The Toronto Bathhouse Raids of 1981
by David Bianco, author of Gay Essentials (Alyson
Publications), a collection of his history columns.
It wasn't the first anti-gay police action in Canada's history, but it was the biggest and most brutal. At 11 o'clock the evening of February 5, 1981,
150 plainclothes and uniformed police officers staged violent raids on four of Toronto's five gay bathhouses and arrested almost 300 men.
At one bathhouse, the Barracks, "a guy in plain clothes ... shoved me up against the wall," a patron reported. Besides bloodying the man's nose, the undercover cop repeatedly punched him in the lower back while taunting
him verbally, "You're disgusting, faggot." Severe physical and verbal abuse of patrons was reported at all four bathhouses.
In addition to roughing up the patrons, police used crowbars and hammers to smash through doors and walls, causing significant damage to the premises. Patrons could hear the police "moving around, kicking things, overturning things," one gay man recounted. "Somebody said, 'Too bad the showers
aren't hooked up to gas.'"
At two of the bathhouses, employees attested that police claimed to have search warrants but refused to present them. Many of the plainclothes policemen also never bothered to show their badges. Police at the Richmond Street Health Emporium allegedly answered the phone during the raid with
such quips as, "Michael's tied up right now."
In all, the raids lasted three hours, and damage to the bathhouses was estimated at $35,000. Canadian "bawdy house" laws permitted the arrest of bathhouse patrons on charges of prostitution or indecency, and a total of 266
men were taken into custody as "found-ins." Twenty employees were also arrested, as well as a medic from a clinic that gave free VD checks to bathhouse patrons.
Community response was fast and furious. At midnight on February 6, at a busy intersection in the heart of Toronto's gayest neighborhood, protesters began gathering. A few hundred led the way, blowing whistles and chanting
"Stop the cops!" Others soon arrived, and patrons of gay bars got off their barstools and joined the angry throng. Within half an hour, a crowd of about 1,500 surged toward the police station where the men arrested the night before
had been held.
As the crowd neared the station, protesters met with resistance from the police, who once again resorted to brutality. Several people were injured, one cop car was vandalized, and 11 demonstrators were arrested. "It was
our Stonewall," one participant later declared, though in fact, Canadian gays had been forging a liberation movement for 10 years.
Two weeks after the bathhouse raids, community anger had not died down. On February 20, the largest gay demonstration in Canadian history up to that point took place in Toronto's Queen's Park, with at least 2,000 in attendance. Many straight people joined the gay community in outrage
against the brutality of the police's actions.
In the months that followed, Toronto's existing gay organizations grew in size and strength, and new ones formed. Anti-violence street patrols were initiated. By the summer, the city had funded a report on how to improve
relations between gays and the police.
Perhaps even more importantly, though, gay activists began discussing and implementing ways to create alternatives to bars and bathhouses. "We finally may be getting something we've been saying we've had for the last 10 years," one activist noted: "a gay community."
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