Hidden behind an unmarked entrance on Yonge Street, Back Door Baths was one of Toronto’s most notorious and beloved gay bathhouses — a place where anonymity, desire, and defiance met under fluorescent light and steam.
Opening in the 1970s, it became both sanctuary and target — part of the city’s thriving queer nightlife until the infamous Toronto Bathhouse Raids of 1981, when police stormed multiple venues and arrested hundreds of men. The backlash ignited Canada’s largest LGBTQ rights protest to date, forever changing the country’s queer political landscape.
