Scarborough is an eastern suburb of Toronto with a rich,distinct history and culture shaped by its large racialized and immigrant populations. While narratives around queerness in Toronto are often situated within the downtown core, Scarborough has long been a space where queer people – and, particularly, queer people of colour – have existed and resisted. It was, as Richard Fung states in Marvellous Grounds (2018), where some of the first conversations around queerness within a Tamil context were held; it is where the queer narratives of literary works like David Chariandy’s Brother (2017) and Catherine Hernandez’ Scarborough (2017) are set; and is, most recently, where the EAST H.E.A.R.T (Health, Education, Art, Resilience, Together) Youth Program for queer youth was born in 2020 as part of Scarborough Arts, one of Toronto’s six Local Arts Service Organizations (LASOs). Despite this recent attention placed on highlighting the unique experiences of queers in Scarborough, there remains a lack of any formally documented history of queerness in the east end. Our collective of university researchers, community organizers, lived experience (peer) collaborators, and arts service providers, aims to address this need and opportunity by exploring how digital spaces and artistic practice can expand notions of community and build new ones.
