Emanuel Jacques' story - Shocking murder of the shoeshine boy is grist for a new documentary film by Bill Moniz
Has it really been 28 years since the shocking murder of little Portuguese
boy Emanuel Jacques? Yes. His sad story and the story of the evolution of
Toronto's Portuguese community gets retold in a solid news documentary The
Shoeshine Boy.
Director-producer Bill Moniz has carefully focused on the larger incidents rather than the sordid details of the murder.
He wisely chose to tell the story through the experiences of veteran Toronto Star reporter Dale Brazao, who wrote many drafts to play up the larger social consequences.
In 1977 Brazao was a young police reporter at The Star who lived through the horrors of those days and knew what happened to those involved.
"Also I had a Portuguese background, "Brazao says. "I could relate to what was happening in that community."
As written by Brazao, the narrative begins with a description of the kind of city Toronto was in 1977 - the "Yonge Street strip" from King Street to Bloor Street had become a festering cesspool of body rub parlours which were fronts for prostitution. Hard drug use was on the rise - it was certainly one of the most unsafe places in the city for a 12-year-old shoeshine boy to be working.
Establishing shots show the area was not unlike New York city's Times Square with its drug pushers, prostitutes (male and female) and army of panhandlers.
Brazao is able in a few broad strokes to give us the background of the Jacques family - like so many Portuguese they had left a crumbling dictatorship for a life they hoped might be better in Toronto.
Muniz creatively uses actors to recreate the abduction but Brazao says he deliberately stayed away from sordid details.
"In those days The Star's veteran reporter Jocko Thomas had incredible police contacts and got tipped off one suspect was coming over to the murder site to give police a sort of tour."
Brazao provides his own insights into the capture of the four suspects and the subsequent trial (not filmed, of course). He even gives an update on what happened after the trial: there were three convictions and two men are still in prison and expected to remain there for the rest of their lives (the third man died).
Brazao then sketches in the predictable outrage of the Portuguese community. The community felt they had always been law abiding and now this?
Few events in Toronto's history so changed a city. Children continue to be killed, but the brutality of this act horrified everybody. And the Portuguese community became politicized as never before. George Hyslop, filmed just before his death, talks about his efforts to steer outrage clear of gay people who feared a backlash. Brazao knows what has happened to the Jacques family but deliberately leaves them out at the end because they asked for peace.
Says Brazao "Time can never heal these wounds. It's a huge news story that deserves to be remembered, a true turning point for the city."
Saturday at 9 p.m. on OMNI.1. It repeats Sunday at 8 p.m.
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