Summer Days Gay Dance

Saturday, June 27, 1981
St. Lawrence Market North

“Harvey Hamburg talked me into this idea that we should have a place that gay people could just go and have a nice time, someplace besides the bars—something that was more inside the movement. The dance at the market was an incredible success. We were practically turning people away at the door. Everybody seemed to be having an outrageously good time, partly because people were not used to having that many gay people around them. It was like your regular dance party times ten! Everybody seemed to really be enthused. I thought, ‘Hmm, maybe we’re on to something here.’”

- Robert Stout, GCDC Organiser 

The GCDC’s constitution, finalized on February 21, 1981, identified two purposes for the organization: first, “to raise funds for gay non-profit organizations serving the needs of the gay community,” and second, “to provide social events that are alternatives to the gay commercial establishments.” By the time  the GCDC concluded their work over a decade later, they had raised more than $250,000 for non-profit LGBTQ2+ community groups and had transformed the city of Toronto. 

The initial GCDC dances in March and May 1981 were relatively small, and were held at the 519 Community Centre on Church Street in Toronto where the music had to be shut off by midnight. The dances raised modest profits ($93 and $601 respectively) that were distributed among the participating gay and lesbian organizations that volunteered to promote and work the dances. 

Organisers worked hard to promote the upcoming June dance, recognizing that the summertime event had the potential to attract large crowds. They sold tickets directly to people in Toronto gay bars, paid for advertisements in The Body Politic and Metro Community News, and asked participating groups to recruit more of their members to attend. At meetings leading up to the June dance, GCDC executives voiced concerns about low attendance, especially among lesbians, who they feared would resent coming to a dance and finding few women in attendance.

Held at St. Lawrence Market on June 27th, 1981, “Summer Days” was a resounding success. Tim McCaskell writes in Any Other Way: How Toronto Got Queer, that there were more than a thousand people in attendance. DJ-ed by Ilona Laney and GCDC-founder Rob Stout, attendees danced from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. At $3,036, the net profit from this dance was significantly higher than those of previous dances. GCDC organisers distributed funds to participating groups and decided that, with dances this large, more volunteer dance coordinators would be needed moving forward.