Glad Day Bookshop is on the move again and changing its bookstore operations to a non-profit status.

Toronto’s Glad Day, now in its 55th year, is the world’s the oldest queer bookstore.

In 2016, after decades in its location on Yonge Street, the store faced a steep drop in sales and moved into the heart of Toronto’s gay village to ground-floor retail space that also included a kitchen and bar.

Once more confronted by the pressure of high rents (in 2024 a crowd-funding drive raised enough to keep the store from immediate eviction) Glad Day is again on the move to take advantage of a municipally offered space.

The store launched a new fundraising drive in late May to help make the transition. The current location will remain open until the end of June or possibly early July. Glad Day is hoping to reopen in a new space on Lisgar Street sometime in July or August, but all is dependent on raising enough funds to help with the move and furbishing the new space, and to cover some of the 2025 operating costs – the campaign has been off to a slower start than hoped, say co-owner, Michael Erickson.

The new location in the west end of the city’s downtown houses a number of non-profit arts groups, with space guaranteed by the City of Toronto until at least the end of 2025 as they reassess the building’s future. The move is a temporary measure and in the meantime Glad Day is “working with the City of Toronto to find a sustainable ‘forever home,’” hopefully in a city-owned space closer to its current location.

Until now, Glad Day has operated as a for-profit business. Glad Day Lit, a registered non-profit, was established in 2016 to support the work done by the store, to help pay writers, artists and performers, as well as individuals in need, and to subsidize community events at the store. Glad Day Lit subsidizes about 500 events for community groups, organizations, and performers a year, Erickson says, and the store’s leadership has long been considering moving the store to the non-profit model. With the move this summer, Glad Day Lit will continue to operate and the store will become part of the non-profit entity.

The new store will be significantly smaller, approximately 300 square feet – about 20 per cent of the size of the current space – but the rent also drops from almost $18,000 a month to just less than $1,000.

The new Glad Day will refocus on books; Erickson notes that with the financial pressures on the store, the stock and range of offerings had suffered significantly in recent years.

The new location will include a café counter, and the building offers a small office space for its tenants as well as a shared occasional space for events. A communal lounge in the building is available to customers.

By later in July Glad Day Lit is hoping to restart various offsite events. The plan is to organize pop-up events throughout the city and Glad Day will continue to host book launches, trivia nights, and is hoping to find a regular location for their drag brunches.

Erickson views the transition in both structure and space as both a challenge and an opportunity. While the long-term nature of the bookstore is yet to evolve, the hope of Glad Day Lit is to renew its focus on books, art, and ideas, while still focussing on community, even as it finds a sustainable model for the bookstore.