Friends House

Friends House Friends House is a 100-year-old Georgian mansion in Toronto Annex neighborhood located two blocks north of St. George subway station.
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Friends House is the home of the Toronto Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and a meeting place for non-profit organizations who share the Quaker concerns for social justice, non-violence, non-discrimination, community and stewardship. It is the home of the Toronto Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, also known as Quakers. Its main purpose is to serve the needs of

the Toronto Quaker community. It is also available as an affordable rental space for non-profit organizations whose aims are sympathetic with Quaker values. Quakers have no written creed, but the belief in "that of God" in everyone has led them to take up causes which accord respect and dignity to those rejected or neglected by society. They have played an active role in prison reform, freedom of religion, in the abolition of slavery in the 17th century and in making education equally available to everyone. They founded "The Retreat" in York, England in 1796, pioneering the moral treatment of those with mental health needs. Present day actions include discerning the ethics of applied biotechnology, taking a stand for the rights of First Nations, seeking the spiritual roots of the environmental crisis and working with prisoners at the Don Jail.

05/23/2026

My favorite metaphor about God is the story of the blind men and the elephant. And each man feels a different part of the elephant and thinks ‘this’ is what the elephant is about. And I think that in a lot of ways, that’s the way we are about God, is that we all see different aspects of God an...

05/19/2026

We had been talking for an hour and a half with a clergyman neighbour, and afterwards I sat by the fire and thought. He had maintained that war has not as yet been grown out of, and that God still uses it as a means of training His children. As I thought over this, old thoughts and memories awoke from sleep. I remembered the familiar words about William Penn’s sword – ‘Wear it as long as thou canst’: and it seemed clear to me that if William Penn had given it up from self-interest or cowardice, or for any reason short of the ‘witness of God in his own soul’, he would have been wrong. And then the thought extended itself from the life of one man to the life of mankind, and I remembered a sentence in the Epistle to Diognetus: ‘What the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world’. Then I seemed to see that war cannot rightly come to an end from self-interest or cowardice or any worldly reason but only because men and women, by one and one, without waiting for the others, have become loyal to the spirit of Christ.

Marion C Fox, 1914
Quaker Faith and Practice 24.13

To celebrate Refugee Awareness Day, The TMM Quaker Committee for Refugees is holding its 2026 Refugee Art Show at Friend...
05/07/2026

To celebrate Refugee Awareness Day, The TMM Quaker Committee for Refugees is holding its 2026 Refugee Art Show at Friends House on Friday, June 12, 10am to 9pm and Saturday June 13, 10am to 5pm. The show provides an opportunity for newcomers to share their feelings and stories with others at no charge.

Free attendance. Sale proceeds go directly to each artist. Wheelchair accessible.

The official opening with refreshments will be on June 12 at 6pm.

Below is a photo of a self-portrait that was sold at the most recent show. The painting of the blindfolded woman is by Badri Motamedi who was arrested while a university student and imprisoned in Iran for her political activity against the brutality of the Islamic government. She spent four months of her five prison years blindfolded in solitary confinement. During that ordeal, she imagined herself a cocoon that one day would become a butterfly. Several years after her release, she painted 'In Hope of Being Butterflies'.

For more information about the show, contact the Quaker Committee for Refugees: https://www.torontoquakers.org/quaker-committee-for-refugees.html

04/28/2026

Canada is the second largest country in the world by area, but is home to just 1,000 Quakers. How did they get there, and how do they stay organized across all that space?

The first Friends to come to what is now Canada were missionaries Mary Fisher and Hester Biddle, who preached to sailors and fishermen in 1656. In the 1780s, Quakers from the American colonies settled briefly in the Atlantic region and moved to Ontario after the American War of Independence, followed by more from Britain in the 1800s. By the 1870s, there were about 7,000 Quakers in Canada, mostly in rural communities.

Today, monthly meetings stretch across the country and belong to Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM), the national body that brings Quakers together with support for worship, community life, and witness. It was formed in 1955 after decades of division and reunion among different branches.

Each year, Canadian Friends gather for Yearly Meeting – a time for worship, decision-making, learning, and fellowship. Regional and half-yearly meetings throughout the year help maintain connection across long distances and keep Canadian Quaker community strong.

https://quaker.ca/

04/24/2026

“Truth will not lose ground by being tried.”

Isaac Penington wrote these words in a letter to a friend in 1670, encouraging her that truth will always prevail, saying, “Darkness is afraid of the light, because it has a secret sense that it cannot stand before it.”

In this moment when the truth seems under attack, we explore what it means to live truthfully, to seek Divine truth, and to share it with others.

Get these inspirational Quaker quotes in your inbox by signing up for our daily devotional email. It’s free to subscribe: https://dailyquaker.com/subscribe/

04/09/2026

"In both Quakerism and science you must be completely ready to revise what you hold to be the truth; you always hold things provisionally, and you are always open to revising them."

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Save the Date!
03/19/2026

Save the Date!

Toronto Monthly Meeting's Quaker Committee for Refugees February press release on joining with the "We're Better Togethe...
03/12/2026

Toronto Monthly Meeting's Quaker Committee for Refugees February press release on joining with the "We're Better Together" Campaign

03/11/2026

Today’s Daily Quaker Message. Subscribe for free: DailyQuaker.com/subscribe

As I grow older, I seem to need more time for inner stillness…. This can happen in the midst of daily chores or when walking in a crowd or riding in a train. It means being still, open, reflective, holding within myself the crucible of joy and pain of all the world, and lifting it up to God.

Praise comes into it, and thankfulness for all the love I have known and shared, the realization of how much of the time I am carried, supported, upheld by others and the love of God. [During this process] comes the deep sense of unity of all beings, the intermeshing of the animate and inanimate, the secular and the sacred, the tangible and the intangible…. It means just waiting, or just lifting the heart.

Citation: Dorothy Steere, 1995
Quaker activist

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60 Lowther Avenue
Toronto, ON
M5R1C7

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Wednesday 9am - 10pm
Thursday 9am - 10pm
Friday 9am - 10pm
Saturday 9am - 10pm
Sunday 9am - 10pm

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