St. John's - Guide for Gays, Lesbians and Queers

St. John’s has no gay bar, no gay sauna and no permanent queer venue. Velvet Club & Lounge, for many years the city’s main place for drag and queer club nights, has closed, as did the Kaleidoscope Drag Lounge before it. Queer life in the city is organized through community groups and their events.

St. John’s Pride runs the Pride festival every July and hosts events through the rest of the year. It also supports Pride groups in other parts of Newfoundland and Labrador. Its channels are the best place to find upcoming drag nights, dances and socials.

Quadrangle, known as The Quad, is a charity working to establish a provincial 2SLGBTQIA+ community centre. Newfoundland and Labrador is one of the few Canadian provinces without such a hub. The organization runs programming, connects community groups and has carried out a federally funded project on health care for queer people in the province.

Trans Support NL serves trans and non-binary people and is closely involved in the Trans March, which goes through downtown during the Pride season.

Queer Picnic organizes socials and the Lavender Lounge dance parties. Dates are announced on the group’s own channels.

For local history, the NL Queer Archive holds digitized newsletters and documents from earlier groups such as the Community Homophile Association of Newfoundland and Gays And Lesbians Together.

George Street is the city’s general pub strip, not a gay district. Visitors who want to meet people should follow the groups above and plan around their events, especially in July.