Women had fewer choices in 1974. We were excluded from the “trades” where you could actually make a decent wage. We couldn’t get bank loans to start businesses without a man’s signature. The courts were taking children away from their mothers because their mothers were lesbians… It wasn’t good, and we were making a fuss. A big fuss.
I, Lamar Van Dyke (then Heather Beyer), became the coordinator of a brand new women’s center, A Women’s Place, located on Dupont Street in Toronto. We taught women basic self-defence, how to change the oil in their cars, how to use power tools and how to get away from their abusive husbands.
There was animosity between women who focused on the women’s center, and those who focused on the gay center, which a woman named Pat Murphy coordinated. The feminists didn’t think working with men was in their best interest and women from the gay center thought we were being too exclusive.
I thought the whole argument was a bit stupid. After all, we were all working and fighting for change. I called Pat Murphy to introduce myself and extend an invitation to meet for dinner with our girlfriends. We had a great time eating schnitzel and drinking beer in a small, out-of-the-way Hungarian restaurant. Not wanting the evening to end, we wandered next door to the Brunswick Tavern, an enormous, vacuous, STRAIGHT beer hall, after dinner.
Surprisingly, it was amateur night, the precursor to Karaoke. We asked Ivy, the piano player – who reminded me of my mom – if she could play I Enjoy Being a Girl. Adrienne (my girlfriend at the time), Murph (the coordinator of the Gay Center), and I took to the stage singing our version: I ENJOY BEING A DYKE.
Ivy stopped playing and pulled the plug on our microphone. We continued until the end, and the crowd went wild. They loved us. The management, however, not so much.
A short bald guy with a permanent scowl pushed through the crowd, saying, “Finish your beer and leave!” But glasses of beer were being passed to us from all directions. There was no way we could ever drink that much beer. We were going nowhere.
Suddenly, the police burst through the side door and approached our table. They physically picked us up, carried us out and threw us into a paddy wagon. We were directed to a bench in the police garage while they tried to figure out what to charge us with. All we’d done was sing a song; as far as we knew, that wasn’t against the law.
After about an hour, they emerged from their conference and told us we could leave. We refused to go until we could make a phone call. We wanted people to know that we’d been falsely arrested. Once again, they picked us up, this time tossing us into the snow banks outside.
”Whatever you do, don’t go back to the Brunswick Tavern!” They said. But that’s exactly what we did. We needed witnesses. We’d been falsely arrested and had no intention of being quiet about it.
Of course, they were waiting for us at the Brunswick. When they smashed Adrienne’s head against a waiting police car, I used the self-defence techniques we were teaching at the Women’s Center. Stomp on his foot.. a quick reinforced elbow to his gut! The cop who had me from behind let go. I was only free for a minute, but it was good to know that what we were teaching actually worked.
Once we were back at the station, things got seriously rough. They threw us down a hallway like bowling balls. Adrienne’s jaw was swelling and turning purple, and my ripped-up ankle was making walking difficult. They put a gun to Murph’s head and threw a packet of white powder onto someone’s lap, saying, “Look what I found!”
We were beat up. We were a mess. In the end, they took the white powder back. We were charged with creating a disturbance as well as assaulting a police officer.
The next day, not only were we bruised and beaten, but we were mad. Really mad. Our two communities no longer had the luxury of bickering over the details. The enemy was clear, and we were united in our resistance to homophobia. We formed a defence committee, raised money and became known as the Brunswick Four Minus One (Murph’s girlfriend, Sue, didn’t sing and consequently didn’t get arrested.)
We needed a lawyer. We wanted it to be Judy LaMarsh. She’d been Secretary of State during the Lester Pearson administration. She’d pushed through Medicare and the Canada Pension Plan and was now retired from the federal government as a professor at York University. The press had been hard on her when she was Secretary of State because she was a woman… and a smart woman at that. They picked on her appearance, repeatedly referring to her thick glasses and lack of style. She didn’t care about any of that. We’d always loved her because she was tough, brilliant and true to herself. If anyone could save us, it was Judy LaMarsh.
“I’m a professor now. I don’t practice law anymore,” she said, when we managed to get an appointment with her.
“Oh please, just listen to our story,” we replied. She sat back and settled in. When we got to the physical altercation with the police, she leaned forward and snapped her pencil in half with one hand.
“I detest police brutality. I’ll take this case, but if there are any demonstrations of any kind in the courtroom, I’m leaving.”
”If we wear t-shirts that say I Enjoy Being a Dyke, would you consider that a demonstration?” I needed clarification.
“Yes.”
“If the people in the audience are wearing t-shirts that say I Enjoy Being a Dyke…would you consider that a demonstration?”
“No, I have no control over them.”
The courtroom was overflowing. People were hanging out in the halls.
The judge took the bench like it was a typical day in Municipal Court. He looked around at the packed courtroom and asked the bailiff if a class was observing today.
”No, Your Honor, these are supporters of the defendants.”
He looked at his docket, gasped and asked if the right Honorable Judy LaMarsh was in the courtroom.
She stood up and said, “Yes, Your Honor.”
He immediately called a 10-minute recess so he could get himself together.
Even though I testified that it was me who assaulted the police officer, Adrienne was found guilty of that charge because she had officially charged the police with assault, which would be another trial. We were all found guilty of the other charges and required to pay fines.
Even though we’d raised enough money for the fines, Murph refused to pay hers. She opted to spend the weekend in jail talking with all the women, providing them with resources, and offering one of them a place to stay when she got out.
At the assault trial, the police were the defendants, and we were merely witnesses. We were gobsmacked when they testified, under oath, that we were standing on the tables swinging pitchers of beer around, screaming “fuck the establishment” when all we did was sing a song. It was also clear that they had switched hats during the melee and, going by the numbers on their hats, we’d charged the wrong officer with assault.
We talked to the prosecutor and asked him to stop them. He did nothing. We tried speaking to the judge, but he wouldn’t have it. Everything escalated, so he called a recess, hoping someone would straighten it out.
“Order in the court, all rise!”
Without any prior discussion, we all sat down. We were arrested for contempt of court at what was supposed to be a trial of the police. We spent lunch hour in a holding cell in the basement of city hall. When we returned to the courtroom, five of us were placed in the prisoners’ box, which only held four. We loved having to sit on each other’s lap in the courtroom.
No surprise that the police were exonerated, and we were guilty once again.
50 years raced by. Life happened. Death happened. I changed my name from Heather Beyer to Lamar Van Dyke. Adrienne Potts changed her name to Adrienne Rosen. Pat Murphy died. I lived in Seattle. We lost touch with each other until…….
One day, out of the blue, I got a call from Adrienne. The Day of Pink, a Canadian gay organization, wanted us to tour high schools in Ontario and tell our story to the kids. I flew from Seattle to Toronto with Monica Helms, creator of the trans flag, and Aja, a former contestant on Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
We hit the road for a month. We went to small towns and big cities. We did a webinar for the Toronto School Board and reached 45,000 students. We argued with a few principles about using the word “dyke”. We sang our song, we handed out t-shirts, and we told the kids they could be whoever they wanted to be.
While we’d been living our lives, The Brunswick Four had become Canada’s Stonewall event. We had no idea.
The tour ended with a very pink, star-studded gala. The mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, presented us with awards and said the word “dyke” at least 15 times. She had her picture taken, hugging us and kissing Adrienne on the cheek.
RiVerse, a popular Canadian group, sang a hip-hop version of I Enjoy Being a Dyke, and have since recorded it. It was way fun and slightly surreal. We were revelling in the afterglow 50 years later.
I returned to my life in Seattle. One day, I received an email from the Toronto Police Department saying the Chief would like to publicly apologize to us at their annual gala in November! It was pretty incomprehensible. It took a while to sink in… apologize? The Chief? Wow! 50 years ago, the police were beating us up for singing a song, and now we’re not only going to get a public apology, but also they’re going to make us honorary detectives with badges and pins and plaques and the whole shebang!
Unfortunately for me, their gala was the same night as the opening of my art exhibition in Seattle. I couldn’t attend. I sent a video, and Adrienne gave a speech that should go down in history. The Chief apologized and presented Adrienne with an official badge. She gave him an “I Enjoy Being a Dyke” T-shirt… he loved it, they hugged. When I returned to Toronto to get my badge, a gay police officer drove us around in their rainbow “Serving With Pride” car. They took us to lunch, we toured a couple of big cop shops and shook many hands. We were treated like rock stars.
I thought I’d missed the pomp and circumstance by not attending the gala. I thought someone would open a drawer and hand me my badge, but no! There was a ceremony in the Chief’s office. He shook my hand and started with… “It’s a privilege to present you with…” It was like an acid trip, a dream, a hallucination.
50 years ago, we had been in so much trouble. Now I’ve been hugged by the mayor who gave me an award, and the Chief of police is apologizing for something he didn’t do. A hip-hop group has recorded their version of I Enjoy Being a Dyke, and an opera singer in Ottawa performed her version accompanied by the Ottawa Philharmonic. A member of Parliament mentioned us during a session of Parliament, putting the Brunswick Four on the permanent record, and a famous Canadian artist has painted the Brunswick Four, which will be hanging in Police Headquarters in Toronto! I believe that none of this would ever happen in America… gotta love those Canadians!
*Were you there for a notable lesbian event, whether it be 5 or 50 years ago? We’d love to hear from you! Email contact@lesbianherstory.com
Leave a Reply