By Matt Mills – On Feb 5, 1981, 30 years ago, more than 150 Toronto police descended on that city’s gay bathhouses, arresting more than 300 innocent men. It was part of a deliberate and organized campaign by government and police to push gay baths and bars out of business, to silence the gay press and to remove gay voices from public discourse.

Gay people were not new to discrimination in 1975 when Montreal police raided that city’s Sauna Aquarius. But that is really where the story of the 1981 bathhouse riots starts. For at least the next six years, police in various cities across the country steadily increased their harassment of the gay press and gay men in gay spaces.

Gay people had, of course, previously fought police harassment, but the events in Toronto in the first half of 1981 were watershed for the liberation movement in Canada. The activist chops refined then equipped gay people across the country to fight censorship, win partnership and employment rights, demand reasonable treatment from government, face HIV/AIDS, fight homophobic violence and win marriage rights.

If gay people had run for the shadows in 1981, if the found-ins had pleaded guilty, if those who marched on that first cold February night had simply stayed home, Canada would be a very different place for gay people today.

We’ve assembled below a series of pieces – videos, audio clips, photos and printed stories – looking back on the bathhouse raids and riots. Among them I’d like especially to draw your attention to the reborn film Track Two. Watch the whole thing below.



Watch shorter clips featuring Margaret Atwood, June Callwood, John Burt, Ken Popert, John Sewell, Gerald Hannon, Chris Bearchell and many more.

I hope you enjoy…

Check out a selection of images.