Remembering Montreal’s Stonewall
In the early hours of July 15, 1990, police raided the Sex Garage loft party—and sparked a movement. Wendy Stephens was one of the people beaten that night.
I was 23 years old—a baby. Nicolas Jenkins, the video artist, was throwing an a er-hours party at a lo in Old Montreal. I’d done work for him, modelling and such, and I ended up there with a friend. Nicolas’s parties were always funky and full of freaks—I mean that in the best way. There were contortionists with snakes, and everyone was very open and creative. There were maybe 400 of us, a proud bunch of misfits.
The police arrived at around 3 a.m. The music went off and the lights went up, but that part wasn’t unusual—these kinds of parties o en attracted cops. They would come in asking about illegal alcohol or saying there was a noise complaint. My friend and I decided to head home. Leaving the building, we began to turn right on De la Gauchetière Street to where we’d parked. But the police made us go in the opposite direction instead, and corralled us up onto Beaver Hall Hill. We knew then that the raid was premeditated. That, and because they’d taken off their ID badges.
That’s when the cops—30 or 40 of them— tightened the circle around us. Everyone started running, so I did, too, and I got separated from my friend. But then I thought, why am I running? I didn’t do anything wrong. I turned and asked the cops, “What’s going on?” I paid for that. One of them punched me in the chest and slammed me down.
I got knocked down three times that night. The second time, a cop hooked his billy club in the small of my back and catapulted me through the air. The third time, when I was on my hands and knees on the ground, in shock, one of the police officers said, “Get up or I’m going to break your ribs.”
I knew my face was cut, but I don’t remember feeling pain. Everything was happening so quickly and it was so violent that my mind switched off.
That’s when Dominic came to my rescue. He was my saviour. We’d never met before, but he picked me up and ran with me. We ran all the way up Beaver Hall to SainteCatherine Street, which took about seven minutes. I tried to stop at a window to see my reflection. I kept asking, “Something’s wrong with my face, right?” Dominic would just grab me and say, “Don’t look at yourself. Don’t.” The police were up on the sidewalks in their cruisers, chasing us. It was surreal.
We escaped by heading down to Place des Arts, which was blocked off for a festival—Just for Laughs, I think. That’s where a bunch of people, maybe 30 of us from the party, reconvened, on the steps of Place des Arts. It was complete insanity. Eventually we split up. One of the girls who was at Sex Garage was dating my ex-boyfriend, of all people. We went back to their place and he cleaned my face. He was freaking out. They finished tidying me up and then I walked home. I got in at around 6:30 in the morning.
A couple of hours later, the friend I’d been separated from came by to bring me to the hospital to make a report. I didn’t want the police to get away with it. But in the end, it was the eight partygoers who were arrested who had to pay a fine.
That night, there was a peaceful sit-in in the village, by Beaudry Metro, to protest the brutality. It dispersed a er the police chief agreed to meet everyone downtown the next day, at Station 25.
I wanted to support the people who had been arrested, and I wanted to show my face. At the station, we blocked off traffic and sat down, but the police soon descended. Once I saw them in their riot gear, I had to move
to the sidelines. I was still really fragile. I had bruises surfacing on my back from the billy clubs, and a fist print on my chest.
There was so much brutality, this time in broad daylight. My neighbour got a club to the stomach. Another protester’s testicle was ruptured. People were dragged off by their hair. At Sex Garage, the only photos were taken by Linda Dawn Hammond, who’d been at the party. But this time there were news cameras and reporters. There were bystanders. And they were horrified. The public concern and outcry that emerged a er the fact shamed the police and helped change things.
A er the raid, my face was on the front page of the paper. I wasn’t even out to my family at that point. I went home to Wakefield, Que., to explain things. At first, my mom was confused, embarrassed by the media attention and worried about trouble with the police. But once she saw me and looked at the footage, she was in tears, shocked by what had happened to me and everyone else.
I took off for England less than a month a er the raid. I’d wrapped up my studies in creative arts at Dawson College and just couldn’t be in Montreal anymore. I was so disillusioned. I went to Brighton, which is a gay mecca in the U.K. But I kept having nightmares about being in a safe space and then being attacked. I definitely had post-traumatic stress disorder, but I didn’t talk about it. Getting over it was a process. The silver lining is that it definitely made me a stronger person. More resilient.
One night when I was living in Brighton, I was at a dinner party and I still had scars from the lacerations on my face. People started asking me about Sex Garage—even there, they knew about it. Sex Garage is referred to as Montreal’s Stonewall (the 1969 uprising in New York’s Greenwich Village), and in many ways it was. It was a turning point for our community, which became more connected and inclusive. Something positive came out of something so negative. The raid was the catalyst for Divers/Cité, the LGBT festival started in 1993. We also got people on the police board to represent gays and lesbians.
The raid’s 25th anniversary was in 2015. I’m living in Wakefield again, where I own a boutique, but I went back to Montreal for the anniversary. I realized then that there are a lot of people, many of them queer, who know nothing about Sex Garage. I find that really sad. We shouldn’t let our guard down, especially with the possibility of a new government coming in. It’s crucial that people are aware of the past, and of what others have done to enable them to enjoy the rights they now have.