The Steps
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Photograph of men sitting on the steps in front of the Second Cup at the corner of Church Street and Wellesley Street, Toronto. 1990. Photograph by George Hall.
Known simply as The Steps, this spot was once one of the most iconic and beloved queer gathering spaces in Toronto. Located at the base of the Churwell Centre on the southwest corner of Church and Wellesley, it became a landmark of the social life of the Church-Wellesley Village from the 1980s through the early 2000s.
The Churwell Centre opened in 1984, bringing with it a new Second Cup franchise. The building’s design included a wide terracotta-tiled stairway—five steps in total—that led up to the café’s entrance. Though never intended as a gathering place, these modest architectural features quickly became a de facto communal stoop, inviting patrons and passersby to sit, socialize, and observe.
During summer nights and even into the chill of autumn, drag queens, hustlers, street youth, gay men, lesbians, and others across the queer community would gather here. Some came to catch up with friends, others to people-watch, and many simply to be seen—to make themselves visible in a world that often demanded their invisibility. The Steps served as a rendezvous point before nights out, a sanctuary after long days, and a perch from which to observe the rhythms of queer urban life. At its peak in the 1990s, the Second Cup at Church and Wellesley became the franchise’s highest-grossing location, open 24 hours and drawing crowds so large that even at 5 a.m., hundreds could be found outside.
In a time when queer people were still often excluded from mainstream spaces, The Steps offered a rare form of belonging—a quasi-public platform of queer visibility, camaraderie, and casual resistance. Its cultural significance was so deeply felt that it was parodied in a sketch by The Kids in the Hall, the Canadian comedy troupe which included openly gay performer Scott Thompson. To be featured—even humorously—in national comedy was a testament to the prominence of The Steps within the city’s cultural consciousness.
The skit performed by The Kids in the Hall
But The Steps were never merely a social venue. They were also a site of politics, survival, and contested belonging. In the early 2000s, changes in the urban landscape altered the dynamic of the space. Increased policing along nearby Yonge Street displaced many street-involved youths, some of whom began gathering here. Their presence was met with growing discomfort from some business owners and older members of the gay community, who viewed the shift as a sign of decline rather than an evolution of inclusion. The language of “undesirables” re-emerged, echoing earlier forms of exclusion from queer spaces themselves.
In 2004, amid mounting pressure from local business interests, the property owner eliminated The Steps by bricking over the stoop and extending the retail space to the sidewalk. Though a new wheelchair ramp was later added after community advocacy, the change marked the symbolic and physical end of The Steps as a gathering place. The decision was met with protest from the local queer community, who mourned the loss not just of the structure but of a rare kind of public queer visibility.
The site has been repurposed today, yet the memory of The Steps lives on. It stands as a reminder of how urban architecture can become a canvas for queer presence, and how ordinary spaces—through consistent, everyday use—can be transformed into sites of cultural and political significance. The Church-Wellesley Village, like all neighbourhoods, continues to evolve. As queer people claim new geographies, The Steps remain a symbol of how space becomes queer not by design, but by the people who occupy it. To gather, to linger, to be visibly queer in public—these simple acts were at the heart of what made The Steps matter.