Original subtitles

[♪♪♪]

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[footsteps click]

[chair wheels draw closer]

We're dealing with the kind of racism

that we usually break down in two categories.

One kind of racism is manifested

in what we call "individualized racism."

The other kind

is what we call "institutionalized racism,"

and we're dealing with both kinds now.

They have not really had to confront

this kind of issue before, face-to-face,

because of the small black population in Canada.

[reporter]: In your opinion, do you believe

there is some racism in this university?

Well, there is racial discrimination in this city.

There is racial discrimination on this continent,

and I would be very much surprised

if the university was made up of a group of angels,

whereas we know full well that our society is not.

If there is racial discrimination

in this university,

I will make up my mind on this

when I hear the evidence under due process

to this effect.

[yelling, cheering]

We want justice! We want justice!

[narrator]: February, 1969.

For two weeks,

hundreds of students barricaded themselves

in the university's computer centre.

They were protesting the alleged racism

of a university professor.

What started out as a peaceful protest

turned into ugly violence

when the occupants allegedly set the building on fire

and destroyed the computers with axes.

97 protestors faced a variety of criminal charges.

Many of those charged were from the Caribbean.

The Sir George Williams incident

had a greater effect on Canadians

than the surface details would suggest.

The computer centre riot

has gained an almost mythical stature

as a turning point for race relations in Canada.

The Sir George event is a story,

a story of a whole bunch of circumstances

that came together.

None of the individuals really mattered.

The individuals were all part of a mosaic,

and they represented a story

that is embedded in the entire larger community.

[bees buzzing]

[Bukka Rennie]: I think, basically, what happened with me

is that, um, I was frustrated at the time

in around '65, '66 in Trinidad and Tobago.

I wanted something else.

I wanted to explore other possibilities,

and the idea came that, look,

I would have to get out of Trinidad.

[dog whines]

When I began applying to Canadian universities,

Sir George Williams did something that was really...

that really caught me.

They were asking me things like what kind of music I like,

whether I'm an introvert,

and I felt that this here was a situation

where these people began to make me feel

that I could belong here.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Hey, friend, say, friend Come on over ♪

♪ Looking for happiness

♪ This is the place

When I came to Canada,

I did not view myself as an immigrant.

I thought of myself

as moving from one part of the British Empire

to the other.

I came to Canada with little race consciousness

because Barbados was a small island,

never changed hands, always British,

with a very homogenous population,

so when I think about it now, it was a little bit amusing,

and didn't at all prepare me for what I was to find.

[announcer]: Montreal.

To the whole world, Canada says, "Come to the fair."

Expo '67,

the greatest trade exhibition in history, is open.

Here's the whole world in colourful miniature.

All the pavilions have exciting differences,

but over them all, there's exciting oneness,

a common denominator that is human and welcoming.

[Cools]: It was a great promise of diversity.

And remember, this is all new language.

When I was growing up, the term would've been

the universal brotherhood of men.

The people who are coming here with an open mind

will have a chance to measure themselves

at a dimension that is far greater

than that dimension

they are normally measuring themselves to.

We have here 70 countries,

who will be here with a different colour skin,

a different language, a different tradition,

a different architecture, a different way of life,

a different political system.

The promises can never, ever match up

to the reality of existence,

and for those people who might've conflated Expo '67

with the Canadian experience,

well...

that would've been an error of judgement.

[Rennie]: My immediate horror

was trying to get a place to rent.

I remember, on a couple occasions,

using the newspaper and calling places,

and tell me come and see the place,

and when I go, the first thing they tell me,

"Oh, this is a sorority house.

We're so sorry we didn't tell you that."

You know?

I had a number of experiences of that,

and I realized to myself,

I said, "Hmm, you know something?

It would seem to me as though Canadians are racist,

but that they like to apologize for being racist."

[laughs]

[John]: There was a pattern of behaviour

that was brought to my attention

in the academic year of 1966-1967.

We met Anderson in a course

that was preparing us for medical school.

[John]: And if you had any illusions

about going on to medicine,

you needed that course.

Anderson was a lecturer who missed most of his lectures,

so we had to study on our own.

Anderson never, ever supervised us in the labs,

but the times he did come there,

he would continuously address us as Mr. Ballantyne or Mr. Mossop,

whereas he would address the white students

as John, Mary, or so forth.

About eight or nine black students

were being failed regularly,

and we couldn't understand what was the motivation for it.

[John]: Had we been a group of white, English immigrants

who were feeling eliminated,

there would never have been the assumption

that because these people are immigrants,

they are somehow intellectually inferior

to the average student.

That would never have been the narrative.

It's not as if somehow, I was a failing student.

None of us were failing students.

We just hit the brick wall of failure

when it came to Perry Anderson's class.

My personal experience

is that I did some labs...

I was very meticulous with lab work...

and submitted them.

These same labs were copied by about three students,

word-for-word.

I got sevens for my labs, and these students got tens.

[John]: Somewhere along the line,

at the basis of all of this

are elements that can be construed as racism.

And so,

to shorten the discussion,

that is what was then the charge.

[wind blows]

When I came, I was a stranger.

The essential quality of the community

was a coldness.

I became instantly aware that I was the other.

It was a really sharp demarcation

from one state to another.

And as the other,

you could not go anywhere without being watched.

We, as students, feel that we have a right to be heard,

that our issues should at least be aired,

that we should have a hearing.

So in April of '68,

there were 14 of us who went to present our case.

I am interested in the fact that it took from April of '68

until December of that year to force this issue,

which is an issue vital to the life of any university,

to the fore.

It seems during that period, to me,

that the black students acted with forbearance,

with intelligence,

in a situation

which must have been a situation of immense frustration.

The university decided

that they would set up a committee to investigate.

They wanted to resolve the problem

within the university administration.

[John]: This hearing committee

was supposed to reconvene a meeting

to go back over the charges.

That hearing committee,

comprised of two black professors,

two white professors, and one professor,

I think it was Professor Mannen,

of East Indian heritage.

We accepted to be there because, in part,

we wanted to make sure

that the students had a fair hearing.

Our job was to gather information from the students

concerning the claims that they made,

and also gather information from the professor

to make a judgement.

That didn't sit too easy with me,

because you can't be the judge and the jury

at the same time.

[John]: The position that the two black professors were in

was untenable.

[Bayne]: And the students were very smart.

They made sure that we couldn't function,

because they confronted me on the mezzanine.

Four of them confronted me on the mezzanine

with crazy charges,

and call you sellout, traitor, this, that,

and which got me so angry that I almost got into a fight,

and at that very moment, that was it.

That means I could not sit and receive information

and make judgment about it.

So that's how it happened that we got off the committee.

[John]: As a minority individual,

we are constantly struggling

with the majority's notion of who we are.

The question that the individual faces

is in order to be authentic,

how much of that interpretation by the other

do you absorb?

How do you then react against it?

Well, my father is Omowale Indongo.

He was known as Omowale

even during the Sir George incident.

His name was Kennedy Fredericks.

His birth name was Kennedy Fredericks.

[Chang]: Kennedy was hoping to get good grades,

especially in bio,

to go on to a medical degree,

and this thing was really devastating to him.

My father was definitely involved from the beginning

when they accused this professor of racism.

I grew up with the Sir George Affair

being just a part of my narrative,

and I was just always aware of it.

Any time somebody would repeat to me the story,

they would say, "Oh,

and they wanted to charge him with everything,

kidnapping, and all these things,"

but nobody actually went into detail why kidnapping.

[Bayne]: What I remember specifically,

is that they were fed up,

and so that Kennedy and these other guys

decided they would go to the director's office,

which was an acting director at the time, O'Brien,

and demand... literally, that's the language they used.

"These are our demands. We are demanding this.

We are not leaving here

until we get answers to this question."

[locking door]

And they did not allow him to leave,

or he felt that he couldn't.

If you are told

for all your life

that blacks are violent...

And then five blacks stand up in your office

and say, "Either you answer me,

or else you're not leaving here..."

how are the neurons in your brain

connected to interpret that?

[crash]

The manner of West Indians is somewhat more expansive

than our own.

They tend to speak with large gestures.

They tend to laugh...

immoderately, perhaps.

The language is very picturesque,

choice, frequently obscene,

but nowadays, of course,

since nobody seems to object to that kind of language,

no one took it all that seriously,

and we were assured, therefore,

that it would be wrong on our part,

it would be overreacting

if we took what the students were saying

at its face value.

[John]: As a human being, you were devalued...

and devalued in a manner

that did not give you many, if any, opportunities

to redress it.

That somewhere along the line, they...

the implicit assumptions of slavery

had become institutionalized.

You were supposed to be voiceless.

You were supposed to simply accept

whatever was dished out to you

simply because it was decreed...by.

At some point, it becomes very difficult to sit back

and to accept that.

It is said that if you are white, you are right.

If you are brown, stand down, and if you are black, get back.

Is this the general feeling of the Sir George students now?

[students]: No!

Well, when I came in the school this morning,

when I came into Sir George as a past Georgian,

I was most surprised and shook up.

I never thought that at any time,

I would see a display of bigotry

as what took place at the cafeteria yesterday.

"Niggers go home!"

That was the sign that was, um,

posted at the cafeteria yesterday.

What is significant about the sign

is that only last week in your parliament,

in your just society,

one member of parliament got up

and said something pretty... pretty similar to that.

He was saying

that they should send the Caribbean students

back home.

[John]: In a sense, we were all our brother's keepers

at that time,

and so all of these were simply opportunities

to show solidarity

with people who suffered from, um,

similar constraints

by a system that would determine

true power...

class...

opportunity.

I was self-righteous, of course,

because I'd been, you know, dissed in a very negative way,

in an anti-Semitic way,

and so, the cop was, you know, and I just...

Here I am,

this 12-year-old little guy and this big, tall cop,

and he's trying to get us to move on,

and I'm saying,

"Well, no, I'm not going anywhere

until you arrest that guy,"

you know, "because he called me a dirty Jew,"

you know?

Cop looks at me like I'm crazy,

and so he's trying to scare me into just moving on.

So he opens, swings open the back door,

and he says, "Do you want to get in,

have me take you to the police station?"

I said, "Yeah!"

So he took me to the police station

and made me sit there for a couple of hours,

then called my father.

This is Sunday. My father's not a happy camper.

He shows up, and then they're all telling my father

about how I'm rude

and I was disrespectful of a police officer

and on and on,

and I'm trying to say something, you know,

like, tell my father what happened,

and everybody's saying, "No, shut up! Shut up!"

My father is telling me to keep quiet.

Anyways, so at the end of it,

they're going to set a date for juvenile court,

and this whole thing's going on,

and then we leave,

and we're walking out the door,

and we're walking down the street towards home,

and my, you know, and I said to my father,

"Well, Dad, you didn't let me speak," you know?

"I mean, the man who yelled at us

called me a dirty Jew."

My father's face just blanched.

He turned around, grabbed my hand,

walked me back into that police station,

walked up to the desk sergeant, and said,

"I want the name of the person who called in the complaint."

And they said, "Well, we don't have it."

He said, "Aren't you supposed to take the name

of anybody who makes a complaint?

Because that gentleman made an anti-Semitic comment

to my son,

and I want it dealt with."

Well, the long and the short of it

was they became very apologetic,

very, you know, the whole thing changed.

Forget about juvenile court, forget about this, let's just,

you know, I'm sorry, it was a mistake.

It's all over, and we went home.

And... I mean, that may have been the reason

I participated in Sir George,

because subsequent to that, my dad never said a thing to me,

but my mother told me later how proud he was...

that I'd stood up.

I knew nothing about the incident

until a day in January,

when there was this large meeting

in the big auditorium on the main floor.

[man]: As far back as 10 months ago,

some black students had laid some charges of racism

against a Sir George Williams professor,

and during the whole period of 10 months,

the administration here seems to have managed

to not do one single constructive thing

about those charges.

I am disappointed in the fact

that a university administration

is incapable of dealing

with such a minor, basic issue.

Essentially, what happened is the students questioned

the composition of the committee.

The six of us who were central to this

were not, um,

taken into account

when two replacements were made

to the two black professors.

[reporter]: The black students have said

that the new committee is unacceptable to them.

Were they not consulted at the time it was formed?

A breakdown in communications had occurred.

I believe that attempts were made

to get in touch with the black students.

This seems to have come to naught.

I don't know whose responsibility it is here.

[Bayne]: There was a certain degree of anxiety.

I had removed myself from the process

because I felt in some sense that I was compromised.

It was originally agreed

that a committee should be agreeable

to both the black students and Anderson.

So since one of the agreements has not been made,

therefore, as far as anybody who's on the side of justice

is concerned,

this hearing and this committee is totally invalid.

My recollection is the committee then adjourned

for a short period of time,

went out of the room,

had a conversation, came back into the room

and said something to the effect of,

"Well, we've decided we're impartial,

and we're going to continue."

[Lyon]: My main concern was that the hearing go ahead

and that Perry have the chance to clear himself.

I got the impression that Perry was vulnerable.

My job was to protect his interests

because the university administration and their lawyers

would obviously consider first

their obligations to the institution.

[Bayne]: Everyone,

from his or her own particular perspective,

was chasing

or trying to get a situation set up

that they felt were just, in which justice was done,

justice was done from their perspective.

There's no one here

who is more concerned about this issue

than myself.

[man]: And so am I!

As a matter of fact,

we are not only taking on an individual member of faculty,

but also the administration...

So, when we were holding Anderson accountable,

in a sense, we were challenging

the entire structure of that department,

and there was no way in hell

that they were going to accept that.

[Adamson]: I said that under these conditions,

I would answer no questions.

I just have one more thing to say, however.

My present condition

is that I think I can sit here for about four hours,

but I have a relatively weak bladder,

and I cannot answer for the consequences after that.

[laughing, applause]

[Hubsher]: The university was acting

in an inappropriate, unjust manner,

and really was not giving the due that was necessary.

Kennedy Fredericks just got up and exploded

because we were going nowhere.

Will all black people come down to the front?

Down to the front!

[jeering, yelling]

All those that are interested in justice,

come on down!

Come on down!

[Adamson]: Uh, Mr. Lyon...

Mr. Chairman...

Would you...

I...I would like to allow the audience to this hearing

to calm itself down,

and when it has,

I'm very anxious to hear your remarks.

At some point, Perry's sister...

she was calling to him, sounding quite alarmed,

to get out,

and so, I ushered Perry to the exit

and told him he might as well leave.

[Hubsher]: I have no idea

whether Professor Anderson was a racist or not

or whether he discriminated against those students or not.

We never got there.

[Fredericks]: Those people who support our demands,

namely, one,

that the administration publicly declare this committee illegal,

two, that the administration meet immediately

with us and Anderson

and set up a new committee.

Three, that the administration

drop criminal charges against three black students.

If you agree with those demands,

we ask you to come with us right now.

Are you prepared to stand up for your rights?

Yes!

Are you prepared to stand for your rights?

Yes!

Are you going to let the administration

push you around?

No!

Or do you intend to go to the end?

Yes!

Right to the bitter end?

Yes!

[Hubsher]: The outcome of that meeting,

which made many people very unhappy,

led to the occupation of the computer centre.

[Fredericks]: We are on the ninth floor

in the computer centre,

and that's the only room

the meeting is going to be continued.

So, everybody, let's get upstairs.

Let's take a stand now!

Let's go!

Everybody that believes in justice, take a stand.

Don't sit on your asses anymore.

Move up there and take a stand.

It's about time the white people on this campus

took a stand one way or the other.

So let's take your stand now.

Up that escalator, follow that man, and go!

[Fredericks]: If you whites can sit back

and have people like O'Brien run you to hell crazy,

that's your privilege.

You're punks.

[Indongo]: Way before Mommy was born,

um,

your grandfather...

took some very huge risks, um...

for... for a just cause.

I didn't really grow up with my dad

because of how his life panned out after that incident.

I feel like I was maybe six or seven,

and I think

some of my aunts and uncles

took it on themselves

to really tell me about my father.

I grew up with this image

of this, this amazing, militant activist type

who was really smart and courageous.

Sometimes I really feel

that my parents' story kind of is stuck on my back.

[jamming]

Viens pour repeter.

Yeah. All right. Awesome.

So we're going to run through it.

I guess I kind of naturally exude that same type of energy

that my father put out there at the time

when he was sort of fighting for...

fighting for justice.

♪ We forward in this generation ♪

♪ Triumphantly

♪ Won't you help to sing

My greatest fear is not effecting change

and not being able to feel that, okay,

I contributed to something in...in a large way.

♪ Redemption song

♪ Redemption song

[Cools]: The '60s were a powerful period,

and for many young people, including myself...

a disruptive one.

It took me a long time to...to recover from that era.

It was powerful because it touched so many people.

How is it and how could it be

that an entire generation was prepared to make sacrifices

and to conceive of a notion that something had to change

because the air was ripe with change.

[Valerie Belgrave]: These are euphoric sort of occasions,

when you have people coming together for a cause,

and they're all optimistic,

and they're all supporting what we think is a just cause,

and so it definitely was a great atmosphere.

There was a great sense of camaraderie,

and when the occupation took place,

we went in order to make sure that it didn't go bad.

Obviously, we wanted the matter to be settled,

and that was the, um, intention, that was the aim, you know?

That was what we expected.

Let's take a look at the action

at Sir George Williams University tonight right now.

As we talk, some 200 students

are still occupying the computer centre there.

They've tried to keep the place clean.

There's been no vandalism.

As the sit-in ends its fourth day,

matters are still at an impasse,

and the administration is considering its next move.

[man]: It seems clear now

that this is not a black and white issue.

The administration are not doing anything

because they don't have to.

[applause]

It seemed to this 21-year-old deluded person

that I was at that time,

affected by everything,

that really, you know,

that an armed insurgence was about the only way

things were going to change.

What I've got to say is very personal,

but it affects every one of you.

You hear...

There have been people that have stood up here

and have called you a racist.

Now, I'm going to call you a racist,

and I'm going to call you a racist

for a very good reason...

because I was a racist!

Because, yeah, sure,

I knew about the oppression of the blacks,

but I'd never done anything.

As long as I haven't done anything, I'm a racist,

and as long as you don't do anything,

you're a racist.

[Marvin Coleby]: Back in the '60s,

it was more acceptable, at least easy,

to talk about race,

just because, you know, explicit racism still existed

in a way that it doesn't exist anymore.

So I suppose,

in that type of politically and socially charged atmosphere,

race was a more acceptable topic to bring up.

Now, today, we have a strange situation

where we don't have explicit racism in the same way

as we have implicit racism today,

which, in my opinion, is much more dangerous.

It's a racism that we don't see.

It's hidden in jokes. It's hidden in institutions.

It's hidden in government actions.

So when I came here, and the first place I went

was in the countryside in Quebec,

I was the only Caribbean person on campus.

I was the only person of colour on campus,

and I was shocked.

I, like, come into this community

and actually saying,

"Oh, you know, like, my skin is actually a problem here.

Like, it's actually an issue. People actually see it,"

as opposed to before,

where I didn't even think of myself that way,

and I suppose my search

for understanding the computer riots

was influenced

by the fact that I felt, in many ways,

what they felt at the time

and what influenced their actions.

[John]: There was a meeting

in which discussions were being held

as to what the next step should do in the occupation.

And there was a gentleman there,

a black gentleman,

who advocated

that maybe we should get some dynamite

and put it in the elevator shaft

and blow up the university.

It was thought

it was a little bit of an outrageous suggestion.

I subsequently discovered, many years later,

that he was, um... a plant.

But these kind of dirty tricks had been part and parcel

of law enforcement in North America

for forever,

so it was not unusual.

[protestors]: We want justice! We want justice!

We want justice! We want justice!

We want justice!

[John]: I left home

and went down to the university

in order to join the occupation.

At that point, the university was closed off.

Two police from the nearby station came.

One took me under one arm,

the other one took me under the other arm,

and they marched me out of the university,

into a squad car...

took me down to Pointe-Saint-Charles,

let me out, and told me

that if they saw me around the university,

that I would be arrested.

And it was one of the very first times

in my life

that I was actually afraid for my life.

[Ballantyne]: There was a fear, I believe,

on the administration's part

that we would get violent.

I mean, that was the egregious problem.

[Butcher]: We have to begin,

when we ask ourselves to define what violence is...

violence is not physical in the first place.

Violence starts from a mental state.

[Cools]: What was their great fear?

Because fear is a, is a strange mental state,

and fear has a way of producing the exact thing that you fear.

You are afraid of black people. Why? Ask yourself why.

Start thinking

and start coming to some constructive conclusions.

[Indongo]: I think if you know somebody's watching you,

and you may or may not know their intention,

you...you guard yourself more.

You...

or in some cases, with some people,

they become quite paranoid.

But I think you definitely hold back,

and you put on a face, right?

It's hard to just be your natural self at all times.

[camera clicks]

We want justice! We want justice!

We want justice! We want justice!

[Ballantyne]: We were just waiting for them

to come and say, "Okay, we will listen to you."

We anticipated that this would've happened, you know?

We didn't expect everybody in the administration

to be racist.

The line of the association was that in the first place,

we were extremely happy to see that in the latest document

that the black students had submitted

to the vice-principal,

and who had asked us, as an association,

for our comments upon it,

we had underlined that we were extremely happy

to see that the students were, in fact,

being ready to negotiate.

[Hubsher]: We were told by the lawyers

that an agreement had been reached.

And the students had come to believe

that it was all over,

and they were going to get the demands

that they had asked for.

[cheering]

[John]: And this was going to set the stage

for the demands that we made,

plus a hearing committee and so on and so on.

So we were kind of confident that, you know,

we were on our way to some small victory

in terms of the initial issues.

We won,

and it was no particular political suasion

that made us win.

It was just that we persevered,

asked for what we wanted,

and we got it,

and then there was joy.

[singing]

[Rennie]: And many people left.

Many people had gone home, you know, feeling really great.

"We won!

It's going to, you know, it was resolved!"

And I actually went home that night

to take a shower, get some sleep,

and went back in the morning

because I wanted to be part of the cleanup crew.

I felt... again, I felt really,

and the group of us really felt strongly

that we wanted to leave the place

the way we found it,

so that people understood that this was not about a party

or just having a good time at somebody else's expense,

but it was, it was about a principle.

But they were pretending they were on our side,

and they were doing everything to help us,

when in truth, and in fact, they were not.

[Hubsher]: The final deal was scuttled

by the Faculty Association.

They had reneged on the decision.

[John]: We found out in the afternoon

that the university union was holding it up.

And it got held up for two days,

which then caused the students,

the more radical ones on the edges,

to say, "You see what we are saying?

These people are not to be trusted."

[John]: Their position was that we had no rights

and they had no responsibilities.

We were tricked.

It was not a victory.

[Cools]: I have a suspicion

that despair had been setting in,

and that many people had begun to reach the conclusion

that these highs and these lows

were just an effort to defeat them.

[John]: Betrayal is probably

a reasonably accurate representation

of how I would've felt.

At this stage in time,

I realize that to have expected otherwise

was highly naive.

[Cools]: At the heightening of expectations

that there would be resolution,

and then the terrible letdown or descent

that everybody went through in disappointment,

one can expect that a few tempers will flare.

[Ballantyne]: The students, they said,

"To hell with it, let's go for broke."

They immediately blocked the campus

from the seventh floor up.

[Rennie]: And there were people marching around downstairs.

There were two sets of people,

some saying, "Kill them," or something to that effect,

and others protesting on our behalf.

I got the impression that there was confrontation

between the two forces in the streets.

Okay, you're going to keep it up?

The demonstration? That's right.

Until what time?

Until our brothers come out.

[John]: I was outside of the university,

and it was the first time that I understood

what it was like as a black to face a white mob,

where your life was in the balance,

and between the mob and a group of us

was a line of blue police.

All the talks were off, so anger,

and this student just tossed this thing out.

[Ballantyne]: All the pent-up emotion

just exploded.

The computer cards were thrown out of the window.

Windows were broken.

And then, all the work we had

for the last couple of weeks

of monitoring and keeping these computers

in pristine condition,

now you see these cards fluttering out the window,

like...

it ticked me off.

[Hubsher]: What I think it was,

was a desperate attempt on the part of us

to garner attention

because there were lots of people

on the street,

around the building,

but we really felt from what we were hearing,

that they were not paying attention to us.

[Bayne]: These computer cards

and ribbons falling like snow out of heaven,

it looked like the brains of society

scattered in the wind or something like that.

At somewhere along the line,

the issue stopped being Anderson.

Everybody forgot Anderson.

He was like a person just floating around somewhere.

It was something floating around,

but it wasn't really about him.

It was an act of civil disobedience,

and there was no plan to do it.

I suppose in my heart, I figured we'd occupy it,

and two days later, it'd all be resolved,

and everybody would be happy, and we'd be singing "Kumbaya."

Um...

not exactly what happened.

[sirens wail]

[reporter]: The computer centre

is a very delicate and important part of the institution now.

Um...

Will the police be called in to...?

I don't know.

I have no idea along these lines,

but I do know that Vice-Principal O'Brien

does feel

that men are more important than machines,

and that the computer has not come

to dominate this university.

The university made a decision

to put an end to the occupation,

to ask the Montreal Police to intervene,

and I was asked to accompany the riot squad

as an observer and a witness.

[Ballantyne]: It is a special squad.

Those people are at least seven feet,

and they trample in, you know,

like a stampede.

They came charging in.

[Cools]: Next thing you know, you're being attacked by police.

[Bayne]: So at that point,

a group of students started using the fire hoses

on the police.

The first time I saw a police officer

through that little window...

and this has never left me...

I never saw such terror in a man's eyes.

I have no idea what they were told about us,

but based on the look on that man's face,

I truly believe

they thought we were armed to the teeth

and we were going to come out shooting.

[yelling]

[Mossop]: I was terrified.

We are locked in.

We can't go through the front because we'll be arrested.

We try to get through the back,

only to find the doors barricaded.

[man yells]

[Sheppard]: Within minutes, probably less,

we saw very black smoke pouring out of the ducts.

There was a door in the back there

that was always closed.

We had never opened it.

It was closed from the inside.

[Rennie]: And when we rushed to get away

from the building-up of the smoke to the front...

that door was locked from outside.

[banging]

So we were virtually trapped in there.

[siren wails]

[Sheppard]: It was like a cloud of black smoke

like I'd never seen before,

and it was ascending.

It was coming down.

I must say, it was quite terrifying,

because, eventually, it fortunately stopped,

I would say, about two feet off the ground.

We all ended up, including the police,

on our knees on the floor.

[Cools]: It was so fast.

[interviewer]: Were you guys scared?

Very.

[Ballantyne]: I was afraid

that my colleagues and friends upstairs

were being burnt alive.

[Sheppard]: One match does the trick.

[Ballantyne]: Any one of about 20 people could've done it,

or 50 people could've done it.

They were so angry.

Just pure, primal, venal hatred.

At what?

At being a nigger?

That shook me to my core, of course,

because that means that there are people around

who don't mind seeing other people perish.

That hit me hard,

and I had to come to terms with understanding

that human beings are capable of doing all manner of things

that I never dreamed were possible.

All of that accompanied by the chants of a white mob

chanting, "Let the niggers burn."

People were yelling, "Burn, nigger, burn."

This chanting of, "Let the niggers burn..."

you know, they wanted us to die.

That...

that, you don't forget.

[yelling]

[Sheppard]: The police apparently told the university

they would not go up to the ninth floor

and dismantle the barricades

and remove the students

unless the university representatives were there

to be able to testify

that there had been no violence, no brutality.

Fortunately, they were able to axe the door down

for us to get out.

[Chang]: And that's when the riot squad went in

and started to get the guys out.

[yelling]

[Mossop]: They started beating us

as we came through the door.

[Cools]: It was four girls, and somebody took us,

and we were in the elevator, and we were then downstairs.

At the time, a policeman actually maliciously told us

that people had been killed.

[Hubsher]: Several students got beaten up really badly,

and I know that

because two of them were put into my paddy wagon,

and they were a mess.

They'd been severely beaten,

and I knew both of these guys, and they were not aggressive.

They were...

[Ford]: I grew up in Trinidad.

I was a very humble person.

I was in the Scouts.

In the Scouts, we serve people.

We work with the elderly.

We work with children.

[crowds yell]

I remember some specific things.

I was, you know, like, cuffed in the nose,

a punch, or...

but I more remember the other people who got beaten up.

Your hand could be bleeding,

but you aren't thinking about your injury, you know,

but you want to make sure everybody is...

it's okay.

Everybody who was inside that centre at that time

on that particular floor was, was arrested.

[fire crackles]

[Fredericks]: Originally we had planned

to go down to O'Brien's office,

but it's too small!

[audio slows]

He...

Kennedy was bright.

Vibrant.

Um...

He probably was... well...

he was very bright.

But... he lost faith.

You see, Kennedy...

my memory of Kennedy

was that he was a believer in the principles

that the university was supposed to have established,

and that the reality of what he had to confront with

was too much for him.

Ah, I... I know that he went off to Tanzania.

Well, he went off to Tanzania with our blessings

and with all our money,

because we had paid, put up the bail,

all of us had put together for the bail,

and we knew they wanted to hang him and crucify him

in Canada, in Montreal,

so everybody told him, "Run!"

[Ford]: I mean, I really had to reach out for him

because he, he felt a lot of pain,

the disappointment and the disillusionment,

and, you know, I'm, I'm...

It really hurts me, you know, to see where...

where he had reached,

and not to enjoy... life to the fullest.

When this issue

has been causing mental strain and physical...

and physical breakdown to students,

then one begins to wonder

as to the right of the existence of such a university.

[Indongo]: My father has just gone through

serious bouts of mental health issues

since the whole Sir George incident.

And it's been really difficult for him

to kind of, to continue his life

without having those kinds of demons

sort of chasing him.

[Murray]: Of course, when all the other students

were being discharged and released from prison,

the only ones left were the black students.

1:00 in the morning,

they came and took me out of my cell

and sat me down with the police, you know, real movie-style

under a little light and the whole bit.

He's lighting a cigarette,

and he's bringing it closer and closer to my face,

and he eventually burned me.

[reporter]: You think it's still possible to negotiate,

or is the day of talk over?

Well, I suppose if we negotiate now,

it'd be across bars.

[Cools]: Taking part in a sit-in is not wrong.

It is not even really illegal.

[door slams]

I would've thought to plead guilty

to something that I thought I was not guilty of

to be unprincipled at that time.

[John]: Rosie was a larger-than-life character.

He was very brilliant.

I don't think he was at Sir George at the time.

I think he was at McGill,

but he supported us thoroughly.

You displayed it right here that this institution is racist,

and in the house institution of decision-making here,

your parliament displayed it.

[reporter]: Roosevelt Douglas,

who was involved in the black students' movement,

gained national publicity for his part in the sit-in.

Since his release from jail last year,

he's made a full-time career

as a militant Black Power advocate.

I am a fighter for liberation

and one who believes that my country has the capacity

to produce and provide all our people

with a decent standard of living,

and to do that,

there have to be certain basic structural changes.

I think Rosie Douglas was the only one

who persisted in trying to stretch out

the political mileage of that whole thing.

[man]: They say Rosie Douglas

is a threat to national security.

[Murray]: His whole life,

he felt he was under surveillance.

[John]: Was it a reality that we were infiltrated?

Yes, that much was proven.

Was it a reality

that so-called leaders were under surveillance?

Yes, that was confirmed.

There was some dramatic testimony today

before the McDonald Commission into the RCMP.

It came from an American named Warren Heart,

who says that for four years,

he worked as an agent in Canada and other countries.

[reporter]: His job was to infiltrate radical groups

like the Black Panthers.

Roosevelt "Rosie" Douglas was to be Heart's chief target.

Today, Heart testified

that he'd been told to break the law

to get information.

He opened mail, broke into buildings,

and secretly taped Douglas' conversations.

His orders, he said, came from the Mounties directly.

[John]: I was born in St. Vincent.

From the moment that I arrived,

interestingly enough,

my thought was always,

"At least I will be going back home,"

and I think this is the,

this is the classic position of the immigrant.

The immigrant moves to a new community.

They do not belong there,

but they take solace in the notion

that they can go back home,

and for many of us, going back home

means to confront the fact that you have left so long

that you really cannot go home again.

[Rennie]: We came out of jail sometime around June,

and by December of that year, I fought my way into Trinidad,

and I came home to get an assessment

of what was happening in Trinidad.

[reporter]: It is exactly two weeks ago today

since the first demonstrations began

against what the Black Power people here

call Canadian Imperialism,

and against the trial of the 10 Trinidadians

in Montreal.

The demonstrations have mounted steadily,

both in the number of people concerned with them,

and in their ferocity.

[Rennie]: It started off

with the issue being the Sir George Williams,

but the local issues took over.

Mass movement came out on the street.

You're talking about 20,000, 30,000 people

marching every day.

[Ballantyne]: There was an anger and enthusiasm.

You could feel it.

It wasn't something tangible,

but it was something you could feel.

People wanted to do something.

[Rennie]: At the time, unemployment was very high.

People were very frustrated with the situation,

the lack of opportunities.

[man]: We want to end the exploitation,

economically, culturally, in every sense,

by the white foreign powers,

particularly from North America and Britain.

As we go lower down the street,

we'll pass a number of other Canadian banks.

You are one of our major exploiters.

[Rennie]: And the moment they were arrested

for that demonstration against the banks,

the situation broke.

[explosion]

I think at the local level, a butterfly flapped its wing,

and it blew,

and it blew because you had Black Power movement

in the States,

you had the movement for the liberation of Africa

at the same time,

you had the whole Caribbean

moving towards different degrees of independence.

All of the Caribbean

is under the control of the Imperialists,

and all of the Caribbean must fight to free itself,

and since we are the same people,

we must aid each other in our battles

to free ourselves from racist Imperialism.

When in April of 1970,

they passed the state of emergency

because they wanted the army to come out

and quell the people's demonstrations in the street

because people were demonstrating every day.

They passed a state of emergency,

and they tried to lock the square.

The square was the place known for people's expression.

Eric Williams, when he came in '56,

he referred to it

as the University of Woodford Square.

That University of Woodford Square in 1970

became a people's parliament.

And what did the government do?

Lock it up

to prevent the expression of the people.

[fire crackles]

[John]: At the end of the day,

the question that is posed is,

were these students suicidal, or just absolutely stupid

that they would set a fire

in which the consequences of setting that fire

was not simply the destruction of the computers,

but that their lives would be in danger?

Once you call a person, once you identify a person

not only as the other, but as such a feral animal

that you wished to have him burn,

then it is very easy to appreciate

that you can go one step further

and create the conditions.

Without any direct evidence...

I am of the opinion,

I hold the opinion...

and we're all entitled to our opinions...

that the fire was set by law enforcement.

[explosion]

[fire crackles]

Nobody ever told me exactly who it was.

And it would've been ludicrous for us to start the fire,

because we were locked in.

[Butcher]: Nobody has been able to

or has wished to

or has said that they've seen anybody do anything like that,

and a certain solidarity exists that, look,

it was an injustice in which we paid the price,

so we were going to stand together.

[reporter]: Do you think

that the suspension served any useful purpose?

Absolutely not.

In fact, I think it was personally damaging.

It is now on my record.

You now have a suspension.

Even if it is lifted later,

you think it'll hurt your later career?

Definitely so,

and I can refer to an article in the New York Times

in relationship to this,

where a statement was made

that students had brought a charge of racism against me,

that the administration had moved to suspend me,

and that an inquiry was pending.

The connotation there, of course,

is that the administration...

possibly felt that I was guilty.

[Duff]: You don't get an accusation like that

unless it's happening.

I mean, you know,

people don't jump to conclusions like that

because there isn't good grounds for it in the culture at large,

and in that sense,

Perry's as guilty as me or anyone else

of being culturally biased, right?

And I don't think it was a personal bias,

but he was part of the cultural bias.

Have you dealt with black students before,

and what were your relationships with them,

if you have?

Could you qualify that statement?

Have you dealt with black students before,

with West Indians before, in any way,

and how were your relationships with them?

There are forces and, and movements

and political movements in societies

that really are, you know,

much more powerful than individuals,

and that he felt very much

that you should be aware of that in life,

because he wasn't, and he felt very much

that he got caught up in something

that he didn't understand.

Well, I feel that the pressures

that were on my shoulders since last December

were subconscious more than anything,

and it is only recently that I've realized

how mentally depressed I was over the course of the period.

But you didn't realize it at the time,

when the pressure was at its most...

was the most intense?

No, I don't think that I realized

how depressed I really was.

[Bayne]: How can you tell what is racist?

In any particular context,

every single one of us might be racist.

There is the extent to which is what control do you have

over your selfish genetic demands

for self-security?

That is what makes the difference between someone

who is a conscious, vicious racist,

and someone who is simply responding

on a sort of, um...

"I need to ensure that I survive,

and I need to respond in a way which meets my particular needs,

and if I see someone or something

that is different to who I am and I can't read it,

I block them out or exclude them."

Now, I think we're all capable of that kind of response.

The question is, have we learned how to control this

so that we can have

the maximum amount of harmony and peace

and move forward together

against an external, physical world

that's not always giving us the security we need?

[Indongo]: Things aren't that much different

for my son.

It may look different

because there's a little bit more tolerance,

or what seems to be more tolerance,

but...

I, I really...

I really don't see it.

So if I stay here with my son, who's African-Caribbean...

whose father has to walk...

witness young, white, Hasidic girls

rush across the street

when they see him coming out of his apartment,

and then cross back once they've passed him,

those are the moments it's just like,

"There's nothing we could do."

[John]: Your entire being is involved

in trying to affect something,

and at the end of the day,

you have failed, and failed spectacularly.

And even to this day,

the relationships with my, with my two sons is, um...

bracketed by those early days when I was not there,

and we subsequently got divorced, my wife and I,

and...

I do not bother to say to them, you know, I...

I don't even say...

I haven't even said that I'm sorry,

because to say that I'm sorry

presupposes that I should've done something different.

I think Perry felt

that it was very much, um,

an absolutely horrific thing that was happening to him.

I think Mom felt...

she wanted to carry on and persevere

in the way that we had,

where Perry, I think, saw it differently.

This is just when I start to have memory.

I'm not sure if I'm four and a half or five.

I remember sitting on the staircase.

We were in a duplex over in NDG.

I think it was two floors, It must've been,

'cause I remember sitting on the staircase

and just hearing loud voices downstairs,

not sure what was going on, um,

and then I remember Mom being gone.

[Ford]: Some people ask me,

"Well, how long does a bee live?"

But then, I never take that on, because a bee is a bee is a bee.

So that same bee, if I mark it, it'll probably die and go,

but there's another bee that's doing the same thing,

and producing honey,

and the honey from thousands and thousands of years ago

is the same thing.

Now, as you're working,

I think sometimes, you reflect a lot,

you meditate a lot, you think a lot.

You touch on a whole lot of things.

You get a chance to resolve things.

Issues come up, and you solve them.

A time to get into you and to understand you,

and what are your beliefs.

What are you believing,

and what are you doing here, you know?

And the fact that you will not be here forever,

and that you're passing through,

and these things are resolved in your mind,

that you're just a, you're just a traveller,

and it removes fear.

[♪♪♪]

♪ Oh, pirates, yes they rob I ♪

♪ Sold I to the merchant ships

♪ Minutes after they took I

♪ From the bottomless pit

♪ But my hand was made strong

♪ By the 'and of the Almighty

♪ We forward in this generation ♪

♪ Triumphantly

♪ Won't you help to sing

♪ These songs of freedom

♪ 'Cause all I ever have

♪ Redemption song

♪ Redemption song

♪ Emancipate yourself from mental slavery ♪

♪ None but ourselves can free our minds ♪

♪ Have no fear for atomic energy ♪

♪ 'Cause none of them can stop the time ♪

♪ How long shall they kill our prophets ♪

♪ While we stand aside and look ♪

♪ Some say it's just a part of it ♪

♪ We've got to fulfill the book ♪

♪ Ooh

♪ Won't you help us sing

♪ Redemption Redemption ♪

♪ Redemption redemption

[singing harmony]

♪ None but ourselves can free our minds ♪

♪ Redemption Redemption ♪

♪ None but ourselves can free our minds ♪

♪ Emancipate

♪ These songs of freedom

♪ Emancipate

♪ These songs of freedom

♪ Emancipate

♪ These songs of freedom

♪ Emancipate

♪ These songs of freedom

[♪♪♪]

[♪♪♪]