Gay Liberation Under Way: the 1970s
The "We Demand" march was not seen as a particularly significant or monumental event to those who attended. There was a torrential downpour, signs got wet and ruined, and about 100 people attended.[1]
However, this marks the first of many gay liberation protests on Parliament in Canadian history. This demonstration was to assert demands of the government, one of which included the demand that homosexuality be added to the Canadian Human Rights Act.[2] Another demand, as written in the Ottawa Citizen article sought to "compel the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to say whether it is their policy to investigate government employees to determine if they are homosexual."
The police raids on the Club Baths sauna club in May 1776 resulted in a police seizure of more than 3000 names of club members. This was a high cause for concern as it meant that the RCMP likely now had access to more names of queer public servants.[3] It was also the first baths raid in Ottawa, following several raids conducted in Montreal as a part of the 1975-1976 Olympic Clean-Up campaign.[4] This demonstrated both a coordination between Montreal and Ottawa police for the purposes of queer persecution as well as an increase in morality policing that plagued the 1970s and 1980s queer scene.
The 1970s brought more publicity to the issue of security screening targeting queer people. An article published in the Globe and Mail in 1977 mentioned the RCMP's investigations into "character weaknesses" like homosexuality, which subsequently resulted in organizations like the National Gay Coalition responding and asking for transparency from the government. More LGBTQ+ rights organizations were established (i.e. National Gay Election Coalition, Canadian Gay and Lesbian Rights Coalition), some in direct response to this increased policing and surveillance.[5]
References
[1] Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2010, p. 259.
[2] Kinsman and Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers, p. 260.
[3] Kinsman and Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers, p. 310.
[4] Kinsman and Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers, p.314.
[5] Kinsman and Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers, p.p. 317-318.