Dangerous Liaisons

During the 1950s and ’60s, the basement tavern at Ottawa’s Lord Elgin hotel was a much-frequented watering hole for middle-level bureaucrats. It was also a popular gay meeting place. Thanks to this latter reputation, it also occasionally hosted mysterious individuals who would hide behind open newspapers and snap furtive photos with pint-sized cameras. The bar’s habitués were well aware of the interlopers’ game. A former regular customer recalled in an interview with authors Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile that “we always knew that when you saw someone with a newspaper held up in front of their face ... that somebody would take out something like a wallet.” He recalled that someone in the bar would then take out a wallet or package of matches and motion over to the newspaper reader. “It was always sort of a joke ... and you would catch everyone’s eye.”

Not that such activity gave real cause for mirth. The RCMP’s security campaign directed at gays employed in the...