Nightmare on Yonge Street

Saturday, October 27, 1990
The Concert Hall

A fire broke out at the Halloween dance of 1990, Nightmare on Yonge Street, which made it one of the more memorable Halloween events. Rob Stout recalls the night of the fire:

"We had a fire at our dance, right over the stage. The Masonic Temple had filled the area with these little peanuts made out of styrofoam–the purpose was to try to keep the sound from going up in the Masonic Temple lodges upstairs. They normally wouldn’t have events up there while the dances were happening, but they would during concerts. Well, somebody went in, found this door that goes into that area and we think he set the fire on purpose. It was a healthy blaze, that’s for sure. One of our guys, without us asking, he just decided to pick up a fire hose and work at it while we had already called the fire department in. We were just trying to keep this guy alive. He’s a hero of mine, Ted. He was on the DJ crew. If he was going to fall or anything, we were going to drag him out of there so fast, the fumes were something. I was worried that something was going to get him. So, the firetrucks all pulled up, we had everybody out of the building onto the street, most people had no coats with them whatsoever, they were in the coat check. Everyone was outside and it was really cold–really cold. So, they were all freezing outside with no coats, they couldn’t go home. Probably in about half an hour or so everything was somewhat back to normal, and we let the people back in. I think they just got their coats and left, we didn’t start the music up again.” 

A Xtra! article from November 1990 describes the dance and the fire, noting that “more than a thousand queens on Yonge Street” waited as firefighters doused the blaze. 

“I remember a certain drag queen decided she was going to use the fire department’s truck as a prop for taking pictures. It was her big chance. She was splayed all over this vehicle, trying to get her picture on some kind of a cover of a magazine! I was trying to keep her off, ‘Get away from there, we have a serious problem here!’ Oh no, she has to do this. And she has to do this right now [laughs]. It was just too much."

- Rob Stout, GCDC Organiser