Canada just approved a site for a $5.6 million memorial (C$8million, €5.3million) commemorating its government’s nearly five-decades-long purge of thousands of LGBTQ people from military and government jobs.

The memorial will be set in Ottawa on a “gently sloping green” with views of Canda’s Supreme Court and Parliament Hill. But most importantly, it will keep the memory of the purge itself alive so that others might never relive it.

In the 1940’s, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and a panel from National Defense and External Affairs began conducting background checks to root out any people with “moral failings” or “character weaknesses” that might make them potential security risks. This included LGBTQ people.

This was around the time of rising World War II tensions with Russia, and the Canadian government suspected queers of sympathizing with communists (since North American capitalism was quite anti-LGBTQ). The government also thought that closeted queer people would become ripe targets for foreign agents to blackmail.

To root out homosexuals, investigators used a device created by a Carleton University professor called “The Fruit Machine.” It allegedly detected homosexuals by measuring a person’s perspiration, pupil dilation, and heart rate while being shown erotic gay images. Using this, lie detector tests, and surveillance, investigators would ask suspected queers humiliating personal questions to decide if they were LGBTQ. Read more via LGBTQ Nation