The Bruce McArthur case exposed a legacy of neglect
Those in gay community say it will always be marginalized who fall through the cracks
It’s a cold January evening, and the Black Eagle is quiet.
A few patrons are perched on stools, while men linger along the edge of the bar — some chat while others flirt, scanning the room. A familiar scene in a place where many have connected with friends, lovers and strangers for decades.
Convicted serial killer Bruce McArthur was once a face in this crowd. A presence at the bar, whether on a stool or out on the shaded patio, his parked van a familiar sight to those of us who spent time here during those years. Following his arrest, some would share stories, vague memories of him — or someone like him — on the periphery of a dance party or night out, a wolf circling the flock, waiting to pounce.
“What if I had gone home with him?” I remember a friend saying in the days following the arrest. “He looked like so many guys at the bar.”
The truth is far more complicated, of course, especially when assessed now, two years since his arrest and the year since he pleaded guilty to the murders of eight men. But what is the legacy of this tragedy and has anything changed?
McArthur was a predator, but his methods were largely motivated by convenience. His appearance benign enough to avoid scrutiny, his victims were invisible within the larger community and subject to discrimination because of race, sexuality and economic hardship — often a combination of all three. His attraction to marginalized men was directly related to the ease by which he could make those same individuals disappear, a growing collection of missing posters that would be largely ignored.
“I think what the case did was shine a light on the danger of racism within the LGBTQ community,” says Haran Vijayanathan, outgoing executive director of the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention, and an advocate for McArthur’s victims and their families. “It showed that people can go missing and their absence can be ignored when we only see things from one specific lens.”
Those within law enforcement also made assumptions about the whereabouts of the men, attributing their disappearances to double lives and precarious housing, disregarding McArthur’s ties to many of the victims and a history of violent behaviour. His eventual arrest after months of public denials only made things worse — creating a deep fissure between Toronto’s LGBTQ community and the police, and further building on the accusations of systemic neglect and abuse.
“I think that the mistrust and collective trauma response that the community has in the presence of police is com
pletely warranted,” says Jaymie Sampa, manager of Program and Partnership Development at The 519, a community centre serving the Church and Wellesley neighbourhood. “What other outcome could there be in the face of such a fractured history?”
In the aftermath of the case, many organizations looked to alternative methods to address concerns around community safety. The 519 expanded its anti-violence programming, creating resources designed to reinforce informal networks between marginalized individuals, as well as offering selfdefence classes, group therapy and drop-in counselling for those navigating grief.
“Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely rely on the institution of policing — but we’ve learned that you can’t strictly rely on them,” continues Sampa. “There are so many informal ways that our community has kept itself safe for decades, and those methods are not going anywhere.”
Vijayanathan spearheaded ASAAP’s Safe Program, a service that allows those without a network or fearful of discrimination to email their contact information to the organization prior to an anonymous sexual encounter with the promise of follow-up.
“If the person is still not responding to emails or calls within 24 hours, we will go to the police,” he says. “It just creates an additional resource and sense that someone in the world is watching out for you.”
The case also motivated institutional changes. Toronto Police Service implemented the Neighbourhood Pilot Project, a program which deploys officers to a community for a four-year term, with specific training designed to improve communication and build familiarity between law enforcement and a neighbourhood’s citizens. Vijayanathan says the ChurchWellesley leg has been successful enough to lead to roll outs in other areas of the city.
“It’s great to see the police stepping up,” he says. “Mind you, that relationship is never going to be 100 per cent, but they are making more active attempts to engage the community.”
The police also announced the longoverdue creation of a Missing Persons Unit in July 2018, a subsection of the Homicide unit that ensures the “consistent process and investigative response to all occurrences of missing persons in the city.”
But many still feel that this renewed interest isn’t enough.
“Four community officers do not change an institution with deep-seated beliefs and where power has been misused to further disenfranchise people,” says Sampa. “Racism is still alive and well in our city, and there are kids who sleep on our porch because it’s the only place they feel safe. That hasn’t changed in the last two years.”
Requests to speak to the Toronto police for this story were not granted.
Retired Ontario justice Gloria Epstein is heading up an independent review into how the police service has handled missing person cases, including those associated with the McArthur case, with her findings due in January 2021. Vijayanathan is on the advisory council, and says his role is to ensure that the review engages the broadest spectrum of community members as possible.
“Sometimes it’s easy to just say (the murders) happened to eight gay-identified men, but not all the men were identified as gay. (The review) attempts to look at intersectionality of the situation. That there are men of colour who experience poverty, but also mentalhealth issues, homelessness, addiction, complicated sexual identities — and ensuring that these factors are taken into consideration by the system to better to protect everyone in the community.”
Still, Vijayanathan feels that even with these resources, the community — those in the bars and out on the scene — need to do more to protect each other and recognize this is an ongoing issue. “Just because (McArthur) is in jail doesn’t mean there aren’t other serial killers out there. It’s important to remain vigilant. We need to be mindful that, yes, we’re in Canada, we’re a safe country, and that’s great.
“But there are cracks in our system and unfortunately it’ll always be the most marginalized that fall through.”