Advocates fear queer community will be pushed out by changes at Hanlan’s Point

Hanlan’s Point has been a safe haven for Toronto’s 2SLGBTQ+ community for nearly 100 years, but a plan to build a 20,000-person festival venue close to the beach has advocates worried the queer community will be pushed out of the historic space.

“It became clear me that the suggestions and the input from people I knew in the community weren’t being listened to,” said Travis Myers, who is one of the people behind the Instagram account Hands off Hanlan’s.

Myers says the goal is to raise awareness about the proposed Toronto Islands master plan.

The City of Toronto has been consulting about the future of the islands for more than two years. City staff tell CityNews that thousands of residents have been surveyed, and those voices, as well as input from industry experts, have gone into the master plan. “The intention is to collect ideas, advance the work, come back, confirm the work, advance the work,” says Daniel Fusca, a city manager for public consultation.

The master plan is extensive, with a multi-year vision for not just Hanlan’s Point but Ward’s Island, Centre Island and many smaller points of interest.

Fusca says one proposal under the master plan for Hanlan’s Point is to add infrastructure to an area that is already used for music festivals in the summer. The space is currently an open field, surrounded by trees and bushes that back onto the beach. When used for festivals such as ‘Electric Island,’ temporary utilities, including power generators, porta potties and other equipment must be delivered to the island prior to the event, at a cost to organizers.

“The idea is to build a space that is flexible that can host an event on Saturday that is a thousand people, 50 people Sunday, and then Monday-Friday just be available for people to use as it normally would be,” added Fusca.

The idea of a permanent festival venue at Hanlan’s isn’t siting well with some, who worry it will marginalize the people already using the space. After learning of the proposed changes, Myers, and a friend got to work. They conducted hours of research on the history of Hanlan’s point, and the deep ties the area has to the 2SLGBTQ+ community.

“It’s Canada’s oldest surviving LGBTQ+ space, there have been queer people visiting Hanlan’s as long as there has been recorded queer history in Toronto.” Myers continues, “when we got into it and realized that the plan didn’t adequately reflect that aspect, it was a bit of a surprise.”

After sorting through dozens of pages of community consultation summaries, Myers said the overwhelming majority of queer people who contributed to city consultations were opposed to the festival venue.

“There’s some important questions we need to ask the city right now about who exactly wants this, thousands of people said that they didn’t,” Myers noted. “We’re talking about a nude beach but it’s really the city staff who have been caught with their pants down when we’re talking about misrepresenting facts, missing documents, mitigating public outreach, omitting stake holders from this. None of this is good.”

The Toronto Islands fall under Councillor Ausma Malik’s riding of Spadina-Fort York. She says it isn’t too late to make changes. “Community members are raising concerns about the plans proposed for Hanlan’s, and those concerns are legitimate, and there is an opportunity for those concerns to be raised.”

The city has added another public consultation focused on speaking with the 2SLGBTQ+ community. It’s scheduled for February 27th at The 519 community centre. Registration for the event has already filled, so city staff are adding a virtual consultation date. City planners are hoping to have a final version of the master plan ready for council to vote on by the end of this summer