Massive mobilization in 1977 followed shoeshine boy’s murder and led to a crackdown on body rub parlours and sex shops.
In the decades following the Second World War, downtown Yonge Street was widely seen as both the heart of Toronto and the piece of the urban fabric most in need of saving. Among the era’s plans to remake the street was a citizen-led campaign targeting the sex industry, which reached a peak in 1977.
A stream of citizen letters demanding action on Yonge — more than 800, in all — poured into the mayor’s office that week. “I’ve been angry and depressed for two days,” wrote a woman from North York, 48 hours after the Jaques murder was made public; others described being “shocked,” “sickened” or “nauseated.”
Dozens of the Jaques family’s neighbours in Regent Park rallied at city hall, hand-delivering a petition demanding action. Their tactics were reproduced across the city in August and September, as more than 3,000 citizens signed petitions circulated in places ranging from apartment tower lobbies to hair salons.
From the day Jaques’s body was found, media coverage of the crime placed the blame squarely on Sin Strip, describing him as “a victim of Yonge St.,” and calling on the city to act immediately to “purge” the area. It was widely asserted that by providing the physical setting for the shoeshine boy’s death, employment for his killers, and more broadly by encouraging sexual perversion, the sex industry was as guilty as the men who actually murdered him.
“Ironically, we didn’t have to develop one. The murder accomplished that. Three weeks ago Crombie was a fascist for trying to clean up the street: now he’s ineffectual for not doing it sooner.”
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