The St Charles Tavern was the gay hotspot during the 1970s in Toronto. It was also the focus of innumerable homophobic attacks, especially during Halloween, when the tavern held an annual drag contest. These events usually began with an outdoor promenade until attacks by homophobes hurling eggs and rotten fruit made that impossible. Canada's 'Stonewall'? Perhaps.... Do you have a story to tell about the St. Charles? If so, let us know!
Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of information about when these two photos were taken or by whom. Can you help us figure out the details? Drop us a line. Send us a note. We would love to hear from you.
There was a period in the mid-90s when this space was a dance club called Club Time. They had a queer night I used to go to. It was great to hang out and imagine the ol' days and feel a solidarity to that time. So many queer spaces are reused, sold, repackaged, re-imagined, but the structure is still there - kind of a palimpsest vibe. It's cool - enriching - to know the queer history of the city and feel a nostalgia for a time you've only heard about second-hand and to appreciate the defiance, the struggles, that go into opening up queer spaces.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how simple it can be to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic, you made my day.
ReplyDeletest charles dance
Part 1/2
ReplyDeleteThe lower picture was taken looking north along Yonge
from the east side just above Carlton from about 1945 to 1949.
The style of the cars in the lot correspond to that period
and there would have been no new cars prior to 1945 due to wartime rationing
while construction of the subway would have torn up the street after 1949.
It was definitely Sunday in Toronto,
a city where police still ticketed children for playing in the street on Sundays.
You could actually get a criminal record at the tender age of 8
for skipping rope on the sidewalk on Sunday if you were a girl
and if you were a boy skipping rope in public
they would probably lock you up in “999” and throw the key away
although following a Salvation Army band was permitted!
The upper picture looks southwest
from the northeast corner of Alexander and Yonge
and was taken from about 1970 to 1980 judging by the style of the car
turning southbound left from Yonge onto Alexander.
The building marked “Radio Trade Supply” certainly brings back memories.
Today the ground floor of 490 Yonge St is Curry’s Art Store
and the upper floor is a hairstyling salon staffed by pretty gay guys
but back then things were very different.
In those days televisions and radios used “thermionic emission devices”,
aka “tubes”, which burned out after a few thousand hours
so distributors like RTS would distribute
the thousands of different kinds of electronic tubes
needed to keep electronic equipment working.
When I was 19 I applied for a job there one Monday morning in January
responding to an ad for a counter clerk in the Star.
I was a very soft-spoken and femme and pretty slinky twinky
who often got pegged as being a girl in boy’s clothing
and the word “ultra-gay” was barely enough to describe me.
The owner was a big beefy guy with a big barrel chest and big huge hairy arms
and a deep gravelly voice and a handlebar moustache.
He apparently also apparently intensely disliked pretty gay boys
and persistently refused to acknowledge my repeated requests
for an employment application form
and kept marching up and down behind the long counter
on the north side of the building to evade me
but I kept following him and politely persisted
until he finally reached under the counter for a form
and slammed it down on the counter in front of me with a great deal of disgust and marched off in a huff to sulk in a corner.
In a strange way I was not really afraid of him and I felt quite at home there
because he reminded me of my father
who tended to respond to me in much the same way.
I filled it in and then tried to give it to him but again he kept trying to evade me
until finally he snatched it out of my hand with a lot of hostility
and repressed anger and I said “Thank you” and quietly left the store.
On my way out I looked back
and saw him crumple it into a little ball with a lot of aggression
and then drop it into the “round file” (ie the waste basket)
so I gathered that I was no longer being seriously considered for the position!
He never spoke a word to me in the several minutes when I was in the store
(although he did answer the phone briefly while I was filling in the form)
but I was very relieved that at least he did not try to pick me up
and throw me back out through the window or the door.
In those days if you were visibly “gay” Toronto was not very kind to you
with even passing streetcar drivers making faces at you and giving you the finger
and you needed to be quite brave just to walk on the street in broad daylight
and always on the watch for thugs who wanted to beat you
and you certainly needed to be able to sprint and run very fast when necessary
and I was a real gazelle and very fleet of foot for this reason.
The good old days were not so good at all
and I definitely do not miss them my darlings!
Part 2/3
ReplyDeleteI can also very vividly remember Halloween night in October of 1978
in front of the St Charles Tavern
just a few months after the Emanuel Jacques murder.
Every year the local gay folks would promenade in all their finery
to the big Halloween ball at the St Charles on Halloween night
and the next day the Sun
(always such a good and kind friend of Toronto’s gay community!)
would show a picture of the “PERVS!” promenading on Yonge St
the night before.
I was still young and finally old enough to go into a bar
so that year I thought that I would go and check it out and then go into the bar
and perhaps engage with all the colorful gay folks therein
in what seemed to be a safe space.
When I got out of the College subway station
I walked north along the east side of Yonge
and I noticed a large crowd ahead of me between Alexander and Wood
opposite the St Charles Tavern.
I thought that they also had come to see the show
but when I got into the crowd opposite the tavern
I suddenly realized that this was actually a lynch mob
which badly wanted to grab somebody gay
and string them up from a lamppost
and they were definitely beyond simply throwing eggs and rotten fruit.
There were several big police horses marching up and down at curbside
in front of the mob to keep people from trying to run across the street
and cops were constantly walking through the crowd
encouraging people to move on.
The west side of Yonge was completely empty
but two very non-gay-looking “hosers”
(not-very-bright sightseers dressed like the McKenzie Brothers)
tried to venture north in front of the St Charles
and this provoked the mob into a frenzy of rage
and got the police very worried.
The cops quickly hustled them away and tried to pacify the crowd.
I still remember a Jamaican woman on my right about 30 years old
who suddenly boiled over and went into a real hate frenzy and rant
and the cops picked her up under her arms and hustled her away
before she triggered the mob into a full-scale riot.
I cannot overstate how intense the hate and anger was on that street that night.
I was someone who was very visibly gay-looking
and I quickly realized that it was not safe for me to be there
so I flipped the hood of my parka jacket over my head
and moved to the back of the sidewalk and very quickly walked north
and then west on Grosvenor to Bay St.
I really wanted to get away from there fast and I finally relaxed a bit at Bay.
I realized that there were no safe spaces for gay folks anywhere
and just went back home into my little closet.
Today you can cross Yonge St in a few seconds at Alexander
and you can visit drag shows on Church St with no fear
but on that night
the west side of Yonge seemed to be very, very far away
and there was no way to cross that narrow little street
to enter the St Charles Tavern
and engage with all the colorful gay folks within.
Grosvenor was full of paddy wagons, police motorcycles, horse trailers
and police cruisers
and there must have been about 100+ cops all around the St Charles Tavern
and they were all very nervous.
I still remember the motorcycle cops forming ranks with their clubs on Grosvenor
and I thought they were getting ready to read the Riot Act
and forcibly disperse the mob on Yonge St
so I was very glad to get out of there quickly.
(In those days there were no riot police
and motorcycle cops would double as riot police.)
Apparently the police were actually protecting the gay folks in the tavern
which I found surreal
because Toronto police did plenty of gay-bashing of their own
and even drag-queens would be regularly hauled off stage to Cherry Beach
to be worked over
although ordinary visibly gay people usually just got beat up in a back alley.
Part 3/3
ReplyDeleteIn those days there was a common popular belief
that all gay guys were also always pedophiles
and were also deranged perverts in general
and the fact that Saul Betesh, who murdered Emanuel Jacques,
was both gay, and pedophilic,
and mentally very disordered and psychopathic from infancy
very strongly reinforced these public attitudes in Toronto.
These attitudes were so deeply entrenched
that many people also believed
that even lesbian women were insane out-of-control pedophiles
and the CBC actually showed a drama special on television back in about 1990
about a lesbian teacher
who sexually abused little aboriginal girls in a residential school in Saskatchewan
in the early 20th century
even though lesbian pedophilia is exceedingly rare.
It took many, many years with considerable research to finally prove
that there was no causal link between gayness and pedophilia and insanity.
I cannot stress how impossibly ugly and unpleasant life for GLB people
could be in those days
and how many GLB people committed suicide when they were outed
or just because they simply could not deal with the chronic depression
of being intensely closeted to shield themselves
from very intensive public prejudice against homosexuality and bisexuality
and transsexuality.
Toronto’s gay community is still very wary about revisiting these events
but it is time to go back there and remember that innocent little child
and also how we were all caught in a vortex of ugliness
and institutionalized homophobic violence.
Thanks everyone for your comments and contribution to the CGLA blog! We really appreciate the participation of our community members to help us keep these memories alive, even if the memories are not always rosie. I will be posting more photos from the CLGA's collection as time goes by. Thanks again!
ReplyDeleteRebecka
on behalf of the
Community Engagement Committee