Hot Summer Nights

Saturday, June 26, 1982
The Concert Hall

The GCDC’s dance Hot Summer Nights on June 26, 1982, coincided with other exciting events in Toronto. In late June and early July, Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) hosted Wilde ‘82–the world’s first gay and lesbian history conference. Named to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s North American lecture tour, Wilde ‘82 brought together lesbian and gay historians from Canada and the United States to discuss the burgeoning field of gay and lesbian history. 

“Queer history, as a legitimate area of study…launched as a coherent intellectual enterprise at the Wilde ‘82 history conference in Toronto.”

- Ed Jackson, GCDC Attendee

Many of the presenters and attendees at Wilde ‘82 also participated in the GCDC’s Hot Summer Nights dance. By the summer of 1982, GCDC dances were becoming well-known and well-respected in Toronto and across Canada. As Tim McCaskell writes in his book Queer Progress, by this time  the GCDC “had a membership of more than twenty groups and regularly attracted over two thousand” dancers.  

In a meeting just prior to the Hot Summer Nights dance, GCDC members voted to add the Glad Day Defence Fund as a member group. This fund was organised to defend Kevin Orr of Glad Day Bookshop, who was charged with selling what Toronto Police considered pornographic magazines. With growing membership and increasing dance profits, the GCDC had more power to support and amplify causes within the LGBTQ2+ community.