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Glad Day Bookshop


Glad Day Bookshop is an independent bookstore and restaurant in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in LGBT literature. Long located at 598A Yonge Street near the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, the store moved to a new location on Church Street in 2016. The store's name and logo are based on a painting by William Blake.

Since the closure of New York City's Oscar Wilde Bookshop in early 2009, Glad Day is now the oldest surviving LGBT bookstore in North America.

Opened in 1970 by Jearld Moldenhauer, it was the city's and Canada's first bookstore targeted to the gay community. The bookstore originally operated out of Moldenhauer's apartment in The Annex, which also served as the original offices of The Body Politic. Moldenhauer later moved to a house in Kensington Market, where the bookstore and magazine operated out of a shed in his backyard. The store moved to its current location in 1981.

In 1979, Moldenhauer opened a second location in Boston. A fire destroyed the Boston building in 1982, but the store reopened in a different location a few weeks later.

Norman Laurila, an employee of Glad Day in the 1970s, moved with his partner Richard Labonté and friend George Leigh in 1979 to Los Angeles, where the trio established an influential LGBT bookstore of their own, A Different Light.

Moldenhauer sold the Toronto location to John Scythes in 1991, but retained ownership of the Boston store and continued to be involved in the Toronto store's operations. After the Boston store's landlord decided to convert the building into condominiums, Moldenhauer closed the store in 2000 when he and manager John Mitzel faced difficulty finding a suitable new location.


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