Police investigating sex on the beach

MONTREAL - Not to be outdone by other undone Canadians, Quebecers have joined what's quickly becoming a national nude-fest.

But in Oka, about 40 kilometres northwest of Montreal, some people have taken the latest Canadian craze to new - and to many people unacceptable - levels.

The town, more famous for its 1990 native crisis than for nudity, is in a tizzy as some residents are going topless and bottomless and even engaging in sex on a nearby beach.

Oka Mayor Yvon Patry said his office has been flooded with complaints.

"We have to get rid of these obscene things, that's for sure," Patry said.

"It's crazy so we've asked the police to investigate."

Ronald Boudreault, a spokesman for the provincial force, said an investigation into indecent acts and nudity is under way.

"There were allegations of sexual relations and touching, masturbation and cases of nudity," he said.

According to Patry, there have been several cases of couples having sex on the beach.

But Robert Richer, the head of a Quebec naturalist group, said the indecency cases at Oka have nothing to do with nudity or nudists.

"The naturalist beach at Oka has been around for so long that we are wondering why this is a story," he said. "If there is a crime, the police should act."

The summer of 1997 may go down as the Canadian summer of nudity. Earlier this week a Saskatchewan woman rode topless down Regina's main drag in a Jeep on a dare from her boyfriend.

There have been several cases of topless squeegee-girls washing windshields in Toronto and of bare-breasted prostitutes in Ottawa.

Women have been publicly baring their breasts more frequently this summer since the Ontario Court of Appeal said both sexes in that province have the right to go topless.

The impetus came last winter when the appeals court overturned an indecency conviction against an Ontario woman who removed her shirt on a hot day in 1991.

Richer applauded the Canadian women who are asserting their right to go topless.

"Anything that strips away inequalities between women and men and prejudices over how a certain part of the female body is treated, then that is good," he said.

But Patry says Oka's problem is more than one of offended sensibilities.

"At the end of the 1980s, nudism was already a problem that people were complaining about in the park but the situation has deteriorated a lot since then with three cases of gross indecency," he said.

"Maybe nudism brought all of that."