culture
How One Young Gay Activist Fought Against Police Homophobia in Toronto
In this book excerpt, a look back at the early life of gay activist Tim McCaskell.
“Downtown” by Kaeleen Pendleton-Jiménez is excerpted from Queers Were Here: Heroes and Icons of Queer Canada, edited by Robin Ganev and R.J. Gilmour © 2016. Published by Biblioasis. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.
1974
He sits in the middle of the running track at Riverdale Park, reading a small magazine. He is 23 years old. If anyone comes toward him, he will be able to see the person a quarter mile away. That will be enough time to jump up, stuff the magazine into his bag, and head off. He looks at the pages, but maintains his peripheral vision. The breeze blows on the cool, spring afternoon, the grass slightly damp underneath his jeans. He can’t be seen with this magazine.
It is a magazine about gay liberation. About homosexuals. Nobody has spoken to him about homosexuals. Not his mother or father. Not his church. Not his school. Only briefly and vaguely did it arise on his wanderings across Europe and Asia, in a glance from another man at the hostel; he looked away. There was also the invitation to join another man’s shower, and that could really only mean one thing, but he wasn’t ready. He was desperate to touch another man, but that doesn’t mean he could do it. The only homosexuals he’d known for sure were the ones from TV. During his last year of high school, backlit shadowy figures appeared on screen when [former prime minister Pierre Elliott] Trudeau decriminalized homosexuality. It wasn’t a crime anymore, but that doesn’t mean it could be fully seen, fully visible to upstanding members of the community. It doesn’t mean he could be seen with this magazine. He looks up again but nobody is coming.
It wasn’t so easy to get his hands on the magazine. He had to find a store that carried it. He had to find a way to buy it without drawing too much attention. Just because you have the money to pay for it, and just because they’re selling it, doesn’t mean you’re not still doing something wrong. Something illicit. But one can be clever about such transactions. There are Popular Mechanics and Maclean’s to shield his small gay magazine. The magazine itself can hide for almost the whole time. It emerges just for a moment, for a glimpse at the price by the cashier before it is deposited into a bag. And if he waits until there are no other customers nearby, then only the cashier would know. And the cashier might not know for sure that The Body Politic is a gay magazine, or if he does, he might forget it, or feel confused by the Popular Mechanics. Homosexuals wouldn’t buy Popular Mechanics.
He flips through his magazine. There is an ad for a march. A Gay Pride March. He could do a march. He couldn’t do a bar or a bathhouse. He grew up in a dry town, without bars of any kind, and he’s not sure what a bathhouse is. He couldn’t be that kind of gay man. Those places are too terrifying. But he could be a gay man in a protest. He knew how to pick up a sign, yell slogans, and march with a group of people down the street. He had been a part of many marches and protests. He is an activist. He is a Marxist. Marching is possible.
It would be visible though. There could be cameras. He could stand on the sidewalk and watch. It could just be coincidence that he is there at that moment, while the march is going by. There must be others, shoppers, people out for lunch. He could just be one of them. They are public sidewalks, nothing specifically incriminating, nothing that could tie him directly to the march of gay liberators. Or would people guess, anyway, or would he be caught at the edge of a photo in the papers? Just in case, he should have a plan. What could he do if he saw journalists? He could hold his breath. If he held his breath long enough, he would die. Without oxygen, a person would have a heart attack, and just die, wouldn’t they?
He might as well just die, jump off a bridge or something, if he doesn’t go to the march. The longing for a man’s body has become too unbearable. First it was just one man, just one specific man he followed for four years. He loved him, only him. Just needed to be close to that one body. But that never happened, and it not happening did not seem to stop the wanting of that man, or of other men.
1964
Petula kept repeating “downtown, downtown.” As a call, “downtown, downtown,” pulling at his young teenage body, downtown. But downtown is a dangerous place. He is a Beaverton boy, a good boy, good grades, no trouble in the community, the son of the man who opened the new and prosperous lumber store. The two annual treks to Toronto for the Eatons display and the Exhibition are exhilarating, but never enough, never enough time. He lags behind his parents and they have to call out to keep him moving.
His father came from “country folk,” from farmers, not business owners. His father had been a worker, a repairman at a bicycle store who managed to get a job at a lumber store and then save the money to open his own. But he didn’t forget where he came from, and he paid a decent salary to workers, with health benefits, and Christmas dinners with the family. His mom broke her own boundaries, a woman going to school to be a dental nurse. The boy is not aware of the nuances of his family’s social climb, but he does know that he is treated well.
If a new kid came to town, he knows to ask two questions: what’s your name and what church do you go to? His family are the descendants of Irish and Scottish immigrants, but always Orange. His family is Presbyterian. They are not as affluent as the Anglicans, not as progressive as the United Church, but good, solid Protestants nonetheless. His mother teaches him from the bible how Martin Luther King from the television will free the “slaves” just as Moses had. There are also Catholics in their town of a thousand, but he doesn’t know them. They don’t go to his school anymore. They are kept somewhere else.
He is fascinated by somewhere else. His father comes home from a lumberman’s convention with a handful of foreign money. Different smells, different images, different languages. He likes holding the colourful paper in his hands, pieces of the world. It means those places are real. It means people live there and use the different money and he would like to meet them. He hunts through the encyclopedia, matching the curves of letters, the structures of symbols, to their national origins.
Beaverton is built upon the mouth of Lake Simcoe, the force of the Beaver River powering a mill and attracting a community. From this vantage point, the waterways lead up and around the towns and farmlands of Ontario, and across two great lakes. The sky reflects on the water and opens a vast, blue-grey space. A distance farther than he can see.
At 18, he will flee his tiny village and be the first one in his family to go to university, but that won’t hold him. It won’t be far enough away. He is a young white man, after all, and his school books told the history of white men exploring the world, so why shouldn’t he? The cold war has frozen the battles, and he is free to wander. He will drop out of school and escape, travelling across North Africa, Yugoslavia, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal. Each land, each people, washing over him. Each religion, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims shedding the hell and brimstone pounded into a childhood by a minister all dressed in black, screaming at him, and his family and community, “If you don’t believe…You’re going to burn and your skin will come off!” But, if each place has its own distinct deities, its own fears, its own preachers of right and wrong, if all of these different people feel just as strongly as they had back home, then none of these beliefs are the truth. The solid material truth. The lord’s creation, the wide vibrant world, undoes him, releases him from sin.
1981
It’s after midnight. There is pounding on his bedroom door. His body is weak from a flu, and exhausted from studying economics schema that mean nothing to him. There are graphs of the price of potatoes dancing through his dreams. The exam is in the morning. Economics 101, one of the big early year courses at the University of Toronto where they like to fail half the students. He doesn’t want to fail.
The pounding resumes. “Gerald Hannon’s on the phone,” one of his housemates yells, “He says it’s urgent.” Gerald Hannon was another member of The Body Politic. It’s the same magazine that delivered him to his first Pride March, to his first male lover, to his first books about gay liberation. It wasn’t long before he joined the magazine himself, taking on the international news. He has been their “bonafide politico,” a man who travels across the world, who studies Marxism and racism, who advocates for workers’ rights.
Gerald’s instructions were clear and direct. “They’re raiding all the baths. You’re closest to the Club. Get over there right away.”
He doesn’t even go to the baths. It isn’t his scene. He’s cursing the full 10-minute walk over to the club in the frozen February night with his housemate. He wishes Richard was here and not away. His lover now of six years. His companion on adventures. Richard is a fellow Marxist, and a filmmaker. He is Chinese from Trinidad. They have found family in one another, and filled their communal home with friends from all over the world. They have travelled the globe together, and he wishes Richard was here beside him as he walks into this unknown.
The police are everywhere on the street. They are lions smugly devouring their prey. They prey on men. Confused, scared, and defiant men. Nearly 300 men of every ethnicity, race, class. Men whose jobs and marriages might be over now with their newly acquired criminal charges of being found in a common bawdy house. The men are in the open on the dark night. The bathhouse has spilled onto the street for everyone to see. That’s not the way it’s supposed to happen. The bathhouses have been there for decades. They are an open secret. The gays can do what they want if they are discreet, contained, hidden encounters late into the night. The police have broken the rules, and brought their bodies out for all the public to see.
He sees them. He sees their bodies, their baffled faces, regular men interrupted in an everyday activity. They are not scandalous, not scary. They are men he might know, or want to know. He approaches the men who go to bathhouses, and asks what happened. He transforms into a gay journalist and activist, documenting their stories. They have their own questions. There is a Portuguese man, a construction worker. “They arrested me. They say I have to go to court.” They asked for employers’ names. They asked for their wives’ names. Will their names be published in the paper? Will everyone know? He doesn’t know the answer.
He doesn’t do very well on his test in the morning. He shakes it off and races on his bicycle over to the office of The Body Politic. It is the biggest gay organization in town, the one with an office, a concrete piece of the city that belongs to gays. And it is bustling with activists planning a protest. When, he wonders? Tonight. Tonight they will have a protest. They will protest along Yonge Street. But that’s not possible. It’s not safe to protest at night, and certainly not on Yonge Street. Yonge Street is Toronto’s artery. It’s sacred, the one uninterrupted path designed by city founders as an escape from American invaders. It’s filled with heterosexual bars, drunk men who could spill out and beat them. Nobody blocks Yonge Street. It’s too soon besides. Protests involve planning. There are marshals to be assigned, maps to be printed, permits to be obtained, do we even have a phone tree?
“We don’t need a fuckin’ permit,” a tough looking dyke cuts him off. She gathers up the flyers and heads out. He shakes his head. He is afraid. He has organized revolutionaries and it’s hard to get people out on the street.
He will go and support gay liberation and hope they are not beaten.
When he arrives around 9, there are already 40 to 50 people on the street. All right, that’s a positive sign; it’s not so easy for police or drunks to beat up 40 to 50 people marching together. We might be okay. The crowd keeps growing. Where are they coming from? There are runners out at every gay bar, every bath, spreading the word. The people fill across the width of Yonge Street and down. Who are they? Three hundred and nine men were arrested last night. Are they here? If it’s not them, it’s their friends. Three hundred and nine people and their friends and gay liberationists are a lot of people. By midnight there are 2,000. They have shut down Yonge Street. They are no longer willing to tolerate the whims of the police.
The police are furious. The police are surprised. Why are these homosexuals so upset? Who knew they had so many friends? They are only doing their job. They are only maintaining the morality of their beloved city.
He already knows about police harassment. They raided The Body Politic office four years ago. They scared them, shuffling off with their boxes, supplies, mailing lists, all of the addresses of all of their subscribers. Still not returned. It had been terrifying, all those vulnerable names in the hands of the police. And yet, nothing has really happened. The police scared them, but The Body Politic won in court. Therefore police raids and charges might not mean so much. The uniforms and official business and stomping around was a big display. A threatening performance. He had been sitting in the office working when they came. He had survived. The Body Politic had survived. There had been court costs, time, aggravation, publicity. They were activists trying to promote gay liberation, trying to be noticed, and the court and trial in part offered a forum.
When they ask him to speak, he is an activist, and he is not afraid. He can see the situation with clarity. The outcome is logical. Past raids have yielded no convictions. The police, therefore, have no reason to attack, other than to invoke fear. He can explain the operation and function of the raids. He becomes a spokesperson for the newly formed The Right to Privacy Committee, and simply explains to the papers how the raids are “so ridiculous. I think the public is going to recognize that what we’re facing isn’t simply criminal charges, but in fact a vendetta” (“Police mounting vendetta, homosexual spokesmen say”).
It could be a vendetta against The Body Politic for successfully beating the police in court, or politicians publicly supporting gay people. It could be a vendetta against gays shamelessly coming out of the closet, declaring their rights en masse. Somebody needs to put them back in their place.
But a vendetta is so dramatic. So irrational. Police are supposed to be reasoned protectors of the public, not driven by vendettas to stomp around the community. He is supposed to be the homosexual, the freak. He is not a freak. He is the clear-headed one in the newspaper, and the police are the ridiculous ones. He is the man appealing to the intelligence and good sense of the public to see this.
They see it. They see him. Everyone across the nation sees him. Beaverton sees him. His father sees him. It’s one thing to know your son is gay, and quite another for your entire town to know it as well.
There is screaming in Beaverton in their big rambling house. The son and father fight it out. The mother cries. The Presbyterian silence is shattered. He is ready for this. He has seven years of gay activism under his belt. He has become strong.