The City of Toronto commemorated the 45th anniversary of the Bathhouse Raids on Thursday — a dark day in the city’s history that led to outrage from citizens and forced a change from police and the courts.

The police raids on Feb. 5, 1981, part of ‘Operation Soap,’ targeted gay men at four bathhouses in the city with nearly 300 of them being arrested. Their names were released to the media, which led to many being publicly outed and losing jobs or housing. Witnesses reported police officers using crowbars and sledgehammers to destroy property and verbally abusing protestors with homophobic taunts.

The move sparked mass protests and rallies in the city the next day, denouncing the incident and the police.

“The bathhouse raids were a horrid mistake and a serious stain on Toronto’s reputation. A scar our community feels to this day, 45 years later,” said Mayor Olivia Chow at the commemoration event at The 519.

“It was wrong, it was shameful and we remember.”

Chow said what came after the raids “changed Toronto forever.” Community members were galvanized in solidarity, coming together to demand change.

Along with taking to the streets, 2SLGBTQ+ groups banded together and mounted court challenges. Most of the charges resulting from the raids were eventually dropped or resulted in acquittals.

In June 2016, then-Toronto police chief Mark Saunders officially apologized for the 1981 raids. 

In collaboration with Heritage Toronto, a plaque will be erected to commemorate the events from 45 years ago. The exact location of the plaque and what it will say still need to be worked out in consultation with the 2SLGBTQ+ community. The plan is to have it in place by the beginning of Pride Month this June. 

What has changed since the Bathhouse Raids?

The Bathhouse Raids in Toronto have been compared to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York — a seminal moment in the movement for 2SLGBTQ+ rights and equality in the city.

But a professor and historian at York University who wrote his PhD thesis on the raids said the Stonewall Riots in fact spurred a broader movement that encouraged the community to fight back against oppression and Torontonians “built on the legacy of the Stonewall Riots.”

Tom Hooper said what happened during the Stonewall Riots inspired the protests that came after the Bathhouse Raids and the legacy of the raids, and subsequent backlash is one of resistance and allyship.

“To resist that kind of massive oppression takes a lot of hard work by activists on the ground. It also takes friends standing in your corner with you — to be able to show up and have your back — and both of those things happened in 1981,” said Tom Hooper.

That activism, Hooper said, has led to tangible change.

“I try to focus on change and continuity. I look at all the changes our community has made over the last 45 years — the fact that I live in a much freer society, that I can be who I am comfortably down the street, that was because of these activists on the ground,” he said.

“Then I also think of the continuity — police boards that talk about accountability, of promises from politicians and ever-increasing police budgets — so some things change and other things stay the same.”

While there has been progress, trust between the police and the 2SLGBTQ+ community remains fragile even 45 years later.

“Trust isn’t automatic and it isn’t permanent. Trust has to be continually worked on and earned. I think that the presence of more women in police service has changed police service. The presence of more LGBT people in the police service has changed the police service. We need to continue to build on that,” said Rev. Brent Hawkes.

“We saw just a few years ago, a lot of that trust eroded and I particularly was challenged by realizing that most of the work that we had done over the years in improving the relationship with the police had been to the advantage of gay white males, and that we had left a lot of people behind in that process of trying to improve relations and a lot of things fell apart.

“We have to rebuild again, and maybe this time rebuild a little smarter to make sure that no one is left behind. And so I think there has been tremendous progress. I think a lot of work needs to be done, and the basis for trust is there, but it has to be earned every day.”