Uncover - S15: "The Village 3" E5: Out With Them All

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Faced with a deadly disease, surrounded by death, AIDS activist Roger Leclerc resorts to controversial tactics to confront discrimination and violence against gays and lesbians. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/the-village-the-montreal-murders-transcripts-listen-1.6479960

Hey there, I'm Elamin Abdelmahmoud. I am the host of Commotion. You know when there's that thing that's like all over your social feeds, or maybe a new movie or a show on Netflix that everyone is talking about, or maybe your favorite artist just dropped a new song or new album. These are the moments when I love to gather the smartest, funniest people together. We get them in the group chat, and then we dig into the culture that is all around us. And Commotion does this every single day. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Anguignon Park, November 30th.

The body of a 51-year-old man is discovered, beaten to death. The park's known as a gay hangout. Six teenage skinheads are charged. When Yves Lalonde is found dead in late 1992, he becomes the 11th gay man murdered since the brutal killing of Joe Rose. Police say Yves Lalonde died at the hands of a skinhead gang that also liked to hunt down gay men.

These are just the latest in a string of attacks against gays or people suspected of being gay. The term is gay-bashing. And in the early 90s, it's everywhere. Within weeks, three more men are killed in the Montreal area. Daniel Lacombe, beaten to death at a roadside bathroom stop. Michael Haag, stabbed to death in his home. And Robert Pinchot, stabbed in his apartment. Police now say that six killings since 1991 may be linked.

And they're warning that a killer or killers is stalking gay men in the bars along this strip rosemary thompson cbc news montreal i talked to michael hendricks a lot like on every single story i would go to michael hendricks and of course the frustration level would go higher and higher and higher and higher because know, you go from one to 10 to 13. It's like, it's horrific, right? And so for the community and for Michael Hendricks, he was at his wit's end and he felt that nobody cared. They figured we would just disappear and get bored of this and go away. But Michael Hendricks wasn't going away.

Not until the murder stopped. Instead, he and fellow activist Roger Leclerc were about to escalate the fight. We will not accept no for an answer, and that we will do everything in our power to make sure that this commission and this inquiry goes forward. Today, Montreal's gay community said it's not going to take it anymore. It wants the Quebec Human Rights Commission to act and hold a public inquiry. At the end of that press conference, Roger Leclerc drops a bomb.

Leclerc drops a bomb. As the journalists were packing up, one of them turned to Leclerc and said, Mr. Leclerc, what are you going to do if the government refuses to have the hearings you want? Raji, always very Cartesian and smart, turned to him, looked at him seriously and said, in that case, we'll have to accept that there is no homophobia and there's no discrimination against homosexuals, lesbians and whatnot.

And we are wrong. And this is a terrible mistake. So if everything is fine like this, we have to tell to all the gays, and particularly these ones who are in the wardrobe. Wardrobe. As in wardrobe. As in those who were in the closet. That, well, come out. That's wonderful. We should celebrate. So we're going to rent the Olympic Stadium. We'll reserve the Stade de l'Épique. And then we'll invite all the homosexuals in Quebec to one big party that

it's over. We're going to put all the homosexual judges and all the homosexual members of the National Assembly. We will send them letters confirming that we invite them. we will say publicly that we wrote to these people. So we'll do coming out, outing. Outing. Publicly revealing that somebody is gay. The journalists laughed. They thought that was very funny. Nobody had their tape running.

No one taped it. No one taped it. No one filmed it. It was an insider joke between Roger and the team, the various journalist teams that he knew quite well. We talked about that. I say it as a joke at the press conference, but it was real.

I'm Francis Plourd, and this is The Village, The Montreal Murders. Well, I'll tell you this much. There are members of our community who are ready to take up arms. We don't wish that to happen, but there are people who are talking about it, for sure. When I started this investigation, I focused on police inaction around a series of gay murders. But I hadn't realized what an important role the AIDS epidemic played in fueling activism against that violence. Because the discrimination gay people faced was not just from police. It also played out in access to treatment and care.

Between 1987 and 1992, in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, AIDS became the leading cause of death among young men. So when Roger Leclerc threatens to out powerful men, it's a threat that comes from the trenches, from a man wielding his last weapon. This is Episode 5, Out With Them All. de monde. Roger Leclerc est un radical de la cause gay. Radical. Radical. That's a description that

stuck to Roger Leclerc. For making waves, for tirelessly pushing against the grain, for insisting and insisting in language so evocative that he became known as the silver-tongued warrior. By all accounts, he's one of the founding fathers of Quebec's gay rights movement. When I show up to meet him, he stands in the hallway,

the light catching his full head of silver hair. At 72, he's a small and soft-spoken man. Your English is really good. Oh yeah, my God. It depends. That's it. In the morning, it's easier. In the afternoon, it's OK. In the afternoon, okay.

It's rolling. Okay, so why is it important for you to talk about this period? Oh God. We have to know where we come from. And gay community, gay men, and the society in general, we forget. It's actually more than forgetting. It's a piece of history that most younger generations don't even know. I'm born in 50.

I'm born in 50, so I was 12 where I realized I was gay. I fell in love with the arms of a baseball player at the park. At that time, homosexuality was a crime in Canada. It was even considered a form of mental illness. I told to my doctor, It's all started there. I was in therapy for many months and I had shock electric to cure me. Electroshock therapy. It is shocking.

It is terrible to put these therapies on a little boy as I was. It is terrible. It is the loss of my dignity. Roger felt like a lab rat. He was just a boy, and he went along with it. And I agree with that. I didn't want to be gay. Who wants to be gay at that time?

It was the condemnation of being outside of the world, outside of the game all the time, outside of your family. Who wants that? Nobody. So I agree. Yes, cure me, please. So I agree, yes, cure me, please. So I was cured. So Roger lives a straight life for several years. He marries a woman.

They even have kids. But as they move to Montreal, it seems like the so-called cure is failing. I was afraid of Montreal. I was afraid about my homosexuality. And for me, Montreal, it was the place where we can live as a gay man. At that time, it was horrible

just to say to myself that I was gay. Saying, I'm a gay man, I did that at 29. And it was terrible for me just to hear me saying this. And I've been married for six years and probably a very bad husband, sexually, because I have no interest, really. And one night, I just got with a man, and it was a liberation. And two days later, I said to my wife,

well, I'm gay. And that's it. It was just freedom. Roger picked a good time to come out. Things were slowly beginning to change in Quebec. In Canadian law as well. Pierre-Eliott Trudeau was justice minister at the time. As he put it, There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.

This was a time of free love. And Roger was having the time of his life. You know, before AIDS, being gay was wonderful because first we laughed a lot. We had a sense of humor very specific. The bars, it was party all the time. Every time you're going to a bar, it was just the party. And we had sex a lot.

I don't know how many thousand men I had sex with. Because it was free. I wasn't afraid that the person just get enceinte. Enceinte, pregnant. We were not as afraid about that. Enceinte, prègnante. Après avoir fait le choix pour tout ce temps perdu, Roger a rencontré son am his lover, André. I met him in Quebec City.

I was in a bar, a gay bar, and he came to my table. Hi, how are you, etc. We exchanged our phone numbers, but that's it. Six months later, I just called him back because probably I was alone or whatsoever. And probably two or three months later, we lived together. Before long, though, André got sick.

As Roger recalls, his disease did not yet have a name. Its first official recognition would happen in 1981, when young and healthy gay men in major U.S. cities started getting sick and dying. Here in Montreal, rumors of a gay plague started spreading through the village. We heard about gay sickness, gay virus or whatsoever, but it was in the United States. It wasn't here. So I went to the hospital and half of the floor was empty. And I got in front

of the infirmiere. I have to put all the costume, you know, protection costume, a mask, a hat, gloves, a robe, everything. And I told her, it's stupid. I was sleeping with him last night. So why, well, you have to do that because we don't know. the dad because we don't know. So he died and he hadn't saw his family for six years because he was gay. And when all planned the funerals. I had to move because we had an apartment, but under his name. So I had to move from the apartment very fast. We were not invited at the funeral. We were maybe 12 of our gay men friends.

On the back of the church, on the last bench, the family was in front, and that's it. Roger believed that André was among the first to die of AIDS in Quebec. It was horrible. We were just like dogs. He believes that André was among the first to die of AIDS in Quebec. It was horrible. We were just like dogs. André was 30 years old. He was too young and it was too fast. It took three months. In three months he was well living and then dying in three months. It just almost killed me, I think.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. If you have sex with more than one partner, it's like Russian roulette. Because you can get AIDS. Or you can get lucky. The truth about AIDS. The plague of the 80s. HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is the virus that is believed to cause AIDS. Sex have just one safe partner, or always use condoms. Always.

The question is, when does your luck run out? AIDS is a killer. Protect yourself. I started to learn about AIDS in Toronto. We knew nothing about AIDS at that time. They were talking about that there was this disease that was killing gay men and everybody thought it was paupers. So we were like, okay, well, geez, that's a drag. Like, I love my paupers.

...study which shows that the lifestyle of some male homosexuals has triggered an epidemic of a rare form of cancer. Conspiracy, yes. It was gays. Yes, of course, with their way of living, it's normal that they're going to be sick. I mean, I had a doctor in Montreal tell me, well, just don't go to New York. It was a New York thing and a San Francisco thing, and it wouldn't happen to us. In 1982, the American Centers for Disease Control declared AIDS a matter of urgent public health

and scientific importance. Yet those in power ignored the early warnings. They even made fun of them, like U.S. President Ronald Reagan joking with one of his advisors. It took a Hollywood icon to catch the disease for the world to pay attention. Mr. Rob Hudson has acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which was diagnosed over a year ago in the United States. He came to Paris to consult with a specialist in this disease. Only one hospital in France could help him, but to get in, he needed an official from the Reagan administration to make a request. That call never came, even though he and the Reagans

were actually good friends. That neglect was felt by the thousands who had AIDS. Suddenly, people were dying, and it was related directly to their sexual lives. It was very common for people that seroconverted to lose all their friends, their apartment, their job, everything. All of it within a week or two. So you didn't talk. You didn't say anything about it.

You kept it covered. But even to admit that you were gay, even to admit you were gay, you ran a risk of losing everything. Because gay was synonymous with being HIV positive. I know it's crazy, but that's just the way it was. HIV positive. I know it's crazy, but that's just the way it was. So for years,

AIDS support here was handled by a clutch of community groups. It relied mostly on volunteers and the kindness of strangers. Strangers like Laura Gregane. She stepped up to help people in the late stages of the disease.

I mean, really, these were young men. They were healthy otherwise. So strong hearts, good lungs, you know, all of that stuff. For some people, it just took forever. You know, it just seemed to take forever. And it was more debilitating, more debilitating. We were always looking for places for these guys because they didn't have family support

and the need for hospice care was enormous. And there was only Lynn. There was only Shaymak who's in. You know, there were the regular hospice, but you got on a waiting list to get up there. And people were dying so quickly that they never got in to that. And we were always saying, is there room at Chez Macousine? Is there room at Chez Macousine? It's called Chez Macousine, my cousin's place. It's a foster home for people with AIDS.

It's the only such home in Montreal for anglophones. It just started because one friend had been put out his apartment by the landlord because he had AIDS. We were so afraid about AIDS. So, chez ma cousine, Evelyn just said to that guy, just come home. And she had many rooms. Just come home and we'll take care of you. She did that, but after that, there was another one, another one, another one. There are hundreds of people out there with AIDS

that need a place to stay, and we can look at the waiting lists for other institutions and see that that's true. Shemekwizin was DIY in the huge sense of the word. And, you know, a woman, lesbian, giving giving to gay men and women dying of AIDS in a time when people were running scared. I mean, what else is to say about Evelyn Beaudoin? Like, that's like fucking sainthood, man. Evelyn Beaudoin's apartment quickly became a place of last resort. that's like fucking sainthood, man.

Evelyn Baudoin's apartment quickly became a place of last resort. You know, I do remember taking one guy there, and I asked her if she needed help. She said, no, no, no, and she was getting him out of the car. It was just bones. He was, you know, so thin. And he said, thank you, thank you for doing this, thank you, thank you. You know, he was very grateful. And she put his arm around him and said, no, you're home now.

You're home now. You don't have to go anywhere else. And she was so sweet to them. She was so kind. else. And she was so sweet to them. She was so kind. She was such a soft, warm person, you know, that you could, you would trust her with anything. What did Chez Macousin represent for those guys? Safety. More than anything else, it meant safety. You know, you weren't gonna have to tell any stories, you weren't gonna have to find a girlfriend to pretend with, you weren't gonna have to worry about what was gonna be next. You know, it takes all of that away from it.

It was all with volunteers. And I remember she was interviewed on TV and she said one day... Love won't do it all. We love our residents, but we need support, financial support, to continue what we're doing. Evelyn Baudouin struggled to keep her hospice afloat. And a friend called on Roger for help.

He told me, well, you should be on the board over there just to help them to get some money. So I said, yes, OK, fine. I do remember him. He was a remarkable guy. He's still alive. Is he? Yes.

Good for him. Good for him. How did he manage that? No, it was a difficult time. It was a difficult time. I just felt like everybody around me was dying at that point. And it was a really, you know, I mean, I went into it with my eyes open. I knew people were going to die, you know.

I lost all my friends. All my friends I had when I was 30 just died. And I'm not the only one. It's not something special we're used to that. We got to funeral every week. I stopped one day. I just stopped going to funeral because I just can't stand it anymore. I just can't stand seeing the family who gave the dignity to a body. Why didn't you give him before when he was alive? It was outrageous.

I was enragé. I was... No, I just can't stand it. I can't. I was enragé. I was... No, I just can't stand it. I can't. It was too much. This is the backup party of Sky on Living Legend. Is he Judy Barron? Unlike their fellow activists, Michael Hendricks and his partner, René, are largely spared from the epidemic until December 31, 1989, New Year's Eve.

And we had a couple of beers. There were maybe six people, people we'd known a long time there, and Luke showed up. And I asked him, Luke, I haven't seen you in six months. Where have you been? And he said, I've been depressed.

And I said, boy troubles. So the joke, you know. And no, no, no, it's worse than that. I said, you know, it's not your career. No, no, no, everything's fine. What's the problem? He said, I'm seropositive. I just found out six months ago.

I haven't been able to accept it. It's very hard. I said, oh, God, no. I said, that's to accept it. It's very hard. I said, oh God, no. I said, that's, you know, that's terrible. He said, well, what you don't understand is that everybody else in this room is too, except you and René. Why didn't anybody tell us? And then he said, because you... Because you'll ditch us as friends. It was when Luke told us that everybody was HIV positive, that the penny fell, you know, doying.

We had to accept it. It was impossible to lie to ourselves anymore or to lie to everyone about it. It just was terribly, terribly depressing. And what was particularly depressing was the attitude towards us that we would be self-righteous or that we had opinions about whether people were guilty of being infected. You see, when you were HIV positive, it was your fault.

And that anybody would think that about us was really very, very unstabilizing. And that was really very difficult because our lives were good and we had great lives and we weren't rich, but we had everything we wanted. And we had great lives, and we weren't rich, but we had everything we wanted. And then, you know, there was no point in having all that when your world folds, and it did fold. I was profoundly affected. ACT UP had called a meeting for January and we went immediately. We wanted desperately not to lose our friends. We went to show them that we were not afraid of people living with HIV and that we did respect them and that we cared.

This is a scream of our anger and our anguish So dig down deep inside while you're here and let it go Michael joined ACT UP as it organized its first protest in Montreal A die-in People lay all over the street clutching signs that said things like silence equals death or act up for life. So act up became extremely important because it was a method of expressing to our friends and other people in the gay community that we certainly weren't going to discriminate

against them. We didn't blame them for being infected. We knew that they were completely innocent. I mean, nobody knew that it was a silent disease, you know. As Michael and his friends became increasingly involved in HIV-AIDS activism, they began thinking about the murders of gay men in a similar light. We'd been chatting about it, talking about it. Was there some connection? Was it driven by the same homophobia

that was killing us in the hospitals? We felt the murders were motivated by the same thing that was killing us with HIV, that is neglect and hate, and that nobody paid any attention. So Michael Hendricks, Douglas Bouclier-Couvret, and David Shannon rallied the community around the murders. We formed something called the Committee sur la Violence, Committee on the Violence. And it was purely the violence question.

It was purely a violence question. So I went there and identified about 12 or 13 gay men who were killed. And the crime wasn't solved by the police. And that's when Michael meets Roger, when they create the Comité sur la violence. What's your reaction when you see him coming to that meeting? My God, are we lucky we got him. Come here, sit at this table.

And when he figured out what was going on, he said, well, maybe I could be president of this committee. Yes, you be president and spokesperson. His French is beautiful. He speaks really well. They were the ones who told me maybe there's a serial killer. And how do you react when you hear about this series of murders not taken seriously by the police? It was ambiguous. In a way, it was the way it is.

The same thing that when the doctor announced me I was seropositive. It was normal. I'm a gay man. I'm going to get AIDS. That's it. So, I'm a gay man in a park. It's normal that I'll be killed. This is what they were living. As a gay person, you were a second-class citizen. in the park, it's normal that I'll be killed. This is what they were living. As a gay person, you were a second-class citizen. You had to accept that you were more at risk

of getting sick or being killed. So that was part of my reaction. The other one was, it's terrible. The murders were just the point of the iceberg. We knew that there was murders, but these are the extreme of the normal violence we had. We knew that. Roger had witnessed it firsthand.

Skinheads had attacked his lover in a park at night, breaking his jaw and his ribs. The violence was normal, but for me it was unacceptable. Something had to be done, and the only person who can do it, it's us. There's nobody else. So they go back to the community and tell them about their plan to demand an inquiry from the Human Rights Commission.

And I asked them, listen, we're on the margin of the society. Do you want us to stay on the march or to get on the society? All the leaders said, no, we want to be on the society, whatever the price we have to pay. So we decided to work to be part of the society. The only way was the Commission des Droits. There was no other way. We were going to fight hard and all that, but we were not cutting it with the government. The Barasa government chose to ignore us, and they successfully did, until this moment.

successfully did until this moment. The moment at the end of a press conference when Roger gets everyone's attention by threatening to out politicians. The journalist called me back and said, what is that outing? Are you going to do that? And we were prepared. And I said, yes, it's serious. I'm going to do that. I don't want to do that. The next day, one paper picks it up. In the bottom of the front page of the Devoir, there's this article, you know, gays and lesbians threatened out judges and members of the National Assembly. And it just simply stated that Roger had made this threat.

And he took it quite seriously. The president of the Commission des Droits, the minister, the police chief, everybody asked us to excuse because it's terrible to say that. But Roger doesn't apologize. Instead, he and his Committee Against Violence double down. So we had a press conference where I didn't excuse.

I didn't say I'm sorry. I said I'm going to do that. I don't have to excuse myself to claim my rights. I don't have to excuse myself to claim my rights. But at this press conference, we had standing in the back some supporters. Among them were two brothers who claimed they'd each had sex with the same government official. We knew it. It's a controversial idea. Some gay activists are threatening to expose Quebec politicians,

bureaucrats and influential people who are keeping their homosexuality private. Well, it was going on all over North America, right? You know, come out of the closet, get out of the closet, you know, or we're going to out you. There was a lot of that going on. And I think it was a big conversation within the gay community that if we can't be out, if we can't be open about who we are, we're never going to be able to advocate for change and to be accepted.

I think it came more from the HIV AIDS movement. I really do, because I think it came more from the HIV-AIDS movement. I really do, because I think that so many people were dying. So this whole thing of outing was big. It's so not Canadian to threaten outing. It was quite common in the United States, particularly around the AIDS movement, but outing has never been done by AIDS activists.

It's always been done by journalists, and it's always done to people that offend or do things to the gay and lesbian community that is considered and perceived as a setback. But, you know, nobody did it here. It was just not the style. Even back then, Roger had his reservations about outing. I hope I will never have to do that. I hope that the Quebec society is open enough

to agree that we're victims of discrimination, to agree that there is necessity for public inquiry. I hope that from the bottom of my heart. But what I say, if that is not happening, we're going to make outing. I don't want to out someone. I don't want to out someone, but I would be able to do it. One day a journalist in an interview after that told me, well it's terrible to do that to someone who's in the closet.

It's his choice, the right of the people. And it's there. I told him, there is a war over there. We're dying of AIDS. We're dying of murders. We're dying of violence. So if the only instrument I have is a bazooka, I'm going to use a bazooka. So I don't want to out anybody, but I want discrimination to disappear, and I'm going to do what is needed to have that. In the end, Roger, Michael, and their group never outed anyone. They never had to.

The phone rang at home and I picked it up and someone identified themselves as being from the Assemblée Nationale and representing the Premier of Quebec without mentioning his name and then said, would you be open to accepting public audiences in front of the Human Rights Commission of Quebec? And I couldn't believe it. We'd won. That was exactly what we wanted.

And it was groundbreaking. A first in North America. It would take months to prepare. But there was more. After dismissing their requests, the Justice Minister finally agreed to meet with them. And when he came, it was almost friendly, I would say. It was, well, bonjour, Monsieur Leclerc, ça va bien, etc. You know, it was like never thing happened before.

We never asked for a meeting, never refused, nothing of that. He didn't speak about that. He just said, yes, we're going to try to work with you, et cetera, et cetera. But it was almost friendly. Despite the win, Roger paid a price for his gesture of defiance. He was now a public persona. Homophobes had seen him on TV.

And he became a target. When we came to outing moment, there I received a lot of menace, threats at that time. And it was quite serious, quite frightening, I should say. Police took those threats seriously. For weeks, Roger walked around town with bodyguards telling him. And I received so much copies of the Bible saying that I'm the worst thing on the earth or saying just be sure to be with someone

because I'm going to kill you. So you received death threats and threats because you were exposed as a member of that group, as a gay man? Yeah, yeah. And because we were asking to the full recognition of what we were. So we just wanted to normalize the gay community. So there was people who just don't accept that. You know, there's no religion accepting gays.

No one. When you read the Bible and the Koran, etc., the worst thing you can be is be gay. And soon enough, the spotlight would be on the church. This is BD. And soon enough, the spotlight would be on the church, and everything it hides. The police feel uncomfortable about it, the church feels uncomfortable, the parishioners. The fact is that he was gay, and that it was a sex crime. When a priest is found murdered on the eve of the human rights hearings, the Archbishop

of Montreal comes calling, and an old enemy becomes an ally. If, however, the speculation is correct that this crime is in some way related to sexual orientation, then we are doubly outraged. For it makes of it not simply a violent crime, but one motivated by hatred. Don't ask, don't tell. That's coming up on the next episode of The Village. This series is produced by Kerry Haber, Michel Gagnon, and me, Francis Plourd.

Original concept by Justin Ling. Check out the previous two seasons of The Village wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find Radio-Canada's French-language production of Le Village on audio.ca. Our story editor is Chris Oak. Our digital producer is Esquire Robert. Special thanks to Dave Donnie and Alex Laplante. Thanks for listening.