The gays and lesbians attending the party were accustomed to police raids, but they knew there would be trouble when they filed outside around 3 a.
Partygoers said police taunted them with insults and obscene gestures. Eight people were arrested on charges ranging from mischief to assaulting a police officer. It would have been our word against theirs.
Sex Garage politicized a generation of LGBT activists who would change the Quebec political landscape, uniting gays and lesbians, and francophones and anglophones, in a common front.
New York filmmaker and artist Nicolas Jenkins had a knack for organizing parties. The building was torn down in to make way for the storey Altoria condo tower. Because alcohol was being sold at an unlicensed loft party, Jenkins had reason to want to avoid police. I was anticipating trouble at Sex Garage because that part of Montreal is very quiet at night. I was extremely nervous because you want people to trickle in, not a surge of traffic in a deserted neighbourhood.
You had to know somebody to know where this place was. This was before social media, before cellphones. Montreal drag king Nat King Pole also left early, anticipating trouble. During the s in Montreal, vice squads routinely raided gay clubs to fill their arrest quotas. By , relations between police and the gay community could be tense, but violence was not the norm. That night, Jenkins said, he had a minute warning from his spotter that police were on their way.
