Sexual Compulsives Anonymous in Toronto was started by two members who were looking for a different approach to “S” recovery from that of another “S” program. Colin K. recounts: “David M. and I were members of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) for several years and, in the summer of 2000, we talked about bringing another ‘S’ fellowship to Toronto. I believed that this was necessary at the time because I wanted to reclaim my sexuality in a healthy way, and there was not a lot of experience, strength and hope that would suggest that our fellow SLAA members were doing this – particularly for those of us who were single.”

“David M. and I met for coffee and looked over the literature we had received from SCA and another fellowship that dealt with sexual compulsion, namely Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA). I liked the tools that SCA had to offer. In particular, I liked the concept of the Sexual Recovery Plan and the fact that SCA was founded by gay men, and inclusive of all sexual orientations (David and I were both gay). The Sexual Recovery Plan was very appealing – sobriety was self-defined as before by listing the behaviors to be avoided, however, on the other side, there was a list of the things that were to be added to make recovery worthwhile. This could include actions that would result in attaining a healthy sexuality. Sexual Recovery Plans differed from member to member, and were based on personal history and circumstances.”

“The Sexual Recovery Plan was like a breath of fresh air. There were a couple of additional factors that swayed us – the term ‘sexual compulsive’ was a bit easier to swallow for newcomers who may have had difficulty with the term ‘sex addict,’ as well as the fact that the preamble stated that the intent was not to repress our God-given sexuality. We were sold on SCA, and agreed to move forward with our plan and bring SCA to Toronto. We initially decided that two meetings per week would be held. In a subsequent coffee meeting, we used the SCA Blue Book to draw up the format for our meetings. The basic format was this – we would read from SCA material then share on the reading, followed by a ‘getting current’ sharing segment (also known as ‘open sharing’). This basic format has survived to the present day, although some additional wording has been included and minor changes have been made to it along the way.”

“In August, 2000, we commenced a search for meeting locations. We approached local churches and institutions, such as hospitals and community centres. We decided on the Women’s College Hospital at 76 Grenville Street as a meeting place due to its central location, good conference room, close proximity to the Church-Wellesley gay village, and ‘pay what you can’ approach to rent. There were no other Twelve Step groups meeting there at the time, and it was felt that this would give the group a new and fresh start. Also, scheduling of the meetings was easier at the hospital, as the other potential locations were already hosting a number of community groups, and scheduling our chosen meeting days would therefore have been more difficult elsewhere.”

The first meeting of SCA in Toronto took place at the beginning of October, 2000. Meetings were held on Sunday evenings and Thursday nights. SCA in Toronto celebrates our founding anniversary on the First of October.

Colin K. continues: “Our first meeting consisted mainly of SLAA members who knew us. These people continued to attend, but most did not want to leave SLAA. We soon realized the need for community outreach in order to carry the message and to build our membership. We approached the LGBT newspaper ‘Xtra!’ in order to obtain an Xtra phone extension. Xtra was the most widely circulated free gay newspaper in the city, and provided groups that served the LGBT community with an extension to their main phone number. The names and extensions were published in Xtra’s weekly paper, and this service was free to non-profit community groups such as ours. We signed with Xtra for our ‘Xtension Agreement’ on October 12, 2000. Our introductory message with group information was then recorded, consisting of the SCA preamble and the times and location of our two weekly meetings. This was updated from time to time until the creation of our local website.”

The summer of 2002 brought changes to the Toronto fellowship. Women’s College Hospital had been undergoing considerable transition, and gave notice that the rent for the meeting room would be raised to a level the group could not afford. Additionally, there were tensions and divisions among a number of the members.

In September, 2002, Colin K. decided to establish another SCA meeting on Fridays. He relates: “At the time, it was thought that attending a meeting at the start of a weekend would give members enough strength to last through the weekend. An application had been submitted to the local LGBT Community Centre (The 519 Church Street Community Center) in September, 2002, however, we did not hear back from them for some time. As a result, St. Luke’s United Church at 353 Sherbourne Street was approached in early October, 2002. The church was agreeable to hosting our meetings. Our first meeting there took place on Friday, October 18, 2002. The group met here until December 27, 2002. At that point, we were informed that the board of the 519 Church Street Community Centre had finally approved our application for the use of their space. The meeting never really took off at St. Luke’s and so the members decided to move to The 519. Another issue was that the 7^th Tradition collections could not cover the $75 per month fee that St. Luke’s United Church was requesting.”

“It was hoped that the gay village location and popularity of the 519 Church Street Community Centre would attract more newcomers. Also, there was no set room rental fee at the community center, and this was very helpful until such time as we were able to ‘get on our feet’ financially. Meetings at The 519 began on Friday, January 3, 2003.”

The Women’s College Hospital meetings closed in October, 2002. David M. and Tony I. set up a new meeting at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, 188 Carlton Street on Tuesday evenings. Initially, this was an SCA meeting and attended by many of the members from the Women’s College Hospital meeting along with the other new meeting at the 519 Church Street Community Centre. Some weeks later though, David M. and Tony I. explored the Sex Addicts Anonymous fellowship, contacting their International Service Organization, and the Tuesday SCA meeting at St. Peter’s was converted to an SAA meeting. This represented the founding of SAA in Toronto.

SCA in Toronto therefore continued with one meeting per week, on Fridays at the 519 Church Street Community Centre, from 2003 until 2006. The Friday meeting gradually became popular and the group had a reasonable number of members so, with group agreement, Kevin B. decided to establish another meeting. There was a search for a suitable and affordable meeting place for a couple of years, and eventually the group also started meeting on Tuesday evenings at St. Andrew’s United Church, 117 Bloor Street East from Tuesday, September 26, 2006 onwards.

The group had discussed outreach strategies at a series of business meetings from 2005 on and, with the prevailing changes in publishing and the ongoing development and expansion of the internet, a significant area of focus was the need for a website to carry the SCA message of recovery in the local area. The group set up a basic website in September, 2006.

The two weekly SCA meetings gave members more stability and structure in which to recover, and the new website attracted more newcomers. Slowly, the Toronto fellowship grew.

SCA Toronto had had various routine dealings with SCA’s International Service Organization over the years, for literature orders and problems with literature shipments mostly, but we reached out to ISO in July, 2007 for more significant assistance with a website misdirect that meant people looking for SCA were encountering SAA locally instead. We contacted ISO again in July, 2008, when our members were ambushed after a meeting by a notorious pick-up artist who was filming a documentary. This contact led to Toronto having an ISO Representative at the Annual ISO Conference for the first time by telephone in February, 2009. SCA Toronto members then became involved in ISO Inreach Committee service work, part of which was to reach out to the former SCA group in Montreal, Quebec, which was found to have converted entirely to an SAA group. It was determined that Toronto was the only remaining city in Canada with a physical SCA presence, Ottawa meetings that we knew to have been in existence around 2003 and 2004 also having folded.

Frank H., an SCA founder from New York, visited Toronto and attended meetings for roughly a year from 2009 to 2010. Frank H. later sent us a copy of a letter dated April 1, 1985 which was part of an exchange between him and individuals of a group called “Obsessive and Compulsive Sexual Behaviour” in Toronto. This group had written to SCA in New York about sexual recovery and the SCA program. We were not aware of that group or what became of it, and to our knowledge SCA as such was not present in Toronto before October, 2000, although both the fellowships of Sexaholics Anonymous (SA) and Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) were.

With the advent of some new members with experience in other “S” fellowships and different Twelve Step programs, and a solid core group attending the two existing Toronto SCA meetings around 2010, Eugene S. started a third weekly SCA meeting on Wednesdays. The noon meeting at St. Basil’s Church Parish Office at 50 St. Joseph Street in downtown Toronto began taking place on Wednesday, March 16, 2011.

SCA Toronto hosted the Annual ISO Conference in Toronto from April 20 to 22, 2012, representing the first time the ISO Conference had been held outside the United States of America. SCA Toronto also had in-person representation at ISO Conferences subsequently, from 2013 to 2016 inclusive, followed by remote attendance.

The meeting at St. Basil’s Church Parish Office closed on Wednesday, August 31, 2016 after being at that location for nearly 5½ years. Renovations and changes at St. Basil’s Church meant that the church asked the group to move. The Wednesday meeting moved to Metropolitan United Church, 56 Queen Street East, Toronto, and meetings resumed on September 21, 2016. Meetings were held there for most of one year, until the meeting closed on Wednesday, September 13, 2017. Eugene S. found himself experiencing difficulty navigating the stairs, and stopped doing service for and attending the meeting. No-one else could commit to opening the meeting, so it ended.

Longtime SCA Toronto member Eugene S. found himself in failing health over the next two years, resulting in him moving to an assisted living facility in downtown Toronto. We kept in touch and, as he was unable to get out to meetings, decided to carry the SCA message and support Eugene as a member of the group by taking special service meetings to his residence. Those took place on Wednesdays at lunchtime every couple of weeks from April, 2018 to the end of May, 2019. The meetings were open to the group, but not listed on our website. A couple of members then visited Eugene in hospital and at the long-term care home he was moved to over the summer, until his passing on September 5, 2019. The group was happy to have been able to support our fellow member’s recovery in this way.

From September 15, 2017 to March 16, 2020, SCA in Toronto continued to hold two scheduled weekly meetings, on Tuesdays at 6:15 p.m. and Fridays at 6:30 p.m. (along with the 2018/2019 unlisted Wednesday special service meetings described above), until the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a general lockdown and the two in-person meetings were suspended. For a time, from October 20, 2020 onwards, the group put on replacement telephone meetings on Tuesdays and Fridays at the usual meeting times during the lockdown, but these were discontinued after about a year. The in-person Friday meeting at the 519 Church Street Community Center resumed on April 1, 2022 with only one meeting a month, on the first Friday of each month, following space use policy changes at the community center. The changes meant that the 519 effectively no longer offered weekly meetings to groups. Nevertheless, our group managed to increase the Friday meetings to two per month, on the first and third Fridays of each month, beginning on August 18, 2022. The weekly Tuesday meetings resumed in person at St. Andrew’s United Church on September 6, 2022. SCA Toronto continued offering meetings on Tuesdays weekly and the first and third Fridays of each month for 3½ years from September 6, 2022 to March 20, 2026.

The group emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic stronger than it had been before and during it, with consistent, improved attendance and most meetings taking place. October 1, 2025 found us celebrating SCA Toronto’s 25^th anniversary. The group went out for dinner after the Friday meeting on November 7, 2025 at the nearby restaurant The Blake House. Eight members were in attendance, with some others sending regrets. After a pleasant and convivial meal, we had a cake for dessert, which our co-founder Colin K. cut and distributed. We asked Colin for some words, and he said that it was controversial when he and David M. had decided to start SCA in Toronto in October, 2000, as it would split the local SLAA membership, but he had no regrets. Colin said that it was the best decision of his life to get SCA going and that, in his opinion, SCA was the best program in town. He reiterated that the early Toronto members appreciated SCA’s use of the Sexual Recovery Plan and emphasis on bringing healthy sexuality into one’s life, and not repressing or avoiding one’s sexuality. Overall, we had a fine time.

In March and April, 2026, we updated and expanded our local website, SCAToronto.org. Our web hosting provider had upgraded its offerings, and we were able to add five new pages to the existing five in a much-improved looking format. The site consequently includes the following ten pages: Home Page, Area Meetings, For Newcomers, The Characteristics, Twenty Questions, Twelve Steps, Twelve Traditions, Tools of Recovery, Gifts of Recovery, and Contact Us. The site became much easier to change and update, and more user friendly. Member feedback has been that it is greatly improved. September, 2026 marks 20 years of SCA Toronto having a website.

As we could not return to having weekly meetings at the 519 Church Street Community Center on Fridays despite periodic requests over several years, and given the deterioration in that neighbourhood, we looked around for a replacement meeting place. Effective April 10, 2026, SCA Toronto began meeting weekly at Friends Meeting House, 60 Lowther Avenue, The Annex, Toronto on Fridays on a permanent basis. We continued meeting weekly at St. Andrew’s United Church on Tuesdays as well. Meeting times stayed the same at 6:15 p.m. on Tuesdays and 6:30 p.m. on Fridays.

While the new location costs more than the 519 and is not “downtown” proper, the area is unquestionably better overall, being in the main a residential, university and office or business neighbourhood. The Quakers proved to be welcoming, friendly and supportive. A sign that we were in a more conducive environment for recovery was that the group immediately took to going for coffee and fellowship after most meetings again. This had fallen by the wayside years earlier in the Church Street location we had met at for 23 years. Encouragingly, fellowship after meetings on Tuesdays also became more frequent and regular.

Over the years, the group participated in SCA’s International Service Organization (ISO) in various ways, and had involvement in a number of significant fellowship-wide projects. These included:

• Working on the final “Avoiding Common Pitfalls on the Road of Recovery” pamphlet (fully approved and published in 2011).

• Establishing the SCA Telephone Meetings that started in July, 2011 working with Online Intergroup, doing telephone meeting service, and generally supporting Online Intergroup in its functioning. This was part of Online Intergroup’s revitalization.

• Hosting the ISO Conference in Toronto in April, 2012, and welcoming the in-person delegates from the USA and Europe to the first (and to date only) SCA-ISO Conference held outside the United States of America.

• Participating significantly in the Website Redesign Committee for the new main SCA website SCA-Recovery.org that went live in 2016/2017.

• Acting as Regional Coordinator for the Americas Outside the USA, including Canada and the Online & Telephone Meetings for some nine years until 2018, when the position was discontinued.

• Co-authoring and editing the final “Sponsorship in SCA” pamphlet (fully approved and published in 2018).

• Participating in the Ad Hoc SCA History & Unity Committee project (Final Report & Recommendations for Addressing SCA Fellowship History delivered and provisionally accepted at the 2018 ISO Conference, fully accepted and in final effect May, 2019).

• Working on, significantly revising and editing the final “The Twelve Traditions of SCA” commentaries (conditionally-approved in 2018, fully approved in 2019 and published).

• Drafting the “SCA Promises,” which were slightly revised, re-titled and published as “The Gifts of Recovery” (conditionally-approved in 2018 & 2019, fully approved in 2020).

• Working closely on the design, development and building of the new, independent Online Intergroup website OnlineSCA.org that was completed and went live in September, 2020.

For the size of the group, we have done a lot, consistently “punched above our weight” and, in the words of SCA Co-founder Frank H. of New York in 2020, “Toronto has had a major impact on ISO and the SCA Fellowship.”

With regard to Frank H., who was in effect a short-term SCA Toronto member by virtue of his year-long stay in the city from 2009 to 2010, following his passing on October 26, 2025, SCA Co-founder Bill L. contacted the group and requested that we speak at Frank’s memorial given Frank’s close association with, and fondness for, the Toronto group. Colin K. was traveling on the day and Kevin B. therefore attended the service by telephone solo on November 16, 2025 as a representative of SCA Toronto and one of the listed speakers. Kevin reported back to the group about this moving experience afterwards via the group email list. Numerous members of the group considered themselves fortunate and were happy to have met and known Frank H. in person for a time. Frank had provided sponsorship or guidance to several SCA Toronto members.

Over the years, our membership has waxed and waned, but our meetings nevertheless persist. SCA Toronto is a small fellowship, but perfectly viable. All those with a desire to stop having compulsive sex and to work the SCA program of recovery from sexual compulsion can find the framework, resources and support to do so in our group!

Submitted by Colin K. and Kevin B.,

SCA Toronto, October 1, 2015 & June 15, 2026