Be Proud. And Get Loud

The subtitle of Parade, director Noam Gonick’s expansive documentary about the history of the queer liberation movement in Canada, lays it all out: Queer Acts of Love and Resistance.

It’s a one-two punch all the way through, starting with the stark realities of being gay in the 1950s and ‘60s — a time when public knowledge of your sexuality could get you fired from your job, evicted from your apartment and judged for the mere act of existing.

As writer and activist Tim McCaskell notes in the film, the first time he heard Petula Clark singing the 1964 pop hit “Downtown,” the idea that there might be a place where he could be free to simply be himself was enthralling.

Born and raised in the tiny town of Beaverton, Ont., McCaskell’s experiences as a young gay man in the 1960s echoed that of many growing up in rural Canada: stay hidden, stay silent, try to survive.

Things shifted in December 1967, when Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government ostensibly decriminalized homosexuality in Canada. The reality of Bill C-150 was somewhat less than sweeping.

Sexual intercourse between two people of the same sex was legal, as long as both parties were over the age of 21 and the activity took place in private. Even if the police couldn’t arrest you for gross indecency, it didn’t stop other forms of discrimination, McCaskell notes. It did, however, change the conversation. Suddenly gay rights were something everyone wanted to talk about.

Even as the love that dare not speaks its name was being openly discussed on CBC, other manifestations of queer culture were taking shape in downtown Toronto. Drag balls had long been places where gay men could express their sexuality a bit more openly.

People like Michelle Ross, a legendary Black performer who was active from the mid-1970s through the 2010s, paved the way for the drag queens who came afterwards.

But it wasn’t all sweetness and wigs: many drag events attracted a hostile, homophobic crowd whose members were often egged on by the police.

Other forms of repression were more intimate but infinitely more devastating, as Jeanine Maes discovered when she was institutionalized for being a lesbian in 1962.

Maes was committed to the Hospital Saint-Jean-de-Dieu in Montreal by her then-husband, who also sent Maes’ young daughter overseas to live with his mother. In an effort to get her daughter back, Maes consulted three different lawyers, who all dissuaded her from seeking custody, saying that it would cost a fortune and ultimately prove unsuccessful because her child was a girl.

Against this backdrop of oppression, where queerness was either treated as joke or a threat to the very stability of society, the gay liberation movement was picking up steam.

Bold steps forward, devastating steps back

The 1969 Stonewall riots were one of the first shots across the bow to the straight world in the U.S. In Canada, the first national protest march took place in Ottawa in August of 1971.

In support of the action, the organizers drew up a document that listed all the issues the gay community had with the Canadian government. We Demand, as it came to be known, was seen as a route to a more utopian and just society. In the pouring rain that disintegrated the protesters’ home-made cardboard signs almost instantly, activists made clear what they wanted. In archival footage and a present-day interview, Charlie Hill reads from a speech that marked a turning point in the gay liberation movement.

With the movement gaining ground, organizers decided that a media publication was necessary. The Body Politic, a monthly magazine that covered issues in the queer community, established Canada on the global stage. The only woman on staff at the paper was Chris Bearchell, a young lesbian activist affectionately described by her contemporaries as a “feisty little dyke” who made sure that feminism was on the agenda.

In Parade, filmmaker John Greyson remembers how The Body Politic ran the gamut from big-picture stuff to more personal experiences. But as artist Courtnay McFarlane explains, the fact that libraries across the country carried the magazine made a huge difference to young queer folks in small towns. They suddenly had access to community in a whole new fashion.

But for every step forward, an ensuing backlash came immediately on its heels.

The Body Politic’s decision to publish a series of articles about youth sexuality sparked a legal battle that embroiled the magazine in a longstanding controversy about censorship and press freedom. In the wake of the brutal murder of a 12-year-old shoeshine boy named Emanuel Jacques, the series could not have come at a worst moment.

The false idea that gay men were inherently predatory was the main argument of American anti-gay activist Anita Bryant. When Bryant showed up in Toronto with her “Save the Children” campaign, the stage was set for a confrontation with gay activists.

But it was the raid on the Montreal bar Truxx that truly galvanized the queer community.

Spearheaded by then-Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau in advance of the 1976 Olympics, armed police raided the bar, arresting more than a hundred people. The community organized swiftly, with thousands of queer people crowding into the streets of downtown Montreal to demand action. The protest led to groundbreaking legislation (Bill 88) that made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal.

Another critical event that challenged the status quo was the infamous “Operation Soap,” a police raid of Toronto bathhouses in February 1981. Although sex in private was legal, the ostensibly public bathhouses offered an avenue for police to target the gay community; many members were not publicly out and they sought safety and romantic connections in the bathhouses. Hundreds of men were humiliated, arrested and thrown in the back of paddy wagons, marking the largest mass arrest in Canadian history since the October Crisis of 1970.

As one person notes in the film, the anguish following the arrests was off the charts. Some of those charged were still closeted and/or married. A number of suicides took place after the arrests.

The intent of the Toronto bathhouse raids was ostensibly to clean up the city, but they also intended to push gay people back into the closet. The following night, more than 3,000 people poured into the streets, chanting “No more shit!” and “Fuck You, 52,” referring to the police district where most of the men had been processed.

A series of ongoing protests unfolded in the months that followed, ending with an 80-per-cent acquittal rate of the men who had been charged. As one interviewee states: “This was our Stonewall.”

Brave leaders lit the way

The film takes pains to note that the realities and challenges facing gay men, lesbian women and trans people were often quite different.

Lesbian women, including comedian Robin Tyler, filmmaker Lynne Fernie, musician Lorraine Segato as well as Amy Gottlieb, founder of the Lesbian Organization of Toronto, or L.O.O.T., share their stories with comedy and warmth.

In interviews that move between laughter and tears, they recall how their sense of identity and solidarity took shape in L.O.O.T.’s downtown Toronto headquarters, a ramshackle old house that offered a haven for them.

Other groups, including the Black community, the East Asian and South Asian communities, Two-Spirit Indigenous people and the Latinx community were also coming together to create their own organizations that reflected the needs and wants of each group.

Of all the many narrative arcs in the film, the most impactful is the HIV/AIDS crisis. The parallels of the political and the personal running concurrently throughout the film find their apotheosis in this seismic period.

In 1989, the 5th International AIDS Conference was held in Montreal. Activists seized the stage, bringing the eyes of the world to the growing death toll and the need for additional research and access to medication.

The film captures well the intergenerational nature of loss that HIV/AIDS enacted on the queer community. It decimated queer culture, killing many leaders, organizers and catalytic personalities. And it changed lives in more intimate ways: friends, lovers and family members died too.

In the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis in 1986, Svend Robinson, the first openly gay member of Parliament in Canada, led the charge to include sexual orientation in the Human Rights Code. Canada was the only country in the world to do this at the time, he explains in the film.

As Parade makes explicitly clear, the battle continues, with some of the same arguments and actions made against the queer community in the 1960s and ‘70s being repurposed and repackaged today.

As many of the interviewees notes in the film, it is important to remember and honour the trailblazers who took the brunt of changing the culture towards one that was more inclusive and affirming of queer identity.

Parade is a celebration of the deep social change that foundationally changed the country thanks to the courage and hard work of the community leaders and activists who bared it all to build a better world.

This is not only hopeful; it is a cause for celebration. A more fitting tribute to celebrate Pride month is hard to imagine.

‘Parade’ opened the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto this spring and will be available to screen across Canada on June 22.