I lived at 214 Bathurst Street for years; my apartment was attached to a decaying building, which stood defiantly untouched. Worn-out letters clung to its dark brick like a whispered secret: Oak Leaf Steam Baths. Below that, in weathered bold:
“PRIVATE ROOMS, OPEN 24 HOURS, ORIGINAL WET & DRY STEAMS.”.
From our shared rooftop, I’d gaze down into its cavernous belly, a derelict husk of something once dripping with heat, sweat, and…sex. Open from 1941 to 2015, this bathhouse had nearly eight decades of secrets soaked into its tiled walls—and I needed to know what they were. Eventually, I found out from none other than legendary filmmaker and queer oracle, Bruce LaBruce, who gave me a glimpse into its scandalous past.
Last November, I found myself at a screening of Super 8½—LaBruce’s 1994 satirical porno-drama—screened inside the very building where it was originally shot, just weeks before it was set to be demolished.
Located at 156 Bathurst, the ex-printing house had once been occupied by LaBruce, who had a ‘Warholian’ vision for its vast and open space. It became a site where film, porn, and queer art converged. Later reborn as Soybomb—a DIY punk venue from 2003 to 2017—it kept pulsing on as an epicentre in Toronto’s underground (shoutout Slash Need).
In an early scene from Super 8½, the impossibly sexy Klaus von Brucker—LaBruce’s co-star and former lover—strikes a match and lights a cigarette outside the Oak Leaf Steam Baths. Shot on grainy Super 8, the bathhouse looks radiant, almost mythic—especially with Von Brucker smouldering in front of it.
Hours later, walking home from the screening, I noticed something new on its walls: a glossy sign slapped across its façade reading, “THE EXCITEMENT IS BUILDING.” The bathhouse was being reborn—as a boutique hotel. The irony was thick. So I asked LaBruce what kind of excitement really went down inside.
LaBruce didn’t set foot in a bathhouse until 1982—just a year after the Toronto Metropolitan police raided four of the city’s gay bathhouses in the now-infamous Operation Soap raids. Around 300 men were arrested in what was then the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history. The raids ignited mass protests and acted as a catalyst for the gay community to mobilize against the police's homophobia and brutality, which defined the period.
But instead of extinguishing bathhouse culture as the raids intended, LaBruce emphasizes how, after the raids, “It came back in full force—stronger than before.”
Operation Soap ignited a new wave of momentum for Canada’s Gay Liberation movement—already surging through the mid to late ’70s with its potent mix of sexual freedom and radical politics.
As LaBruce recalls, “Its political expression was tied inextricably to sexual radicalism. The core was sex—crazy sex, as much of it as you could have, in public spaces, with as many people as possible. All sorts of more public and communal expressions of sexuality.”
This wasn’t mere hedonism—it was defiance. It was a cultural moment where public sex became a form of protest. “That was more the mood of the gay world at that time,” LaBruce notes. “So having sex at a sauna was considered a political act—to be very libertine with your sexuality, and to give it full expression.”
In these spaces, desire doubled as demonstration, and pleasure pulsed with political charge. LaBruce described the towel as the “great equalizer”—a garment that dissolved markers of class and background, collapsing social hierarchies into a shared, sweaty anonymity. Thrust by thrust, the revolution moved forward, slick with heat and defiance.
Up until the early ’90s, the bars in Toronto shut down at 1 a.m., leaving many craving more after-hours action—enter the bathhouses, open 24/7 and pulsing with opportunity for a hot fix. LaBruce breaks it down: “There was kind of a different sauna for every type of gay person.”
The Barracks—tucked away on Widmer Street, where the Scotiabank Theatre now stands—was the leather-and-chains pitstop for the S&M crowd, and was, unsurprisingly, a key target in the Operation Soap raids. The Romans, on Bay, was a campy gay mirage: Roman columns, Greco gods, and a layout like a labyrinth. Then, the Club Baths, smack in the middle of what LaBruce refers to as the “gay ghetto,” or The Village as we know it, drew in a younger, more mainstream crowd.
And then there was the Oak Leaf—old-school, Euro-style, and never officially branded a gay bathhouse, though behind its fogged-up windows, most men knew exactly what they were there for.
LaBruce reminisced about the Oak Leaf’s archaic allure: “There were attendants with oak branches dipped in some kind of herbal ointment—they’d gently caress your body with them.” I told him it sounded deliciously erotic. He went on to say, “Yeah, yeah, but it wasn’t supposed to be erotic. It was more like the Turkish baths in Istanbul—a culture where homosexuality is still taboo, so these spaces become sites of discreet sexual release for men.”
And that’s exactly what the Oak Leaf became—a pressure valve for the married, the closeted, the men with no other outlet. It masqueraded as a traditional European bathhouse. But pull back the towel, and you’d find a discreet refuge for getting off without getting caught (if luck was on your side).
Of course, as LaBruce reminds us, part of the thrill was precisely that “it was a bit dangerous.” That edge—the risk, the secrecy—was an undeniable part of its appeal.
Upstairs, the Oak Leaf had private rooms—officially for a bit of privacy, maybe a nap. This is characteristic of traditional European bathhouses dating back to the Middle Ages, where many were equipped with sleeping chambers--establishing their early association with erotic diversions.
“That’s where the hustlers were,” LaBruce said.
The space operated under a veil of plausible deniability because the Oak Leaf was never publicly identified as a gay venue, and management could maintain a posture of ignorance. “They knew it was happening,” LaBruce explained, “but they wouldn’t acknowledge it. Because once you acknowledged it, you had to admit it was gay, and that gay sex was happening. So it was that classic old-school denial of reality.”
Because the Oak Leaf tolerated hustling—unlike other bathhouses of the era, like the Barracks, where even the suspicion of hustling could get you suspended—it attracted a markedly different crowd. In a strange twist, the old-guard denial of gay sex actually created room for transactional desire to not only exist, but thrive. It became a space where bodies could negotiate, perform, and exchange—in the hidden corners of the upper floor.
If you weren’t feeling the pull of the private rooms upstairs, there was always the lounge. LaBruce recalls how men would “lie around in their towels reading the newspaper, and you know, socializing.”
Maybe you’d catch someone’s eye, share a lingering glance, and treat them to a post-steam snack—thanks to Mimi’s Café, conveniently attached to the bathhouse. Through a little interior window, Mimi would serve up hot food to patrons still damp from their soak.
Mimi was far more than a cook—she was a central figure in the Queen West milieu of the 1980s, moving within intersecting networks of queer artists, punks, and political dissidents. Her café became a de facto gathering place for Toronto’s queer and countercultural underground, remembered by many for its spirit of radical hospitality.
LaBruce, who worked at the iconic Queen West restaurant La Hacienda at the time, was a regular at Mimi’s café. He recalls how the neighbourhood was the artistic epicentre of the city—bohemian, affordable, and deeply enmeshed in the politics of queer liberation.
“Toronto was quite fun in the ’80s!” he laughs, citing hotspots like The Cameron—a venue so popular it required a membership—and artist-run centres like A Space, which fostered a lively scene.
But LaBruce also complicates the mythos surrounding Mimi. “I always found her quite terrifying—a bit imperialist, and very flamboyant,” he admits, hinting at the tension between her commanding presence and her near cult-like status. “On any given night, you could be blessed or banished.”
“If she took a liking to you, it was all good,” LaBruce told me. “But if you said the wrong thing—or did something she didn’t approve of—you’d get a whole lot of shade when you walked in.”
Curious where he stood in her hierarchy of favour, I asked if he’d ever offended her. He smirked: “Probably.”
.jpg)
Photo by Kaiya Nixon
But beyond any one story, the Oak Leaf holds a collective memory. Discreet to a fault, it thrived precisely because it didn’t scream its purpose—its reputation of subtlety allowed it to become one of the city's longest-running gay-identified businesses.
The sign outside reads, “THE EXCITEMENT IS BUILDING.” But the real excitement has already coursed through its walls--hot and hungry. Walk past 216 Bathurst and remember it not for what it's becoming, but for what it was: a site of resistance, a cathedral of pleasure.
.png)
.jpeg)
