Beach and Immigration Policies

id checks: You needed to be careful leaving gay bars late at night or the cops might pick you up and take you down to Cherry Beach, which was mostly deserted back then, according to NOW Magazine. There they would beat you up and leave you to make your way back home on foot. When I came out in 1974, one of the first pieces of lore I learned about Toronto was the Cherry Beach express. Cherry Beach was one end of a spectrum of police abuse against queers that included harassment, ID checks, entrapment and arrests on spurious charges. But the relaxation of Canada racist immigration policies at the end of the 60s was changing the complexion of the city. Toronto was a pretty white place in the 1970s, almost 96 per cent Caucasian, according to the census. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.