Skip to content
History–Tours
19815–6 February 1981 · Toronto, Ontario

Toronto bathhouse raids

The corner of Church and Wellesley streets, heart of Toronto's Gay Village
Photo: Rachel from Los Angeles, California, USA. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In 'Operation Soap', some 150 Toronto police raided four gay bathhouses in one night and arrested around 300 men, the largest mass arrest in Canada since the October Crisis. The next night thousands marched on a downtown police station and the Ontario legislature. Most charges collapsed, the protests grew into Toronto's Pride, and the city's police chief apologised in 2016.

Sites

  1. Site 1: Church and Wellesley VillageToronto's gay village, with Barbara Hall Park and the AIDS memorial.Map ↗
  2. Site 2: The ArQuives, Isabella StreetCanada's LGBTQ2+ archives, which runs walks through the Village.Map ↗
  3. Site 3: Queen's ParkOntario's legislature, where the protest march of 6 February ended.Map ↗

Guides who take you there

History-only · order never for sale
We haven't found an independent history guide for this yet. Guide here? Tell us about your tours.

Also in Toronto & Niagara

More from the Cold War

Read more: reference. Summary written by History-Tours.com.