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The Current Transcript for June 28, 2019

Host: Megan Williams/host]

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

I need to drink. I have trouble breathing I feel like.

MEGAN WILLIAMS: Having surviving the heat as sweltering temperatures once again and golf Europe this summer and put Italy and France on high alert, health care workers make sure this older woman in an assisted care home in Paris stays hydrated. Memories of thousands of French seniors perishing in the heat wave there in 2003 are keeping the country on guard. But in Italy already two people have died from the heat. We'll talk to someone who toils daily under the hot Roman sun, a tour guide, and hear how tourists and locals alike are coping in the eternal and Infernal City. Then something airier in our next half hour.

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[Sound: Birds chirping]

JEAN IRON: When you enter a birding area especially if it's a birding hotspot you just click the species you're seeing and the number of birds you're seeing. It's wonderful.

MW: Torontonian Jean Iron is just one member of a growing flock of citizen online birders helping collect precious data to spread the wings of science. And finally today.

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After the blunt murder, the DJ would stop the music and say if you're going to go home with somebody make sure you introduce this guy to your friends.

Keeping safe with a possible killer on the loose in Toronto's gay community. We'll hear the next instalment of the CBC investigative podcast Uncover: The Village. It takes a close up look at a series of mysterious disappearances of gay men in Toronto. Hello I'm Megan Williams and this is the summer edition of The Current.

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Heat wave scorching Europe could become new normal for Canada, expert warns

Guests: PAtrizia Sfligiotti, Blair Feltmate

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VOICE 1: Last night at the Spanish Steps It was 41.

PRODUCER: 41.

VOICE 1: Yes.

PRODUCER: That's way more than you want it.

VOICE 1: Yes it is exhausting when you're trying to do [unintelligible].

VOICE 2: This is like a sauna. You walk out and you just dripping.

VOICE 3: Very hot. Really really hot. I'm from Cuba, figured out is hotter than Cuba.

VOICE 4: It's super hot. I need a lot of water.

MW: How hot is it right now across Europe. Well you heard those tourists and you may have heard the actual numbers too, 42 degrees Celsius in the south of France yesterday with a forecast for a record breaking 45 degrees. 38 in Poland this week. And then there's the story of a heat related traffic stop in Brandenburg, Germany. Police pulled over a man on a scooter who was cooling off by driving in the nude. There were no arrests made or fines handed out. German police told us that in Germany only a helmet is compulsory for driving. But all the fun in the sun aside this month's heat wave caused by air coming up from the African Sahara is stoking serious concerns, and it's sparking memories of the summer of 2003 when the heat was blamed for the deaths of nearly 15,000 people in France alone. Patrizia Sfligiotti is out under the sun every day in Rome where she is a tour guide. We've reached her at the Rome airport. Buongiorno.

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Buongiorno Megan. How are you?

MW: I'm fine. How are you? How hot is it today?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: But I'm fine because I am in air conditions. The environment that yesterday was awful and two days ago it was probably even worse.

MW: What kind of things are you seeing in the centre of Rome where you're taking your tourists through?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Well I see tourists really exhausted, looking for a fountain. Yesterday I know that at the Colosseum they organized a kind of free distribution of bottled water to help but it's really it's been really tough. And I know that today is the peak. I can't think about my colleagues working right now. It must be absolutely awful.

MW: And you're talking about the Civil Protection handing out bottles of water?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Yes, exactly, right.

MW: And how are tourists reacting?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Well some are so enthusiastic about being in Rome that they just want to keep going. Others can't bear the heat. So for example two days ago I had a four hour tour to Colosseum and my clients couldn't cope with the heat so I put them on a couple of stones in the Colosseum in the shade. And we've spent three hours there, you know, discussing everything about ancient Rome construction. That's what we do. We have to be flexible.

MW: How is the heat affecting other popular sites that you're taking people around?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: If you have a walking tour in the central Rome that horrible. It's really utterly terrible because of the heat, and also all the heat coming from the air conditioning system. And you know that really makes walking through the alleys almost unbearable.

MW: Which is something relatively new to Rome. I know when I moved there a couple of decades ago most people didn't have air conditioning and now they do. Why is that?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Well because in 2003 when as you mentioned before in Europe suffered for the first time the heatwaves. Most people had to start air conditioning because it was so unbearable and it was probably even worse than now because we were actually between 35 and 40, or even above 40 degrees between May and September.

MW: Now, to your mind, from that heat wave in 2003 and there was another one to in 2015 that was a very hot summer as well - were there were there any lessons taken from those two big heat waves for you in particular and how you do your job?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: And speaking up for me, Oh yeah absolutely. I never wear dark colours for example. I drink a lot. I don't eat meat. I eat lots of fruits and vegetables. And you know that helps.

MW: So some seriously holistic approaches to dealing with the heat.

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: You know you must go, because if you have a tour you have to go even if it's 50 degrees. You have to find solutions.

MW: And are you changing the times that you do your tours or you're doing them earlier or later now?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: If I have my own clients yes I do. But that's not always possible when you work for an agency.

MW: And how are you noticing, the Italians in general, how are they? How is their behaviour changing with the heat?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: I don't know. I think the only change I really see is air conditioning in their homes. Generally speaking also from the government I don't see any effort to be more considerate. Years ago, it was probably soon after the 2003, one of our major national companies allowed employees to go to work without a tie so that they could keep their air conditioning a little bit- I mean not too cold. And the people working there would be any way comfortable.

MW: Which is a radical change of sorts for Italy, a country that hates its fashion very seriously.

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: I think that was a very good idea.

MW: Now there is another problem in Rome which I know intimately from having lived there for the past few years which is the garbage crisis online on various corners throughout the city. There are these huge piles of garbage. What's happening now with the heat with all that garbage?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Well I was listening to a program a couple of days ago with the radio and they were saying that the city has organized special teams to keep the area around hospital and schools clean. But I know, and that what I saw with my eyes, that areas in Rome some districts are still really covered in the garbage and that outrageous. I think that a city like Rome which is one of the most important touristic nations in the world and the capital of Italy shouldn't suffer a crisis like the present crisis.

MW: Rome also has a public transportation problem. A couple of the main subway stops have been closed. And obviously when it gets very hot a lot of people take refuge. They'll stop taking buses if they if they take buses and they'll take the subway system which is a lot cooler. It's underground. What problems are the fact that a couple of the main subway stops are closed? How is that affecting things?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Well I have a friend who lives very close to one of those stations and she has to use the next station. So she walks. What else can you do? There are lots of young people prefer to use scooters for example instead of using public transport.

MW: Which creates a little bit of wind I suppose when you're on a scooter at least. So how worried are you that this kind of heat is going to become the new normal in Italy?

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Well I'm very worried because this heat affects people, that affects nature, affects agriculture. You know it is the crisis in the shops. I mean we had rainstorms, hail and a couple of weeks later this terrible heat. So I'm very concerned. I'm very concerned for the next generation. I think that all of us should try to do a little thing to help. Use less water. Keep your and conditioning not freezing cold, you know, being more responsible with garbage. I do compost on my balcony.

MW: Okay well thanks very much, Patrizia, keep cool and buona giornata.

PATRIZIA SFLIGIOTTI: Thank you. Chao.

MW: Patrizia Sfligiotti is a tour guide and Rome we reached her at the Rome airport. So far this summer Canada has been spared the kind of extreme heat we're seeing across Europe. But the long term forecast is for more longer and harder heatwaves. And according to my next guest we need to do a lot more to get ready. Blair Feltmate is the head of the intact centre on climate adaptation at the University of Waterloo. He's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello.

BLAIR FELTMATE: Good morning.

MW: Good morning. You just heard Patrizia talking from Rome about the heat there last night. It was 39 degrees. That's in the evening. Could we see those kinds of temperatures here in Canada?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Yes absolutely. And we've done modelling in Canada to look at the kind of heat we can expect going forward. And we've done modelling and in various parts of the country and in some cases in greater depth. For example here in Southern Ontario where we're sitting right now. At the moment we max out at daily temperatures. The maximum level we receive is about 37 degrees Celsius. By 2040 45. That will go to about 42 degrees Celsius. Right now we experience about 20 days per summer where the temperature exceeds 30 degrees Celsius by 2040-45 that will go to 65 days. And we experience one heatwave every second summer that's three days in a row whereby the temperature doesn't drop below 30 degrees Celsius. By 2040-45. We will experience 2 to 2.5 heatwaves per summer. So the heat is coming for sure.

MW: Now those are averages across the country. Are there are there certain parts of the country that are going to be more effective than others?

BLAIR FELTMATE: The further north you go the disproportionately warmer it gets. So it's going to get hotter in the West than in the east. And then the more you go north the warmer it gets as well. Which for example in the far north is now permafrost is coming out of the ground very rapidly affecting the structural integrity of buildings.

MW: Right. By hotter temperatures there do you mean relatively? Like it's cooler generally in the north of course. So is it going to be hotter in the north and in the south or heart of hotter than it is now?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Hotter than it is now.

MW: All right. Okay. Now a hot weather last summer was blamed for deaths of 90 people in Quebec. What do you anticipate as summers get hotter related to people's health?

BLAIR FELTMATE: We have to prepare and we have to pair prepare rapidly for extreme heat and what was experienced last summer in Quebec for example and I don't want to be it sounded delicate here, but that was actually under good conditions in the sense that there was no electricity outage. Had there been an electricity outage during July of last summer with no air conditioning running. Those deaths wouldn't have been 90. They would have been in the hundreds if not thousands. So it's just by dumb luck that we didn't have an electricity outage during that heatwave but that heat wave could hit anywhere in the country now.

MW: Those are huge numbers. I mean what happens when the electricity goes out? How does that- obviously air conditioning goes off but anything else?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Well a lot of things go wrong. And for example here in Toronto and I'll just use that as one illustration we have about 500,000 people in apartments that are greater than eight stories and that are greater than 30 years old. And these are buildings that heat up very quickly. 95 percent of the people in those conditions they do not have central air conditioning and only one third of the buildings have backup power generation if there is an electricity outage. And if the electricity goes out that means the water doesn't flow above the sixth or seventh floor in the building first of all the because the pumps are gone. And you could have someone up on the 18th floor of a building with no water, no electricity, no backup power supply to run the elevators. They're stuck there and not even a fan. And what do you do if you have an 80 year old couple up there with a walker who can't go down the stairway and they need medications and they've got no water and they've got no cooling capacity? So it's very dangerous.

MW: So we obviously need backup generators and perhaps alternative sources of energy. No?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Well for sure we need backup generation deployed rapidly and because at a minimum you want to be able to run fans.

MW: Okay. So let's talk about other solutions and ways that we can prepare.

BLAIR FELTMATE: What other things that need to be done so in buildings there should be cooling centres. So even if the individual units within apartment dwellings don't have air conditioning at least there should be a cooling centre in the building where people can go in and cool down. We should be working within and around cities to help cool them because they're safe. Heat island effect associated with cities in other words the dark pavement and cities and so forth contributes another one to three degrees Celsius, extra heat on top of the heat wave to the cities themselves. We should be working to retain tree canopies within the city's. Cool roofs. These are roofs and instead of being the dark surface of a roof that absorbs the heat, they should be white to reflect sunlight back up into space and that contributes to cooling.

MW: So literally just painting the rooftops white helps?

BLAIR FELTMATE: That is correct. Yes.

MW: And in terms of public health interventions what sort of things need to be changed in order to get us more prepared for responding?

BLAIR FELTMATE: We should develop programs, community watch program, for vulnerable people and that is for example if you have elderly people or people with pre-existing health conditions respiratory problems and so forth these are people more vulnerable to extreme heat. We should have systems set up through the social NGOs, the Red Cross, maybe others that look at where are these individuals that are more vulnerable to the heat and who's checking on them. And it's all set up ahead of time before the heat wave occurs. Who's checking on these people to make sure they're okay? Are you too hot? Do you need water? Do you need to get out? So I think this is a program that we should be developing and which you developing very aggressively within cities.

MW: Now of course elderly people are very vulnerable. We know that physically they're more vulnerable and many of them are isolated. Is there are there any other groups that are particularly vulnerable to heat waves?

BLAIR FELTMATE: Yes though those with pre-existing health conditions such as respiratory problems in particular and then also the homeless who's checking on the homeless? And is someone going out to the homeless is saying, look, I know you're hot, I know you've a problem but can we get you to a cooling centre? How can we help you? Are you hydrating properly? You know, can we supply them with lighter clothing. So they're not excessively hot et cetera? So this is another area where it's the heat is very dangerous for that population.

MW: So how far along are we here in Canada in preparing for a hotter future?

BLAIR FELTMATE: We're at the early stages right now. And what we need to develop is a federal program a guideline a standard on heat risk mitigation that addresses changes in the physicality of operations of buildings to behavioural adaptation on the part of individuals. And we really need to think this out. We need to think it out rapidly.

MW: Okay. Now we just have a few seconds left but a couple of quick things that individuals can do to get ready for heat.

BLAIR FELTMATE: Well even when that when the heat waves hit we can have adjustments in the time of day that we work. You know you work earlier in the day and then quit at noon on hot days. Cooler clothing right now I'm wearing a suit and tie I have to give a keynote after this. This isn't the way to dress. You want to keep hydrated. You want to limit your exercise. So there's a lot of common sense factors that could come into play here.

MW: Okay. Great. Thanks so much for coming in today.

BLAIR FELTMATE: You're welcome.

MW: I've been speaking with Blair Feltmate who is the head of the intact centre on Klein climate adaptation at the University of Waterloo. He was in our Toronto studio. Have you changed your habits now that summers are hotter. What are you doing to brace for extreme heat. Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC or find us on Facebook and leave a comment. Well Anna Maria Tremonti may have officially signed off as host of the current after 17 seasons in this chair but she's still making waves. Earlier this week at the New York Festival's Radio Awards in New York City Anna Maria Tremonti was named Best Talk Show Host. It's a fitting honour to cap her work off here at The Current. And the jury in New York is hardly alone in recognizing her talents. Here's a testimonial we'd like to share from a devoted fan who joined us here at the broadcast centre in Toronto last week for Anna Maria's final show.

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FAN: So I trundled in all the way from rural Quebec. Yesterday I left my cat with the neighbour.

AMT: To be here?

FAN: To be here and I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I didn't make this statement that I'm so grateful for the work that you've done. And I'm so grateful because I discovered you after a divorce and the world was a mist and you cleared it for me. And I began to see what was going on and I began to be much more politicized. And I'm very grateful for that. There's been a lot of talk about listening today and I hear that and I listen to your quiet sometimes mellifluous voice sometimes indignant voice. I listen to the undertone to know whether this guy was a creep, or whether he was worth listening to. You really guided me and I wanted to speak to you directly today. This is why I came. So I'm sorry producers you're excellent but this is a statement. I Thank you profoundly from my heart.

AMT: Thank you. Thank you so much.

MW: Congratulations Anna Maria Tremonti on your most recent honour the best talk show host award from the New York Festival's Radio Awards. If you'd like to hear that entire audience Q and A session from her last show you can find it in The Current podcast feed. The CBC News is next. Then in backyards across Canada, citizen scientists are making a real difference. Thanks in part to apps like e-bird. I'm Meghan Williams And you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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eBirders helping identify hotspots for migratory bird conservation

Guest: Chris Wood

MW: Hello, I'm Megan Williams and you're listening to the Summer Edition of The Current

[Music: Theme]

MW: Still to come, we'll bring you Episode 5 of the CBC Podcast, Uncover: The Village. Today - host Justin Ling traces Sandy LeBlanc's steps from beloved brother with humble beginnings to well-known discotheque owner in the Village's burgeoning club scene. When he's killed, rumours are rampant about who was responsible for his death. But first, technology, that's for the birds.

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JEAN IRON: Well right now we're hearing a Ruby Crowned Kinglet singing in the background. And also we still have lots of Dark Eyed Juncos that are left over. You know they're still here from the winter. They've been around all winter. We have a Fox Sparrow which is bright red streaked beautiful Sparrow.

MW: As you can probably tell... Jean Iron is pretty passionate about birding... she's pointing out some of the feathered visitors in her Toronto backyard. For her, the allure of birding goes beyond the birds. It's also about being part of a global community of birders - all of them connected by an app called E-bird.

SOUNDCLIP

JEAN IRON: When you enter a birding area, especially if it's a birding hotspot, the app finds your location. Then it brings up the checklist for that's hot spot. And then as you go you just click the species you're seeing and the number of birds you see. They give you graphs and statistics over time. It's wonderful.

MW: E-bird isn't just about sharing beautiful pictures. It’s all about collecting data. Every time Jean Iron goes birding, she uploads information to E-bird about what she's seeing. The app notes her location and time of day. And for the past 15 years, hundreds of thousands of other birders have been doing the same thing, creating a growing database with hundreds of millions of data points. It's a burgeoning area of research called citizen science, and it is reshaping the possibilities of empirical investigation. Chris Wood is the director at eBird, which is run out of Cornell University's Ornithology Lab. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April from Ithaca, New York.

CHRIS WOOD: So we have data from every single country in the world. There’s about 450,000 people who have contributed data. There’s about three million people who come to the save each year and play around of the data. They'll use it to figure out where to go to see birds or figure out what birds are in their area. And at this point we have more than 650 million records which makes it one of the largest biodiversity databases in the world.

AMT: How did it start?

CHRIS WOOD: So eBird began with a National Science Foundation grant out and it was in cooperation with National Audubon here in the U.S. and the idea really was that you have you know hundreds of thousands of birdwatchers, like Jean Iron, who go out and look at birds every day. And the idea was is that each of them carries really useful information in those notebooks. And could we come up with some mechanism that makes it fun enough for them to spend their free time to record their information so that scientists like Richard can have access to these data, come up with publications that then the scientific community and also the conservation community can use these data to make better decisions.

AMT: So this is the upside of the smartphone, huh?

CHRIS WOOD: It is. It is.

AMT: You're collecting data gathered by laypeople. How do you know it's accurate?

CHRIS WOOD: That's a great question. I would say I spend about a third of my time thinking about data quality. So the first component that we do is in every country in the world we have regional experts. And so if we were to look at something like British Columbia, British Columbia may have 30 different data quality filters that are set by a combination of experts and then the data that are gathered in eBird itself. And so if you think that you cite something that has never been recorded there that is recorded very infrequently, you'll get a message on your app when you're there in the field that says 'this is unusual, the count is unusual'. And because so many people now have cameras or you can take your smartphone and take a picture through your binoculars or through your scope. You can document that bird right there when you're in the field so that there's a higher degree of data accuracy. But then there's also several different ways that we have and even just getting it the differences in expertise that birdwatchers have. You know Jean Iron is one of the very best birders in Canada, incredibly good, knows the calls, you know she could identify the fox sparrows, the juncos, just by short little calls. My mom who's a terrific mother. She just kind of watches the birds in our backyard. If birds are carrying she may not be able to identify them. So we also spend a lot of time using the data to be able to understand the differences in birdwatchers and we sort of think of them as our sensory network, and we need to calibrate that sensor network against itself. And then when we're doing research, like the type that Richard is doing, we can then make predictions for what an expert observer would see, instead of somebody who's maybe a beginning birdwatcher.

AMT: Chris Wood, then you need the point that other people are using eBirds. You've got bigger plans for it?

CHRIS WOOD: We always have great plans for what we'd like to do in the future. What we really try to do is focus on these different communities. So, you know, continue to develop new features for the birding community. One of those is an application called Merlin where we use the date in eBird that allows you to then- the application sort of knows what birds are most likely in any place in the world. So if you go to Point Pelee and you see a bird that's flying around you can either answer a few questions about where the bird was, what colours it were. It's sort of like having a bird expert in your pocket. You answer these questions and then it gives you a list of what species are most likely along with photos and sounds that come from the McCarley library here at Cornell. Or you can take a picture of the bird and then through some machine learning algorithms, within about a second, Merlin will let you know what bird that is. And you know like eBird, Merlin is free and open to everyone.

MW: Chris Wood is the director at eBird, which is run out of Cornell University's Ornithology Lab. He spoke with Anna Maria Tremonti in April from Ithaca, New York. You can hear that segment in its entirety on our Web site at cbc.ca/thecurrent.

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Uncover: The Village Ep5

MW: I'm Megan Williams. We've got another episode of the CBC podcast Uncover: The Village. It's called Last Call at David's disco. And if you've missed previous episodes or want to download the whole series The village is available where ever you get your podcasts. Here now is The Village.

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN LING: Getting killed. Those are the two words in huge letters on the front cover of the February 1979 edition of the Body Politic. The article inside capped off years of homicides targeting gay men. One of the last was the 1978 murder of Sandy LeBlanc. He was the second gay man killed in Toronto that week.

NEWSCASTER: There's little doubt that the current spate of homosexual murders are causing a great deal of concern in the gay community of Metro Toronto.

JUSTIN LING: A few months earlier another gay man had been murdered. Just next door to Sandy's apartment building.

NEWSCASTER: Question is being asked now, will they continue? And perhaps who will be next?

JUSTIN LING: The article was called Overkill. The author was a young writer named Robin Hardy.

ROBIN: Yes Robin already was a friend of mine.

JUSTIN LING: Unfortunately Robin Hardy died in a hiking accident in the 90s. But I reached Robin Rowland. In the 70s, he was a young journalist working for the CBC.

ROBIN: And there was a bunch of us who were young journalists hanging out together and you know we would talk shop, so that if there was a murder or something we talk about it and people were beginning to think there was a serial killer or maybe serial killers targeting gay men. And basically Robin Hardy his story confirmed what the rumours were and it was after Sandy LeBlanc that people in at least my circle friends started calling him the mad stabber.

JUSTIN LING: The story details the fear and the paranoia that gripped the community. There's a note scrawled on the bathroom wall of the St. Charles tavern reading 'I'll kill again Saturday night'. There's a threatening letter sent to a politically active and openly gay professor promising 'your next'. They're probably dark pranks but it is all part of this climate of anxiety which hung over the community. The story reads quote: "With eight of the 14 murders unsolved belief in the existence of a single psycho killer is widespread. One that is coldly anticipating a victim every six months". Today we've called this a serial killer. But this article also raises something maybe even more unsettling quote: "There could be 14 murderers". A terrifying indication of homophobia.

ROBIN: After the oblong murder the DJ would start the music say once or twice a night and say: "If you're going to go home with somebody make sure you introduce this guy to you or your friends".

GPS: In one kilometre the destination is on your left.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy, a twenty nine year old club owner and an openly gay man, is one of the most mysterious and frustrating cases. So I want to know. Who killed Sandy LeBlanc.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy's family has been wondering the same thing for 40 years. Most of them are still around. He's got three siblings in rural New Brunswick. And they're eager to talk.

JUSTIN LING: [To family] Hi. How's it going.

ALICE: CBC?

JUSTIN LING: Yes.

ALICE: Come on in.

JUSTIN LING: I'm Justin.

ALICE: Nice to meet you, Justin. I'm Alice.

JOANNE: I'm Joanne.

ALICE: This is Ted.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy siblings welcomed me in. And before I know it I've got a glass of red wine in my hand and we're sitting in a circle in the living room.

JOANNE: But when it's McArthur came up in January and it brought it all back to me it about Sandy.

JUSTIN LING: That's Joanne.

JOANNE: You mean you don't think about him every day but you don't think about him spending his birthday comes stuff like that. And then when it has on the TV that they're going back to cases in the 70s of all unsolved gay murders. What is it? Seven year old this MacArthur guy? Which he means he's our age. So the first thing I thought, My gosh. He could have murdered Sandy. Right away I thought that if he to start murdering gay men in the 70s, he was a young man himself. He wouldn't know how to get rid of bodies he wouldn't know what to do with it. And I called a detective I think was Stacy somebody.

JUSTIN LING: It was Detective Sergeant Stacy Gallante, the head of the Cold Case team for the Toronto Police Service. The guy who isn't reaching out to friends and families.

JOANNE: So I contacted him.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy's family has a lot of questions and lots to share. There are memories they're dragging out for the first time in decades. And the siblings have quite literally dug out boxes of photos and postcards and even an essay Sandy wrote when he was in high school.

ALICE: He was very good at school he excelled in everything he did. They offered grade 13 which equivalent first year university. And because we're seven children in the family our parents couldn't afford to send us to university or college. So he was very fortunate. He's the only one of all of us that got to almost equivalent to four year university. And in 1967. He entered a competition 'why I would like to visit Expo 67'.

JUSTIN LING: That's Alice. Sandy's older sister.

ALICE: So he wrote this. And he won a trip to Expo. Can you imagine a little country bumpkin. Out here in this little village in St. Antoine Winning this free trip to Expo.

JUSTIN LING: And Ted the baby of the family.

ALICE: Know it was an excellent excellent essay. This was Sandy's graduation with Mom and Dad. This is a family photo and this is me and this is Sandy.

JUSTIN LING: I think Sandy is grinning in just about every photo I see of him. And there are a lot. His high school graduation photo won on the farm that his family owned for a time. One with his siblings.

ALICE: This is Sandy with Ted.

JUSTIN LING: Big grin. Big forehead. Big poof of dark hair. Obviously big personality.

ALICE: Anyway [unintelligible] and I don't know how many years is going on, they'd have a talent show. So Sandy and I would sing. We're about nine and 10 and believe you me I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. But I remember us singing Bye Bye Love by The Everly Brothers. Oh my God.

[Song: Bye Bye Love]

JUSTIN LING: Sandy left home for Ontario when he was 17 and I get that. It's not easy coming out in a small town much less in the 1960s.

ALICE: And when I found out that he was gay I was very surprised very surprised. And I remember him coming in the back door with Mom. I gave him the biggest hug, like I just hung onto him. And I didn't say to him but I wish I had said 'Sandy it doesn't matter what kind of lifestyle you're living. I love you. You're my brother. I will always love you'. And I was so glad I came to terms with that when he was still living.

JUSTIN LING: Ted learned about his brother's sexuality when he and his girlfriend visited Sandy's club in Toronto. David's disco.

JUSTIN LING: [To Ted] What do you remember about that with the club?

TED: Well it was pretty different when you are in a little community like St. Anthony here down here and you go to the big city. The bouncer was- we were his detail. He kept an eye on us the whole night. He didn't let us out of his sight. And 'you guys can dance but don't dance together', I can still remember him saying that. So this was pretty different.

JOANNE: Did you know when you when you went up there that he was gay?

TED: I got it when I got up there.

JOANNE: He told you?

TED: Yes.

JUSTIN LING: Do you remember what he said?

TED: This is my club.

[Laughter]

ALICE: So now you know what's going on.

TED: That's what I own now and it's where I work.

JOANNE: Obviously that's why you went away, obviously.

ALICE: Back in the 60s. It was all in the closet. Nobody told anybody that they were gay. And it's just something me didn't talk about. I mean my parents were devastated when this happened.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy's parents learned about his murder and his sexuality on the same day.

JOANNE: It just wasn't- It was disgraceful. My mom always want to talk. Mom would always talk.

ALICE: Yeah I think she accepted it. And I remember calling one of her friends one time she was describing this to somebody how Sandy died and she said that's one of those awful gay murders. That's exactly what Mom said. It was an awful gay murder. It's as if a gay murder was worse than an ordinary murder.

JUSTIN LING: Just like Alice I'm stuck on the fact that even for Sandy's mom who seemed to accept his sexuality his death was still a gay murder. As though that name was in and of itself an explanation. Even still I can only imagine how hard this must have been for Sandy's parents and the siblings.

ALICE: I thought Oh God this is just a nightmare like. This can't be happening. How could this be true? Sandy is gone. I just seen him like in April and he was still alive laughing and talking and just himself. It was just like- Oh. I had such a hard time to deal with that. I didn't want to face it. I didn't. I didn't want to go through that horrible, that horrible feeling that I thought I'd never ever see my brother again. [Sobbing] So by not trying to feel. It over the years I would look at anything anybody sent me or anything about him. I couldn't handle it. So. I'm sorry.

JOANNE: He deserved to have a full. Happy life.

ALICE: Yes he did yes.

JOANNE: If anybody ever deserved to have a full happy life-

ALICE: I mean we just can't believe that anybody hated him. To that extent to do what they did to him.

JUSTIN LING: There is one piece of information that has always underscored the mystery for their family.

ALICE: And this was public knowledge to all of us that he had a life insurance policy for my mother, in my mother's name. So if thing happened to him, she will be well looked after the rest of her life.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy was 29 when he died. He wasn't supporting his parents financially. So what exactly did he think was going to happen. Alice wonders the same thing.

ALICE: I wondered after that I thought, jeepers, did he think his life is in danger?

JUSTIN LING: That insurance policy though, never paid out.

ALICE: They were told by this insurance company that he hadn't kept up his premiums. So there was no money for Mom. No money.

JUSTIN LING: It's one of a few clues that suggests Sandy was in trouble financially. Sandy siblings are torn about whether his finances had anything to do with his death.

ALICE: So I'm thinking maybe he had broke up with somebody who was with somebody else and this person so upset about it. I just think it was a lover's quarrel that went wrong.

JOANNE: I think it has to be more than that. I think it has to do with financial problems. In my mind I think it had something to do with the club. What do you think?

TED: But my fear is if I was for some money lying there that maybe it was somebody didn't collect or couldn't collect. I think that was what I felt at the time. I still think that today.

ALICE: He was such a young man. He had so much to live for. Everybody loved him. He was so smart. I would be happy if somebody paid for that I'd be very happy.

JOANNE: If somebody was charged. Pay for it.

ALICE: Yes.

JUSTIN LING: It's becoming obvious that to find out more about Sandy's murder I need to find out more about the club, David's. Luckily there's someone who can help me do just that.

[Music]

JOHN: Well when you came into the club you walked down a long hallway to-.

JUSTIN LING: His name is John Webber and he was one of the club's original DJs.

JOHN: There was couches and like living room couches on one side of the wall.

JUSTIN LING: John worked for David's in the mid 1970s. He's pulling out some old photos and is giving me a mental walkthrough of the club.

JOHN: There was a staircase around the statue of David. And he went down it on both sides to the dance floor.

JUSTIN LING: David's had a life size statue of Michelangelo's David in the middle of the dance floor. It was a working fountain. And I realize that sounds a bit tacky but I wish so badly this place was still open. This would be my kind of club.

JOHN: This was a picture in the dressing room upstairs that Shirley and Company did the song Shame Shame Shame.

[Song: Shame Shame Shame].

JOHN: This is Michelle Dubarry. It's the world's oldest living drag queen.

JUSTIN LING: Michelle Newberry is the one who remembers getting harassed on Halloween night outside the St. Charles. She performed at David's too.

JOHN: But the dance floor. There was a portable stage. That was pulled out on usually Saturday nights for a drag show at 2 o'clock in the morning. There was a platform for a couple of go down to do a dance on as well. It was about 10 feet from the front of the DJ booth.

JUSTIN LING: Clubs like David's discotheque were a real contrast to the grungy straight own beer halls where gay men had been meeting. Places like the St. Charles and the Parkside taverns. And they became places to organize. At David's, there was a banquet to raise money for a civil servant fired for his sexuality. In 1977 the club hosted an all candidates debate for that year's provincial election. More than 100 people showed up. They grilled one candidate for his opposition to gay rights. It was an early indication that the queer community could have political power. But of course it was also a disco.

JOHN: This is something David as well. This is this is one of the Astros.

JUSTIN LING: [To John] It's so cool.

JUSTIN LING: John's apartment is absolutely blanketed with records pictures memorabilia and awards. He is a huge music nerd, especially disco.

MW: We're listening to episode five of the CBC podcast Uncover: The Village. We'll continue with Last Call at David's disco in our next half hour I'm Megan Williams and this is the summer edition of The Current.

MW: I'm Megan Williams And you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. We continue with Episode 5 of the CBC podcast Uncover The Village. Here again is host Justin Ling with Last Call at David's disco.

SOUNDCLIP

JUSTIN LING: John knew firsthand how hard it was to be an openly queer person in the 1970s.

JOHN: When I got my first apartment that I had put my name on a lease I was told not to acknowledge that I was gay, because back in that time you could be refused housing just for being gay. So that's the type of fear that you just lived with, like that that was normal back then.

JUSTIN LING: Did you end up having any bad encounters? It sounds like a lot of people- you know.

JOHN: I remember one time specifically I was walking down Yonge street one night and the traffic was at a standstill and this guy on the passenger seat in the car asked me the directions to some place. So I was giving the directions and then the person in the back seat asked me about another place and I'd be noticed to be the guy in the front seat had pulled up a metal bar and just- I took it right across the chest.

JUSTIN LING: For John disco was more than something to dance to. It was a coping mechanism.

JOHN: And I think that it was a great way to go out and escape what's going on in the world when you're a gay person because it was happy and uplifting.

JUSTIN LING: That love led to a career in the music industry and some amazing stories.

JOHN: The Supremes after Diana Ross left still continued for quite a while and they fit into the disco category on some of their stuff too.

JUSTIN LING: The Supremes were in Toronto for a series of shows. Diana Ross had left the group in 1970 but there were still, you know, the Supremes.

[Music]

JUSTIN LING: John went to see every night of their show and ended up meeting the group.

JOHN: I don't know where I got the balls to say what I did but I said to them there were a group of female impersonators that did the Supremes, and would they be interested in having to see the show at the club that I DJed in so they came along for the ride. So I got to a Supremes drag show.

[Music]

JUSTIN LING: But I'm not here to talk about disco or drag shows. Okay, well I sort of am, but I'm mostly here to find out what happened to David's. And Sandy. And as I talked to John, memories are resurfacing.

JOHN: Because I would play till 6:00 in the morning and sometimes stayed afterwards and vacuum the club afterwards as well. And there was a couple of times where there was an envelope. I'm assuming that had money in it that I was left to hand over to somebody that showed up at the door that I did not know.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy had a business partner at the time named Jay who's unfortunately no longer alive. I assumed it was him giving the instructions.

JOHN: A guy shows up at 7:00 a.m. It was actually Sandy.

JUSTIN LING: I wouldn't be shocked to learn that a club in the 70s was paying someone cash though giving out envelopes of money at 7:00 in the morning does seem unusual. And just like Sandy's siblings, John wonders of Sandy's business dealings had something to do with his death.

JOHN: When I started writing things back in my mind after finding Sandy was murdered that came back into my mind, and I was wondering, well, was it a money thing.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy was 29 years old when he died. His family wasn't rich. David's was no dump. The lights, the statue of David, the retractable stage it all costs money. So where did you get that kind of cash? John does have a suggestion as to where the money might have come from. Sandy's other partner, an American named Mark.

JOHN: He was a really nice guy as well. He usually came off most weekends from Detroit to help with the running a fan club as well.

JUSTIN LING: So do you have any sense of why Mark was involved the club? I mean this guy's not even living in Toronto. He's coming up every weekend.

JOHN: I think that it was probably financial support from him.

JUSTIN LING: In the LGBTQ to plus archives there's a folder devoted to David's. I find an old tabloid with a picture of Sandy. It's from 1977 two years after David's opened. In a photo Sandy’s wearing a pattern shirt with a huge pointy colour and a big grin. He's in front of a disco ball. The article says David's has had its struggles. It was expensive to open. Some nights they were barely paying for the electricity. There's competition from other clubs. Sandy's first partner had opened a new place Studio 2. Studio 2, David's, the St. Charles and the Parkside Taverns, they were all within about five blocks of each other. The building which housed Studio 2 would change a lot over the years but eventually it would become Zippers. That bar where Skanda, first MacArthur's first known victim, was last seen on the night of his disappearance in 2010. At David's Sandy and his American partner Mark we're trying to bring in a bigger crowd. Where once it was for Gay men only they soon opened the door to lesbian and bisexual people too. They even open up a restaurant next door. The tabloid story ends on a positive note, quote: "As for Sandy he'll always make it. The world would be a dismal place without his smile and his determined belief that the gay crowd is his crowd". A year later he was murdered. John vividly remembers the fear he felt after Sandy's death.

JOHN: It was a scary time for me still being that young. And for the longest time afterwards after I found out that he had been murdered and how brutally he had been murdered, I was afraid to even walk home so I would take a cab home. It really bothered me that he was killed the way he was. Like nobody deserves that.

JUSTIN LING: In the archives there are hours and hours of oral histories.

JUSTIN LING: Did you ever meet Sandy?

VOICE: Sandy LeBlanc?

JUSTIN LING: Yes.

VOICE: Yes I knew Sandy. I saw him last night he was alive. The morning after the second anniversary of the opening of a Studio 2. So the anniversary was a formal occasion. Everybody came all dressed up and Sandy it was the tuxedo, giving out free champagne.

JUSTIN LING: As I listened through it quickly becomes clear just how much people were searching for answers about what happened to Sandy.

VOICE: Have they solved that crime yet?

JUSTIN LING: I don't think so. I wondered if you had any insight.

VOICE: I never had any but we have an idea you might have done that, because we always involve certain individuals. And it was a little bit on the- he's up to some shenanigans.

JUSTIN LING: I don't know what he means by shenanigans but I do get the impression that there were lots of different types who hung out at David's. From queer activists to closeted business people too. Well maybe some less savoury types.

JUSTIN LING: [To VOICE] Visitors involved with the Mafia?

VOICE: No I wouldn't say anything as respectable as that.

[Laughter]

JUSTIN LING: While I'm sifting through boxes of notes from the body politic I find two typed pages. These appear to be a reporter's notes, a summary of all of the interviews they've done around Sandy's murder.

VOICE 1: Sandy LeBlanc murder continued. His body was found on Monday by friends. He'd been stabbed 100 times for head to toe, footprints in red bled across the bedroom carpet to a window. Someone asked how did you get home in those bloody clothes. A lot of people hated Sandy LeBlanc because of his business dealings. He would compete with other owners gay bars or discos and he'd throw people out of places he owned. A year ago November one man heard from the street that there was a contract out on Sandy LeBlanc.

JUSTIN LING: There was a contract out on Sandy LeBlanc? I'm starting to wonder if the village rumour mill was just working overtime on Sandy.

VOICE 1: Sandy gave his friend hell said don't pay attention to those stories. Then he went back and sat with the two detectives he'd been talking to. Everyone saw Sandy at the Studio 2 anniversary party and he left there at 3 a.m. Ida the doughnut shop lady was working the midnight shift. She saw Sandy drive by in a station wagon that night. That's anything.

JUSTIN LING: Business enemies, a contract on his head and conversations with the cops. Most of this stuff never appeared in the Body Politic articles about Sandy. So maybe it was dismissed by the reporter as just rumours and innuendo. There's somebody who might be able to help me clear things up. Edna, another sister of Sandy's who lives in Ontario and the only sibling who spoke to police after Sandy died.

EDNA: One afternoon I decided to call the police to see if they had any leads or anything.

JUSTIN LING: Two years after Sandy's death Edna spoke to a detective investigating Sandy's murder.

EDNA: One thing he did tell me was that Sandy was known to police. He said Sandy has helped us several times so I think just the fact that he was in a gay village he was familiar to the police. They maybe came around and talked to him because he did have a club.

JUSTIN LING: There's something Edna wants to share with me. It's from her mother's old paperwork.

EDNA: Amongst that information was the name and address of a woman. This Darlene I think that, yes, she knew Sandy.

JUSTIN LING: This name, Darlene. Who she was? What her connection was to Sandy? It's a mystery that Edna has carried with her for decades.

EDNA: Oh yes I've had this for a while. I would say 39 years. It's an old piece of paper yes.

DARLENE: He was good. He was a good guy.

JUSTIN LING: This is Darlene Sailor. In the 70s. Sandy hired her as a bouncer at David's disco.

DARLENE: He had a good heart. He was therefor you. He wasn't scared. He wasn't scared. I know he fought to the end. I know he fought to the end.

JUSTIN LING: When I arrive at Darlene's house she's already buzzing with activity.

DARLENE: Oh yes. You can go through the [unintelligible]. That and then this is a bar and that's the people that were sitting there at the time. That's Phyllis. There's Sandy there.

JUSTIN LING: She's pulled out old photo albums.

DARLENE: And then there is a dance marathon.

JUSTIN LING: Very 70s hair.

DARLENE: Yes. What do you expect.

JUSTIN LING: And newspaper clippings.

DARLENE: And then that's about. You know. The killings.

JUSTIN LING: One thing I want to know about is Sandy's relationship with the police.

DARLENE: They weren't very trusted out there at that time. You know. It's hard time.

JUSTIN LING: Let's sort a make [unintelligible] to see cops hanging around.

DARLENE: There's cops here all every night at David's.

JUSTIN LING: At David's?

DARLENE: Yes.

JUSTIN LING: Doing what?

DARLENE: Just coming in and having coffee talking to Sandy then leaving. That would happen all the time.

JUSTIN LING: Do you know what these conversations were like?

DARLENE: I can tell you who the guy was. Marvin Blaha.

JUSTIN LING: Marvin Blaha?

DARLENE: Was just a cop, he was going to find out stuff and he was trying to find out stuff for me. He came to me at one point said there's nothing I could do. I said Really? No, he said, it's a dead end. So let it go. That's what he said. I know but I thought okay maybe it is a dead end. Maybe they can't find anything.

JUSTIN LING: Darlene has lost track of Marvin Blaha.

DARLENE: So I don't know if he moved to another district. I don't know what happened anybody.

JUSTIN LING: But he is definitely a cop I want to find. Darlene has thought a lot about Sandy over the years. Recently memories of his death have come back into sharp focus.

DARLENE: Skanda. I knew Skanda. Andrew was a really good friend of mine.

JUSTIN LING: Jesus. Okay.

DARLENE: It's crazy. I worked with Andrew and he was one of the greatest guys I ever met he was so sweet.

JUSTIN LING: How did you know Skanda?

DARLENE: I met Skanda through friends of mine in Toronto and he was a great guy too.

JUSTIN LING: He was like I'm stunned when Darlene tells me this. She knew Sandy who was killed in 1978 but she also knew Skanda who was killed in 2010. And Andrew who was murdered in 2017. She also knew Bruce MacArthur.

DARLENE: I only met him twice. Yes. I only met twice and he was on his best behaviour probably but he was so quiet. Well you know and sweet. Oh. Yes. Maybe eight nine or ten years ago. When I first met him.

JUSTIN LING: It's actually around when Skanda went missing.

DARLENE: Yes. Because Skanda went missing and we were all were and he was concerned telling people you know we got to look for him. Yes. Yes. And I remember watching the news and this picture came up. And I thought I know him. Where do I know him from. And then the name. I thought I know that name too. And then I get a phone call and then they're telling me did you see the news, and I said Yes. Who is that guy? They said it's Bruce. And I went Bruce? Bruce? He goes the gardener. I went. Shut up.

JUSTIN LING: Darlene is wondering the same thing I am. Could Bruce MacArthur have been responsible for Sandy's murder? I show her MacArthur's high school graduation photo. He's maybe 18 years old. It was about five years before David's opened.

DARLENE: I don't know if that would be his type. I don't think that's his type. Sandy liked them like- I don't know.

DARLENE: Dali knew Sandy for about a year. She worked at this club and she also cleaned its apartment. But she has no memory of seeing MacArthur around David's disco or Sandy in the 70s. But she admits she didn't know all the details of Sandy's private life.

DARLENE: But then again if Bruce was a real good talker and he had conversation with him because Sandy was like that too, he liked a good conversation. And he'd go from there. This is like- it's like a 41 year old circle. It's crazy.

JUSTIN LING: Before Sandy died Darlene remembers a change in the club, in the crowd and in the acts. Sandy was bringing in.

DARLENE: It was gone totally different. It wasn't disco anymore. It was a punk. That's what it was. I knew it was something. It was awful.

JUSTIN LING: I find some old posters from David's. They're for bands, bands with names like Monster Children, The Ugly, The Vile Tones, Cardboard Brains. A bunch of punk bands.

[Music]

TIBOR: I think the disco thing was maybe a little bit slow. And so we just thought our old friend Sandy. Maybe you let us have our punk nights at the club.

JUSTIN LING: Tibor Takacs is a Los Angeles based director now but in the 1970s he produced punk bands.

TIBOR: That's a pretty big jumps out to go from disco to punk. Natural in the way that it's sort of rebellion of some kind. I think you know it's like an underground scene. I think they're connected that way. You know alternative different people who just have a different lifestyle than the normal.

JUSTIN LING: The punk scene was a bunch of outcasts and rebels, honestly just like the queer community.

TIBOR: They reminded me of know the village people sometimes. They're dressed up, do you remember the Village People?

JUSTIN LING: I remember the Village People.

TIBOR: Well the guys would hang around and they would have one of those you know those Captain hats you know with bangles and silver jewellery and tight leather pants.

JUSTIN LING: Sandy and Mark were trying to keep things going at David's. So they tried to bring in a new audience. Tibor says they even brought up bands from Detroit to play David's.

JUSTIN LING: [To Tribor] So do you ever read anything about Sandy's Detroit connection.

TIBOR: Not really. No. Maybe his partner was from Detroit. He had a partner didn't he?

JUSTIN LING: Yes. Did you ever meet her?

TIBOR: No. Maybe once but Sandy ran the show. So.

[Music]

TIBOR: We had set up this New Year's party and there was quite successful a lot of people packed the place was packed. And then we went home at three in the morning or whatever. And the next thing I hear that the place burned down with all our equipment and because nobody brought their equipment home.

JUSTIN LING: On New Year's Day 1978 just nine months before Sandy's murder, his bar burned down. And those punk bands lost thousands of dollars worth of gear like it was.

TIBOR: Place was got it. The place was gutted, you know. The roof caved in, the holes in the roof. Light was coming through.

JUSTIN LING: This is no small fire.

TIBOR: No no. Those huge.

JUSTIN LING: I go hunting for more details and I find this:.

HOST: And we're very pleased to have with us in the studio tonight. The outlaws of the underground The Ugly.

JUSTIN LING: It's an interview the ugly did in 2007.

HOST: You guys played New Year's Eve 77-78 at Club David's. That was the infamous night where the club actually burned down that night after the gig was over.

VOICE 1: You know that night Sandy was telling us you guys should take your stuff home tonight.

VOICE 2: Yes. You left your guitar on the stage.

VOICE 1: And we just went it's New Year's Sandy, like, we're going to a New Year's party. Can we just put out a few things upstairs? He kept going to me like you should take it home. Take it home. They take it away.

VOICE 2: He knew that.

JUSTIN LING: Did Sandy know the fire would happen. It's not the first time I've heard that.

VOICE: They tell me - and I don't want to be quoted - but they tell me he set fire to the building that he owned in order to collect insurance. But I can't prove one way or the other. But that happened a short time before his demise.

JUSTIN LING: Money troubles and unexplained fire. Did Sandy torch his own bar?

VOICE 3: During that time then he was murdered the manager for that same guy. So.

JUSTIN LING: So maybe Ted Sandy's brother was right. Maybe Sandy did owe people money. Damage of the club was estimated at 100,000 dollars and it doesn't appear Sandy collected any insurance money after the fire. Tibor the band promoter was still trying to collect when Sandy died.

TIBOR: I went to his apartment looking for him, knocking on the door and I'm sure it was like trying to figure out this insurance stuff. And I think I made some calls some inquiries and then I heard that he was murdered.

JUSTIN LING: So the club burns down January 1st. Nine months later Sandy's at a party. The next day he's murdered. The punks in that interview fixate on one thing in particular: the ash trays from David's. The same kind of ashtray that John Weber still has in a box in his apartment. They see the ashtrays turned up at a gay bar turned punk bar in Detroit after the fire. Detroit where Sandy's business partner Mark was from.

VOICE 1: What do you think we went to Detroit Racing Club David ashtrays on the table. Yeah. Think about it.

VOICE 2: The connection was I think that Sandy owed money.

JUSTIN LING: At this point I'm left wondering. What the hell happened to Sandy LeBlanc? For all the people I've spoken to I'm still not sure what led to Sandy's murder but there is one person I really want to reach, someone who might be able to tell me something about the final days before Sandy's death and his business dealings. Mark the American partner. Trouble is I'm having a hard time finding any trace of the guy. It seems the business records for David’s are long gone. So I try another tactic. I find a Facebook group where people chat about the good old days of Gay Toronto. And I get lucky.

MARK: Hello.

JUSTIN LING: Hello this is Justin Ling there.

JUSTIN LING: This is Mark but not the mark I'm looking for. He's Mark Stoddard. He and the American Mark were roommates.

MARK: I actually moved into his room temporarily because he was only using it on the weekends. He had already furnished it with stuff out of David's, like I mean the red carpeting some coaches a couple of dressers and stuff like that. And they'd obviously been through a fire. There was char marks on everything but I mean not bad enough that they were unusable, just they were scorched right. This must have been after the David's fire. Like I think he had money that he sort of spread around. But I don't know where the money came from exactly. He never talked that much about what he did in Detroit. So he was sort of secretive about it. So maybe that was intentional. That's the way I'm reading it.

JUSTIN LING: On one weekend in the fall of 1980 Mark didn't show up at the house.

MARK: We hadn't seen him in a while. He hadn't come in to Toronto and one of the guys got a phone call and that he been killed in Detroit.

[Music]

JUSTIN LING: Killed in Detroit. Mark was murdered.

[Music]

MW: That was episode 5 of the CBC Uncover podcast, The Village, with host Justin Ling. Will bring you Episode 6 next week. And you can find the entire series wherever you get your podcast. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q after rumours of a Break-Up. The Black Keys have returned with a brand new album called Let's Rock. Patrick Carney and Dan Auerbach will be in studio to talk about their break between records, their newfound love of playing together and the pitfalls of the music industry and 2019. And remember you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. I'm Megan Williams. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current and have a happy and safe Canada Day weekend. I'll be back Monday.

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