Toronto is home to multiple and thriving queer communities that reflect the dynamism of a global city. Any Other Way is an eclectic and richly illustrated local history that reveals how these individuals and community networks have transformed Toronto from a place of churches and conservative mores into a city that has consistently led the way in queer activism, not just in Canada but internationally.
From the earliest pioneers to the parades, pride and politics of the contemporary era, Any Other Way draws on a range of voices to explore how the residents of queer Toronto have shaped and reshaped one of the world’s most diverse cities.
Any Other Way includes chapters on: Oscar Wilde’s trip to Toronto; early cruising areas and gay/lesbian bars; queer shared houses; a pioneering collective counter-archive project; bath house raids; LBGT-police conflicts; the Queen Street art/music/activist scene; and a profile of Jackie Shane, the trans R&B singer who performed in drag in both Toronto and Los Angeles, and gained international fame with her 1962 chart-topping single, ‘Any Other Way.’
Stephanie Chambers is a news researcher at The Globe and Mail and teaches investigative reporting at Humber College. She has been a researcher for many Globe stories, from investigative to business and beat reporting, including some that have gone on to win National Newspaper Awards and most recently a 2015 Michener Citation of Merit. She has a Master of Information from the University of Toronto.
Jane Farrow has worked as a CBC broadcaster, City Hall staffer, public facilitator and community animator. She was the first executive director of Jane's Walk and has received numerous community awards from the Toronto Community Foundation.
Maureen FitzGerald is an urban anthropologist and a Fellow of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She is a co-editor of Queerly Canadian: An Introductory Reader in Sexuality Studies and Still Ain’t Satisfied: Canadian Feminism Today. In the 1980s, she was managing editor of Women’s Press and a member of Lesbians Making History, a collective that did oral history of ‘gay women’ in Toronto in the fifties and sixties. She is fascinated by all things Toronto.
Ed Jackson was a long-time member of the editorial collective of The Body Politic and co-editor of Flaunting It!: A Decade of Gay Journalism from The Body Politic. He was one of the founders of the aids Committee of Toronto, where he managed prevention education in the crisis years, and later served as Director of Program Development at catie until his retirement in 2015. An ongoing supporter of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, his enduring interest is queer local history.
John Lorinc is a journalist and editor. He reports on urban affairs, politics, business, technology, and local history for a range of media, including
The Globe and Mail,
Toronto Star, Corporate Knights and
Spacing, where he is senior editor. John is the author of five books, including
No Jews Live Here: A Memoir (Coach House Books, 2024), and has co-edited eight anthologies for Coach House, including
The Ward (2015),
Any Other Way (2017), and
Messy Cities (2025). John is the recipient of the 2019/2020 Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy and was the winner of the Writers' Trust Balsillie Prize for Public Policy, for
Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias (2022). He lives in Toronto.
