On the 40th anniversary of the raids, Xtra reflects on the lasting impact the protests had on the city’s LGBTQ2S+ community and police
Four decades ago, a cataclysmic shift took hold of Toronto’s splintered LGBTQ2S+ community. In a deliberate attempt to eradicate one of the city’s sole bastions of queerness, two hundred cops stormed several of the city’s gay bathhouses, bashing in walls and mass arresting the people inside. The raids were part of what police called Operation Soap.
Many of the police were in plain clothes, but the thundering of boots indicated to many unsuspecting men inside the bathhouses that something was awry. Some men clung to each other in fear as police hurled homophobic insults and violent threats their way. Many men were half-naked, barred by police from retrieving their clothes and forced to endure the cold February air before being thrown into the backs of police trucks. When the bathouses were raided, some men were having sex while others were simply resting. Police battered down doors and placed men in handcuffs indiscriminately, humiliating and degrading everyone in their wake—many of whom were still firmly in the closet and trying to survive in the oppressively homophobic social climate of 1981.
What followed was the emergence of the modern gay rights movement in Canada. Queer folks took to the streets in the days that followed the raids, overwhelming police and declaring with unrelenting force that enough was enough.
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Community members protest in the streets in 1981, after Toronto police raid several gay bathhouses. Credit: Courtesy Pink Triangle Press; Brian Wong/Xtra
I remember this and feeling so helpless, I was 26 at the time and a long term resident of Toronto who had just moved to Calgary. Please click on more to read the full article it really is amazing, sort of Canada’s Stonewall.
Link to the movie Track Two – Enough is Enough documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN4_8eurids