Toronto’s police chief is set to make a historic apology on Wednesday for a string of raids on gay bathhouses in 1981 – a watershed for gay rights in Canada and the catalyst for Toronto’s annual pride parade which is now one of the biggest celebrations of its kind in the world.

On 5 February 1981, 286 men were arrested on charges of prostitution and indecency when uniformed and plainclothes police officers stormed four of the largest gay bathhouses in the city.

It remains one of the largest mass arrests in Canadian history, but the raids are now better remembered as the country’s equivalent to the Stonewall riots.

“Gay people realized that they had to band together, they had to get political, and they had to stand up for their rights,” said Ron Rosenes, who was 33 when he was arrested at the Romans II bathhouse that night.

“I was alone in my room when all of a sudden all hell broke loose,” he told the Guardian. “I heard the police knocking on doors and they came to my door and basically bashed it in. And I was brusquely and roughly escorted to the front of the building.”

He was handed a summons to appear in court, and allowed to dress and go home, but still remembers it as a traumatic experience.

Most charges under the country’s “bawdy house” laws were later either dropped or dismissed, but many of the men outed by the police that night had their lives ruined, Rosenes said.

“I had it easier than a lot of the men who weren’t out of the closet, weren’t supported by friends and family like me, and who were at other bathhouses where there was a lot more violence,” he said.

Widely perceived as a deliberate attempt by police to silence gay activism in Toronto, the raids instead galvanized the gay community and its allies.

Around 3,000 protesters took to the streets the next night in a hastily organized protest against the arrests and police harassment.



Ken Popert, who at the time worked for the now defunct gay newspaper the Body Politic, said the raids marked a turning point for what had previously been a fractured community.



“I was actually dreading going to the demonstration that night because I was expecting the usual bedraggled 150 familiar faces,” he said. “But when I arrived there were already a thousand people there – the sidewalks were overflowing.”

Toronto’s police chief, Mark Saunders, is expected to apologize to the city’s LGBT community in a speech on Wednesday afternoon.

Dennis Findlay, president of the Gay and Lesbian Archives, was among a group of activists who approached Saunders a few months ago suggesting the police apologize.



“It’s long overdue but it is most appropriate,” he said.



But Findlay said Wednesday’s apology is just a first step in improving the force’s relationship with marginalized communities throughout Canada’s largest city.



“How do they deal with the trans community? How do they deal with the black community? How do they deal with the aboriginal community? That’s the shortlist,” he said.



“They have to start working with the communities who are minorities within our society, work with them on how to move forward so they don’t continue to make these stupid mistakes.”



Saunders is also expected to apologize for a raid in 2000 by several police officers on an all-female bathhouse event, which led to an Ontario Human Rights Commission settlement in 2005 that included sensitivity training for all Toronto police officers on gay and lesbian issues.



Canada decriminalized homosexuality in 1969, but it was only in 1996 the country’s LGBT community gained federal protection against discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. Ontario added sexual orientation to its human rights code in 1986.

