“John Sewell doesn’t really want anyone to vote for HIM: He wants voters to choose the ideas he represents. He is incapable of charming, partly because it smacks of dishonesty, partly because it would take time from what he wants to accomplish. It is not that he thinks that political seduction is beneath him so much as that he thinks it is beneath us. He expects a lot from the voters — that we be a rational, detached electorate with priorities that emphasize the serious, willing and able to measure performance alone.”— Joan Sutton, Toronto Star, October 31, 1980
The 1980 Toronto municipal election was John Sewell’s to lose. Elected mayor in a tight three-way race two years earlier, he was controversial for his criticisms of the Metro Toronto Police and his support of the LGBTQ community. The campaign would revolve around these issues, serving as a referendum on the combative style he’d honed since joining city council in 1969.
The controversies began as soon as he became mayor. In January 1979, Sewell spoke at a rally supporting The Body Politic, a publication whose office had been raided by police just over a year earlier in the wake of an article about sexual relationships between men and minors. Evangelical groups spread his office number widely, while the Toronto Sun demanded his resignation. For the next two years, Sewell’s sexuality was constantly questioned by the Sun and by the public.
Detail from the cover of the February 1980 issue of The Body Politic.
The Sun also regularly denounced Sewell for his criticisms of the Metro Toronto Police. Following the shooting of Albert Johnson, a Black man, in August 1979, Sewell charged that the incident reflected systemic racism in the force and was proof, amid eight deaths in 13 months, of a shoot-first attitude. His calls for reform shaped his depiction as a cop hater and drew the enmity of the Metro Toronto Police Association.
In March 1980, Sewell declined to attend the funeral of Constable Michael Sweet, who’d been held hostage and shot while investigating a robbery. He feared his presence might offend mourners and politicize the event, though he also had a distaste for police funerals, as they glorified the force. The move, however, backfired and caused the city’s press to heap even more scorn on him.
Alongside these controversies were many others, including the poor financial situation of Cityhome (a city agency dedicated to building affordable housing), a defeated plan to provide aid to Grenada, and a tourist visit to a sex show in Amsterdam. Yet, despite these issues, Sewell had decent support from the city’s diverse minority communities and those who liked his combative style.
Homophobic cartoon from the September 28, 1980, issue of the Toronto Sun.
The question among the city’s backroom movers and shakers was who might successfully challenge him. A group including Metro Toronto chairman Paul Godfrey (who had frequently locked horns with Sewell and denied the mayor many of the important board and committee seats he desired), lawyer/fixer Jeff Lyons, and numerous Liberals and Progressive Conservatives settled on alderman Art Eggleton. Once described by political observer Colin Vaughan as being “as close to the centre as is politically and humanly possible,” Eggleton had first been elected to city council the same year as Sewell. An accountant, he’d served as the city’s budget chief. Known as a mediator, he had a low public profile and little charisma. Outside of council, he had run unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate in a 1978 federal byelection in Parkdale. His platform supported many of the same issues as Sewell’s (affordable housing, police reform, opposition to attempts to evict the residents of the Toronto Islands), but he was viewed as less confrontational.
After entering the mayoral race in March, Eggleton attacked Sewell’s personality and tendency to alienate people but didn’t land any decisive blows. He did participate in one of the odder events of the campaign, an August 5 Variety Club roast for outgoing police chief Harold Adamson that turned into a skewering of Sewell. Eggleton dressed as Sewell had during his council days, donning a leather jacket, a turtleneck sweater, and a long-haired wig with a bald spot. Eggleton observed that they had a “weird and wonderful relationship” in which Sewell was the weird one. Adamson received the biggest laugh when, in response to a Sewell quip about having the biggest funeral in Toronto when he died, he said, “It just goes to show that if you give the people what they really want, they’ll really turn out.”
Over the campaign, Eggleton shifted his focus to the issues. As many voters still had no clue who he was, he increased his advertising. A series of TV spots created by film producer Bill Marshall (who had worked for Sewell in 1978) showed Eggleton pointing out projects he had supported, such as Roy Thomson Hall, before stepping on a streetcar headed to city hall. For his part, Sewell reluctantly agreed to pose for a campaign brochure depicting a typical day as mayor. He preferred to be out among the public, using walking tours as campaign events.
A Hislop campaign ad from the October 1980 edition of The Body Politic
In terms of the council races, in which each ward elected two aldermen, the most-watched was Ward 6, which covered most of downtown. A spot there had opened up after Allan Sparrow decided not to run again. His wife, Sue, though, became campaign manager for LGBTQ activist and businessman George Hislop, who aimed to be the first openly gay city councillor. A part-owner of the Barracks bathhouse, he’d been charged with keeping a common bawdy house following a police raid in December 1978 — a point the Sun repeated endlessly.
Positioning him as “not the gay candidate, but the candidate who happens to be gay,” the Hislop campaign tried to spotlight general concerns such as day care, police reform, and protecting neighbourhoods. The press, though, maintained its focus on his sexuality. He felt it was important to promote public visibility. “By being out, we are no longer perceived as a mystery or a threat,” he told The Body Politic. “By not being judged solely in terms of our sexuality, we regain our humanity.”
Sun city-hall columnist John Downing gave Hislop credit for his campaign materials, which included a T-shirt that read “George Hislop Is Going Straight” on the front and “To City Hall” on the back. Many of Eggleton’s backers instead supported dentist Gordon Chong, who felt that relations with police had grown too heated and that parties needed to sit down and talk.
Sewell’s campaign team formed an alliance with Hislop’s, although, given the constant attacks on his own sexuality, Sewell was apprehensive about tying himself to it too closely. He agreed to attend the opening of Hislop’s campaign office in September but feared, correctly, that it would turn into a media circus. Sewell believed that an alliance with Hislop would cost him votes but that upholding one’s moral principles was more important. “We’re dealing with a minority,” he told the audience at the opening. “And representing minorities seems to be a basic principle that makes Toronto work very well.”
Hislop’s candidacy arose just as the Toronto Board of Education was being attacked over a proposal to establish a homosexual advisory committee and liaison. For some evangelical groups and for some at the Sun, the prospect conjured visions of kids being molested or brainwashed into becoming gay. (The proposal did not pass.)
The combination of Hislop’s run, Sewell’s support for LGBTQ people, and the school-board proposal
Photo of Art Eggleton (right) dressed as Sewell at the roast of outgoing police chief Harold Adamson. (Toronto Star, August 6, 1980)
fuelled an explosion of homophobia. Reading the Sun during the election campaign is an eye-opening experience; coverage included venomous editorials and Andy Donato cartoons. Queen’s Park columnist Claire Hoy suggested that readers should spread anti-gay petitions.
These petitions arose from another factor that had entered the picture. Evangelical groups were targeting anyone who showed even the slightest trace of sympathy for LGBTQ people. Reports surfaced that anti-gay pamphlets with titles like “Queers Do Not Produce: They Seduce!” had appeared in at least one police station. Among the loudest evangelical groups was Ken Campbell’s Renaissance International, which bought a two-page ad in the Sun on the eve of the election. Rejected by the Star for being potentially libellous, the ad, which claimed to speak for “Metro’s Moderate Majority,” declared that Sewell slandered communities with legitimate issues through “his mindless lack of discrimination between authentic minorities and the socially irresponsible who arrogantly flaunt their acquired disorientation as ‘normal.’” The ad compared homosexuals to alcoholics locked “in a destructive orgy of permissiveness and self-pity.” It also tried to depict homosexuals as child molesters who were on par with the Ku Klux Klan in offending good, moral Torontonians.
Neither Chong nor Eggleton wanted to be associated with any of these groups. Eggleton’s public stance on homosexuality varied throughout the campaign; while he did express fears that Toronto could turn into a northern version of San Francisco, he also stated that there was no room for discrimination, regardless of one’s sexuality.
The Metro Toronto Police Association also pursued the defeat of Sewell and Hislop. A memo asked members whether they’d be willing to donate a day to political campaigning. New MTPA president Paul Walter said he shuddered to think of what a “police-basher” like Hislop would do with the force if elected (Hislop countered by saying he still believed the majority of cops were good people). A Star editorial felt that the MTPA’s temptation to take a greater role in the campaign would “jeopardize the public trust and ultimately the role of the police as impartial upholders of the peace.” By the end of October, Walter had indicated the MTPA would officially stay out of partisan politics.
Going into the home stretch, the race appeared close. Sewell both offended and attracted voters, while Eggleton still hadn’t raised his profile as much as he’d hoped to. When the daily newspaper endorsements arrived, the Globe and Mail backed Sewell for his integrity. The Star found faults with both candidates but leaned toward Eggleton in hopes that he would prove less inflammatory and more open to spurring downtown economic development. The Sun also backed Eggleton, but mostly trotted out its grievance list against Sewell.
When results came in on November 10, the CBC initially declared Sewell the winner. But the totals see-sawed, and, by 10 p.m. Eggleton had taken the lead for good; he won by just under 2,000 votes. Sewell gained more support than he had in 1978 but carried only three of the city’s 11 wards. Hislop finished third in Ward 6 and blamed the volume of anti-gay literature for his loss. The Sun was ecstatic about Hislop’s defeat and declared that “decent people with a sense of propriety will rejoice.”
Detail from the front page of the November 11, 1980, Toronto Sun.
In the aftermath, Walter congratulated Chong and Eggleton in a holiday message carried in the MTPA’s magazine News & Views. The results marked “a progressive step toward a stable municipal government,” Walter said, adding that he looked forward to working with politicians who employed compromise and understanding instead of confrontation.
Sewell returned to city council via an October 1981 byelection to replace Heap in Ward 6. He retained his seat in the 1982 municipal election, while Chong was defeated by a political up-and-comer named Jack Layton. Hislop ran unsuccessfully for the Ontario legislature in 1981. He served as grand marshal of the city’s Pride Parade in 2004 and died the following year. A park just east of Yonge Street is named in his honour.
Eggleton, who served as mayor until 1991, didn't officially proclaim Pride celebrations during his tenure. The year Eggleton left office, Torontonians voted in their first openly LGBTQ councillor, Kyle Rae.
“The problem with being in public life is that not only must you make sense of your own actions, you must also worry about what the public makes of them,” Sewell reflected in a Toronto Life article he wrote following the election. “The maxim that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done, applies to political decision-making. Politicians must be able to convey to the public what they are doing. And that was one of my failures as a politician: I paid too little attention to what the public was seeing.”
Sources: How We Changed Toronto by John Sewell (Toronto: James Lorimer, 2015); the November 1980 and December 1980/January 1981 editions of The Body Politic; the August 6, 1980, September 4, 1980, October 18, 1980, October 23, 1980, November 6. 1980, and November 11, 1980, editions of the Globe and Mail; the December 1980 edition of News & Views; the July 1980 and February 1981 editions of Toronto Life; the October 18, 1980, October 24, 1980, October 31, 1980, and November 8, 1980, editions of the Toronto Star; and the October 21, 1980, October 23, 1980, and November 11, 1980, editions of the Toronto Sun.
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