Karen Fraser remembers the exact moment police told her she had to vacate her home on a calm Leaside crescent. It fixed her house as ground zero in an expansive police investigation and the focal point of a horrifying international story.On the morning of January 18, 2018, police arrested Bruce McArthur, the man who landscaped the yard of her home on Mallory Crescent and is now charged with killing eight men with ties to Toronto’s Gay Village. At the same time, police launched a massive investigation that saw officers fan out across the GTA and sent Fraser and her partner Ron Smith from their home for 22 days. It was just the first of the difficult days — for the victims’ families, for the LGBTQ community, for Fraser and Smith, for investigators, for the city.In the coming weeks, police would find human remains on the property Fraser and Smith owned, and yet more remains during a summertime excavation.As questions arose about past investigations into the disappearance of the missing men — and whether a killer could have been stopped sooner — an external review was launched to probe how police handle missing persons investigations.Read more:Alleged Gay Village serial killer Bruce McArthur ordered to return to court Jan. 29Will Toronto see fewer killings in 2019? A violent year ends with record totals — and questionsA timeline of the Bruce McArthur case and the police investigation into the Gay Village killingsBut it all began that day. And as the anniversary of the arrival of the police approached, Fraser and Smith decided they needed to do something to acknowledge it. “On the day when everyone’s thinking: ‘It’s been a year?’ — and then they wouldn’t quite know what to do with their reaction — we thought we need something to mark the day,” Fraser said in an interview this week.And so, at 10:25 a.m. Friday, which is the same time Fraser was ordered out of her home and when Mc ...
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