Operation Soap was a raid by the Metropolitan Toronto Police against four gay bathhouses in Toronto , Ontario , Canada , which took place on February 5, Nearly three hundred men were arrested, the largest mass arrest in Canada since the October crisis , [ 1 ] before the record was broken during the Stanley Cup Playoffs in Edmonton , Alberta. Although many gay bathhouses had previously been raided in Canada and other smaller raids followed, [ 1 ] Operation Soap is considered a special turning point in the history of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in Canada ; the raids and their aftermath are today widely considered to be the Canadian equivalent of the Stonewall riots in New York City.
Canada's " bawdy-house " law, under which the charges in this raid were laid, remained in effect until it was repealed in , [ 5 ] but was only rarely applied against gay establishments after the trials connected to the raids ended. The murder of Emanuel Jaques , an immigrant shoeshine boy, led to large protests to "clean up" Yonge Street in The political momentum from the protests would lead to Toronto police raiding many adult stores, body-rub parlours, and shoeshine stands along Yonge Street.
Police would raid these establishments and make charges against business owners, effectively closing down many businesses even if many charges were eventually dropped. Mayor John Sewell strongly supported gay rights in his β term as mayor. He condemned police raids, including the controversial raid on the gay magazine The Body Politic , where Toronto Police confiscated the newspaper's subscription lists, advertisers lists, and other user information.
By April , 87 per cent of the "found-ins" charged in the Toronto and Montreal raids have been acquitted at trial; 36 individuals have been found guilty but received absolute or conditional discharges. The last remaining charge related to the raids was settled by plea bargain on February 7, At the time it was widely believed that the raids were approved by Attorney General of Ontario Roy McMurtry and the provincial government.
In a interview, however, McMurtry said that this was not the case: "The irony of the whole thing was that I had expressed my concern to the chief of police; that it really looked like we were dissolving into a police state. The whole thing looked terrible. Without a doubt, that was one of my most frustrating experiences. Journalist Matthew Hays has criticized the media's frequent labelling of the Toronto raids as being Canada's Stonewall; according to Hays, that distinction should be extended to the Mystique and Truxx bathhouse raids in Montreal , which led within just a few months to Quebec becoming the first government in Canada to pass a law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
