I don’t know what we were expecting when we walked into the police station at 14 Division to see for the first time the man who blew up the Morgentaler Clinic in Toronto.
MetroPolice were finally going to unveil the photo of the man caught in the act in the early hours of that May night in 1992 when the Harbord Street clinic went up in a fiery blaze, wiping out one of the best known symbols of the abortion industry in Canada. Up until now, the arsonist’s head in the photograph had been blocked out. Police had released a picture shortly after the bombing of a man, carrying what appeared to be two gas cans, with his entire head hidden by a white box. The detective working on the case never explained why the key part of the photo had been kept away from the view of the public.
Now we were going to see the uncovered picture of the arsonist and perhaps we would even recognize him. We had heard so often, from the media and from abortion activists, that it had been some radical pro-lifer who had razed the building. Maybe we were expecting to see someone we knew, someone we had picketed with or who had been around the Campaign life office. I was with Jim Hughes, national president of Campaign Life Coalition, who never forgets a face, and another long-time Toronto activist who knows pretty well every active pro-lifer in town.
The photos turned out to be dramatic and tantalizing, but ultimately disappointing. Whoever it was we actually saw in the police pictures, the mystery remains a mystery and the case remains as cold as ever. The security at the clinic, for whatever reason, had been woefully inadequate at the time of the arson. Much of the action takes place out of the camera’s view. The arsonist only makes fleeting appearances in the range of the video camera. To make matters worse, the camera from which the pictures were retrieved had been found in the rubble of the building and had suffered water damage. The pictures were essentially useless. We couldn’t even tell whether it was the back or the front of the man’s head, or whether he had been wearing a mask. Forensic scientists had attempted to enlarge and enhance the photo but all their work produced was a big white blob. The man’s identity remained concealed. There were other video cameras but police either didn’t have images from them or weren’t showing them to us.
The only thing the police had to go on was the man’s build. They received very few leads from the public. At one point they were investigating white supremacists but that yielded no results. Because the abortion issue is such a politically hot issue, they are reluctant to say a great deal about the case and the detective who showed us the photos wouldn’t even state categorically that there is no arrest imminent.
So why was the identifying part of the photo hidden when we saw it? The detective said the police had their “reasons.” One possible explanation is that by hiding the head, police would scare the arsonist into believing that they had more information about him than they actually did. From what we saw, they certainly didn’t have that much to go on. There are still so many questions. What about this security company which had the contract at Morgentaler’s and conveniently produced video of such poor quality? Why the silence surrounding the case? Campaign Life Coalition has opened its affairs to the police, giving names of Toronto activists and offering its files and photographs. Is it really credible, as Morgentaler suggested, that radicals from the U.S. risked crossing the border to target a building they didn’t know in a strange town. Was it a lone crank or is there a conspiracy?
The bombing remains an unsolved mystery and there is no doubt who benefits from this. Most people have already pinned it on pro-lifers and that suits the other side just fine. The pro-life movement in Toronto and across Canada has taken a beating publicly as a result of the arson. The Ontario government, in a thinly veiled attack on the political arm of the pro-life movement, is looking for blanket injunctions and massive damages, often using the arson to justify its vendetta. Henry Morgentaler gets his spanking new publicly-funded clinic, massive infusions of government money and sympathy and support from the media. And pro-lifers are further marginalized, pushed one step away from civil discourse in the affairs of this country.
It’s in all their interests, including the provincial Attorney General and the abortion activists, that this case remains unsolved. As long as there are no arrests the fingers will continue to point at peaceful, compassionate people whose sole aim is to save children and help mothers. The word has to get out and pro-lifers should never tire of saying that there is absolutely nothing linking them to the arson at Morgentaler’s.
