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Uncover S3 Episode 7

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th..

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

ANNOUNCER: This is a CBC podcast.

[Music]

JOHN: I met him at a Halloween Party. [Laughing] And I know it sounds corny as hell. But I remember he came into the party and I was standing and somebody and I said, “I'm going to get that man.” I just thought he was an extremely handsome man. Derek, just as soon as he walked in that door. He knocked my socks off. He really did. And I got him! [Chuckles]

JUSTIN: In the early 1970s John Roberston met a man. His name was Derek Grant. And the two fell in love.

JOHN: He was an Englishman. He had enormous charm. We were culture vultures we went to the opera. Ballet sometimes. Most of your socialising was -- was with friends. Then he had his night out at the bar. Once a week, which was fine. You know, St. Charles and the Parkside of course. I didn't know what he was up to. [Laughing] Ignorance is bliss.

JUSTIN: One Tuesday in 1979, Derek had been at the Parkside Tavern.

JOHN: I can remember being up with the cat. The two of us looking out the window - it was like three in the morning and I thought “What the hell is going on? And then five o'clock in the morning the police arrived. To tell me. And they took me down -- I guess to the hospital. And he was in a body bag and the thing tied around his toe. I remember that. And I made the identification and then they had me sit down for a while. Because you know I was really, really shaken. And then they took me to the police station, I suppose, the officer said to me. “Yeah, he was sitting right there when he croaked!” Never forgot that.

[Music]

JUSTIN: My name is Justin Ling. This is Uncover: The Village.

[Music]

JUSTIN: In October 1979, Derek George Grant is sitting in the Parkside tavern. His partner John is at home, with the cat. Just after midnight Derek goes down to the bathroom. And, he's not alone. It's the men's washroom in a gay bar. But then, two Toronto Police morality officers burst through the door to arrest the men. They were fooling around. Police call it an indecent act.

JOHN: It was a victimless crime. I'm sorry, but it's a victimless crime. They just simply swooped in and I think they had been other raids there in the past. That wasn't the first one. JUSTIN: There's a struggle. Derek panics. He pleads to be let go. An officer twists his arm, and forces him outside. He puts Derek in a headlock, then leans him over the police cruiser and puts his weight on him. Derek is brought to police headquarters. He has trouble breathing. The officer says it looks like he's having a seizure. Derek begins to vomit. The officer loosens his tie and collar. And lays him down on the floor. Then he performs mouth to mouth. An ambulance arrives, but Derek is pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. The cause of death is "inhalation of stomach contents." He choked to death. On his own vomit.

JOHN: I mean when they say he choked to death on his own vomit, ‘cause I'm sure he was scared half to death by this.

[Music]

JOHN: There was an inquest. To -- well as it turned out, to clear the police! It was like he was on trial. Really. I've got nothing against the police. I've never been in trouble with the police so I don't have an axe to grind here. I just felt that was what was going on here and his name was being dragged through the mud... to clear them. He had died in police custody and I think what they were trying to prove, was that they had nothing to do with this. That's what I think they were trying to make it absolutely clear that the police had nothing to do with it except arresting him. The rest was his own fault.

[Music]

JUSTIN: A man died in police custody after being scooped up in a bathroom raid. The inquest concluded, the police were not at fault. Instead, the jury commended the actions of the Sergeant who tried to revive Derek, the Sergeant who arrested him, put him in a headlock, dragged him to the police station. And, yes, later performed mouth to mouth.

PETER: I find out that there has been an inquest and that somehow it involves a gay man and the Parkside.

JUSTIN: This is Peter Maloney. He's a lawyer and a long-time queer activist.

PETER: I get suspicious about it so I ask for information from the coroner's office. There always has to be an inquest when it's a death in police custody.

JUSTIN: Derek was not the first man to be arrested in the Parkside tavern.

PETER: So you have this 75 or 100 men on the ground floor in the bar, in the tavern. And alcohol loosens inhibitions -- if they met somebody they might go downstairs into the bathroom to have sex. Nobody objected because we're all gay. We know what goes on, the public doesn't, isn't there, you know, the general public. And there was a cubbyhole, a closet, with a vent that overlooked the bathroom and the police were given a key to that closet so that they could observe the washroom and make arrests of men who had sex in the washroom. This is like they're you know shooting fish in a barrel. It's easy peasy, make arrests.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Next to the bathroom of the Parkside tavern, a gay bar, there was a secret room. In that room were two police officers. They took turns standing on a chair and staring out of a ventilation grate. Every man that came in and out of the washroom was watched. If two men were to get intimate, thinking they were alone, the two officers would burst through the door and arrest them. This is how Derek Grant ended up at the police station. And this is how he died. There would be no reprimand for the officers involved. No suggestion that his arrest was improper. Or excessive. Just a conclusion that it had been accidental.

[Music]

PETER: I decide that I'm going to close this operation down. And I gather together George Hislop and Brent Hawkes and a few other people…

JOHN: People were really angry at the owners. But it continued to be busy on Saturday afternoons because it was one of the few places where people could go. The amount that we fed into our own oppression.

PETER: And we demand an appointment with Norm Bolter, who's got an office on the second floor of the St. Charles.

JUSTIN: Norman Bolter was the owner of the Parkside and the St Charles taverns. The one who said gay men shouldn't own their own establishments because they would get too emotionally involved. And here he is, letting police spring out of the shadows and arrest his own customers.

PETER: Straight people thought nothing of that at that point in time. And we go visit him and I say to him “You're going to change the locks on that closet. You're going to close off that grill and you're not going to allow the police to use that anymore. And if you don't, I'm going to send a picket to the Parkside and I'm going to shut your business down.” And so he complied.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Peter Maloney didn't just stop the surveillance. He made it widely known.

PETER: I went to the body politic and said “Here's the story,” and it was very dramatic. You know X number arrested, one dead and, ah, made people aware of it in the community.

JUSTIN: It's the frontpage story. Quote, "In 1979, 190 men were arrested by Toronto police for sexual offences.” They were arrested in washrooms. At the bus terminal. In parks. In a cinema. In a parking garage. At the baths. They were arrested in their own homes. The community fought to make these numbers public. This is the first look they got into the undercover police morality operation. At the Parkside, The Body Politic got inside the secret room. There's a picture in the paper of a gay activist, long hair, moustache, bell-bottom jeans, standing on a chair, peering through the vent which overlooks the bathroom. Just like the cops would have done. Peter Maloney, Brent Hawkes, George Hislop, they all helped put an end to it. But that wouldn't bring Derek back

JOHN: This closure business doesn't do anything for me. He's -- he's dead. And nothing is going to bring that back. It's awful. Well, I mean, I know 10 years isn't that long but it is -- when you're 26 it is. And I loved him to bits. I loved him like mad. And it was mutual. You're left with this gaping hole in your life.

JUSTIN: Derek's obituary absolutely breaks my heart. It reads, simply “Sadly missed by John.”

[Music]

JOHN: I think of him all the time. And I often think, “God that was young.” But oh no, he's never left me. No. Not for one moment.

JUSTIN: This was 1979. Derek and John's relationship may have been as real as any marriage, but not in the eyes of the law.

JOHN: When Derek died I had no status. Absolutely none. So if the house hadn't been in my name, I possibly would have got booted out of it. I didn't exist in relation to him as far as the law was concerned. And I had a hell of a job getting the ashes into a niche in Mount Pleasant. Ah, God did I fight for that. Finally they gave in.

[Music]

JOHN: It's not the kind of thing you just tell people. So very few people know the truth. It's just easier to say “He died of a heart attack.”

JUSTIN: John had to go on without Derek. He managed to cover the mortgage on the house and he pursued his passion, classical music. He's now a successful composer.

Has that ever worked into your work?

JOHN: Yes. Two pieces. His initials were DG. If you know anything about music, D is the dominant of G -- [Playing keys on piano] dum dum. One just was written because I wanted to and the other one is in memorial D.G., a piano piece.

[Piano music plays]

JOHN: I don't remember anybody ever coming around and following up so that's why this is a surprise. The fact that his memory is still alive somewhere. Which I like! You know, I thought I was the only person left in the world. When I go, that's it. But it's nice to know somebody else remembers.

[Piano music continues]

[Crickets chirping and footsteps]

VOICE 1: On March 20^th…

VOICE 2: Run!

[Heavy breathing and running]

VOICE 1: ..only one movie experience this year will make you afraid to breathe.

VOICE 3: You won’t survive.

VOICE 2: We have to try.

VOICE 1: A Quiet Place: Part II. In theatres March 20^th. Tickets on sale now.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Derek's death, and being kicked out of their surveillance closet, didn't stop the Toronto Police morality squad. If anything, their work continued with greater force.

REPORTER: Smashed lockers, pushed in doors, and broken windows. And a lot of angry homosexuals.

JUSTIN: It's a frigid night in February, 1981.

REPORTER: The Barracks, The Romans II, The Club, and the Richmond Street Emporium. Places where homosexuals allegedly meet others for recreation and sex. Places police allege are bawdy houses.

JUSTIN: 200 cops descend on four bathhouses.

TERRENCE MCKENNA: My initial emotional reaction was confusion. I don't know what's going on. Suddenly I heard clamor loud noises pounding feet in hot pursuit.

FEMALE: Doors were broken down and I remember a fat, ugly plainclothes cop rushed into my room and said 'don't move' 'just stay where you are.' And God the noise, the bedlam!

[Indistinct uproar in background]

MALE VOICE: One of them grabbed me, I heard some sort of commotion at the front foyer. I could see a bunch of people streaming now into the building. This man still had me in a body grip of some sort. I was struggling with him, and I then yelled out for somebody to call the police. It was then that somebody yelled back, “We are the police.”

JUSTIN: Reverend Brent Hawkes is there, outside.

BRENT: When people were hearing that friends were arrested -- being arrested, it was like “This can't be happening.” You know, baths had been raided before, but there's not like this mass like you just felt from all over the place in those few hours. And they were lined up in the shower area and one of them heard the cops say “I wish those showers were hooked up to gas instead of water.” And his parents had survived the Holocaust.

MALE VOICE: And then being caught in between floors on the stairs by two very rough and burly individuals who told me “Get in there.” And here we were engulfed in terror.

[Music]

MALE VOICE: Doors were being smashed, glass was cracking and we were silent. Our heads were lowered and suddenly a frightening realization of being naked and being surrounded by raw power. How hopeless the situation was. What despair came over us. I am the son of concentration camp victims, and I never knew what my parents went through until that night.

BRENT: I remember people being so angry, wanting to figure out how to stop the paddy wagons from being able to leave and yelling and screaming at the police and being really, really, really angry.

REPORTER: Toronto police rounded up 286 men in the largest mass arrest in Canada since the imposition of the war measures act in 1970. The men were owners and patrons of four Toronto steam baths frequented by homosexuals. They were charged under the bawdy house provision of the criminal code.

[Music]

[Commotion on street]

[Chanting “Gay rights right now”]

REPORTER: In the days since the steam bath raids Toronto's homosexual community has taken to the streets.

JUSTIN: The backlash is swift and explosive.

REPORTER: The night after the arrest, nearly five thousand joined in a Yonge Street protest march.

JUSTIN: Peter Maloney is there. He had been a part owner of a bathhouse.

PETER: I remember the organization the flyers going out to all the bars. One of the nice things about the community at that point in time is that everybody fed off one another in terms of their anger. It was agreed that everybody would meet at the corner of Wellesley and -- and Yonge and I remember seeing people flowing from everywhere and I realized that this was going to be a major event.

[Chanting]

BRENT: I remember chants that I was very uncomfortable chanting, I'm way too conservative, to chant “No more shit.” I would say “no more” and then I would go blank.

PETER: I walked into traffic and cars stopped and the intersection filled. So we occupy the whole of Yonge Street for blocks. Streetcars stopping, cars stopping. I mean this now has grown into something never before seen in Toronto gay history.

[Chanting]

PETER AT PROTEST: Well the first thing you gotta know is the Barracks, and the Romans and the Club Toronto are open again.

[Crowd cheers]

PETER: They're open and operating! They're not going to intimidated, neither should we!

[Chanting]

BRENT: Then the reaction kept getting worse and worse and worse on both sides. The police kept getting more and more violent and the gay community kept reacting more and more violently setting fire to garbage cans and stuff.

[Chanting]

PETER: The police by now have got themselves organized and so they've called in cars and officers from all over Toronto and they've - shoulder to shoulder - surrounded 52 division, on all sides. So you've got this cordon of police officers physically on the sidewalk right.

BRENT: And I remember the diversity in the crowds, the number of women who came out, the number of family members who had come out and all the co-workers who came out.

PETER: We were in a group in the front door of the legislature and so people start trying to break that door down, and they came to protect the doors and started bashing people with the batons. I remember standing beside one guy and he whacked some guy over the head and the blood spurted onto me because I was standing next to him. And I looked at this officer and he was just as shocked by what he had done as I was. I mean he was, you know, he suddenly realized what he had done and you could just see it in his eyes, he was just horrified.

BRENT AT PROTEST: No longer will we stand idly by, while the politicians ignore us, the police abuse us, and the right wing lie about us!

[Crowd cheers]

BRENT: It was an unbelievably galvanized movement and you had the sense of it was, all of the -- [Tears up] -- frustration of all those years just spilling over, all of these years of being treated less than by society and by the police of having no rights and having people, you know, physically abused and emotionally abused that it was time to stand up.

[Chanting]

REPORTER: The people here represent more than 30 groups in the gay community. Today they called the charges unfounded and vague. They said the charges were a deliberate attempt to make their leaders and their entire community look criminal.

MALE VOICE: The organizations represented here today. Are united in our support of the gay community and business leaders charged. We are united in our protest against the escalating attacks and continued harassment by metro police on Toronto's gay community. We state once more that we will not be intimidated. Enough is enough.

JUSTIN: Support for the arrested men comes from across the city.

MARGARET ATWOOD: Somebody said to me “Police have raided the bath houses.” And I said, “What have they got against cleanliness?”

[Crowd laughs]

JUSTIN: This is author Margaret Atwood.

MARGARET ATWOOD: I would be very angry if I were taking a bath.

[Cheering and laughter]

MARGARET ATWOOD: ..and somebody thought they had the right to come and kick down my door.

[Crowd laughing]

MARGARET ATWOOD: So I'm here really because people think that they can beat up on supposedly powerless smaller groups, because it's fun, and because they think they can get away with it, um - makes me angry. Makes me sick. And I don't see why anybody, in a society that calls itself a democracy, should have to suffer from institutionalized contempt.

[Crowd applauds]

JUSTIN: The police chief Jack Akroyd is confident his officers have done nothing wrong.

JACK: Homosexuals can take people to their own private homes, to their own private apartments, and it's perfectly agreeable what they do as consenting adults in private. The charge here deals with the keeping of a common bawdy house. It's a place that's kept or occupied for the purpose of prostitution or the practice of acts of indecency. You know, I think that the gay community feel that they should have a right to run bawdy houses.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Brent appears before the police board to demand an inquiry into the raids

BRENT: Because of the brutal and Nazi-like police actions of the force last Thursday and Friday, I am no longer able to pursue the moderate approach. Where are your priorities? People of Toronto need protection, not harassment! We ask - we tell you - to get out of our clubs, get out of our homes and get out of our bedrooms, and get back to fighting the crime in the streets!

[Cheering and applause]

BRENT: You may respond by saying, “Well why don't you go lay a complaint?” Well, why should we lay a complaint! We’ve seen in the past, and the black community have seen in the past, that when we go to lay a complaint, what usually happens is the complainant is charged with something, or, their home is raided!

JUSTIN: George Hislop is there too

GEROGE: The night of Thursday, February 6th, will go down in this city as the night of infamy! It is tragic that so much work has been destroyed by so few people! I want to ask the commission, have any of you gone down and seen what happened down there?!? No!

JUSTIN: Despite a push from city councillors and the civil liberties union, the government refuses to hold an inquiry. That is a breaking point for Brent.

BRENT: That's when I made the decision to go on a hunger strike. to demand an investigation into the police. It was a real spiritual thing for me. Brent I just felt led, but I would use language by God to do that.

[Music]

JUSTIN: For nearly a month, Brent survives on nothing but water.

REPORTER: This evening Brent Hawkes held his last communion service on the steps of the provincial legislature. He's been meeting with members of this church and other supporters this way every evening since he began his hunger strike 26 days ago.

BRENT: I was getting weaker and weaker and weaker and dizzy. The congregation put a cot in my office for me so that they would have people stay overnight and stay with me just to make sure I was OK because I was I lost 35 pounds in 25 days because I was just drinking water only and nothing else. I didn't have an exit strategy. You know I didn't - I never thought about it.

[Music]

[Music]

JUSTIN: While the community is fighting to bring accountability to the Toronto Police, there's a fight brewing inside the police force itself. This obsession, this campaign by the morality and intelligence bureaus - is not only damaging community-police relations. It's de-railing homicide investigations.

ROBIN: Now the story that I heard from my other reporter friends was that it was largely a case of bureaucratic silos.

JUSTIN: Robin Rowland, the young journalist, whose friends were worried about a "mad stabber" is hanging around crime reporters. And they're speaking to the detectives who still have all these unsolved murders on their desks.

ROBIN: Homicide, at least some people in homicide were trying to reach out to the gay community, and morality squad wanted to shut down the bathhouses. And the story that I was told that there was a shouting match between senior officers in homicide and the intelligence and morality commanders, basically saying “You fucked up our murder investigation.”

JUSTIN: Even as there are killers loose on the street, the morality squad has declared war on the gay village. But the raids? They have an unintended consequence. They push the gay community out into the public eye. And they are pissed.

DENNIS: And this was an attempt, a very blatant attempt, to shove us back into the closet. I'm sorry we were out. We're not going back.

JUSTIN: This is Dennis Findlay. He got involved in the organizing after the bathhouse raids.

DENNIS: Immediately after the 1981 bathhouse raids, there was an upsurge in queer bashing, where people would be walking around in the downtown core and going to bars going to restaurants, going to clubs. And a bunch of -- a carload of white men normally would arrive and then jump out of the car and beat this person up. And the community was beginning to become very disturbed by this increased level of violence.

JUSTIN: This fear, it isn't new. But, until now, the community had been demanding the cops bring security to the Village. It's clear that wouldn't happen. The raids only confirmed that. So Dennis Findlay and others come up with an idea.

DENNIS: Now at the time, myself and a number of other people had actually been participating in self-defence classes. And so some of us started to talk what we should be doing is we should be actually patrolling the streets because the cops aren't going to do it for us. So that's what we did. We sent out a notice basically saying we are going to set up this gay street patrol. We will train you in self-defence. We will give you courses in first aid. We will teach you the law, give you some lessons in the law. Now I have to be honest and say we never actually intervened in any particular incident. We never saved anyone. But within the community there was this real awareness of “Oh my God we've got our own street patrol. Wow. Like I can actually go out to the bars and I can wander from the Parkside to St. Charles and I don't have to feel quite so frightened.” So we, the community, once again took responsibility for our own safety.

[Music]

JUSTIN: The decision to bypass the city, and the police, it comes as the community is flexing its muscle. George Hislop, that unofficial mayor of gay Toronto, decides he will try to make his title a little more official.

GEROGE: By being elected and being at city hall, people will know that we are there. When it came time to think about getting into politics, we could actually remind people that gays contribute to the well being of the city.

JUSTIN: In 1980, Hislop runs for Toronto city council on a platform of police reforms.

Do you remember what the sentiment was like when he announced, you know, I'm running openly gay to be city alderman?

DENNIS: Well, within my circle was, “Yes!” Thank heavens. Go, George, go! I had a George Hislop sign on my front yard. My community, the one that I was hanging out with, was over the moon of the fact that a gay man was actually publicly standing for office. Having one of your own who was out and who could speak truth to this incident -- this was historic, like this was exciting.

[Phone rings]

MALE VOICE: Hislop headquarters, poll numbers please.

JUSTIN: Toronto Police actively campaign against Hislop.

GEORGE: It's gonna be a long night , I think, figuring out whether he's gonna make it or not.

JUSTIN: And, the police win. But it's close. Hislop comes just 2000 votes shy of being elected.

[Cheering and applause]

GEORGE: The amount of love that is being shown, toward me, and towards the people who worked on our campaign, and toward our community, has been overwhelming. It has vastly outweighed the hate that we have seen demonstrated.

[Cheering and applause]

GEORGE: Finally I'd like to thank the person who loves me, and who I love very much. Ron Shear.

[Louder cheering and chanting “George” repeatedly]

JUSTIN: But George was just getting started. This is a CBC story from 1981, just days after the raids.

REPORTER: If there is a gay political movement growing in Toronto, its undisputed leader is George Hislop. His revealed homosexuality was a key issue in his defeat in last fall's civic election. As part owner of one of the raided steam baths, Mr. Hislop has been charged as a keeper of a bawdy house. But George Hislop says that he is more disturbed by the methods of the 160-member police raiding party than by the charges he faces.

GEROGE: Gays are abandoning and leaving their party affiliation for this election in protest against the lack of principle in these parties. Their failure to speak up strongly.

JUSTIN: This time he runs provincially, as an independent. None of the political parties are willing to run an openly gay candidate, and all three parties refuse support adding protections for queer people in the human rights code. So he takes them all on.

[Crowd applauding and chanting]

JUSTIN: George would lose again but now there's buzz around this band of angry gays. They are a threat to the political order.

[Crowd applauding and chanting]

JUSTIN: Meanwhile, Brent Hawkes has been on his hunger strike for 26 days. And city council has a meeting scheduled.

BRENT: That city council meeting was the last one before they were taking a four-week break. JUSTIN: Oh so it would’ve been that or nothing.

Brent's supporters push councillors to vote for an inquiry into the bathhouse raids. Brent watches from the gallery. He knows that, if they fail, he will likely die. City councillors listen to three hours of testimony from lawyers who'd taken statements from the men arrested during the raids.

REPORTER: The statements refer to verbal abuse wanton damage of property the use of crowbars and sledgehammers being forced to stand naked with arms above the head for more than an hour. Being handcuffed for four hours, being photographed naked, having police demand to know where the accused worked. Married men were asked to name their wives and provide the name of their wives employers. The council debate was frequently interrupted by responses from the near capacity audience.

[Crowd cheering and applauding]

JUSTIN: While some councillors want an inquiry, the mayor is opposed

MAYOR: I've come to the conclusion I do not believe that the raids were not ordered to harass or persecute the gay community.

[Crowd laughing and jeering]

MALE VOICE: Please let the mayor speak.

MAYOR: If I thought that were the case, Mr chairman, I would certainly be supporting the enquiry that is being asked for because I am opposed in any way shape or form to any bigotry or harassment to any individual--

CROWD MEMBER: Prove it!

[Gavel bangs]

MALE VOICE: Order here!

MAYOR: No matter what their social identification may be.

JUSTIN: But the mayor is outvoted.

REPORTER: The homosexual community had won a major victory. Toronto's city council had voted 11 to 9 to request an independent public inquiry into the police raids on the four Toronto steam baths…

[Music]

BRENT: And the motion, you know, was a good motion. So I said yes.

[On video] We get our report before an impartial person. So the objectives of the hunger strike were clearly met in that sense.

JUSTIN: What was your first meal?

BRENT: It was really funny. I remember it was cream of mushroom soup and we went to some little diner near City Hall to kind of celebrate. I honestly can say, I never really -- we didn't eat mushrooms a lot when I was a kid growing up in New Brunswick, but I never noticed the flavor. But that night it tasted so good. And I've always believed that that was the first I've ever really tasted mushrooms. Mushrooms -- yes.

[Music]

JUSTIN: The community, in the end, doesn't get a public inquiry. They get a study. Toronto city hall commissions Arnold Bruner, a former journalist who is attending law school, to do a study into community police relations. It's called Out of the Closet.

ARNOLD: The major recommendation of the report is that a dialogue committee be set up to include the police, the gay community and to be chaired by a person to be chosen by the City of Toronto, someone who -- who has the respect of both the police and the gay community.

BRENT: I think it had 14 recommendations and he basically gave us everything we asked for.

JUSTIN: In his report, Bruner calls out Toronto Police priorities. He notes that the morality and intelligence bureaus had way more money and staff than the entire investigative unit, which includes homicide. More than $1.5 million dollars more. In other words, police are dedicating way more resources to arresting men cruising in bathrooms than to catching killers roaming the streets. The report also calls on police to recognize the legitimacy of the gay community and basically, to stop criminalizing consensual sex.

[Music]

BRENT: One of them was quite quickly done that the police would recognize the gay community as a legitimate part of the city of Toronto and not just a criminal element. That came quickly.

ARNOLD: The attitude of the police and the gay community in general is that it's a criminal group. That may seem a bit strong but in fact whenever the community has a gathering, the police feel they have to be there. And you ask for an explanation as to why they have to be there - the softest explanation that I heard was, “Well, they attract crime.”

JUSTIN: The recommendations include adding basic human rights protections, expanding police training and hiring community liaisons. It also recommends ending the surveillance and arrests in bathrooms and public parks. Common sense things

BRENT: But, you know, if you want to get involved in police reform you've got to be in it for the long haul because you don't get big wins fast. It takes a long time to change that institution. It's such a militaristic institution that's been above public scrutiny for so long, it's really, really hard work getting change. and so it took like 30-40 years before we got all the recommendations implemented.

JUSTIN: The report is about community police relations, but it's also about language. Bruner takes issue with one term in particular -- "homosexual murder." He says it associates the gay community with crime. Meanwhile, hundreds of men are appearing in court for charges of committing an indecent act in a bathhouse.

MALE: I attended somewhere in the neighborhood of 92, 93 or 94 percent of the trials. All the trials of the men arrested in the bathhouse raids.

JUSTIN: Like this man

MALE VOICE: I'm beginning to learn what fear is about. The funny thing about it is at first I believed them. I believed that I was doing something wrong. That I was maybe at fault for being what I am. I believe now that when I get the chance to be, I will become more active. And if need be, a militant about it. But at present I can't be. Because it would endanger my case.

JUSTIN: The activists defending the men arrested in the raids called themselves the “Right to Privacy Committee.” Dennis Findlay was one of the organizers.

DENNIS: At a certain point people started arriving who didn't have lawyers and I was, like, freaked out that they didn't have a lawyer. And so I then literally called one of the lawyers and said, “What do I do?”

JUSTIN: And that lawyer tells Dennis “Represent them yourself.”

DENNIS: So that's what I did. I went into the halls the next day, called up John Doe and when John Doe showed up, I said “I'm Dennis Findlay, I'm with the right to privacy committee. I am not a lawyer. If you're willing to let me look after your case, I will help you through it.” And they went, “Oh my God, thank you.” So I walked in and then I proceeded to, like I wasn't a lawyer, but I defended people and I got all twelve people off.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Meanwhile, Peter Maloney is pursuing a career that puts him in a perfect position to defend himself. As well as everybody else who was arrested.

PETER: I was the first openly gay lawyer in Toronto. I wanted to set up a general practice, but I immediately, almost immediately, became a criminal lawyer.

JUSTIN: Between the police calling up their employers and newspapers publishing their names, many men have their lives ruined overnight.

PETER: A man came into my office at one point in time, and this man had being charged in the 1950s, he asked a man on the street who he thought was gay to have sex with him. His name had been published in the newspaper. He lost his family, he lost his job and he came to me because he'd been charged again with the bath houses and he thought that his whole life was going to blow up again. This was a man in his 60s, who was just shaking. I mean, he got to my office and his physically, his whole body was shaking. So there were just so many stories like that.

[Music]

PETER: What happens when you raid bathhouses? People go into the parks and the washrooms as substitutes. So then arrests occur in those places. The action gets displaced, so people get charged with a commission of indecent acts and so they come to me.

[Music]

PETER: There's so many tragedies. There was a series of arrests.

REPORTER: Thirty two men charged with indecency after being taped by police cameras during a surveillance. It happened at the public washrooms at this shopping mall in St Catharines.

PETER: This man was summoned to appear in court.

REPORTER: One of the men who'd been charged kissed his family goodbye Saturday afternoon got into his car and drove off.

PETER: He had a wife and kids.

REPORTER: A businessman and father. He had been a coach at the local soccer club. He taught Sunday school. Newspapers that he was well liked by his neighbours and the people he worked with.

PETER: He drove his car out to the 401.

REPORTER: When he got out of town. He doused his car with gasoline and ignited it.

[Music]

PETER: Because of this case of the man who lit himself on fire and killed himself and left a widow and orphans, the police officers recognized the harm that could be done. Various police forces adopted a policy of not publishing the names. I remember one police officer's very brief answer, he says, “‘cause I don't want to be, I don't want to have blood on my hands.” So the whole, that whole attitude changed.

[Music]

JUSTIN: For those men who fight the bathhouse charges, they discover something surprising.

The courts don't see them as criminals.

PETER: It was almost like there was an unspoken conspiracy between the judiciary and the police officers to find ways in order not to have these people found guilty. Many of the judges were very sympathetic. When you got to court very often they couldn't identify the accused, so we would exclude the police officer from the courtroom. The person would be arraigned, would plead not guilty. Then they'd be told to sit in the body of the court. Police officer would be called back in, asked to point out the person, couldn't point the person out, couldn't remember who it was. End of case.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Of the nearly 300 men charged, close to 90% have their cases thrown out. Of those convicted, nobody goes to jail. That doesn't mean the damage wasn't done.

For the cops arresting them was kind of enough, right? That was the punishment almost unto itself.

PETER: That's right.

JUSTIN: Lives are ruined. Marriages end. But it is also a watershed moment. The protests around the bathhouse raids are widely considered Canada's Stonewall, the New York riots that pushed the American gay liberation movement into the mainstream a decade earlier. The night the community had enough. When queer people fought back. Over the past few years, the city of Toronto and the Canadian government have taken steps to make amends. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for Canada's discrimination against LGBTQ minorities.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU: Today, we finally talk about Canada’s role in the systemic oppression, criminalisation and violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and two-spirit communities.

JUSTIN: But he refused to pardon the few men who were convicted in the bathhouse raids. In 2014, Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders publicly issued a statement regarding the bathhouse raids

MARK SAUNDERS: The Toronto police raids on Toronto bathhouses did not occur on just one evening. But the February 1981 event was the most dramatic in its destructiveness and in the number of men arrested.

JUSTIN: But Saunders never actually apologized.

DENNIS: He did not use the word “apology.” He did not use the word “sorry.” He simply implied that we made some mistakes. If you're seriously apologizing, you pull out the words “apology” and you say “I am sorry.”

JUSTIN: For Dennis Findlay, it's even more glaring that police have continued to arrest men in morality raids

DENNIS: Marie Curtis Park is a direct parallel…

JUSTIN: Just three years ago, Toronto police charged 72 men under various acts, including the criminal code. Because they were engaged in sexual activity. They had sent officers undercover to bust these guys in Marie Curtis Park.

DENNIS: So there's a way in which the police could actually conduct themselves, which would illustrate to the world around them that in fact there is a change in policies and practices and procedures.

JUSTIN: The charges were, eventually, withdrawn. And yet, police were patrolling parks to arrest guys for cruising, even as men continued to disappear from the Village. It all feels familiar.

DENNIS: What's changed between the 70s and 2019? What's -- what's changed? Nothing. And we've gone through a lot of history. The cops have gay, lesbian, trans people within their community. So what does that do? Does that actually make a change in the philosophy and the way in which the police conduct themselves? Apparently not. We've gone through the bathhouse raids. We had the Bruner report. The police have actually gone through training to deal with people from other sexual orientations. Has that actually changed the philosophy and the conduct and the policies of the bureaucracy? Apparently not. And this is a direct mirror image of what's happened recently in the Village, where men of color were disappearing and the police did not follow up.

JUSTIN: It's January 2019. One year after Bruce McArthur's arrest. I'm sitting at my desk when I get a news release from the Toronto Police Service. It says that Bruce McArthur is scheduled to appear in court, shortly before 9:30 the next morning. There is a "significant development" in the case.

[Music]

JUSTIN: Coming up on The Village…

DAVID DICKINSON: I just want to recap today by saying at approximately 10:00 a.m. this morning, Bruce MacArthur attended the superior court of justice here in Toronto.

MARK SAUNDERS: We knew something stunk. There was no ifs, ands or buts, which is why we put millions of dollars into it. We knew something stunk and we did everything we could to find it and we just didn't.

JUSTIN: We've been speaking to you know one former investigator who says that he always had a person in mind for one of these cases, the murder of Sandy Leblanc

GALLANT: They did have persons of interest in that case

HARAN: Why did we have to lose eight people? Where did the police mess up royally?

[Music]

JUSTIN: The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling, Jennifer Fowler and Erin Byrnes. Cesil Fernandes and Mitch Stuart are our audio producers and Sarah Claydon is our Digital Producer. Additional production on this episode by David McDougall. Audio from Track Two Enough is Enough is provided courtesy of Xtra. Thank you to John Robertson for use of his music. Tanya Springer is the senior producer of CBC Podcasts and our executive producer is Arif Noorani. For a look at some of the defining images of the gay rights liberation movement, visit our website at cbc.ca/uncover. Or find CBC Podcasts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

[Music]

[Music]

JUSTIN: Uncover: The Village is a CBC Podcast. Another show we think you might like is “Personal Best” - a reckless, do-it-yourself approach to self-improvement. Each episode aims to help someone tackle a weird, eccentric, or petty everyday hang-up that you would be too embarrassed to tell an actual life-coach about. Visit cbc.ca/personalbest or wherever you get your podcasts.

ANNOUNCER: For more CBC original podcasts, go to cbc.ca/originalpodcasts.

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TRANSCRIPT: UNCOVER: THE VILLAGE - EP7

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