Uncover - S15: "The Village 3" E6: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

When one of its priests is found murdered in Montreal, the Anglican Church has to publicly reckon with its sins. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/the-village-the-montreal-murders-transcripts-listen-1.6479960

I'm David Ridgen, host of the award-winning podcast Someone Knows Something. Each season I investigate a different unsolved case, from a mysterious bomb hidden in a flashlight to two teenagers killed by the KKK. The New York Times calls SKS a consistently rigorous intelligent gem, and Esquire named the series one of the best true crime podcasts of 2021. Find Someone Knows Something wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Here we were, after all of those years of the nonsense

of parading around with those signs and those false coffins, and we had been through months, years years of gay murders and demonstrations and whatnot. Suddenly, we got what we wanted. As the old joke goes, you know, be careful about what you want. What Michael Hendricks wanted was for the government to address the steady stream of violence against Quebec's queer community. And in 1993, it got just that, a public hearing at the Human Rights Commission.

It was a resounding victory, a first in Canada. And yet, on the eve of its opening, all signs suggested it was about to be sidetracked. The murders, the violence, suddenly footnotes instead of the main focus. And he wasn't going to let that happen. We were discussing whether we should have a demo Monday morning, right here in old Montreal, thinking about terrible things we could do

to ruin their public hearings. Stink bombs, I mean, it went quite far. And to make our point, when are the police going to stop raiding our bars and treating us as criminals instead of catching the criminals that are preying on us? That's when fellow activist Douglas Bouclet-Couvrette breaks from them to call home.

He returns with a most unexpected message. We got a message, and we're supposed to call the Anglican Archbishop. He wants to talk to us. We said, well, then call him, see what's going on. We had no idea what was going on. The secretary to the archbishop said, would you please come to the offices and meet with the archbishop? So we really were mystified by that.

That a high church official should reach out to them was truly perplexing. We all had our very strong prejudices about the way organized religion has dealt with homosexuality. Not prejudices, it's the reality of the history.

We know it. And the things that have happened to gays and lesbians because of religious people. So we were shocked that he wanted to see us, and we couldn't figure why. They didn't tell us on the phone. But once we got there, it became evident he was quite crushed. He sat us right down and said, I'll get to the point.

Last night, a priest in Montreal was killed. And it would appear that this is a gay murder. And he said, would you let us participate in the hearings? Because I have something to say about homophobia. I'm Francis Bloord. This is The Village. The Montreal Murders. The Church has convinced us!

The Church has convinced us! The intolerance of the Catholic Church towards gays is only one of the grievances men like these have forced onto the public agenda. Over many centuries, we have tended to condemn rather than help people understand themselves sexually, and we have not handled this situation well. This man offers me no comfort at all.

Jesus Christ offers me comfort. God offers me comfort. This man offers me condemnation. This is Episode 6. Don't ask, don't tell. I was raised a Catholic. My twin brother and I even served as altar boys, which was pretty cute. And the church offered guidance, a sense of community, comfort

even. But I'm also aware of its flaws. How women are relegated to its lower ranks. Its official stance against abortion. Its refusal to accept gay marriage. I know it sounds like a contradiction, being queer and being religious. but I don't see those two things as mutually exclusive. And yet, I can't imagine why a queer person would choose to dedicate their life to an institution who rejects who they are and condemns them to a life of secrecy. Which is what an Anglican priest named Warren Ealing chose to do before he was killed. And that's why I'm heading

to Toronto. That's where Warren Ealing grew up and where he lived most of his life as a closeted gay priest. I want to let you know I'm running a little bit late. I think I took the wrong turn at the metro station, so I'll be there in about 20 minutes. I'm hoping to find answers from a few of his friends.

Hello? Well, hi Michael, it's Francis. I'm just downstairs. Alright, I'll let you in. Thank you. Hi. Hi. Come on in. Nice meeting you. You're welcome. Michael Burgess is British.

After almost 40 years in Canada, he's kept up old habits, the accent, and the self-deprecating charm. I make terrible coffee, but my tea's okay. Would you like a cup of tea? I would take water, please. All right. Okay. Do you mind if we stop the music? Oh, sorry, I didn't want to.

Because for my audio, it's going to be a challenge. Of course it is. Even though Michael has felt the tension between being gay and being a priest, he says that for him, there was never any choice. I believed that God wanted me to be a priest and I wanted to respond to that vocation. I've had friends, lay and ordained,

who were totally, totally disgusted by the church's attitude and decided that therefore they had to leave. But I decided that gay Christian men needed a role model too. And I decided that the choice that I had was either to leave and carp from the outside or to stay in and try to change it from within. As we talk, Michael shows me his collections. I inherited a lot of his books. And that mirror over there, that was from him.

All around him, memories of Warren. It isn't things that make me remember Warren. It's the memory of the friendship. I first met him in the courtyard of All Saints Margaret Street, which is one of the great Anglo-Catholic strongholds in the West End of London. And it was the church that I attended regularly. And Warren was visiting, and there was I having sherry, and I was introduced to this priest from Canada.

Warren was six foot two or six foot three, so of course he loomed over me. But it turned out that we had a friend in common, and he had a spare ticket for the opera, Covent Garden, the next night, and invited me, and I went, and we became friends and stayed in touch. As a boy, Warren was a celebrated soloist When Michael moved to Toronto their shared love of the arts was a foundation for a lasting friendship We weren't each other's types

but we were good friends and a good friend is not to be sneezed at so you were roommates uh yeah that's all we were when i first went there i arrived and the place was looking fairly untidy i said i will teach you how to be tidy and he said i will teach you how to drink well after six years he was still untidy and I was an untidy drinker. Not to the same extent that he was, but yes, he broadened my horizons in all sorts of ways. The rectory was right next to the church and so we got a constant stream of visitors asking for handouts and things. And he wouldn't give them money, but almost always he would give them food

or invite people to share, you know, sandwich and a bowl of soup or something. I don't recall him ever turning anybody away. He had a wonderful reputation as a confessor and spiritual director. And when I spoke to people who'd used him in either of those capacities, they always said how immensely nonjudgmental he was. And one of them said that they'd always thought that if they'd confessed that, you know, by the way, I had sex with an elephant last night, he would simply say, I hope you took precautions. Although he was always an immensely

private person, and although I shared the house with him for all those years, and, you know, ate with him and went to the theater with him and did all sorts of activities together. There was a very real sense that I never really knew Warren and what made him tick. You mentioned he was a very private person. Was he open about his sexuality? Well, he was with me and people that he trusted, but he certainly didn't go out of his way to advertise it. During the time I knew him, there was never anybody who was the person.

Do you think that's a result of being in the church and having to be careful about your relationships, not to raise suspicions? I think it would certainly have contributed to it, yes. As it did with every gay priest. It was actually when I was in my late teens that I met Father Warren Neeling for the first time. He was a very handsome guy, tall, soft-spoken, very likable sort of person.

My gaydar was going off. I figured, yeah, he's family. I used to be called Father Jim or the Reverend Jim Ferry. And I was fired in 1991 and put on trial in a bishop's court for having a boyfriend or admitting to having a boyfriend.

Jim sums it up quickly here, but he wrote a whole memoir about his experience. It's called In the Courts of the Lord. I've come to see him because his case became the cautionary tale for gay clergy in Canada. And the basic rule was one of survival, what we call don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue. So everyone knew there were gay clergy. By and large, people knew who they were too, I would say, including

the bishops. So don't ask, don't tell, and don't pursue. All of that works very well when everybody's in on the conspiracy of silence. And it only takes one person to blow up the whole thing, which is basically what happened to me in Unionville. Unionville was Jim Ferry's parish in the suburbs of Toronto. He started there in 1988. Just a few months before, I had met Ahmed, and it was love at first sight. He was an immigrant from Lebanon. We became soulmates, you know.

The tension became pretty unbearable for me. became pretty unbearable for me. How can it be that a church, a congregation, a bishop, everyone can love a gay priest, respect them for the work that they do, but as soon as you tell them you're gay or someone else out you, you're a monster. That just doesn't make sense. And so I was living with that. It was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. I spoke to a friend who was a bishop, an assistant bishop, and I started to tell him about what I was going through,

and he said, stop, Jim. Don't tell me something you want me to do something about. And I was like, okay, so as long as I don't tell you who I am, you'll love me and respect me. So, you know, that's the context in which all gay and lesbian queer clergy were living back in the 80s and 90s. Basically, you can call it the conspiracy of silence, but I call it just institutional homophobia and institutional transphobia.

It goes back hundreds of years. institutional transphobia. It goes back hundreds of years. So Father Jim walked a fine line. I knew I had at least one homophobic parishioner. She told me about her experiences with homosexuals and how much she hated homosexuals. She had actually gone undercover for the police in a lesbian bar to try to catch them. And that was back in the days when the police were into this. So I started at Unionville with a feeling of dread that if this person ever figured out that I was one of them, I was in trouble.

But eventually, his relationship with Ahmed became known. There were three parishioners who threatened to go to the bishop to out me. I mean, the moment of truth had come. You know, I could give in to blackmail, or I could say, no, I'm going to stand up and speak truth to power. So I knew that the bishop had many friends who were gay and gay clergy, and certainly was not unsupportive of gay and lesbian persons. So Jim met with the bishop. But in the end, he had his ministry taken away.

But what I didn't expect to happen was, after I was fired, to be publicly outed. That happened the following Sunday after I was gone at Unionville and there was a bishop there to preach and read a letter from the archbishop outing me to the congregation. I was totally surprised. I mean, it's not like I was a member of Queer Nation or anything. Jim tried to keep a low profile, but word got out,

and soon enough, his story landed in the Toronto Star. I lost everything. You know, Ahmed was scared to death, so he parted from me. And, of course, I didn't have a place to live, didn't have an income. I'd lost my privacy. I'd been held up as an example of a, what, a sexual offender or something. All I did was love somebody. The church should have been saying to gay and lesbian persons,

you know, we want you to have an intimate, loving relationship. And instead, what the church has done historically is force people into hiding, into the darkness. And when you're hiding and you're in the darkness, it's dangerous. Because you never know what you're going to experience. It was at this low point that Warren Ealing, an old acquaintance, reached out. Warren was the first clergy person to give me a call. And basically he said he was leaving the Diocese of Toronto.

He had accepted a parish in Montreal. It was a brief conversation, you know, but it's interesting that he was the first one to give me a call. What was his state of mind? He was very angry. He was very angry at what had happened to me. I mean, he told me, you know, that he was glad that he was leaving Toronto and going to me. I mean, he told me, you know, that he was glad that he was leaving Toronto and going to Montreal. The impression I had from that, of course, was that he thought he was going to a safer place. And it's ironic that it turned out to be not so. I think in church land, Montreal probably was a safer place. I knew the Bishop of Montreal, Andrew Hutchison, and I know that he valued his gay clergy. He was certainly advocating earlier than other bishops

for the blessing of same-sex unions. Father Ealing had been a tutor at Trinity College in Anglican Seminary in Toronto, and I had known him there. Andrew Hutchison, the former Archbishop of Montreal.

Once a year, Warren would show up in Montreal, and we'd go to lunch together somewhere, and I'd see him again the next year or so. And a time came when St. James the Apostle on St. Catherine Street in Montreal was vacant and immediately Father Ealing's name came to mind. He knew Montreal, he cared for Montreal and I certainly knew something about him and his effectiveness as a priest. So I called him and made him an offer. Warren had never said publicly that he was gay. Howsoever, as you can imagine, it was pretty widely known.

So, we had a heart-to-heart at the Bishop's Court, and I said, you know, I'm an old-fashioned bishop in that if any kind of scandal were to come my way, I would immediately resign my orders for the sake of the church. And I tend to expect the same thing of my clergy. Are we clear? And his response was, Father, I will never embarrass you. Rather unfortunate words, huh? words. 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 3 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. The body of 54-year-old Reverend Warren Ealing leaves the... Ealing was found half-naked on the second floor of the church rectory. Police believe Ealing invited his attacker inside.

We believe that the mother was theft, since they knew each other. Ealing lived alone. Friends say he was celibate. Ealing's computer is gone, and his car is also missing. was celibate. Ealing's computer is gone and his car is also missing. It was in Westmount, in a rather fine old home. Detective Gilles Racette was first on the scene on that November morning in 1993. There was several bottles. It appeared that whoever had murdered him had been an invited guest.

Warren's wrists were tied. The belt from his housecoat was wrapped around his neck and knotted tightly to his bed. The homicide squad started searching for evidence and dusting for fingerprints.

We said, well, the guy would normally eventually go and visit the toilet. And if he was drunk, looking at the number of bottles, maybe he was unsteady. And maybe he will have leaned against the wall to steady himself up. Surprisingly enough, a fingerprint came up quite high on the wall. The fingerprint Gilles Racette's team found ended up belonging to Danny McIlwain, a hustler and petty thief known to police. He had problems with consumption of drugs. And hang around bars and get in trouble because of booze, because of drugs.

Ealing's car was found in Toronto. Police say someone tried to push it into Lake Ontario. But the car got stuck on a wharf. We went to Toronto and the Toronto Metro Police, they opened doors for us and we came up with a bit of information. Information that led them back to Montreal and to arrest Danny McIlwain. He claimed that Warren Ealing had paid $40 to spend some time with him. He said that it was a sexual game.

I've seen a case where somebody was actually filming himself choking himself, hoping to ejaculate at the time that you're choking is supposed to be a sexual thrill. But apparently this was the game that had been proposed. Danny McIlwain told the court that Warren Ealing had died accidentally. But what didn't help him is that after accidentally you choke your friend, you might want to call for medical help. You might want to seek that that person is still alive. You don't steal his car and his video or whatever it was and make off with it to pawn it somewhere else and ditches his car in a lake in the next province.

If that was an accident, he didn't show any remorse or compassion to the person that he had choked. person that he had choked. It was a Wednesday when his body was discovered. And on Wednesday mornings, I used to celebrate a Eucharist in the local hospital. I came back this particular Wednesday morning, and there were 17 phone messages. All of them sort of began like, Michael, I don't want to talk about this on the phone, but when you get a chance,

please will you call me back as soon as possible? Except for the last one, who said, I assume you've heard by now of Warren's terrible death. How did you react? Sheer disbelief. I was shocked. Warren was my closest friend in Canada, even though I still didn't feel I knew the real Warren. But the guy who was arrested and indeed charged with the murder always claimed that it was an accident,

that it was kinky sex that went wrong, and no particular axe to grind for him, but I suspect that might be true. I know that even when he lived in Toronto, he had a big wrought iron bed frame, and it was broken. The foot of the bed had kind of snapped off and it was held up by a pile of books. And even when he moved to Montreal, he didn't get it repaired.

It was still held up by a pile of books. And I suspect that... I can't remember the technical name for it, but satisfaction with close to asphyxiation when you climax is supposed to intensify the climax. And I suspect that while this was happening, he was writhing about and the bed moved and the book shifted and the noose tightened. And indeed, I think, on appeal, I think the charge was reduced from first-degree murder to manslaughter or something. I can't remember the details, but the decision was subsequently made that it wasn't deliberate first-degree murder. murder. McIlwain was eventually convicted of second-degree murder. But in the short term, as the details piled up, so did the potential for disgrace. The Montreal police understood

how the details of Warren Ealing's death might look for the Anglican Church. details of Warren Ealing's death might look for the Anglican Church. I think the police really were well-intentioned. You know, they didn't want to embarrass the church. And, you know, that's the way they had dealt with the last one, a Roman Catholic priest. That Roman Catholic priest was Roland Gagné. Gagné had been strangled to death three weeks earlier.

Police knew the victim was gay. In the case file, they described one of the perpetrators as a pimp. But in court, they claimed he was killed in the context of a robbery. And that's the way they dealt with that one, and that was a problem for me,

and I wasn't going to let that happen. I said, listen, if this thing was sexually based as I believe it is, then you're dealing with a hate crime. And by the way, by then I had discovered that in the last two years there have been now 17 gay men killed in the city. So this needs to be dealt with. So I phoned the then Minister of Justice, Claude Ryan, and said this has to be addressed. And it was addressed.

That was the purpose of the Human Rights Commission hearings, which took place on November 15, 1993, less than a month after Gagné's murder, and just six days after Warren Ealing's death. It's a pleasure this morning to welcome the bishop of the Anglican Church of Montreal, the very reverend Andrew Hutchison. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. the Très Révérend Andrew Hutchison. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I was one of the voices that asked that these hearings be held. The Archbishop, he was there with Reverend Ehrling's family, Reverend Ehrling's friends, and they brought lots of media because they're important people. And they had something to say about a very fresh murder case. At large, on the 10th of November, Father Warren Ealing, a respected pastor of one of our larger and more important churches in Montreal, was found murdered in his bed. And of course no one really knew much about gay murders. They weren't advertised as being gay murders, but the Archbishop saw to it that it was advertised as a gay murder.

...and there certainly is that possibility that his death was related to his sexual orientation and that he may in fact have been killed for that reason, then this is of enormous significance to this committee and indeed to the public at large. It poses a threat to all of us and certainly a terror to the community of gay and lesbian persons here in Montreal and elsewhere. One after another they went down the list of the subjects that they wanted to cover about him and about gay violence and about discrimination in the church and outside the church. The fact that for a very long period of our history in the church, our teaching and our practice has contributed to homophobia

and more than that, even given it moral force. And I recognize that with great humility. It's evident that most homosexually oriented persons feel obliged to maintain secrecy and certainly within our own church that has been the case and when one drives

people into living a secret life their desperate need for privacy means that what they do, they do alone and not in a community context and and take risks that are unnecessary and dangerous for us it was a gift because someone important in the society saying gays have rights. And he was sincere.

I don't know if his testimony was important for the commissioners. I don't know. But it was important for us. I benefited from the openness around the fact that it was now possible to talk about gay issues more openly and more honestly. Whether Warren would have thought that it was worth it, I don't know. I think he would have been hideously embarrassed by the whole thing. It's not the way anybody would choose to live this life after all. Even today, Burgess wants to imagine a kinder ending for his friend.

A kinder ending for his friend. I suspect that if Warren had had the opportunity to settle down in a faithful, monogamous relationship with somebody, then the chances of him picking somebody up and it turning out to be the wrong person would have been much reduced. But Warren was my closest friend and closest confidant, and he wasn't there anymore. We have to accept some culpability for Warren's death, you know, because the church's attitude towards gays at its very best had been, don't tell, but at its worst had been really condemning. We insisted that he live in the shadows that way. And I told you about my first conversation

with him when he came to Montreal that sort of encouraged his continuing to live in the shadows. And it's to some extent because of that that he found himself in such difficulty.

There's one last thing that Andrew Hutchison said at the 1993 inquiry that's worth playing. Father Ealing was one in a series of gay individuals who have been murdered in our city. It's the moment he put the owner's back on the police for the murder of gay men in Montreal. back on the police for the murder of gay men in Montreal. And nine of those crimes have yet to be solved,

and it's a matter of some embarrassment, I would think, to law enforcement agencies that they don't yet seem to have any handles on that. When yet another victim shows up murdered in his own home, police finally call on the community for help. They have realized that they're not going to get anywhere with the old way that they have tried to solve these murders by looking at them as just being

theft and that sexual orientation wasn't a motive. With the police now looking in the right direction, it turns out that all the talk over serial killer wasn't so far-fetched after all. That's coming up on the next episode of The Village. The series is produced by Carrie Haber,

Michel Gagnon, and me, Francis Plourd. Original concept by Justin Ling, and I highly recommend you check out the previous two seasons of The Village. Our story editors are Chris Oak and Damon Fairless. Our digital producer is Esquire Robert.

Editing, mixing, and sound design by Julia Whitman, Gabby Clark, and Mira Burt-Wentonik. We'd like to send a special thanks for their help in this episode to David Dorney, Robert Roat and Alex Laplante. Kerry Haber is the series showrunner. Our senior producer is Cecil Fernandez. The director of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. Thanks for listening.