The Beginning: 1940s and 1950s
"The civil service was never the same again"[1]
In the 1940s, the Department of National Defense and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police began investigating the "moral weaknesses" and "character defects" of their members. At first, investigations focused on active service members.
In 1948, security screening became policy, which, according to author and historian John Sawatsky (Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service) "opened the door to just snooping and prying."[2]
The late 1940s had the RCMP conducting approximately 2000 security checks per month. By the mid-1950s, this number climbed to an astounding 5000, and the hunt had only just begun. The process remained quite secretive as the RCMP and DND purposefully kept processes ambiguous, all under the guise of national security.[3]
With the rise of McCarthyism in the United States, the Americans began their expulsion of queer employees, and Canadian intelligence officials saw fit to follow suit.[4] Canadian intelligence reports suggested that Canada's allies would not share sensitive information unless Canada had a security screening system in place.[5]
Additionally, by 1950, the American government had publically declared homosexuals as "unsuitable" for federal public service and were declared as physical threats to other employees' safety.[6]
In the 1950s, the federal government enacted official policies that expanded the practices of the RCMP and DND across all government departments. A prominent risk factor for national security was "defects of character," which, while it had a wide range of applications, primarily targeted LGBTQ+ public servants and military personnel.
Some ways that the RCMP used to "detect" queer individuals included "indicators" like if someone wore a pinky ring, drove a white convertible vehicle, chose to sit on the left or right, the way one held a cigarette, the way one carried their binder, or if a woman played sports.[7]
Another tactic the RCMP employed was to try and coerse "known homosexuals" into identifying other members of the LGBTQ+ community. Public servants would also sometimes be offered an ultimatum, they must willingly resign or be publicly outed.
The 1959 report on a case of Gross Indecency detailed the extreme measures that the RCMP and DND would employ to prove that an individual was gay. This case report states that the investigative team, requiring further evidence than the surveillance already gathered, used an investigative team member to seduce their suspect. The team member applied a "fluorescent detection compound" to his privates, and then seduced the suspect. The report details how the team apprehended their suspect and interrogated him, and after he denied being gay, they shone a blacklight on his hands, which glowed with the compound.
References
[1] Sarah Fodey, dir., The Fruit Machine, Toronto, ON: TVO, 2018, [03m03s]. https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/the-fruit-machine
[2] Fodey, [03m47s].
[3] Daniel J. Robinson and David Kimmel, "The Queer Career of Homosexual Security Vetting in Cold War Canada," The Canadian Historical Review 75, no. 3 (September, 1994), p. 323.
[4] Robinson and Kimmel, p. 325.
[5] Robinson and Kimmel, p. 326.
[6] Robinson and Kimmel, p.p. 326-327.
[7] Fodey, [06m40s].