It’s a shocking story that happened near you. For more than four decades, until 1992, the Canadian government hounded gays and lesbians, who posed an alleged threat to national security.
More than 9,000 people have been excluded from the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the federal public service.
During this dark period in recent history, at least 30,000 Canadians were registered because of their sexual orientation — even after the Trudeau government decriminalized homosexuality in 1969 and adopted the Charter of Rights. and freedoms in 1982.
The documentary The purge. The dark story, broadcast this Saturday on ICI Télé, looks back on this extremely painful episode for thousands of victims. The film by director Orlando Arriagada gives voice to soldiers who were “purged” from the Canadian Forces, as well as to social actors who helped to shed light on this not-so-distant era.
“I felt like I was holding a real bomb in my hands,” says journalist Dean Beeby of The Canadian Press, who discovered these disturbing facts in 1992, in the documentary.
“It’s a stunning story. No one will believe me,” this access to information specialist said to himself when he got his hands on hundreds of files of federal employees who had been rejected because of their sexual orientation.
All spies
This hunt for gays and lesbians was triggered by attempts to bribe Canadian diplomats — and allied countries — by the Russian empire in the 1950s and 1960s. The Soviet enemy attempted to blackmail Canadian diplomat John Watkins, who was homosexual, and who died following interrogation in a hotel in the suburbs of Montreal. As for the British diplomat Guy Burgess, he was indeed a Russian spy, the supreme crime in the midst of the Cold War.
“So it was obvious that all spies are homosexuals and all homosexuals are spies,” denounces lawyer Douglass Elliott, who led a long legal battle for the victims of the purge against Canadian homosexuals.
A secret Canadian government report even described “homosexual characteristics” such as “distrust of society and the tendency to surround oneself with other homosexuals [qui] do not inspire confidence.
Lives destroyed
The victims of the purge could not believe their ears when they were summoned by their superiors to learn that they were losing their jobs. “I asked myself: ‘What is my crime to be treated like a prisoner of war?’ », says Lucie Laperle, who was excluded from the Armed Forces in 1978.
” They got me domed on the street and I broke down, crying all the tears in my body,” adds the ex-soldier.
She claims to have been raped by a superior who had sworn to “show her what a man is”. Lucie Laperle experienced deep depression and still suffers from post-traumatic stress after this rejection of incredible violence due to her sexual orientation.
“The waitresses knew me as the woman who drinks beer and bawls,” she says.
Many of those “purged” considered suicide. Some did. Steven Deschamps, expelled from the Armed Forces in 1982, decided not to throw himself from a bridge because the structure was not high enough to drag him to his death.
Apologies and tears
“You are a disgrace to the Canadian Forces,” his superior told him when dismissing him. He was able to rejoin the military 10 years later when then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ordered an end to all discrimination based on sexual orientation against members of the Canadian Forces.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presented an official apology in 2017 to the thousands of Canadians who were victims of this purge against gays and lesbians lasting almost half a century. This gesture and the $145 million in compensation paid to the victims were well received. But the wounds remain deep.
“I was destroyed. It traumatized me forever,” says Martine Roy, who is now dedicated to promoting the rights of LGBTQ2+ workers. She manages to lead a normal life. But tears well up when she recounts her journey of the cross within the Canadian Forces.
Lucie Laperle, for her part, evokes what will be inscribed on her tombstone: “I never forgot. »