Glad Day Bookshop is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. The Toronto store is North America's oldest gay and lesbian bookstore. Founded in 1970 by Jearld Moldenhauer, Glad Day was bought in 1991 by current owner John Scythes. Glad Day continues to provide the most comprehensive selection of GLBT books, movies, posters and art books in North America.
The store's great selection aside, Glad Day has a history of fighting arcane Ontario censorship laws so queers in this province could have the right to read and view what they damn well please without fear of government interference.
And sure, you could find most of these book titles on the Internet (certainly not all), but why go there when you can find a retailer who knows the inventory and can inform you about new titles and introduce you to books you never would have found otherwise ? Glad Day goes above and beyond just selling books. The store remains a cornerstone of intellectual life for the city's queers.
Unfortunately things aren't all rosy for the store. Glad Day has seen its business decline in recent months, and needs the continued support of its customers to survive. There has been plenty of media coverage on Glad Day's plight. Most recently an article by David Balzer in Eye Weekly.
Coverage has also appeared in Xtra!, a wonderfully thorough piece on OpenFile, Toronto's new online news site, and in Canada's national newspaper, The Globe and Mail.
On another note, this weekend marks Pride Toronto's 'official' 30th anniversary. Though there were certainly Pride events in Toronto before 1980. What better time could there be to find the right book / movie / gay porn magazine for yourself or a friend ?
Only at Glad Day will you find rare, out-of-print volumes, compilations of famous authors works (Ex. Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader) and classic GLBT movies (we still have one copy of the Criterion edition of My Own Private Idaho)
Happy Pride All.
Cheers,
Josh
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