Looking at Windsor, Ontario, today from Detroit, few would guess our neighbor was a city of rough edges in the mids, as World War ll was winding down. It was also a convenient stop-off where Detroiters crossed by bridge or tunnel for anonymous partying in after hours joints, where liquor flowed, loose women helped defense workers forget they had wives and kids at home.
Windsor cops usually looked the other way. Canadian gays scored the opposite. They came to Detroit by tunnel bus safer than personal car to visit downtown bars, where they might relax, let their Maple Leaf hair curlers down, away from censorious friends, busybody neighbors who knew beyond a doubt that queers were perverts. As late as the s, any bar-hopping lesbian who looked too butch ran the risk of being turned back at either the Windsor or Detroit tunnel borders.
Cruising was dangerous business. Get picked up twice in Ontario, even for consensual adult sex, and you could wind up behind bars for 20 years. Canadian dollar advantages โ no legalization of prostitution. In the s, what's now thriving Dieppe Park was called Government Park. It was filled with a number of eyesore makeshift shanties for hardworking factory workers involved in the war effort.
Government Park was also after-dark turf for pickups โ a risky and sordid endeavor for any gay man willing to chance possible arrest and public exposure. Police entrapment, though rare โ the homosexual world was a secret subculture โ did happen through anonymous calls, tip offs, or drunken, careless risk taking.
No one in Windsor really gave much thought to queers. Everyone was in a mood of celebration, of getting life back in order. But by July, things changed alarmingly for gay men. The Windsor Daily Star began to report in its back pages incidents of slasher crimes.
