Under the Cover: Finding Forgotten Gay Histories in Ben Ladouceur’s I Remember Lights

When I was writing the first draft of my novel I Remember Lights, I didn’t have a thorough outline, but I did know what would happen on the last page. The book examines the lessons, errors, hookups and heartbreaks of a 19-year-old gay man’s first year of being out, against the deranged utopian backdrop of Expo ’67, Montreal’s summer-long centennial celebration. The last pages, I decided, would flash forward ten years and depict a much grimmer piece of Montreal history: the Mystique/Truxx raid of October 1977, during which around 150 men were arrested on “bawdy house” charges for spending the evening in queer spaces. They were thrown in paddy wagons, kept in jail cells overnight, and subjected to tests for venereal diseases. By showing a glimpse of my protagonist’s life as a 30-year-old, ten years after Expo, and by putting him through this horrible night of Canadian history, I could paint a fuller picture of queer life: the threat of jadedness, the scarcity of safety, the institutionalization of hate and fear.

It didn’t quite work. Spending only four or five pages on that event gave the book a wonkiness that was undeniably unsatisfying. One early reader suggested expanding that element into a frame narrative. I loved the idea, but had one major problem: there was very little information available about the raid. How would I manage to say more than I already had, when the facts were a mystery?

I knew that there existed a 20-minute documentary directed by Harry Sutherland, called Truxx. That 1978 film is now available on the streaming service Cinema Politica, but as I was writing the early draft back in 2021, it was not available anywhere. I thought, maybe I could find it. I started by emailing a friend who seems to know everyone in the world of queer Canadian artists. (We all need one such friend.) He suggested a film professor who, lo and behold, had a copy of the film on his hard drive—and who also had contact information for someone interviewed in the doc. It was one of those great moments of outreach. You hit a lot of dead ends, but the occasional successes redeem those if you’re lucky, and I was.

I met Paul Keenan over Zoom. Going into it, I was nervous about asking intimate questions regarding possibly the worst night of a man’s life. But Paul had engaged in activism about the raid and he was pragmatic about the facts. His participation in the documentary was one part of that activism; he also helped run a small gay bookstore in Montreal at that time. So many precious small details about the event came out of our conversation. Paul was generous and supportive of my storytelling. He also had information about two other helpful contacts.

One, a man named Mark Wilson, provided critical clippings and documents. The other, Jeff Richstone, was not a victim of that raid but the lawyer who represented several of the men when they decided to take action about what had been done to them. Jeff lived in Ottawa, same as me, so we grabbed a coffee, then a cocktail. Jeff was just as sharing and supportive as his friend Paul—and very tolerant of my cluelessness regarding legal jargon.

The book improved immeasurably thanks to these men and the people who helped me in my outreach. I have heard novelists talk about the moment when their book came to life; mine did this in the months I put towards the Truxx frame narrative. Now the book is out, and I was overjoyed to be able to send copies to these interviewees and express my thanks. At my book launch at Library and Archives in April, I was even able to give a shoutout to Jeff in the audience.

My book ends the morning after the raid, when detainees and activists gathered outside of the Montreal police headquarters, organizing protests that would continue in the days to follow. The collective response to this injustice led shortly to the enactment of progressive gay rights legislation in Quebec. It is a story of the strength found in numbers. My novel concerns one individual—one fictional piece of a gigantic story—but if anyone who reads it develops a stronger interest in these collective actions and all that followed, that’s a great thing.