When police stormed four gay bathhouses in Toronto on Feb. 5, 1981, patrons were mocked, humiliated — and arrested by the hundreds.

The raids outed men who considered the private clubs a sanctuary, free from the hostility of a populace who disapproved of, or didn’t understand, intimacy between men.

On Wednesday, Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders will make a historic apology for the raids at his annual Pride reception at police headquarters, the Star has learned. He will also apologize for a 2000 raid by six male officers on Club Toronto during a women’s bathhouse event known as the “Pussy Palace.” Police claimed to be searching for liquor violations. Many of the women were nude and felt violated, according to a story in the Star. Police settled a civil suit in 2005.

The Toronto Police Service worked with prominent gay activist Rev. Brent Hawkes to craft the apology, a source said. The chief’s event will be an acknowledgment of the past and a commitment to efforts going forward, with new initiatives that speak directly to the LGBTQ community, the source said.

Saunders plans to march in the Pride Parade on July 3, following in the footsteps of Bill Blair who became the first Toronto police chief to do so in 2005.

Dennis Findlay, who was part of a legal defence committee formed after the 1981 raids, said the apology is a long-time coming.

“They did wrong,” said Findlay, president of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. “This was their attempt to slap us into the closet, big time . . . but it didn’t work.”

Ninety per cent of the charges were dismissed by judges.

Critics said the raids criminalized men for being gay and persecuted a group with no human rights protections, who could be fired from their jobs and shunned by their families.

No public figure — police officer or politician — has ever accepted responsibility.

“It would be interesting to know who did give the order,” said Tim McCaskell, who covered the raids for the Body Politic, a gay newspaper, and later joined the Right To Privacy Committee and organized demonstrations. “Let’s have some real truth here.”

Anger over the raids spread quickly and politicized gays and lesbians alike, who had previously clashed in debates over sexism and feminism. The cohesion gave rise to the gay rights movement in Toronto.

The night after the raids, 3,000 demonstrators, mostly gay men who typically feared visibility, marched down Yonge St. and confronted police, yelling “resign, resign, resign.”

The raids were “probably the best thing that happened to our community ever,” said Findlay, adding they also brought together the public at large. “Even if you were not supportive of the gay community, you realized that this was an attack on civil liberties.”

The Feb. 5 raids took place after a six-month investigation by the Metro force, whose officers infiltrated the clubs. At 11 p.m., more than 100 police armed with crowbars and sledgehammers broke down bathhouse doors, dragging men, draped only in towels, into lobbies and charged them. About 300 people were arrested with being owners or “found-ins” of a common bawdy house — a house of prostitution — and given a public court date to face charges.

Many of the men considered themselves patrons of private clubs where rooms could be rented for anonymous sex, one of the few safe spaces for gay men at the time. Homosexuality had only been decriminalized in 1969 and “the vast majority of gay men were deep, deep, deep in the closet,” McCaskell said.

The typical Toronto resident wouldn’t have known what a bathhouse was, said Sen. Art Eggleton, who was then mayor of Toronto but said he had no foreknowledge of the raids.

McCaskell said he was numb as he watched men, many of them frightened, being dragged out of the Mutual St. bathhouse. “But I started getting furious as well because, really, these places had been open as long as anybody could remember.”

The demonstration the next night came together within 12 hours — an astonishing feat, said McCaskell, in the days before email, when handing out flyers in the straight-owned gay bars on Yonge St. was discouraged.

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As the anger boiled over, many gay activists stepped up and began working tirelessly for their rights. A legal defence committee was formed and raised more than $200,000 to pay for lawyers to represent the accused, although more than 30 stepped up to do the work pro bono. Findlay represented 12 men himself and got the charges dropped, either because officers weren’t able to identify the accused or because the defendant had a reason for using the bathhouse’s gym or pool.

McCaskell said theories persist about who orchestrated the raids. Some thought it was the responsibility of mid-level sergeants who wanted to humiliate George Hislop, who had been the first openly gay man to run for city council. (Hislop lost.) The businessman owned a stake in the Barracks — also raided that night.

Others thought it was a provincial directive under a law-and-order campaign orchestrated in the run-up to the provincial election that March. Roy McMurtry, who was both attorney general and solicitor general at the time, was blamed, but he has denied involvement.

“Cleaning up the queers played to a conservative base,” McCaskell said. “But nobody was ever able to find the smoking gun.”

Where the raids took place

The Romans II Health and Recreation Spa, 742 Bay St.

The club was one of four raided simultaneously at 11 p.m. Feb. 5, 1981, by police as part of what they called Operation Soap. One patron describes it as mostly featuring consensual sex between men over the age of 21 in a private room, with no money changing hands.

Club Toronto, 231 Mutual St.

Reporters at the time said police damaged 20 of 57 doors leading to rented rooms. Douglas Chambers, a U of T English professor, was outside warning other men not to go in. “The police are ruining people’s lives,” he said at the time. The address is now home to the Oasis Aqualounge sex club.

The Richmond Street Health Emporium, 260 Richmond St. E.

Men, some in towels and others naked, were rounded up and left in a locker room while police went through the club. The damage was so extensive that the late owner, Peter Bochove, never reopened.

The Barracks, 56 Widmer St.

The Barracks was once a Finnish steam bath. George Hislop was one of several owners who bought the building and reopened it in the mid-’70s as a gay bathhouse, according to queerstory.ca. Hislop would become an influential activist and win survivor benefits for same-sex partners.

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