Sorry, 35 years later
Toronto police chief will apologize for infamous 1981 bathhouse raids
When police stormed four gay bathhouses in Toronto on Feb. 5,1981, patrons were mocked, humiliated — and arrested by the hundreds.
The raids outed men who considered the private clubs a sanctuary, free from the hostility of a populace who disapproved of, or didn’t understand, intimacy between men.
On Wednesday, Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders will make a historic apology for the raids at his annual Pride reception at police headquarters, the Star has learned. He will also apologize for a 2000 raid by six male officers on Club Toronto during a women’s bathhouse event known as the “Pussy Palace.” Police claimed to be searching for liquor vio- lations. Many of the women were nude and felt violated, according to a story in the Star. Police settled a civil suit in 2005.
The Toronto Police Service worked with prominent gay activist Rev. Brent Hawkes to craft the apology, a source said. The chief’s event will be an acknowledgment of the past and a commitment to efforts going forward, with new initiatives that speak directly to the LGBT community, the source said.
Saunders plans to march in the Pride Parade on July 3, following in the footsteps of Bill Blair, who became the first Toronto police chief to do so in 2005.
Dennis Findlay, who was part of a legal defence committee formed after the 1981 raids, said the apology is a long time coming. “They did wrong,” said Findlay, president of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. “This was their attempt to slap us into the closet, big time . . . but it didn’t work.”
Ninety per cent of the charges were dismissed by judges.
Critics said the raids criminalized men for being gay and persecuted a group with no human rights protections and who could be fired from their jobs and shunned by their families. No public figure — police officer or politician — has ever accepted responsibility.
“It would be interesting to know who did give the order,” said Tim McCaskell, who covered the raids for the Body Politic, a gay newspaper, and later joined the Right to Privacy Committee. “Let’s have some real truth here.”
Anger over the raids spread quickly and politicized gays and lesbians alike, who had previously clashed in debates over sexism and feminism. The cohesion gave rise to the gay rights movement in Toronto.
The night after the raids, 3,000 demonstrators, mostly gay men who typically feared visibility, marched down Yonge St. and confronted police, yelling “resign, resign, resign.”
The raids were “probably the best thing that happened to our community ever,” said Findlay, adding they also brought together the public. “Even if you were not supportive of the gay community, you realized that this was an attack on civil liberties.”
The Feb. 5 raids took place after a six-month investigation by the Metro force, whose officers infiltrated the clubs. At 11 p.m., more than 100 police armed with crowbars and sledgehammers broke down bathhouse doors, dragging men into lobbies and charging them. About 300 people were arrested with being owners or “found-ins” of a common bawdy house — a house of prostitution — and given a public court date to face charges.
Many of the men considered themselves patrons of private clubs where rooms could be rented for anonymous sex, one of the few safe spaces for gay men at the time. Homosexuality had only been decriminalized in 1969 and “the vast majority of gay men were deep, deep, deep in the closet,” McCaskell said.
The typical resident wouldn’t have known what a bathhouse was, said Sen. Art Eggleton, who was then mayor of Toronto, but said he had no foreknowledge of the raids.
McCaskell said he was numb as he watched men, many of them frightened, being dragged out of the Mutual St. bathhouse.
The demonstration the next night came together within 12 hours — an astonishing feat, said McCaskell.
As the anger boiled over, gay activists began working tirelessly for their rights. A legal defence committee raised more than $200,000 to pay for lawyers to represent the accused, although more than 30 stepped up to do the work pro bono. Findlay represented12 men himself and got the charges dropped.
McCaskell said theories persist about who orchestrated the raids. Some thought it was the responsibility of mid-level sergeants who wanted to humiliate George Hislop, who had been the first openly gay man to run for city council (Hislop lost). The businessman owned a stake in the Barracks — also raided that night.
Others thought it was a provincial directive under a law-and-order campaign orchestrated in the run-up to the provincial election that March. Roy McMurtry, who was both attorney general and solicitor general at the time, was blamed, but denied involvement.