Feb. 5, 1981, was a cold Thursday night in Toronto.
The Toronto Maple Leafs continued their plunge into a disappointing year as they lost their third game in a row. As they struggled on the ice, it was glitz and glamour just over 2 km away at the O’Keefe Centre.
On hand for the Juno Awards was Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who saw Anne Murray and Bruce Cockburn pick up two awards each.
Meanwhile, along Yonge Street, at four popular bathhouses, hundreds of gay men danced and socialized, free of the stigma they felt on the outside.
But among the dancers and revellers were some with on a different mission.
At 11 p.m., 150 police officers stormed the buildings in a sweeping raid.
The arrests were based in bigotry, but they inspired protests that have evolved into one of the largest pride festivals in the world.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I share the story behind Operation Soap!
When Governor General Roland Michener gave Royal Assent to the Criminal Law Amendment Act on June 27, 1969, people cheered and said Canada had become a more progressive country.
Justice Minister John Turner stated that the Act was the most important and all-embracing reform to criminal and penal law ever attempted at one time.
It legalized the sale of contraceptives and brought in new offences related to misleading advertising, harassing phone calls and cruelty to animals.
But no one remembers that.
Because the act was supposed to bring about the legalization of abortion, and the decriminalization of homosexuality.
But did it really?
While the Canadian government patted itself on the back and called itself progressive, the changes to abortion and homosexuality laws were superficial at best.
It was an attempt to appease those who wanted change, without angering others who wanted everything to remain the same.
Abortions were legal, but getting one was next to impossible.
A woman had to go through a therapeutic abortion committee of three male doctors and the abortion would only be approved if it endangered the woman.
It wasn’t until 1988 that a liberalization of the abortion law came about thanks to the Supreme Court case R v. Morgentaler.
You can learn more about that landmark event in my episode from 2023.
Homosexuality was decriminalized, but again there is more to that story.
Between 1968 and 1969, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau sparked a controversy surrounding the Liberal government’s passage of Bill C-150.
Consensual same-sex relationships were legal, yes, but it came with strings attached.
Parties had to be over 21, relationships had to happen in private homes and could only be between two people.
A law from 1892 made “gross indecency” between men illegal, meaning any same-sex attraction, which includes touching, dancing and kissing.
The law had been made gender neutral in 1953.
Bill- C150 made acts legal BUT under special circumstances otherwise you were still breaking the law. Before the decriminalization of homosexuality, Everett Klippert was arrested and charged with gross indecency for having consensual sex with other men.
His court case led to the change in the laws.
But as the government applauded their progress, Klippert sat in jail.
It wasn’t until 1971, two years after the law changed and four years after he was jailed, that Klippert was released.
And was he pardoned?
No.
In the eyes of the law, he remained a former criminal.
The change never helped him.
And it wasn’t until 2020 before he was pardoned, 24 years after his death.
Meanwhile, people outed as gay could still lose their jobs or be vilified in the community.
So, the laws didn’t do much other than make it easier for police to arrest same sex couples in public,
This effectively forced gay people to stay in the closet.
The changes to the law left a lot of grey area in decriminalization and those that opposed homosexuality made full use of it.
In the 1970s, Toronto was at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ rights in Canada.
It seemed that barriers were being broken annually.
On Church Street, the Glad Day Bookshop opened in December 1970, and it had a massive impact on the gay rights movement going forward.
Jearld Moldenhauer’ shop was the first LGBTQ bookstore in Canada.
A year and half later, On June 12, 1971, Moldenhauer and several others founded the Toronto Gay Action group.
Two months after that, they marched in the We Demand Rally on Parliament Hill, calling for equal rights for the gay community.
On November 1 of that same year, at Glad Day, The Body Politic launched.
It was Canada’s first significant gay publication.
For the next 16 years, it was at the forefront of publicizing the fight for equality for gay Canadians. And all of these actions led to some progress.
In February 1972, Peter Maloney, heard about a petition to prevent homosexual activists from addressing students in Toronto high schools.
So, he came out as gay at a Liberal Party policy conference and became Canada’s first openly gay political candidate when he ran in the Ontario provincial election.
But there were also drawbacks.
On January 5, 1974, four women, Adrienne Rosen (formerly Adrienne Potts), Pat Murphy, Sue Wells and Lamar Van Dyke (formerly Heather Elizabeth Nelson) — were thrown out of a Toronto bar.
They became known as the Brunswick Four
Their expulsion and eventual detention led to charges.
In response to their treatment by the bar staff and the police, they launched a landmark court case and, in the process, raised awareness about homophobia and harassment at the hands of the Toronto Police Department. It seemed like the police force targeted the gay community and attempted to stifle the growing LGBTQ rights movement.
It became a repeating theme over the next decade.
The police force and the powers that be used the force at its disposal to slow down progress.
The Criminal Code outlawed same-sex relationships outside the privacy of the home, which made bathhouses frequent targets for raids by the force.
Each time a bathhouse was raided, the names and addresses of those arrested were published in newspapers.
Jobs were lost, marriages failed, and friendships collapsed.
And these raids weren’t just happening in Toronto.
In May 1976, raids of bathhouses were conducted in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa as part of a nationwide effort by police forces leading up to the Summer Olympics.
And that wouldn’t be the last time police used force to oppress the gay community.
In 1977, police raided the offices of the Body Politic to seize the subscription list of the magazine so they could target gay men.
That raid sparked protests around North America.
In San Francisco, gay activist Harvey Milk protested outside the Canadian consulate.
Yet raids continued.
On Oct. 22, 1977, Montreal police raided Trux Cruising Bar and arrested eight people with gross indecency, and another 145 people as “found-ins” in a common bawdy house.
This led to a protest by 1,000 people two days later.
There seemed to be no end to the raids, and things were about to get worse.
Aside from the near constant raids, Toronto did have problems.
Crime was high and residents complained about Yonge Street because they saw it as a destination for sex work strip clubs and adult stores.
Locals and tourists alike avoided the area, but others had no choice but to work there, and that came with an element of danger.
Emanuel Jacques was a 12-year-old boy who immigrated from the Azores with his parents years earlier.
To help provide for the family, he operated a shoe-shine stand on Yonge Street.
On July 28, 1977, he was lured to an apartment above a massage parlour with the promise of earning $35 to move photographic equipment.
What happened next was graphic and violent.
Once inside, Jaques was restrained and assaulted for 12 hours.
Then he was drowned in a kitchen sink.
Four men were arrested for the murder, three of whom worked as doormen at the massage parlour.
The murder of Jacques sparked outrage in Toronto and across Canada.
Several protests and marches were held demanding that Yonge Street be cleaned up.
Telegrams were sent to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau asking him to reinstate the death penalty for the four men.
In response, high-ranking police officer Peter Ackroyd was tasked by the city to crack down on what they felt were unsavoury businesses.
Chief among their targets were adult stores, strip clubs and gay bathhouses.
Even shoe-shine stand operators were told to pack up and leave.
There was also an economic reason for the crackdown.
Eaton Centre had just opened at 220 Yonge Street, and city officials worried that the area’s reputation would be bad for business.
Over the next few months, the police presence increased.
Raids became commonplace, and any gay man who went to a bathhouse was in danger of being arrested for gross indecency or “found-ins” in a common bawdy house.
In an episode of our sister podcast Global News What Happened To…?
Tom Hooper, a historian and Sessional Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University who spent years studying the bathhouse raids in the late 70s and early 80s told then Global News reporter, Erica Vella that twenty police officers raided the Barracks bathhouse and several dozen men were arrested on December 8th, 1978.
The Right to Privacy Committee became one of the city’s largest and most active advocacy groups during this time and would play a very important role in just a few years because unfortunately … this wouldn’t be the last raid …
Thankfully not everyone was in favour of the crackdowns.
When longtime Toronto David Crombie left municipal politics in 1978 for the House of Commons, it opened the mayor’s seat in the city.
Three aldermen, David Smith, Tony O’Donohue and John Sewell put their names forward.
While O’Donohue and Smith were well-known for their connections to developers and their right-leaning politics, Sewell was the opposite.
First elected to Toronto City Council in 1969, he was known as a community activist and labelled a radical by his opponents.
As a councillor he opposed the Spadina Expressway which became what Torontonians know as The Allen.
He also worked with residents of Trefann Court on the northside of Queen Street between Parliament Street and River Street to fight against developers who wanted to level the neighbourhood.
No one gave him much of a shot of winning the mayoral election.
But on Nov. 13, 1978, right-leaning and pro-business supporters couldn’t decide between O’Donohue and Smith and split the vote while everyone else voted for Sewell and was elected as mayor of Toronto with just 38 percent of the vote.
The media quickly labelled him Mayor Blue Jeans for his habit of wearing denim to city council meetings.
When he entered office, he criticized the Toronto Police and demanded they be more accountable to the public.
He was also a major supporter of LGBTQ rights.
Sewell condemned the raids on bathhouses in the press, as well as the attack on The Body Politic.
While the mayor was ahead of his time, Toronto overall was still conservative-leaning.
In the Nov. 10, 1980, election, Sewell lost the mayor’s seat to Art Eggleton.
Around this same time, Peter Ackroyd became the Chief of Police.
With Eggleton as mayor of Toronto, there was a rollback to the progress made by the LGBTQ community in the city.
And 66 days after the municipal election Operation Soap began.
On the night of Feb. 5, 1981, the four most popular bathhouses along Yonge Street — Club Baths, Romans II Health and Recreation Spa, Richmond Street Health Emporium and The Barracks were busy… the music was jumping as folks socialized.
Club Baths was the most popular as it was part of a chain of dozens of bathhouses in North America that had over 500,000 members across the continent.
Unbeknownst to the revelers inside, police officers gathered outside waiting.
Coordinating through radio, 150 police officers readied themselves for the signal to begin.
Inside the bathhouses, undercover officers wore red dots on their clothing to identify them.
One officer stated it was to quote:
“Know who are the straights.”
At 11 p.m., the doors to the bathhouses burst open as police swarmed.
Officers shouted, grabbed men and put them in handcuffs.
Each of those arrested were led outside into the cold Toronto night to waiting paddy wagons to be transported to jail.
Several men were lined up against a shower wall and an officer allegedly told them he wished the water pipes were hooked up to gas so he could kill them all.
[2] It was a clear reference to the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust.
Ron Rosenes told then Global News reporter, Erica Vella on an episode of the podcast What Happened To… that he grew up in Ottawa and in his 20s he moved to Toronto and often visited the bathhouses in the city.
On February 5th, 1981, Ron visited the Roman Baths with his cousin.
Ron said he was sitting alone when he heard unexpectedly loud noises.
Ron was one of 306 men who were arrested that night.
He was charged with “Found in a common bawdy house.”
Which means he was found in a place that was being used for the purpose of prostitution or other acts of indecency — the vagueness of the law allowed it to be applied to anything that offended current moral standards of decency when it came to sex. Tim McCaskell, a columnist for Body Politic at the time, raced to the scene when he heard about the raids.
He said of the police,
“They looked like a pride of lions that had just killed an antelope. They were standing around, very pleased with themselves, and didn’t pay any attention to the people outside because they already had their prey inside.”
That night, hundreds of men were arrested across Toronto.
Many were wearing only towels as police led them to jail.
At the time, it was the largest arrest in Toronto’s history and the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.
It was not exceeded until the mayhem of the Stanley Cup Playoff riots in Edmonton in 2006.
While there were claims by police that the arrests were over prostitution, not a single incident of sex work was ever uncovered.
Each man was forced to give their names, the names of their superiors at work and if the person was married, their wife’s name.
Police sometimes called workplaces as quote unquote “concerned citizens” to tell them about the sexual orientation of an employee.
Notices were later sent to the arrested men’s homes recommending they be tested for venereal disease.
This was another tactic to expose gay men to their family and friends.
So many complaints came into the Toronto Public Health Department because of this policy after Operation Soap that they removed it completely.
Each of the bathhouses were heavily damaged by police.
The Richmond suffered the most and never opened again.
Dennis Findlay is a community activist, and he told then Global News reporter Erica Vella on the What Happened To podcast that he recalled news of the raids spread quickly.
They were also furious that police were attempting to shame the Queer community.
Within hours, people mobilized, and a protest was organized.
Attorney General of Ontario Roy McMurtry became the focus of blame because he would have had to approve the raids for them to take place.
Several years later he stated that he expressed his concern to Chief Ackroyd and believed such raids risked the city devolving into a police state.
He said,
“The whole thing looked terrible. Without a doubt, that was one of my most frustrating experiences.”
Chief Aykroyd stated that he was enforcing criminal code violations, which was technically true. quote
“As chief, I have no other course of action but to go along with the direction of the Crown Attorney.”
Mayor Eggleton told the press he had no knowledge that the raids were going to take place.
To the people of Toronto, it didn’t matter who was to blame. They were angry and they were about to let everyone know it. [PAUSE]
Community organizer Dennis Findlay told Erica Vella he was on the frontlines handing out fliers informing people of the demonstration.
Dennis says that was a defining moment.
As they marched down Dundas Street, a group of counter-protestors yelled homophobic slurs and tried to block them.
When a human barricade of 200 officers blocked the protestors from the police station, they headed towards Queen’s Park.
Police arrested 11 people, a police car was damaged, and four smashed windows in a street car. The protest wasn’t just about the police raids on the bathhouses.
It was years of pent-up anger at having to hide from society.
Ken Popert, a writer with Body Politic, said,
“I know that something got into people, because it got into me. What got into me was my own anger over living in a society which finds my existence inconvenient. What got into me was my own anger over harassment on streets that are never safe for me.”
Others found different ways to express their anger.
Brent Hawkes, the senior pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, accepted the LGBTQ community and outraged by the raids, he began a hunger strike on Feb. 16.
Meanwhile, CHUM radio criticized the police for what they termed brutality, while a column in the Globe and Mail called the raids hypocritical and a danger to other communities in the city.
The Toronto Star, however, refused to condemn the raids or reverse its policy of printing the names of those arrested.
Meanwhile, the outrage continued…
On Feb. 20, 4,000 protesters marched from Queen’s Park to Toronto Police 52 Division once again leading to an angry confrontation with police.
Two weeks later, the protests continued with a Gay Freedom Rally on March 6.
Considered to be the first Pride event in Toronto’s history, speakers who attended and denounced the raids included Margaret Atwood and Member of Parliament Svend Robinson.
Eight years later, Robinson became the first openly gay Member of Parliament.
On March 12, Hawkes agreed to end his hunger strike after 25 days when Toronto City Council appointed a race relations advisor to investigate the raids.
The city appointed Daniel Hill, who was also tasked with looking at the larger issue of police relations with the LGBTQ community.
Hill declined the appointment.
Arnold Bruner took over and began his investigation on July 13.
Meanwhile, with 306 people charged in the bathhouse raids, the cases clogged up the courts at Old City Hall.
Community organizer told then Global News reporter Erica Vella on her podcast What Happened To… that the courts were displeased by the raids.
Findlay said lawyers and community organizers came up with an idea on how to defend those arrested.
Dennis said the Right to Privacy Committee worked to pack the courtroom with people who resembled the accused, so officers would have a harder time identifying the man facing charges.
It took four years for the cases to be heard, and Dennis told Erica Vella they were able to successfully defend about 87 per cent of those cases.
As for Pastor Hawkes, he wasn’t done with LGBTQ activism.
On Jan. 14, 2001, he officiated a wedding between two same-sex couples at his church. This led to a court challenge that made Ontario the first province, and only the third jurisdiction in the world, to legalize same-sex marriage.
The Toronto bath raids caused public outrage and thrusted gay rights into the spotlight, but they weren’t the only ones.
Across Canada police continued to target them.
On May 30, raids took place in Edmonton.
Two weeks later, Toronto police raided Back Door Gym and Sauna and International Steam Baths.
Those raids led to another 21 men being arrested.
Which led to more protests. On Sept. 24, Arnold Bruner’s report Out of the Closet: Study Relations Between Homosexual Community and Police.
This landmark report recognized the gay community as a legitimate community in the city.
It also called for a dialogue committee to be established between the gay community and Toronto police.
But what happened in the years to come?
Despite all the anger and protests, the raids did not stop.
Toronto police conducted raids in April 1983, February 1996 and September 2000. However, no matter how hard they tried LGBTQ rights progressed thanks to relentless work by the LGBTQ2S community.
And homophobia became less acceptable in Canada.
In Toronto, what had started with a protest over Operation Soap slowly evolved into one of the largest gay pride parades in the world.
Today, over 100,000 people take part in the parade and another one million are part of the Pride Week celebrations.
In 2005, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair became the first chief of police in Toronto’s history to march in the parade.
But, in June 2016, more than 35 years later, then-police chief Mark Saunders spoke to a packed house.
Historian and professor Tom Hooper told then Global News reporter Erica Vella for her podcast What Happened To that he was at Toronto Police Headquarters that day but left feeling disappointed.
You might remember that at the time there was also a debate over police involvement in Toronto Pride at the same time as Black Lives Matter was invited to not only join but lead the parade.
However, Justin Trudeau did march in that year’s pride parade and became the first sitting Prime Minister to do so.
In November 2017, less than a year later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued a formal apology to the LGBTQ-two-spirit community in the House of Commons.
Then, less than a year later officials introduced Bill C-75 to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice act as well as other acts.
The Bawdy House law was officially repealed, and in March of 2023 the former Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendocino… said those who were convicted could now apply to get their records expunged.
. As for Roy McMurtry, the attorney general many blamed for authorizing Operation Soap, he went on to have a part in helping the LGBTQ community.
The same year of Operation Soap, McMurtry played a critical role in brokering a deal that led to the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In the late-1990s and early-2000s, the Charter became an important tool in the fight for equality for the gay community.
And in 2003, when the Court of Appeal used the Charter to justify the right for same-sex couples to marry, the man who wrote that history changing decision was…
Roy McMurtry.
A special thanks goes to Erica Vella for her work on the Toronto Bathhouse Raids for the podcast Global News What Happened To…? A link to her full episode will be included in the show notes.
flagging that this is about operation soap and we are halfway through the episode before we tackle the topic in earnest will try and fill out details from the episode from What Happened To…?
Roslyn can we grab clips from What Happened To below?
