At about 8:50 on the evening of Saturday, December 20, 1975, police responded to a 911 call at the St. Charles Tavern, 484 Yonge Street. The Toronto Police Service recorded that the victim was inside the tavern, suffering from blunt trauma. Homicide detectives later told the Toronto Star that he had been found in the washroom at 8:50 p.m. He was taken to hospital.
His name was Frederick John Fontaine. He was 32 and worked as a technician for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, according to CBC News. The Star gave his address as Castle Frank Road.
The St. Charles had opened in August 1950 in the old Fire Hall Number Three, as a cocktail lounge owned by the horse breeder Charles Hemstead. In January 1966 the Toronto Daily Star carried an advertisement for “Call Me Miss-Ter,” a female impersonation revue in its Mandarin Room, with three shows nightly Thursday to Saturday. CBC News described it as one of the most prominent gay bars in the city in the 1970s. Torontoist’s Historicist column reported that as the decade wore on, patrons used the back door to avoid being seen.
Ten months before the attack, on February 18, 1975, Harold Walkley, a 51-year-old history teacher, was found stabbed in his bedroom on Borden Street. The Body Politic would later count his death as the first in a series of fourteen.
Fontaine stayed in hospital. On February 11, 1976, James Taylor, 41, a painter and decorator, was found in his home, beaten to death with a baseball bat.
Fontaine died at Toronto General Hospital on Thursday, July 15, 1976. He was 33. The next day Dr. James Ferris, the deputy provincial pathologist, performed an autopsy and found that death was caused by “skull and facial fractures.” The Star reported on Saturday, July 17, under the headline “Man dies 7 months after attack,” that he had been in a coma for several months. The story called the assault “vicious” and said it was “Metro’s 49th murder in 1976.” It identified him as “an employee of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.” and named the St. Charles Tavern in its last sentence. It did not describe the tavern or its patrons.
The family’s death notice ran in the Star on July 16 and 17 and in the Globe and Mail on July 19. It said he had died “after a long illness.” His mother lived in Cornwall, and the notice announced a funeral at St. Columban’s Church there on Monday, July 19, at 10 a.m.
On September 20, 1976, James Kennedy, 49, was found dead in his Jarvis Street apartment with a towel knotted around his neck, the Body Politic reported. He had last been seen at the St. Charles Tavern the night before.
On November 28, 1978, police found the body of Duncan Robinson, 24, stabbed in his Vaughan Road apartment. The next day the Star ran a story by Dave Norris under the headline “Homosexual killing 14th in 3½ years.” It reported that “several homosexuals have been killed in their apartments in the past three years after visiting homosexual bars in downtown Toronto,” and it listed the other unsolved cases. One entry read: “Fred Fontain, 33, a CBC technician, beaten in the St. Charles Tavern in December, 1975.” Fontaine had been attacked inside the tavern. The list gave his name as “Fontain.”
Shortly after Robinson’s death, the Body Politic reported, a message was scrawled on the wall in the washroom of the St. Charles Tavern: “I’ll kill again Saturday night.”
The magazine’s February 1979 issue put “homosexual slayings” in quotation marks on its cover and ran “Overkill,” by Robin Hardy, on the fourteen cases. Eight, it said, were unsolved. The article named Fontaine among them: “Nor do police know who murdered Fred Fontaine, Donald Rochester, and Sandy Leblanc.” Inspector Hobson of Homicide told the magazine: “In several of the murders there is a common denominator: the victim was last seen at the St Charles Tavern, and met his murderer there. Beyond that we cannot say if there is a connection.”
No one has been charged. The Toronto Police Service lists the case in its cold case files as Homicide #49/1975.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Frederick John (Fred) Fontaine; “Fontain” in the Toronto Star, November 29, 1978 |
| Age | 33 at death; 32 at the time of the assault |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Technician, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation |
| Date of death | July 15, 1976 (assaulted December 20, 1975) |
| Manner of death | Blunt force trauma; skull and facial fractures |
| Location | St. Charles Tavern, 484–488 Yonge Street (assault); Toronto General Hospital (death) |
Sources
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #49/1975 (Frederick John Fontaine)
- Toronto Star, July 16, 1976, p. B6 (death notice)
- Toronto Star, July 17, 1976, p. C10 (“Man dies 7 months after attack”; death notice)
- The Globe and Mail, July 19, 1976, p. 37 (death notice)
- Toronto Star, November 29, 1978, p. A3 (Dave Norris, “Homosexual killing 14th in 3½ years”)
- The Body Politic, February 1979, pp. 19–21 (Robin Hardy, “Overkill”)
- Toronto Daily Star, January 26, 1966, p. 36 (advertisement, “Call Me Miss-Ter”)
- Jamie Bradburn, “Historicist: How the St. Charles Tavern went from Chinese-Food Restaurant to Popular Gay Bar,” Torontoist, June 25, 2016
- Lisa Mayor, Jen White and Saman Malik, “It happened before,” CBC News, April 4, 2018
- Photograph: St. Charles Tavern, City of Toronto Archives
Murder Village Map