The area surrounding the Eaton Centre’s entrance at Yonge and Dundas has long been a magnet for people sharing their causes with the world. While pedestrians usually encounter street preachers and political activists there — sometimes they’ll face somebody pushing an agenda that stands out from the rest.
Such was the case the night of December 6, 1979.
As holiday shoppers entered the mall that evening, they heard shouts from a man who declared Santa Claus a fake and bemoaned he was “tired of parents lying to their kids.”
A crowd gathered to watch Richard Dildy, a computer technician and Vietnam War veteran, denounce Santa.
Dildy, who lived in East York, believed Santa Claus was a shield of fantasy that adults used to confuse impressionable children.
While some bystanders laughed at him, the police did not and ordered him to leave. A few hours later — after “imbibing some Christmas spirit,” according to the Toronto Sun — Dildy returned to resume his protest.
Crowds gathered on both sides of Yonge Street to hear Dildy’s anti-Santa screed before police also returned and arrested him for causing a disturbance. He spent the night in jail.
The next day, the Sun called Dildy a “grinch” and observed that he’d be lucky to receive a lump of coal that year.
The experience didn’t faze him. “This is a scientific world we’re living in. We’re going to the moon and outer space, but we’re still telling our children that reindeer fly,” he told the Toronto Star.
“All I was saying is that people have to stop lying to their children. I say give kids science and the new math. But don’t give them any fantasies and red-nosed reindeer flying around in the sky.”
“I’m planning to get a sign and I’m going back to the exact same place,” he promised. “I have a right to express myself.”
The power of signage
Dildy was no stranger to attention. He first drew the public’s eye in October 1978 when, after separating from his wife, he grew demoralized by the number of fake phone numbers he collected while trying to meet women at local bars and discos.
In his desperation, Dildy made a cardboard sign that read “SEPERATED AND LONELY! I NEED A GOOD WOMAN FOR LOVE AND COMPANIONSHIP. POSSIBLE MARRIAGE! WILL CONSIDER SMALL CHILDREN. MUST BE SINCERE!”
After wearing the sign during a 10-minute walk along Yonge Street between Dundas and King, he received 15 phone calls. Interest only grew among women and the media, including an article published in U.S.-based Jet magazine. After sorting through hundreds of inquiries and going on at least 35 dates, Dildy and his wife reunited.
That experience taught Dildy the power of signage. Over the next few years, he protested injustices in the city while wearing or carrying cardboard signs.
In August 1979, he wore nothing but a sign while protesting the fatal police shooting of a young black man, Buddy Evans. The following summer, he disrupted the Baptist World Congress at Maple Leaf Gardens when he rushed onstage wearing a sign that read “Jesus is not coming back.”
But it was his crusade against Santa Claus that gained Dildy most of his notoriety.
During his initial court appearance, Dildy argued he was arrested for simply telling the truth about the mythical North Pole figure.
When his case went to trial in February 1980, he appeared at Old City Hall wearing a sign that exclaimed “DOWN WITH SANTA! UP WITH TRUTH! STOP LYING TO THE KIDS! SANTA CLAUS MUST BE EXPOSED!”
He repeated his previous issues with the concept of Santa Claus (“You can’t cripple the children’s minds”), adding that he also believed Christmas had become over-commercialized.
His lawyer, Charles Roach, argued police paid more attention to Dildy than nearby street preachers because of the position he was espousing. Dildy received an absolute discharge, with Justice S.W. Long observing that only his shouting provided any cause for alarm.
Another arrest, this time at the Santa Claus Parade
The ruling appeared to embolden Dildy to escalate his crusade.
During Toronto’s 1980 Santa Claus Parade, he donned a sandwich board proclaiming “KIDS! SANTA IS A PHONEY AND FULL OF BALONEY SO PULL A CHRISTMAS PRANK AND GIVE HIS BEARD A YANK!”
He marched alongside the procession, yelling to onlookers “There is no Santa Claus!” The crowd was not amused, shouting back “Get this man off the street!” He was arrested again.
“I like the spirit of … Christmas. I just don’t believe in Santa Claus,” he told the press in the aftermath. “But this does not deter me, it only makes me stronger. I intend to intensify my struggle.”
Defending himself in court in December 1980, Dildy explained his motivation: preventing children from suffering the same disappointment he experienced when he learned Santa does not exist.
He recalled being so devastated that he lost interest in his schoolwork, which affected his grades. “I only wanted to save children from possible harm,” he told Justice David Scott.
Dildy received some support on the Toronto Star’s letters page.
“The reason that Dildy was arrested was probably that this type of demonstration would, if widespread enough, bring a downfall to the big money-making business that surrounds Christmas,” wrote Star reader J. Senecal. “It would be quite obvious that if one gets rid of the ‘jolly old soul’ there would be a lot of money lost.”
Scott was not amused by Dildy’s antics. “We’ve got to keep you off the streets at Santa Claus time,” the judge told him. “Attacking Santa Claus is akin to attacking motherhood and apple pie.”
Dildy was sentenced to pay a $50 fine or serve five days in jail. When Crown attorney Peter Griffiths raised no objection to granting Dildy 45 days to pay his fine, instead of the usual five, the judge joked that “There is a Santa Claus and his name is Griffiths. How can I go against Santa Claus?”
A ‘true activist,’ not a ‘crackpot’
Later actions also got Dildy into trouble. In 1987, he was fired from his sales job at the Prudential Insurance Company of America for placing a newspaper ad urging people to buy disability coverage before insurers began testing clients for AIDS, which he called “the worst epidemic to hit mankind and possibly the last.”
Dildy claimed he was following industry practice by warning about the possibility of terminal illnesses and believed the company viewed AIDS as a greater taboo than cancer or stroke.
Prudential Insurance president Ron Barbaro — who, ironically, was a longtime executive with the Santa Claus Parade — objected to the ad’s alarmist tone and noted Dildy failed to receive permission to run it.
Following Dildy’s death in 1988, freelance photographer Al Peabody, who befriended him after covering one of his protest walks, remembered him fondly.
“He was a true activist,” Peabody told the Star. “Maybe his methods would make him seem like a crackpot, but he was no crackpot. I had the greatest regard for him and respected him highly.”
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Jamie Bradburn is a Toronto-based freelance writer and historian, specializing in tales of the city and beyond. His work has been published by Spacing, the Toronto Star and TVO.
Sources: Globe and Mail, April 20, 1987 edition; Jet, March 29, 1979 edition; Toronto Star, October 12, 1978, December 7, 1979, February 8, 1980, February 23, 1980, July 9, 1980, November 3, 1980, November 8, 1980, December 23, 1980, April 13, 1987 and January 12, 1988 editions; and Toroonto Sun, December 7, 1979, November 3, 1980 and December 23, 1980 editions.