As a young queer visitor to Toronto in the ’90s, Dani Gaede remembers Church Street at its liveliest: the wide steps outside the old Second Cup always packed with people laughing, sipping coffee or wine, and watching the Village go by.
Today, Church and Wellesley remains the place she feels safest in the city — but it doesn’t look or feel the same. Condos and corporate chains have crowded out some of the queer-owned businesses that once defined the neighbourhood.
Now, with her partner, author and activist Rowan Jetté Knox, she hopes to revive some of that community with the Understory — a queer, trans-run café and wine bar that just opened at Church and Wellesley.
Since opening on Jan. 30, the Understory has drawn a mix of commuters, neighbours and Church Street regulars, some stopping for a quick coffee, others lingering over conversation.
While longtime community staples like Woody’s, Pegasus and Hair of the Dog still stand, others have struggled. Glad Day Bookshop — the world’s oldest queer bookstore — moved temporarily because of rising rent costs. Businesses like Boots, Zelda’s and Colby’s have served as mobilizing points until costs or closures forced them to leave.
“When developers build new condos, the retail below becomes astronomically more expensive,” says Rowan Jetté Knox. “Mom-and-pop places get priced out.”
Dean Lobo, senior communications advisor at the 519 — Canada’s largest 2SLGBTQ+ community centre, located on Church Street — says that pressure isn’t new and is felt city-wide. He says establishments have closed because of high rent, limited rent control and new condos that take away from “the social and cultural fabric of the neighbourhood.”
Gaede and Knox have found community along Church Street and hope to create a similar space with Understory. The café’s name refers to the forest floor, where life flourishes beneath the canopy.
“The more vibrant the neighbourhood is, the more people will show up to experience it and the more business there will be for all of us,” says Knox.
As Church Street regulars, the two describe Understory as a “quieter third space,” something they say has already begun to take shape in the café’s first week. With colourful walls, calming wood and a tree that sprawls across the ceiling, Knox and Gaede say customers already walk in and forget where they are for a moment.
Steps from Wellesley station, they are seeing commuters — families, seniors and young queer couples — stop in on the go. But they also want people to stay and “meet their neighbours” — for dates, for writing workshops or craft nights.
Opening a café was once their retirement dream and now, they’re cashing in early. Knox sold his house in Ottawa and invested much of the proceeds, while Gaede put in a significant amount of her savings.
Knox and Gaede were prepared to go forward with Understory using their life savings. But a small business loan program, partially backed by the federal government, made it so they didn’t have to. Knox says the approval is “shocking” in the current market.
“As we understand it, we’re one of the very few restaurant-type businesses that they are approving right now so they feel we have something really special,” says Knox.
When Knox’s child, now nonbinary, came out and he published his bestselling memoir Love Lives Here in 2019, he recalls a period of what he says was more openness and acceptance.
But Rowan says the climate for 2SLGBTQIA+ rights has become more challenging, particularly in the U.S., where policy changes have restricted access to care and curtailed protections for transgender people. He has heard from many who are struggling as a result.
He feels the weight of the current climate and relates to people feeling helpless. Rowan says that’s why the café couldn’t just be anywhere — it had to be on Church Street.
For years, Knox heard from countless people who felt comfortable coming out after reading his story. Meeting readers with honesty and compassion, he likes to think his writing is like having a cup of coffee with a friend.
Cafés have shaped their story from the beginning. Morning Parade, a “community-run” coffee shop in Toronto’s east end, was the first place Gaede says she showed up as her authentic self in public. It was also where she read Knox’s memoir and sent him a message for the first time. Later, on their first date in Montreal, the two buzzed from café to café.
“We found those spaces. We have used those spaces. And now we get to provide a space like that. That’s the dream,” says Knox.
Coming up on the 519’s 50th anniversary next year, Lobo says that since more people have moved off Church Street and settled in other cities, the organization’s work has shifted to support people everywhere.
“But that doesn’t underplay that the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood is still a place where our communities come together to play, to organize, to advocate, to share ideas, to share grievances and to really be in solidarity with each other,” says Lobo.
As Gaede swept the floor outside in the café’s first weeks, before the doors were open, people stopped to ask questions or slowed their cars to call out their anticipation. Now, they don’t have to wait.
“Someone said, ‘My kids are trans and they don’t have anywhere to go. They’re coming to the city for school. I want my kid to have a safe place to go and feel like they belong.’ And that’s what we’re trying to do here — with really good coffee,” says Gaede.
