Just after midnight on Thursday, May 5, 1977, three youths attacked a man in Allan Gardens. They beat him and kicked him in the head. When people came toward them to help, the three ran. The man’s wallet was left on the ground beside him.
At about 12:15 a.m., police were called to the area of Jarvis Street and Gerrard Street East. The man was found in the park with blunt trauma and taken to hospital.
He was Bernard Guay. Police records give his age as 62. The newspapers said he was 63.
Guay came from Sherbrooke, Quebec. His friend Marcel Robichaud had known him for 30 years, since they met in Montreal. Guay moved to Toronto in the early 1950s, the Toronto Star reported, barely able to speak English. For 25 years he lived downtown and worked as a kitchen helper in restaurants, among them Julie’s and George’s Spaghetti House.
Guay was epileptic, and his eyesight was failing. Friends said he couldn’t tell the colours of traffic lights apart. Seven months before the attack, his eyes forced him out of his job. He took to napping during the day and getting up late at night to walk near his apartment on Jarvis Street.
“He was a cheerful person. He liked meeting people,” Robichaud told the Star. He said Guay didn’t drink or smoke.
Robichaud lived near Allan Gardens, which the Star called a downtown haven for winos. He often warned Guay against walking through the park at night. “I wouldn’t dare go through there myself,” he said.
Guay was attacked in a section of the park that police described as “the favourite haunt of homosexuals.”
He was kept alive on heart and lung machines for six days. He died on Wednesday, May 11.
The next day, police released descriptions of the three suspects. All were white males in their late teens or early 20s. The youngest was about five foot two, with red, curly, shoulder-length hair. The other two were about five foot ten.
On Friday, May 13, the Star put the story on its front page. Reporter Dick Chapman opened by telling readers to think of Guay the next time they heard the phrase “Toronto The Good.” The headline said muggers had left a blind, elderly man to die in the park.
“Here you have a quiet old man minding his own business and three yahoos come along and kick him in the head,” Insp. George Sellars of the Metro homicide squad told the Star. Police were hoping one of the three had been bragging to his friends.
Sgt. John Mitchell of the homicide squad said he thought robbery was the motive. Guay’s wallet had been found on the ground beside him.
The story continued inside. Capt. James Stoops of the Salvation Army’s victim care clinic on Sherbourne Street said attacks like this were something his clinic dealt with all the time. “It’s become the survival of the fittest,” he said. Maj. Austin Millar of the Harbor Lights Mission, at Jarvis and Shuter, said the area had seen an influx of people who preyed on the helpless.
Stoops said many people came to the clinic after letting someone into their homes and being robbed. The Star’s next sentence began, “But Guay.” It reported that he had been living with Henri Carboit, 32, an unemployed restaurant worker.
Three days later, Richard J. Needham wrote about the case in his Globe and Mail column. He did not name Guay. He described a nearly-blind man, 63, who had died after a vicious beating by “would-be robbers” in Allan Gardens. He set the case beside the stabbing of a young mother in a Bramalea parking lot and the looting of a boy’s ice cream buggy. Old people, children and the handicapped, he wrote, were becoming targets.
By December, Metro Toronto had recorded 52 killings for the year, a record. On December 12, the Globe and Mail listed the seven still unsolved. One was Brian Latocki, 24, stabbed and tortured in his North York apartment on January 25. Police believed he may have been killed by a homosexual assailant. Another was Choung Yim Quan, 40, killed by a bomb in a Dundas Street restaurant on May 4, the day before Guay was attacked.
The Globe listed Guay as “a 63-year-old transient found beaten to death in Allen Gardens on May 11.”
Sellars told the paper that unsolved murders eventually receive less attention and a lower priority. The file, he said, is never closed until the killer is found.
On December 16, under the headline “Homosexual killer may be stalking city,” the Star reported a possible link among five unsolved killings. The day before, Neil Wilkinson, 35, a data processor at the Royal Bank, had been found beaten and nude in bed in his Charles Street East apartment. Police compared his death to Latocki’s. Both men, police said, had frequented homosexual bars on Yonge Street.
Police said three other men may also have been victims of killers who prey on homosexuals to rob them. James Douglas Taylor, 41, a house painter, was killed in his North York home in February 1976. James Robert Kennedy, 49, a federal civil servant, was found nude and strangled in his Jarvis Street apartment on September 28, 1976. The third was Bernard Guay, “found beaten and robbed in Allan Gardens March 5.”
In May, the Star had written about an old man minding his own business. In December, it placed him among men police believed were robbed because they were gay.
The record disagrees with itself. Police give his age as 62, and the papers give 63. The attack is dated May 5, and in December the Star dated it March 5. The Globe merged it with his death and gave May 11. The Star reported his wallet on the ground beside him, then seven months later reported him robbed. He had lived in a Jarvis Street apartment, and the Globe called him a transient.
His killing is a Toronto Police Service cold case, Homicide #17/1977.
Vital statistics
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Bernard Guay |
| Age | 62 |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Restaurant kitchen helper (out of work since about October 1976) |
| Date of death | May 11, 1977 (attacked May 5, 1977) |
| Manner of death | Blunt trauma |
| Location | Allan Gardens, near Jarvis Street and Gerrard Street East |
Sources
- Toronto Police Service, Cold Case Files, Homicide #17/1977: https://www.tps.ca/organizational-chart/specialized-operations-command/detective-operations/investigative-services/homicide/case/17/1977/
- The Toronto Star, May 13, 1977, pp. 1 and A12
- The Globe and Mail, May 16, 1977, p. 6 (Richard J. Needham, “A writer’s notebook”)
- The Globe and Mail, December 12, 1977, p. 5
- The Toronto Star, December 16, 1977, p. C1
- Photographs: Toronto Police Service (Guay); James Victor Salmon (Allan Gardens)
Murder Village Map
Vital Statistics
Name: Bernard Guay
Age: 62
Gender: Male
Date of Death: May 11, 1977
Manner of Death: Blunt force trauma
Location: 19 Horticulture Ave.
Suspect Name: 3 unknown men