy Center
7/9     Chicago/United Center
7/13    Dallas/American Airlines Center
7/14    Houston/Toyota Center
7/17    Toronto/Air Canada Centre
7/18    Montreal/Bell Centre
7/21    New York/MSG
7/23    New York/MSG
7/26    Philadelphia/Wachovia Center
7/27    Boston/TD Banknorth Garden
7/29    Washington DC/Verizon Center
7/31    Atlanta/Philips Arena
8/2     Tampa/St Pete Times Forum
8/3     Sunrise/Bank Atlantic Center


**George Michael’s official fan club site, GeorgeMichael.com, is offering ticket pre-sales and four exclusive VIP packages for the "25 LIVE" tour, George's first North American tour in 17 years.  
 
George Michael fans can get first access to exclusive ticket pre-sales for the 25 LIVE tour by joining the official online fan club on GeorgeMichael.com.  In addition, Club members will receive full access to GeorgeMichael.com content, access to members-only contests for chances to win exclusive autographed memorabilia, and the latest official news on George Michael.

CYNDI LAUPER,THE B-52s, ROSIE O’DONNELL AND SPECIAL GUESTS CELEBRATE THE SECOND ANNUAL TRUE COLORS TOUR PRESENTED BY LOGO AS THEY TAKE THE STAGE TO "GET OUT THE VOTE"
WITH HOST CARSON KRESSLEY!

The True Colors Tour will hit the road again this summer with an exciting new line-up of legendary and up and coming artists. After receiving rave reviews and a successful debut in 2007, the True Colors Tour is expanding to meet demand in many more cities. The tour will kick off Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month on May 31 at Boston’s Bank of America Pavilion.

Produced by True Colors Concerts in partnership once again with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the 24 city North American tour is presented by Logo in support of the newly created True Colors Fund of Stonewall Community Foundation. The concerts feature nearly five hours of nonstop music with exciting special guests appearing on select dates throughout the tour including Wanda Sykes, Tegan and Sara, Regina Spektor, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Joan Armatrading, Indigo Girls, Nona Hendryx, Deborah Cox and The Cliks.

 

The True Colors Tour was conceived by Cyndi Lauper stemming from her desire to give back to the community for the love and support they have given her throughout her career.  The True Colors Tour is a celebration of the basic values and freedoms that should be shared by all Americans. Fans will experience these values through the music of both legendary icons and the newest and coolest acts this generation has to offer.

 

“I’m so excited and honored that we’re taking True Colors out on the road again this year,” said tour producer and creator Cyndi Lauper.  “We had a blast last year and we are proud that the tour also brought about visibility and discussions of issues that LGBT citizens face in our country today. This year I am once again joined on the tour by an array of incredibly talented artists. The tour is a non stop 5 hour music party with a message. This year the party only gets bigger and our message to the fans is to get out and vote in November. The True Colors Tour asks for equality for all, not just for some, that is the principal upon which this country was founded. So let’s celebrate and have fun this summer while we spread the word to get out the vote and all become a part of the changes in this country.”

  

 

“Thanks to the overwhelming success of the first True Colors tour last year, we were able to send a loud and unmistakable message to all Americans that it is past time our federal hate crimes laws be updated to  include sexual orientation and gender identity. This year, we are going to build on the grassroots power of the tour by launching a massive, nonpartisan voter outreach campaign that will educate, engage and organize equality voters in this year’s election,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “This year’s True Colors Tour will provide us with an historic opportunity to organize our community to achieve a powerful voice in the 2008 elections.”

  

 

The True Colors Tour is presented by Logo and produced by True Colors Concerts, LLC in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign. For the second year, SIRIUS Satellite Radio is the exclusive national radio partner of The True Colors Tour.  Various SIRIUS talk and music channels will promote True Colors, with flagship station SIRIUS OutQ – America’s LGBT Radio Station - creating a tour-long campaign spotlighting the True Colors mission.  SIRIUS OutQ will also exclusively air a True Colors concert performance. 

Concert Dates...Tickets for select cities are on sale NOW and  available at TicketMaster.

May 31   Boston, MA                       Bank of America Pavillion       

June 1     Wantagh, NY                        Nikon at Jones Beach Theater            

June 3     New York, NY                       Radio City Music Hall  
                  

June 4     Toronto, ON                         Molson Amphitheatre 

June 6     Mashantucket, CT               MGM Grand Arena at Foxwoods

June 7     Washington, DC                  DAR Constitution Hall 

June 9     Minneapolis, MN                 US Bank Theatre at Target Center

June 10   Chicago, IL                            Chicago Theatre

June 11   Clarkston, MI                        DTE Energy Music Theatre

June 13   Atlantic City, NJ                   Borgata Resort Spa & Casino                 

June 14   Bethel, NY                             Bethel Woods Center for the Arts

June 16   Atlanta, GA                           Chastain Park Amphitheatre

June 17   Atlanta, GA                           Chastain Park Amphitheatre

June 18   Clearwater, FL                       Ruth Eckerd Hall
June 19   Fort Lauderdale, FL             Frank Sinatra Theatre at Bank Atlantic Center
June 21   Houston, TX                         Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavillion

June 22   Dallas, TX                             The Superpages.com Center

June 25   Phoenix, AZ                          Dodge Theatre

June 27   Alpine, CA                            Viejas Casino – Concerts in the Park

June 28   Los Angeles, CA                 Greek Theatre

June 29   Berkeley, CA                         Greek Theatre

July 1      Seattle, WA                          WaMu Theatre

July 2      Vancouver, BC                     Deer Lake Park

July 4      Salt Lake City, UT                USANA Amphitheatre

July 5      Morrison, CO                        Red Rocks Amphitheatre