Global InformationOperation Soap information
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Operation Soap was a raid by the Metropolitan Toronto Police against four gay bathhouses in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which took place on February 5, 1981. Nearly three hundred men were arrested, the largest mass arrest in Canada since the 1970 October crisis,[1] before the record was broken during the 2006 Stanley Cup Playoffs in Edmonton, Alberta.[2]
Although many gay bathhouses had previously been raided in Canada and other smaller raids followed,[1] Operation Soap is considered a special turning point in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Canada; the raids and their aftermath are today widely considered to be the Canadian equivalent of the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.[3] Mass protests and rallies were held denouncing the incident.[4] These evolved into Toronto's current Pride Week, which is now one of the world's largest gay pride festivals and celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2015.
Most charges connected to the incident were eventually dropped or discharged, although some bathhouse owners were fined $40,000. Canada's "bawdy-house" law, under which the charges in this raid were laid, remained in effect until it was repealed in 2019,[5] but was only rarely applied against gay establishments after the trials connected to the 1981 raids ended.[1]
At the time it was widely believed that the raids were approved by Attorney General of Ontario Roy McMurtry and the provincial government. In a 2007 interview, however, McMurtry said that this was not the case: "The irony of the whole thing was that I had expressed my concern to the chief of police; that it really looked like we were dissolving into a police state. The whole thing looked terrible. Without a doubt, that was one of my most frustrating experiences."[6] McMurtry subsequently served as Chief Justice of Ontario and wrote the 2003 decision of Ontario's Court of Appeal in favour of same-sex marriage.
In 2016, the play RAID: Operation Soap, written by Raymond Helkio and starring performance artist Keith Cole and actor Johnny Salib premiered to a sold-out audience at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre in commemoration of 35 years since the raids.[7] The same year, Toronto Police chief Mark Saunders expressed regrets on behalf of the Toronto Police Service for the raids.[8]
Journalist Matthew Hays has criticized the media's frequent labelling of the Toronto raids as being Canada's Stonewall; according to Hays, that distinction should be extended to the 1977 Mystique and Truxx bathhouse raids in Montreal, which led within just a few months to Quebec becoming the first government in Canada to pass a law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.[9]
- ^ a b c McKenna, Terence (1981-02-15). "The Toronto bathhouse raids". CBC RADIO archives. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 2007-05-11.
- ^ "Hurricane season, June 2006; Massive arrests June 10 and 17 a sign of no-nonsense policing, rowdier behaviour". The Edmonton Journal. June 3, 2007.
- ^ "Pride history display flaunts the past" Archived 2010-11-01 at the Wayback Machine, Xtra!, June 23, 2005.
- ^ Gordon, Rebecca. "Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance." The Women's Review of Books 15.n6 (March 1998): 7(2).
- ^ Repealed: 2019, c. 25, s. 73 https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/astat/sc-2018-c-29/latest/sc-2018-c-29.html
- ^ Makin, Kirk (2007-04-04). "The regrets of a consensus-building chief justice: Retiring Roy McMurtry muses about bathhouse, baby death and abortion cases". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2007-04-04.[permanent dead link]
- ^ "Do young Grindr gays know Toronto LGBT history?". Daily Xtra, June 9, 2016.
- ^ "LGBT liaison officer calls Chief Mark Saunders' bathhouse raids apology a 'huge step'". CBC News, June 23, 2016.
- ^ "Raiding History: Why can't Canada's LGBTQ community tell its story correctly?". The Walrus, June 28, 2016.