4. The 519 - 519 Church Street

Barbara Hall Park and the 519 Community Centre are arguably the town square of the Church-Wellesley Village. Named after former Mayor Barbara Hall, a supporter of the LGBTQ community throughout her public life, the park as well as the 519 building were once home to the Granite Club. One of the club buildings was destroyed by fire in 1913 and its foundation can still be found at the back of the park by the AIDS Memorial, itself begun as a temporary installation in the late 1980s but made permanent in 1993.

After the Granite Club moved, the building you see today, with its second-floor ballroom, housed the German Harmony Club until 1939 when it moved to Sherbourne Street. Later the building became the Ulster Athletic Club, then the headquarters for the 48th Highlanders. At risk of demolition in the mid-1970s, the building was turned into a City of Toronto community centre that ultimately, and not without some controversy, offered some of the first gay programming in the city.

During Pride, the park becomes an outdoor discotheque, and Church Street closed to cars, one of the biggest queer pride celebrations and on the scale of the annual Christopher Street Day Pride events in Berlin.