Stories

Content Warning: Some depictions of violence in this story may be disturbing to readers.

"In the pre-gay-bar years when downtown was full of discrete places for LGBTQ people to meet, one of the locations where gay men could find each other was in the flickering half-light of second-run movies that showed at The Strand."

John Kerr was the manager of the Pisces Health Spa when Edmonton Police Service raided it on May 30, 1981. The events of that night changed John’s life irrevocably, even though he was not present in the bathhouse at the time.

"I first met Michael Phair in the summer of 1981, a few short weeks after the Pisces Health Spa raid and probably in the midst of the Pisces trials as they made their way through the courts. Even so, he never gave me even a hint of what he was going through, perhaps to protect a young gay man from a small town from learning about the way Edmonton — my soon-to-be-home — was treating its gay citizens."

A decision to become a silent investor in a gay bathhouse altered a doctor’s life and career in ways he never could have predicted.

The impact of the first Empress of Edmonton didn’t end when the crown was relinquished. Millie was at Pisces the night of the raid, and she made sure the police knew how she felt about this invasion of her realm.

"... the raid was part of a series of raids across Canada that year, coupled with the history of regular bathhouse raids nationally since the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969, suggests that this pattern of police harassment was already a tried and tested form of intrusion."

The Dapple Gray Cafe played a brief but vibrant role in the late night gay scene, due in part to its location next door to the Marvel Beauty Academy where, by day, many a hairdresser and beautician learned their trade. It also had a convenient proximity to the then-notorious gay cruising strip along MacDonald Road, high atop McDougall Hill.