'Every other country' better than Canada at getting people out of Afghanistan: former correspondent

Guests: Bashir, Mina, Kevin Newman

AG: Well, the president has fled the country, the former head of the central bank got it with just the clothes on his back and a single shoe. Now, thousands of other Afghans are hoping to follow them.

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[Indistinct chatter]

AG: All of this has been the scene at the Kabul airport. Men, women, children, families camped out under the blazing hot sun, carrying a few possessions and duffel bags or rolling suitcases. They're hoping to be rescued from the Western powers that they tried to help. This woman worked for the Germans.

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Life has become intolerable and very difficult here, and we don't feel well at all. There is not one person to help us here or answer our questions. Yesterday, I was supposed to go to the airport and stand in line again, but I have shortness of breath and asked the other workers if they could. But nothing is moving forward on our files. We are begging anyone who can hear our voices to help us.

AG: Well, amid the chaos, some countries have managed to get some of their people out, but there is growing criticism of the Canadian effort. Joining me now is Bashir. We're not going to use his full name because he fears retribution from the Taliban. Hello.

BASHIR: Good morning, Antony.

AG: Bashir, what is life like in Kabul today like this?

BASHIR: It is a stressful and the level of uncertainty is very high. People are scared and it has been more than a week that Kabul has fallen to the Taliban and the streets are empty, shops are closed, banks are closed, and you hardly see people outside.

AG: Can you give me a sense of what you were doing in Kabul before before the Taliban came back to power?

BASHIR: Before the Taliban, I was working for a government office, and my job was to write policies and procedures for gender equality, for empowering women in Afghanistan. And also, I was busy in a little factory that we have as well.

AG: So you were actively trying to help women in your country?

BASHIR: That's right. I've been doing that for over well over a decade.

AG: Now in all of the chaos that we see happening right now, Have you heard from any of the women that that you helped train over the years?

BASHIR: Well, actually, I have lost contact with all the women that I know, except one who called me a few days ago. And she was distressed and she was crying and she was upset. And she also put through an application to go to the U.S. but she hasn't heard anything from them yet. And she is a stress. And she was crying for the country and she was crying for the 20 years of development in the country. And it was unbelievable for her.

AG: And what kind of training are you doing with this with this woman and other women that you helped?

BASHIR: Well, I worked for a project funded by Canada, and it was at the Ministry of Interior Affairs and we helped establish a gender department that was the first gender department in the government, in the ministry and within the ministry of the Interior Office. And we recruited women into the police and we gave them training, gender equality, training and ensure that they know their rights and police training as well.

AG: So you were directly employed and connected to a Canadian programme?

BASHIR: That's true.

AG: Now, you've applied to come to Canada through the Canadian government, what kind of response have you received from them so far?

BASHIR: And fortunately, I sent my application, but I got an auto reply, so when you get a note to reply, you know that you're not connected to a human. So asking me a couple of questions to answer. So I reply to that email by answering those questions, and I got another email asking me further questions. So I completed those questions. But it has been more than a month now, but I haven't heard anything. So I sent another email for a follow up. A few days ago, as I was frustrated as I've been, I received another reply that makes no sense.

AG: You're just getting automatic messages? No, no officials, no bureaucrats. Nobody on the Canadian side is speaking with you in person or by email.

BASHIR: No, I got no communication from the person. No phone calls, no message, no email.

AG: Bashir, in the event that you do get through to a human being on our side. Who are you hoping to bring with you to Canada?

BASHIR: That's my my whole family. I've got my wife, my little son, who is almost two years old, and he's very scared because of the shooting that I have a couple of days ago. And he's still in shock and shaking with my mother, my brother and my sister's family as well.

AG: So your son witnessed a shooting?

BASHIR: Yes. It was the first time, as he is almost 18 months, 18 months old. And there was a shooting outside our gate, very close and firing, shooting, shouting. And it was my fault that my kid was running scared and he he was still scared. When I leave the room, he cries and he doesn't allow me to to go to leave that room. And, you know, he he speaks a few words. The words, he speaks. Ask me to sit down. Sit down.

AG: So obviously, you're quite concerned about your safety, not just for your son, but your whole family.

BASHIR: Yeah, the level of security, uncertainty and level of security is very low and I'm concerned for the whole family and family comes first, actually. So I come second.

AG: And how many members are we talking about, if you could bring to Canada?

BASHIR: Eight,

AG: you know, given the fact that you worked with the Canadian government after the fall of the Taliban and trying to work to to really assist women, which I gather I think we all know would be against what the Taliban believes should be the role of women in Afghan society. What kind of obligation do you think the Canadian government has towards you?

BASHIR: Well, the United States comes first because that was the first country to pull out the rest of the country, followed the U.S., which is unfair. I think every country has their own role to play. So if the United States pulled out, I thought that I was the one talking to my family, that we have to make sure we have the Europeans, we have Canadian. I don't think they will pull out. But it happened all at once. It is it is unbelievable. And I have no word because it is too late to ask for the international community, especially the Canadian government, to do anything for women in Afghanistan.

AG: What do you think the Canadian government should be doing right now for people in your situation?

BASHIR: I believe what the Canadian government needs to do is a quick response to the applicants, and especially those who work for the Canadian government to to to to get somebody or hire people who can directly response to to the applications to tell them where they are. So the level of uncertainty, certainty is very high. I don't know where my application is, if it is in the system, if it is not included in the system, if it is going to work out or not. That is very complicated. It is it is very difficult to to be in a position where you don't know where your application is, if you are going to be able to leave the country or you will stay here and wait for the Taliban to identify you. At the moment, it's difficult for them to identify who you are and where you live. But that comes later once they have access to all the government offices and to the computer, to the information they need.

AG: So, I mean, we've seen reports that the Taliban's going door to door looking for people like you who worked for foreign governments. How much longer can you and your family wait before the Taliban starts identifying people who worked for Western governments?

BASHIR: We have no alternative except to wait. But if the application doesn't come through, that's the only hope we have. We should develop a Plan B. That's that's what we have in mind to waiting for the for the for the U.S. military to leave the Kabul airport. So at least we get some commercial flights, hopefully, to fly from Kabul and we can move to a neighbouring country. And if that doesn't work, we have we are waiting for for the for some of the borders to the neighbouring countries so we can travel overland maybe by car. And to to cross the border to another country.

AG: Year, I hope somebody from the Canadian government and our Department of Immigration gets back to you. Good luck to you and your family. Thank you very much.

BASHIR: My pleasure. I hope so. Good luck.

AG: Thank you. Bashir worked for a Canadian funded programme training Afghan women police. We are only using his first name, he is in Kabul of thousands of kilometres and an ocean away. Canadians with family stuck in Afghanistan can only wait and worry. This is a woman we're calling Mina to protect her and her family.

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My family is in Herat. My sister, my niece and my brothers work with the international office, American office and Canadian office. The situation is so dangerous right now for them. They are hiding. My sister had a letter from two months ago from [unintelligible]. They say to her, We will kill you. Then after the Taliban reach to Herat, are they looking people home by home. My sister is not at home. She goes one night to be [unintelliglbe] and one night to [unintelligible] for safety. If they find her, I'm sure they will kill her. I know the Taliban. I was with them. I know the Taliban. They are not human.

AG: Well, Kevin Newman is a well-known veteran journalist who has reported from Afghanistan and he's volunteering with Veterans Transition Network, and that's a group that is helping Afghan interpreters escape the Taliban. Kevin, good morning.

KEVIN NEWMAN: Good morning, Anthony.

AG: Let's start with your reaction to what Bashir and Menagh had to say about their own experiences. What do you make of that?

KEVIN NEWMAN: Well, our group is in, you know, touch through WhatsApp and other means with hundreds of stories like that, frankly. I mean, this morning we're hearing people who have been told by the ICC, which is the immigration minister of Canada, to go to the airport or are are are discovering that, you know, one member of their family has been approved for a flight, but others have not. And, you know, a lot of people were, I think, rightfully outraged when we heard reports from the Mexican border with the United States about how families are being separated. I have to tell you, Anthony, we are getting story after story of of families that are having to make these awful decisions of like, do I get on the plane and leave my sister behind? We have one story of somebody who has to leave his wife behind and children. So for some reason, we're not approving these passages to Canada as family affairs. We're treating them all as individuals. And people are being contacted by text, you know, one person at a time, not not as groups of people that applied. So I can understand that. And when you when you just hear these stories that we're hearing, other stories of people who get almost to the plane and then are turned away because, you know, their documents are printed in colour, they're only in black and white. And these are people that have been standing in sewage, you know, for hours and hours and hours just trying to get through this bottleneck at the airport.

AG: Well, it sounds absolutely horrendous, Kevin. And listening to Beshir, he doesn't strike me as a person who would leave his family if the only option was to head to Canada by himself. I guess it's difficult to say why this policy is happening that way.

KEVIN NEWMAN: I think it's just I think the people at Hamid Karzai airport ah ah. Don't know what's going on. I mean, there's this incredible disconnect between what, you know, politicians are saying back in Canada, which is that people on the ground have full authority to let people through. They're not getting in the way of the paperwork anymore. And what we are hearing from literally hundreds of people that there is still a credible amount of resistance by officials of Immigration Canada, some members of the Canadian armed forces on really minor, minor, minor things when we understand these people have been let here because they've proven their loyalty to Canada by putting their life on the line for many of our Canadian soldiers.

AG: With respect to the people, Kevin, that you're helping the interpreters that I mentioned in the introduction, how are things going for them?

KEVIN NEWMAN: Not well, I mean, you know, that story of like they haven't been able to talk to a human being in this entire process for weeks, you know, we get people are surprised to know. And the only way they know whether or not they've completed the paperwork properly is they get a text that suddenly says go to the airport urgently. So there's been no handholding of people through a process when they are clearly in great fear of being killed. So we I'm I'm stunned that any human being and especially any Canadian could not understand. These are terribly frightened people. They are not in a position to go and get things printed in colour. And, you know, we are giving them a passage to citizenship in Canada, which is wonderful. And some people are receiving that. But there has to be, I think, a thought now to like, do we just make these people refugees? Because the the paperwork standard for refugees is a lot lower than it is for being an immigrant to Canada. And yes, you might not get an instant citizenship pass to Canada, but that is proving to be such a high threshold for people who know that the Taliban is waiting and counting down to when they will have to make a terrible decision. Do I do I stay here with hope for Canada or is it time for me to flee because Canada is not going to be there for me?

AG: I don't know if you can comment on this, but there were reports yesterday that some special forces I'm assuming that you have to or that we have are on the ground helping. Is there any evidence of that? And if so, how important is it?

KEVIN NEWMAN: Yeah, there is it is true that Canadian soldiers who for days have been staying inside the relative safety of the airport ventured out. Talk to some of the Afghans that are being gathered in the location. They were there all the time, but they did show a bit of a flag. And that was reassuring to people. There may be other missions going on that our group is unaware of, maybe to retrieve, you know, some of the elites that worked with the Canadian government around Kabul. But there is not a large presence to our knowledge. We're we're we're watching and trying to shepherd about 800 people through this process. And one of the things they have not done is set up any way for them to get to various places, to the airport. So there's a lot of children, there's a lot of elderly that are having to walk for kilometres and then stand in the heat for hours and hours and hours. Many other countries have set up, you know, meeting places, transportation under military protection. To our knowledge, that has not been offered to these people. All they get is they wake up to get a text saying go to the airport right away, and they never, ever talk to any human being from the government of Canada.

AG: So if I hear what you're saying, Kevin, are there other countries? I think, you know, we've seen what the Americans are doing. Are there other countries other than the United States? They're doing a better job than Canada,

KEVIN NEWMAN: frankly, from from our point of view, just about every other country. I mean, there is there's Norway, there's Spain, there's France. Many, many countries have set up a much more robust attempts to get people safely through Taliban checkpoints to the airport. I think what we lost I mean, Canada, as governments made the decision to withdraw all of its embassy staff and any military attaché that were in Kabul to safety about two weeks ago, and that that cost us as a country in planning because we have and still continue to have very few eyes and ears on the situation. So every other country had that week to plan a more robust way to get people through this process. Canada's been playing catch up and we've had to ask a lot of favours of a lot of other countries because, you know, we we don't have a robust military presence there. We have a couple of people who are trying to process thousands and thousands of applications, and it's just not working.

AG: Only have a minute left, Kevin. But there are reports that senior American officials are meeting with the Taliban if if the evacuation deadline can be extended. Does Canada have a chance to sort of, you know, get its act together?

KEVIN NEWMAN: Yes, of course. Time more time would would would definitely help. And the Taliban, from all the reports that we have, they have been beating people on the way to the airport. It's but they have not been stopping people. So they are cooperating to get people out. But, you know, we're now we're now only a week away from the current deadline. And candidate made a lot of promises to 2000 and more people. And if that isn't extended. And at some point, we're going to have to tell those people we're not going to be there, run and try to hide,

AG: what's the desperate situation? Kevin, good luck to you and your organisation in the 800 people you're trying to help. And thanks for your for being our eyes and ears on the ground there this morning. Thank you.

KEVIN NEWMAN: Thanks, Anthony.

AG: As a journalist, Kevin Newman reported from Afghanistan and he now volunteers with the Veterans Transition Network. CBC News is next. And then.

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We posted the entire interview in its entirety, and I encourage all Canadians to take a look to see what Erin O'Toole has to say about what he sees on the future of health care.

AG: Justin Trudeau on the defence after a tweet from his party was flagged as misleading how to sort fact from fiction when the country's voters are about to select Canada's next government. That's in six minutes. I'm Anthony Germein in St. John's and you're listening to The Current.

Political scientist Aengus Bridgman on manipulated media and misinformation; the humble beginnings and lasting appeal of Dr. Martens.

Guests: Aengus Bridgman, Andrew Groves, Elizabeth Semmelhack

AG: Hello, I'm Anthony Germain, and you are listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AG: Still to come, earlier this year, Matt Galloway took a trip down memory lane with a few footwear enthusiasts. We'll revisit his conversation with those who've done Doc Martens about the history of that iconic boot. But first, what information is true, what's false and what is somewhere in between on the campaign trail? Well, you probably don't have to be told this by now, but believe it or not, you can't trust everything you read on social media. It's election time, which means it's also misinformation, time, half truths, strategically edited interviews and flat out lies are all out there getting clicks and shares as I speak now, tech companies are trying to tamp it all down, leading to an awkward situation for Liberal candidate Chrystia Freeland this week when one of her tweets was labelled manipulated media by Twitter. It was an edited video of conservative leader Erin O'Toole talking about health care. Chrystia Freeland wrote in a tweet that O'Toole unequivocally supports for profit health care. Now take a listen to the edited version that Freeland posted.

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CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Would you be prepared to allow provinces to experiment with real health care reform, including the provision of private, for profit and non-profit health care options inside of universal coverage?

ERIN O'TOOLE: Yes. Now, a little bit more, we can't have just one old model that is increasingly becoming inefficient and we have to find public private synergy's and that capital will come in to to to drive efficiencies. I've run on this for several years now.

AG: The conservatives were outraged. Now take a listen to an unedited version of that clip, which Freeland linked to further down in her Twitter thread.

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ERIN O'TOOLE: If we're expecting innovation and more choice and better performance, we can't have just one old model that is increasingly becoming inefficient because of the amazing new drugs that are dragging some of the funds into other areas in our health care system, especially biologics, which the Trudeau government also messed up in terms of the NAFTA negotiations. If we want to see that innovation, we have to find public private synergies and make sure that universal access remains paramount.

AG: So that was the important context that the Conservative Party says was missing from the edited video, the part where Erin O'Toole says universal access to health care remains, as you just heard, Paramount. NDP leader Jadmeet Singh then joined in the criticism of Chrystia Freeland tweet.

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This is the wrong thing to do. This is completely wrong. And new Democrats are absolutely opposed to it and want to see very strong laws in place that do not allow misinformation, information to be spread. And we need to be taking an active role in the removal and the flogging of this type of information. It is really disconcerting, though, that The Current party in power is engaging in exactly what we need to be ending.

AG: Now, in the face of the backlash, Liberal leader Justin Trudeau doubled down and defended the tweet.

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ERIN O'TOOLE: Yes.

JSUTIN TRUDEAU: What's really important here is that in the middle of a pandemic, Erin O'Toole came out unequivocally in support of private health care in terms of for profit health care. We posted the entire interview on it on- we posted the entire interview in its entirety, and I encourage all Canadians to take a look to see what Erin O'Toole has to say about what he sees on the future of health care.

AG: Now, despite our slight mix up, you can decide for yourself how misleading that video was. But this is the kind of post that Aengus Bridgman is watching out for. He's a political scientist with McGill University Media Ecosystem Observatory and he is the director of the Canadian Election Misinformation Project. And that was formed to analyse and monitor serious cases of misinformation during the federal election. Aengus Bridgman, hello.

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: Hello.

AG: So first off, what do you make of Twitter labelling that tweet as manipulated media? Was this a clear case of misinformation, in your view?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: So it is a clear case of manipulated media. I mean, they definitely took this clip and and cut and paste different segments of it. You know, I'll let Canadians decide the extent to which they think the underlying message is true. But it certainly was manipulated media. I think it's useful to put this in a larger context, which is that these labels were developed by Twitter and other social media platforms during covid-19 when they was just flagrant misinformation circulating on those platforms. They then were used in the US election. Now, for the first time, they're being applied in the Canadian elections. So I think one of the reasons this story has gotten so much traction is because it's the first time we're seeing Twitter, a social media platform, playing a little bit of an arbiter between competing factual claims of parties and not. That has definitely gotten a lot of Canadians kind of looking at this and saying, hey, wait a second, do we want social media platforms to be fulfilling this role in terms of telling us what the facts are.

AG: Interestingly enough, the liberals, as you heard standing by the Post, despite what Twitter says about it, what do you make of that?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: So I think, you know, you can separate the misinformation piece from sort of the political content here. And the liberals are trying to make this an election issue that the health care. And so in some ways, this has helped them do that. So this is actually quite common with labelling on social media platforms. For example, with Trump's tweets when they were labelled as sort of false or misleading, they tended to get actually a lot more traction than the tweets that did not. And so this is an interesting case where the fact that so many people have seen this now as a result of that Twitter decision. And so this is the sort of highlights an unusual but but not that unusual context where something that gets labelled actually is propagated far more than something that would would have just been left alone.

AG: So when we talk about manipulated media, what is it exactly?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: So Twitter has a particular definition, Facebook as a particular definition, et cetera. I think that the standard has sort of shifted a little bit. But but in this case, it's where you are taking sort of an existing type of media, whether it be an image, a sound clip or a video. And you're you're cutting out important pieces of context. This is becoming obviously increasingly a problem as sort of AI and machine learning techniques produced better and better fake videos and images, which I'm sure people have seen online, but but sort of begin to blur even further this distinction between what really happened and what could potentially be reported on. So you could easily imagine a politician being a fake, being generated as a politician, making a statement. And this is just sort of this is not to add it to that extent, but it's along that continuum.

AG: Given Trudeau's decision to to stand by the tweet, does Twitter's label actually work at steering people away from misinformation or is it just muddy the waters?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: Yeah. So in this case, it muddies the waters. There's been some good research on this that has shown that generally labelling does reduce the spread. But in specific instances like this one, it can really go viral. And what we what we see now is this was tweeted on Sunday, yesterday's news cycle and today's news cycle is all about this issue and about both the health care issue and the fact that Twitter is sort of playing the arbiter. So so it has not, in this case, limited the spread. Many more Canadians are now aware of this than would have been if nothing had happened there.

AG: But in this case, then, for instance, it's entirely possible that the Liberals War Room decided, hey, let's plant the notion that oatmeal that Auteuil feels this way about health care, then we can't really tell if this is working for the liberals advantage or not, right?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: Yeah, it's too early to tell. I think Canadians are very concerned about their health care, rightfully so. And so having this be an election issue is not necessarily to liberals disadvantaged. That said, it's not a good luck to be spreading disinformation or misinformation during an election. And so so that's certainly not going to help the liberals.

AG: Let's move away from Twitter to Facebook. Facebook released its Canadian Election Integrity Initiative. Sounds good. What does that entail? And do you think it will will help stamp out election misinformation at all?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: So this is actually not the first Canadian election that's taken place under Facebook's Election Integrity initiative. It was also during the 2010 election. And they've taken a whole number of steps, some of which have been really good. For example, they have a public ad library now. So if you want to see what the political parties are posting in terms of advertisements on Facebook, which is a large percentage of the overall advertising spend, now you can do that. And so, you know, that's a great initiative. The broader initiative, there's a lot of different moving pieces to it, one of which is sort of this pilot project to downplay political news and Canadians feeds. And that got a lot of press last week. It is tricky to see these initiatives and to sort of wonder, OK, these platforms now have an enormous presence in our democratic deliberation and debates during an election, and they're setting the rules of engagement on those platforms. And I think there's this question about whether or not we are comfortable as a society giving so much power to non Canadian social media companies to police information during an election. And I think that's very troubling. And Facebook, Google and Twitter are all doing that and maybe are doing so in good faith. But there's still very little oversight.

AG: What else do you think needs to be done?

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: So I think there's a couple of things. One is that the transparency in the spaces is incredibly poor. You can get data from all sorts of major social media companies through various mechanisms, but the data provided is very limited. And so we don't actually really have good visibility, for example, into how many posts Twitter has labelled as misleading or manipulated media. We have no idea. We just have to sort of manually look for these things. That's one example. We have no idea how many pieces of misinformation Facebook is taking down daily, around covid-19 or other election related content and what those pieces of information are. So without that transparency, it's very hard to recommend things because we just don't know the scope and scale of the problem. Um, another thing is, I think sort of some some non voluntary measures are going to have to be taken. Right now. The social media platforms are all taking measures that they think are appropriate without, again, any oversight. This this is going to change in the future. Every industry is regulated and social media companies strive for very long time with minimal regulation. And that era is coming to an end. And that's been pushed long, seriously by covid.

AG: All right, Professor Bridgman, appreciate your time. Thank you very much.

AENGUS BRIDGMAN: My pleasure.

AG: Aengus Bridgman is a political scientist with McGill University's Media Ecosystem Observatory. He's also the director of the Canadian Election Misinformation Project. I'm Anthony Germein, and you are listening to The Current.

[Music]

AG: uniform is on your feet. Pete Townsend with the song Uniforms from 1982. Well, back then, you might have worn the same uniform as Pete. Wild hair, ripped jeans, suspenders are the good old days. But if you weren't wearing a pair of Doc Martens, were you really punk for all kinds of generations, including my generation. The moment you got your hands on the boots with the yellow stitching is not something you would ever forget. This is Toronto City Councillor Mike Layton remembering his first pair.

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I bought them would have been somewhere around 92, 93, probably about 14 years old, 10 Otari, red dots with black laces, big yellow stitching like it was the style at the time. I had long hair or a dirty lumberjack. It ripped jeans and like the docs were part of the outfit. And I had an older sister who had gone through that phase of life as well. And so it was a rite of passage for me as you got to pick up the pair. That was a reflection of your personality.

AG: Liisa Ladouceur, author of Encyclopaedia Gothika, also remembers hers.

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So the great thing about Doc Martin for me was that they were cool, but they were also comfortable. You could wear them anywhere. And I did. And when I would go on vacation backpacking, I bought one pair of boots and at one point I was living in Mexico for six months just in my Doc Martin. So going to the beach, Doc Martin, you know, going out for dinner, Doc Martin, you kind of felt ridiculous at the beach. But, hey, you know, it's punk rock.

AG: 73 years after they were invented, the company went live on the London Stock Exchange earlier this year. And yes, you heard that right. Stocks and docks. Elizabeth Semmelhack is creative director and senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. And Andrew Groves is professor of fashion design at Westminster University in the U.K. and Matt Galloway spoke to them in February. Here's a conversation.

MATT GALLOWAY: Andrew, I think a lot of us remember the first pair of Docs. I came into Toronto as a teenager and went into some wild store and came out with a pair of boots that I thought I'd wear for the rest of my life. Do you remember saving up your money and buying a pair of those boots?

ANDREW GROVES: Yeah, absolutely, I think that a rite of passage for everybody. Mine was in the early 1980s and the time of ska, and the band Madness and going up to Camden Town to buy a pair from a shop called Holtz. So that was actually a pair of 20 hole boots at the time.

MATT GALLOWAY: Sorry, 20 holes?!. So there's like 20 different holes!

ANDREW GROVES: [laughing] Twenty holes!

MATT GALLOWAY: How long did it take you to lace up the 20 hole boots? [chuckling]

ANDREW GROVES: They were a nightmare. I have to say! [Elizabeth laughs] And I think that the thing of youth wanting to look amazing, but not realizing what that takes. [Matt chuckles] So I probably used to take about 15 minutes to put on.

MATT GALLOWAY: in the Bata Shoe Museum, Elizabeth, are there Docs in the collection there?

ELIZABETH SEMMELHACK There are. We don't have a lot, but we do have a number of representative pairs, yes, we do.

MATT GALLOWAY: Representative pairs. What do you think that they represent?

ELIZABETH SEMMELHACK You know, I think that they represent overarchingly sort of an idea of rebellion, sometimes disenfranchisement. And they obviously are linked to these larger historical moments, be they punk, you know, grunge sort of has a moment with them. Goth fashion makes a lot of them. And so they've... they've had different moments. But each of those moments, I think, connects to ideas of rebellion, although they did start out as just a, you know, a form of work shoes.

MATT GALLOWAY: Andrew, how much lore is tied up in these shoes? You talked about Madness and the ska movement. What is it that Docs symbolize aside from, you know, a pair of boots that you have on your feet?

ANDREW GROVES: Well, I think they're really interesting because I think they're clouds of contradictions, because obviously, you know, originally they were designed as a safety shoe for police, policemen, you know, very working class. But then they're also actually rebellious as well. And, you know, they've been warned by the far-left and the far-right, quite ordinary looking, but subtly erotic. So I think.. I think it's one of those objects that you can transform by the wearer and their attitude. And those are very rare. And like you were saying earlier, you know, to hear that there's other people saying they very much remember the first time they bought them, they are a transformative garment or object. And I think they're very rare in fashion.

MATT GALLOWAY: How can they be transformative? I mean, what happens when you put the boots on? Who do you become?

ANDREW GROVES: Well, I think it is the idea that, you know, putting those on, I think, especially when you think you're a teenager, you're going to become an adult. And with that, it's going to give you all sorts of things, you know? So they play into ideas of masculinity, aggression, rebellious, all of those things. I think that as a teenager growing up, you see youth culture and subculture represent, whichever the moment, there's a pair of Doc Martens that goes along with them.

MATT GALLOWAY: Elizabeth, they've also had... and Andrew talks about aggression. They've had negative connotations associated at various points in their history with skinhead movements, with racist movements as well. How did that develop, that link?

ELIZABETH SEMMELHACK You know, when the Doc Marten brand is brought over to England, they get sort of adopted by the mods. The mods break into multiple different groups. Some of them are very welcoming and inclusive, and some are increasingly nationalistic. And so because the boot itself becomes sort of linked to ideas of the British working class, skinheads begin to use them as a uniform of both masculinity, the working class and the British nationalism. And so for the very fringe elements of that group, they become the sort of neo-Nazi skinheads. And so that's really where that association begins.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do they still have that association today, Andrew? I remember when I got my boots, I mean, part of it was you had to do this sort of like on the street decoding of who had different kinds of boots, and in particular, who had different colours of laces. And there were certain places that people believed meant certain things in the boots that they were wearing. [laughing] Is that still the same thing now, Andrew?

ANDREW GROVES: Well, I mean, two points. One I think is that uniform, so you can see anything that suddenly gets adopted and becomes a uniform. You can look at the Proud Boys and how they've adopted the Fred Perry shirts. And it's very scary to see lots of people dressed the same because of the connotations that has. And then, I think there's also that myth or semi-myth that comes from, you know, these sorts of cultural ideas that certain laces mean certain things, which can be, I think, interesting, because, you know, they mean different things maybe to a straight community than a gay community. So I think that meaning can be subtly played with. And some of that is mythologized, and some of it almost doesn't matter where it comes from. It then becomes true.

MATT GALLOWAY: How, Elizabeth, do Docs move from being a symbol of anti-fashion to something that's very [Elizabeth chuckles] fashionable to something that's on a stock market and a company that's worth something like five billion dollars?

ELIZABETH SEMMELHACK You know, I think that in the 1990s, they begin to... their reach begins to broaden and they kind of become a general statement about youthful rebellion. They begin to distance themselves from these, you know, more complicated political statements. And... and then, you know, today you see Doc Martens doing a lot of collaborations. Marc Jacobs, of course, famously put them on the runway in the '90s, sort of elevating that the high fashion platform. And I think one of the things that's interesting about this focus on collaboration's, right? It's linked to what's happened within sneakers and sneaker culture. The risk, I think, is that if Doc Martens are used broadly now to add a kind of aggressive statement to an otherwise innocuous fashion statement, what happens when Doc Martens becomes so connected to ideas of high fashion that that currency is lost? And so, you know, I've talked too about the Converse All-Star, which is unchanging in its form. You know, it came out in 1917, and it's still... and its usefulness is the fact that it is unchanging and it can be used kind of as an anti-fashion statement. And Doc Martens, I think, is going through this interesting moment where which way will it go and will it lose its currency as the footwear of rebellion if it treads down this road too far?

MATT GALLOWAY: I mean, I think those of us of a certain vintage, we love to look in the rear-view mirror and say, oh, it was way better back then, [elizabeth chuckles] or it meant more back then. And those boots were something. Is there anything I mean, maybe it's the Converse, but is there anything, and I ask this to you as a shoe historian in some ways, that represents that sense of rebellion, that when you put those shoes or those boots on, it meant the same as it did when you put the Docs on back in the 80s and the 90s?

ELIZABETH SEMMELHACK Well, I think that they are... I mean, that history isn't erased, that history is still there. And I think that that thrill is still related, right? But we're also seeing, particularly with Gen Z, like a nostalgia Bratz dolls, which typically this... this look, this quote/unquote sassy look, features heavy platform footwear that sort of rests on Doc Martens. And so I think that right now, a lot of younger people interested in fashion are looking back towards that moment when the Doc Martin itself started to... Or its meaning started to really splinter where it gets used by Marc Jacobs, or it gets somewhat a feature of grunge where it's still have this punk legacy, where the Gothic Lolita look incorporates it because it's like a 19th-century lace-up boot. And so I think that Doc Martens are having a bit of a moment related to those complexities from, you know, 20 years ago.

MATT GALLOWAY: Who do you see... You live in Manchester, Andrew. Who do you see on the streets of Manchester wearing DocS these days?

ANDREW GROVES: Well, it's sort of everyone, because I think, you know, they've become the boot of the working class, you know, historically, so, you know, just people that don't really care about what they wear and also high fashion. So I think, you know, it's very few brands that have been able to do that. So you can say Levi's managed to do that or maybe Raybans with sunglasses, but, you know, To become the iconic brand that everyone wears, you know, is one of the reasons they're being able to float themselves on the stock market because they have a meaning to everyone. So, therefore, everyone feels they have a personal investment, even if it's not a financial investment into the brand.

MATT GALLOWAY: Does part of you cringe when the boots that you used to love, maybe you still love them, when you see them floated on the stock market, as you say?

ANDREW GROVES: No, because I kind of think with all these brands, ultimately, they do belong to the... belong to the people who wear them. And I think those... whatever happens to the actual company that owns the rights and all of that, they actually belong to the people. It's up to the people, I think, ultimately to decide whether they still have that meaning or not. If they... if they still have that cultural meaning, then I think that's fine. And I think, you know, brands are very careful with what they do. So I think, you know, they're always thinking about how do any of those decisions, same with those partnerships they might be doing, how might they reflect their core customers as well? So they don't want to push them too far because they know they're going to lose those core customers.

MATT GALLOWAY: Do you have any pairs left?

ANDREW GROVES: Yes, I think I've got two for three pairs. I still got, you know, I've got the old ones I wear out because they've been warn for years, so they're really comfortable. I've got a pair that, you know, you can polish up and they look good with a suit. So I think they're always a good boot to be wearing. So, you know, I can't see, no matter what happens, I can't see them going out of fashion or anti-fashion. I think they're going to remain with us, you know, for another 60 years.

MATT GALLOWAY: Andrew, it's great to talk to you about this. Thank you very much.

ANDREW GROVES: Thank you.

MATT GALLOWAY: And Elizabeth, thank you for the historical perspective on this. I love it. Thanks.

ELIZABETH SEMMELHACK Absolutely. Bye.

AG: Elizabeth Semmelhack is the creative director for the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. And Andrew Groves is a professor of fashion at Westminster University in the UK. Well, coming up after your regional update, soldiers in the streets, bomb plots and a terrified public. The CBC podcast recall. We'll take you back to the October crisis through the voices of the people who lived it. I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current.

Episode 1 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution

AG: I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current. Over the course of the summer, we've brought you a couple of the best CBC original podcasts. And today, we begin one final one. It takes us back to a time of radical movements. Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution. The Black Panthers in the United States. And here - Quebec and Canada had the FLQ. By October 1970, there were soldiers in the streets in Quebec, communities on edge, kidnapping and terror in the headlines. But those frightening weeks were the crescendo of a wave of terror and violence that was nearly a decade in the making. Here's Geoff Turner with episode one of Recall: How to start a revolution.

Geoff Turner: In October of 1970, Canada was at the peak of a crisis, a drama that made it feel as though the federation was unraveling and our democracy was in peril. The first time I’d heard of the October Crisis and everything that led up to it, it wasn't on the news or in history class. It was on this record that you're hearing. It's by a Calgary punk band called the Hot Nasties. [Clip of “October Seven Oh” by Hot Nasties] The song is called “October Seven Oh.” And it alludes to hostages and murder, calling in the troops. And for a long time, this song, badly dubbed on a mixtape from a friend, contained the full extent of my knowledge of one of the most dramatic episodes in modern Canadian history. Geoff Turner: You see, I grew up an anglophone in Vancouver, the other side of Canada, far away from the heart of the action. And as near as I could tell, the October Crisis was about some really angry folks who wanted to leave Canada and make their own country where French was the language of the land. Well, that made no sense to my young mind. I mean, why would you not want to be part of the greatest country in the world? I'd eventually fill in details for more reliable sources, but until I got to work on this series, I didn't know how much I didn't know. I didn't know that October Crisis was actually shorthand for a seven‑year escalation of tension and violence; but mostly, I didn't know about the real people who made this history. It was only when I started to meet those people that the history started to make sense.

Geoff Turner: This series is about a radical separatist movement, the Front de Libération du Québec, the FLQ. We're going to hear the history of that movement from the people who lived through it. And we're going to hear how a dream of equality, sovereignty, and liberation led to a nightmare of bombs, kidnapping, and murder.

[music recedes]

Geoff Turner: I'm Geoff Turner, and this is Recall: How to Start a Revolution. Chapter One: Suicide Commandos.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 1] A bomb exploded today in a federal government building in downtown Montreal.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 2] Would you say that this is a communist‑backed subversive group or would you say it's French separatist terrorism?

Sound Clip: [man speaks French]

[cheers and applause]

Sound Clip: [news reporter 3] The damaging of a section of track apparently with dynamite has been blamed on the so‑called Suicide Commandos.

Sound Clip: [news reporter 4] That they intend to murder in cold blood two innocent men unless their demands are met.

Sound Clip: [woman] Your letters have moved me to hope that we will soon be together again. I do hope the FLQ will continue to allow you to write to me.

Geoff Turner: I'm in the home of Therese Labbe in suburban Montreal. She's a friendly grandma with a charming matter of factness about her. She seems comfortably settled into retirement. And in her utterly undramatic way, she's walking me through her own very dramatic chapter in this history.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe speaks French]

Geoff Turner: When Therese Labbe arrived at work on May 5th, 1966, it was nearing the end of the lunch hour. She was eight months pregnant and about to go on leave. It was meant to be a quick visit.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] I had agreed to come back to sign my termination letter and pick up my last paycheck.

Geoff Turner: It was quiet in the office at the LaGrenade shoe factory, just a couple of the bosses and their secretary.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] I was speaking with Madame Morin. She was a tiny woman, so delicate. She was a sweet, very sweet lady...and with the two LaGrenade the brothers and we chatted and chatted.

Geoff Turner: To get into the building that day, Therese Labbe had had to cross a picket line, just as she'd done every day for more than a year.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] Madame Morin was here. And I was here. Then the two LaGrenade brothers were at the back against the edge of the drawers. Then the little boy came to drop the box between Madame Morin and me.

Geoff Turner: That little boy was in fact a skinny, young man of 17. He'd arrived at the factory on the back of a scooter. When he appeared in the office, he was carrying a package about the size of a shoe box wrapped in brown paper.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] Then one of the LaGrenade brothers asked him, "What is it?" This little boy answered, "My boss is going to call you in five minutes."

Geoff Turner: Henri LaGrenade would later testify that the kid told him it was a pair of shoes. It was actually a bomb. It wound up on his secretary's desk. Then came a phone call from someone who urged LaGrenade to evacuate the premises. No explanation, just a warning to get everyone out. This was more than a year into an ugly labour struggle. And the company had already received a number of threats, none of which had amounted to anything. Henri LaGrenade ignored the warning. Whenever a bomb turned up anywhere in Montreal, this was the guy who got the call.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] I'm Robert 'Bob' Cote. I'm 83 years old, retired from Montreal Police Department. I've been six years with the Army, 31 years with the police. In my police career, I spent 14 in the bomb squad either as a member...

Geoff Turner: When I imagine a bomb squad technician, I picture an edgy, ice‑blooded loner with a chip on his shoulder. Well, that's not Bob Cote. He's warm and gregarious, a fountain of stories. He's 83, but he's looking spry in his leather coat, wool cap, and tartan scarf. But back in 1966, around the time Therese Labbe was signing her papers to go on maternity leave, Bob Cote was three years into a new work assignment on the bomb squad.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] When I was selected to go on a special course in 1963, we thought it was a temporary situation, but in my case, it lasted for 14 years.

Geoff Turner: When that temporary situation began, it seemed like little more than a nuisance...Molotov cocktails hurled at federal buildings, that sort of thing, but it escalated quickly.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 1] A bomb exploded today in a federal government building in downtown Montreal.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 2] Today's activities show that the movement pledged to bring about Quebec's independence by violence, if necessary, is graduating in its sincerity and boldness.

Geoff Turner: By early spring of 1963 it was getting hard to ignore the radical voices for separation. There was a flurry of bombings beginning in March, mostly aimed at symbolic targets, but others were a little more personal.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 2] The CNR and the police have confirmed that a section of track not far from Quebec City definitely was sabotaged ahead of the Prime Minister's train earlier in the day. The damaging of a section of track apparently with dynamite has been blamed on the so‑called Suicide Commandos.

Geoff Turner: Suicide Commandos. The term appeared in an early communique from the bombers, dated April 16th, 1963. It read in part, “The Front de libération du Québec is a revolutionary movement consisting of volunteers ready to die for the independence of Quebec. The Suicide Commandos of the FLQ are aiming principally at the complete destruction by sabotage of the colonial institutions, of all means of communication in the colonial language, and of the enterprises and commercial firms practicing discrimination against Quebeckers.”

Geoff Turner: So now the world had a name for what had been an otherwise faceless, anonymous group behind the bombings. And though he didn't know it at the time, Bob Cote's name and career would become forever entwined with the FLQ.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] During that period, 200 incidents have happened, 72 were actually bombs, and of these 72, I dismantled 31. Quite a good score. Quite a good score.

Geoff Turner: Now keep in mind the nature of the job of the bomb squad in this period. Police weren't sending in robots with video cameras. They were living, breathing, sweating humans with their hands in a device that could reduce them to a stain on the ceiling.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] We did have some equipment, very rudimentary equipment. We had a shield, a metal shield, with poles. At the end of these poles we had tools, which it was so crude that most of the time it did not work, but it makes good pictures for the press. So most of the time I have used small cutters, nail cutters.

Geoff Turner: That's right, nail cutters, for trimming your toenails. There was also something called a Spooner suit, named for a fellow from the New York bomb squad in the 1930s. It was basically a bulletproof vest that covered the whole body, but it was cumbersome. And it made the delicate work of disarming explosives nearly impossible. And according to Bob Cote, in the event that a bomb actually did blow up in your face, well, the Spooner suit would merely add 85 pounds to the stretcher on which they would carry your corpse away. He can enjoy a little black humor about the job now, but it's with the full knowledge of the brutal risk of the profession.

Sound Clip: [News reporter] When a bomb exploded at an army recruiting office in downtown Montreal, it claimed the life of an elderly night watchman.

Geoff Turner: Wilfred O'Neill was 65 years old, a veteran of both world wars, and only days away from retirement. He had a heart condition. That's why he was working the night shift. It was quieter then. The bomb that killed O'Neill was actually meant to destroy a statue of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, but there were crowds in the square that night, so the bombers went looking for another target. They settled on a garbage can in an alleyway behind a Canadian army recruitment center. And that's where Wilfred O’Neill was making his rounds that night.

Sound Clip: [Minister] Man that is born of a woman has but a short time to live in this full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower.

Geoff Turner: O’Neill died instantly...the first victim of the FLQ. A couple dozen people attended his military send‑off, no politicians.

Sound Clip: [Minister] Who may we seek for a succour but of the O Lord, who for our sins are desperate displeased...

Geoff Turner: That same day a then 27‑year‑old Robert Cote was on that special bomb course in a suburb of Montreal. He'd actually heard an explosion at the RCMP headquarters. That marked the beginning of the FLQ's weekend bombing campaign. Bob's first official day on the squad came less than a month later.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] That day Leo Plouffe, chief of the bomb squad, had gathered the new members at a restaurant on Saint Helen's Island. We had lunch there. And as we were looking at the rudimentary equipment we had, a motorcycle police came and said, “Hey, there's been a series of bombing in the Westmount and one dead.”

Geoff Turner: At this point you need to know a little bit about Westmount. Remember, at the root of the FLQ's cause was the perception, and this is well founded in reality, that working‑class Francophones were sort of second‑class citizens in their own home. They earn less than the minority Anglos. And if they wanted to advance their careers, they'd probably have to do it in English.

Geoff Turner: Well, Westmount was historically an enclave for the Montreal Anglo elite, stately homes on leafy streets high on Mount Royal looking down over the city...the home of old money. In other words, it was a natural place for Francophone separatists to plant bombs in mailboxes. At the time, Westmount was governed and policed independently of Montreal so the military was responsible for any bombs set there, not the Montreal police. That's why Sergeant Walter Leja got the call. He was an army engineer, a part of the bomb squad. He was born in Poland, but like Bob Cote, he grew up in Pointe‑Saint‑Charles, a working‑class neighborhood of Montreal. He joined the army in 1942. Now as you can imagine, the fraternity of Montreal bomb defusal technicians was not a big one.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] We knew Rocky. He was a frequent visitor at headquarters. And I would call him Mr. Leja. He'd say, Bob, I'm from Pointe‑Saint‑Charles. You call me Rocky like the others. OK, Rocky. So we became friends.

Geoff Turner: By the time Walter Leja reached the corner of Westmount and Landsdowne, he had already disarmed two of the bombs in the neighborhood, and his work was beginning to attract a crowd. There's film from that day. And the scene looks strangely casual when you view it through a present‑day lens. It seems like a pleasant spring afternoon. Firefighters, curious neighbors, reporters are standing around. And they're not exactly keeping their distance. Walter Leja is kneeling in front of the box. He's got his hands in the open panel door. And then there's a blast and the camera shakes.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] He was given for dead, but miraculously he survived, but he took 29 years to die.

Geoff Turner: And he spent nearly all of those 29 years in hospital.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] So he has to be considered as a victim of the FLQ, although he did not die immediately.

Geoff Turner: Ten bombs were planted in mailboxes that day, seven of them detonated, one to devastating effect.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] This day is still remembered in Westmount as ‘Black Friday’.

Geoff Turner: So just for the moment put yourself in Bob Cote's shoes on that Black Friday. It's your first day on the job, the job that just put a friend in hospital for life. By the time Therese Labbe is arriving at the shoe factory to pick up her papers, Robert Cote has already been with the Montreal police bomb squad through three remarkably busy years, remarkable in part because no one had died on his watch, despite the growing proliferation and the sheer size of the bombs. That was about to change.

Sound Clip: [dramatic French dialogue]

Geoff Turner: There's a French‑Canadian TV show called “District trente‑et‑un,” “District 31.” It's sort of a police soap opera. It runs Monday to Thursday at 7pm. And for millions of Quebeckers, including Therese Labbe, it's appointment television. And that's the reason we're hanging around a barbecue chicken joint on a cold December evening. We agreed to meet Therese at 7:30. And my producer, Francis, is convinced it's because Therese doesn't want us interrupting the show. Also, we're starving, and Francis is homesick for St‑Hubert chicken. So we kill some time before we knock on Therese Labbe's door in Saint Janvier de Mirabel.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe] Bonjour.

Geoff Turner: That other voice you hear is my producer Jessica. The little dog is happy to see us. The house is cozy with Christmas decorations. Around her neck, Therese Labbe wears a gold chain with a pendant that reads simply ‘maman’, mother. At the dining room table she's got a box in front of her that used to hold Christmas cards. There's a picture on the lid of Père Noël, Santa Claus. It's stuffed with newspaper clippings from 1966. They're all neat and crisp. They've hardly faded.

Sound Clip: [speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Therese is showing us pictures of the shoe factory where she worked. She's taking us back to that spring day in 1966. You'll remember, it's nearing the end of the lunch hour, and a young man has just delivered a package to the office. It looks like a shoe box. And as Robert Cote said to me, "What could be more normal than a shoe box in a shoe factory?" Except for what was inside, one‑and‑a‑half sticks of dynamite connected to a small clock and a battery, wired so that when the minute hand reached the desired time it would contact a nail. That would complete the circuit and deliver a tiny little nine‑volt current. Tiny, but plenty enough to fire the detonator cab and ignite the dynamite. So that's what's in the shoe box on the desk of LaGrenade's secretary.

Geoff Turner: Therese Morin was 63 years old. She'd never married. She'd been working for the LaGrenade family for 47 years. Her sister would later tell a reporter that Morin had been rattled by the picket lines, but she felt loyal to her bosses, and she kept coming to work. So there she was, a box with a bomb in it between her and her heavily‑pregnant colleague Therese Labbe just feet away...the two women talking to one another across Morin's desk.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] It didn't take five minutes before it exploded.

Geoff Turner: In the news footage from that day it's a scene of destruction and chaos. There are men sweeping broken glass off the sidewalk.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] On the west side of the building there was a huge window that had been blown out.

Geoff Turner: Smaller windows were shattered too. And you can see the mangled blinds flapping in the breeze.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] And when we entered, it was all full of blood.

Geoff Turner: Inside the building the camera shows a metal door hanging from its hinges, dented filing cabinets and desks. The floor is littered with paper, ash, a woman's shoe.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] You know, a really horrible scene, difficult to describe, but you can easily imagine what happens when dynamite blows up in your hands.

Geoff Turner: At this, Bob Cote makes a morbid scraping gesture toward the ceiling. Therese Morin was killed instantly. The two LaGrenade brothers were injured. In the film you see one of them walking to a waiting police car. He's got blood running down his face. And his clothing is hanging from him in shreds. It's just like in one of those old cartoons. Robert Cote is in the film too. He's coming in and out of the building carrying evidence, bits of a desk, a typewriter. And there's Therese Labbe, her face bloodied, clearly in shock, being tucked into the back of a station wagon.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] I know someone got me out, but it's vague. I was taken to the hospital, Hôtel‑Dieu. It's there that I woke up.

Geoff Turner: When she came to, Therese Labbe remembered feeling the force of the explosion, but not much else. And that force was incredible.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] I had a purse. And you might not believe this, but my purse was closed, but the papers in my purse were all shredded. It's just as if rats had chewed them up.

Geoff Turner: At the hospital she was finding it difficult to understand what was even happening. Her ears were buzzing. Doctors were concerned for the health of her unborn baby.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] It was the eyes and the ears, one ear without an ear drum, and the body...the metal...the pieces of metal that had entered my body.

Geoff Turner: All that metal from the desk where the bomb had been placed, well, it was now in pieces and buried in her body. Newspapers from the time reported that she'd been blinded. They were wrong, but she nearly lost her left eye. You can still make out the y‑shaped scar just above the eyelid with a shrapnel hit. And the ordeal didn't end the day she was discharged.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] It was painful. I spent three years hanging out in hospitals.

Geoff Turner: There were surgeries to remove the bits of embedded metal, more surgeries to transplant her blown eardrums, only one of which was successful. You can imagine all of that throwing her life into disarray, but life got busy and there just wasn't any time to dwell on what had happened. So she simply closed the lid on her box of memories and she put it away, until now, anyway.

Geoff Turner: Therese is flipping through a copy of “Le Miroir” from the day after the bombing. On the cover of this lurid tabloid is a picture of her in her hospital bed. Her belly is huge. Her hair is a mess. And there's a patch over her left eye. She looks absolutely ravaged. But today she holds up the picture for us and she's beaming. At the other end of the table watching all of this is Labbe's son, Sylvain Sirois.

Sound Clip: [Sylvain Sirois speaks French]

Geoff Turner: As a kid, Sylvain knew that his mom had lost her hearing in one of her ears. And he tells us he'd take advantage of that by sneaking up on her.

Sound Clip: [speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He loved to just stand there and stare at her until she noticed him. It scared the hell out of her.

Sound Clip: [speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Cruel tricks aside, Sylvain wonders how she kept it to herself all these years. That's my producer Francis. He's confirming that Sylvain had never seen any of this before.

Sound Clip: [Francis Plourde speaks French]

Geoff Turner: For 53 years Therese Labbe kept all of these things - the clippings, the letters, the photos - hidden away in the Santa Claus box. They were even hidden from Sylvain, who you've probably figured out by now was in her womb the day of the bombing. And you might wonder how that baby, now a 53‑year‑old man, had never really heard the story of what happened to his mom, nor the details of the terrorist movement that had delivered the bomb that had so badly injured her. But history and memory are complicated things.

Sound Clip: [Sylvain Sirois speaks French]

Geoff Turner: Sylvain says he knew that something had happened, but he didn't feel comfortable pushing for details. Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe speaks French] And as for Therese, well, like I said, she's very matter of fact. She says the faster you forget, the better it is.

Sound Clip: [Geoff Turner] Does it surprise you at all that your mom had all this...

Sound Clip: [Sylvain Sirois] Yep. Yep. Honestly, I didn't know. I didn't know that she had the all those newspaper. I didn't know. Like, we never used to talk about it, never asked question about it.

Sound Clip: [Geoff Turner] What's it like to see that picture though of your mother very pregnant with you and imagining what ‑ I mean, pregnancy is not easy under the best conditions. What she must have gone through...

Sound Clip: [Sylvain Sirois] I feel a little bit anger. Because back then all the tools they had, you know, there was no insurance, there was nothing. So you were ‑ basically, you were poor and you had to live through it. You know, so I feel angry a little bit for what she had to went through, to be honest with you. FLQ was...the idea was good, but the way it was done...

Geoff Turner: That speaks to the lasting power of the FLQ message for so many Quebeckers. Sylvain and his mother could have died because of the methods, but even he concedes that there was some virtue in some of their goals. Therese Labbe says that after the bombing she just didn't give a lot of thought to the FLQ, nor to the irony that it had killed one of the workers that it professed to be fighting for.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] It wasn't really targeted against me. It was the Front de libération du Québec.

Geoff Turner: But she's never stopped thinking about Madame Morin.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe via translator] I wonder why I didn't die and she did. We were there so close to each other. She was blown away and me, I survived somehow. Seems like I had a little one to protect. My time had not arrived.

Geoff Turner: The FLQ wouldn't claim responsibility for the attack until more than a month later, but the group was at the top of the suspect list from the moment the cops arrived on the scene. The FLQ had a newsletter called “L'avant Garde.” And at least once they'd written about the situation at LaGrenade and the need for action. A coroner's inquest would later confirm the FLQ connection to the bombing, as well as the bomber's rationale for targeting the shoe factory.

Sound Clip: [news reporter] Police told me today that the bombing of strike‑bound companies is designed to show the idle employees that the terrorists are on their side and that FLQ ranks are open to them.

Geoff Turner: I think about Therese Labbe a lot. I think about how she welcomed us, these strangers, into her family home on a cold Quebec night. I think about how surprised she'd been to hear that anyone was the least bit interested in her story. I mean, it's not as though people were banging down her door to hear what had happened to her. That brings us to a curious fact about this history. Inside Quebec, the FLQ has been a cultural obsession for decades. With each milestone anniversary it's revisited with documentaries and feature spreads in newspapers.

Geoff Turner: And over time some of the bombers have gained retrospective status as kind of swashbuckling idealists. Some of them even made their way to the upper reaches of power in Quebec. So as far as terrorists go, public memory has been pretty kind to these guys. After the initial drama of the LaGrenade bombing, the media, the experts, the historians, well, they moved on. The site of the bombing is now comfortable, middle‑class apartments. And somehow Therese Labbe and her place in the story was forgotten.

Sound Clip: [Therese Labbe speaks French]

Geoff Turner: "But the past is the past," she says. Because Therese Morin had been killed, the case was handed over to the homicide squad. By the time the lead detective arrived at LaGrenade later that afternoon, the coroner had already come and gone and taken the secretary's body with him. Three months went by. The detective superiors were getting anxious. He needed a break in the case. He needed a name. And when a young man known for his ties to the FLQ was picked up for another crime, he got that name.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] That one time he says, “OK,” he says, “Listen, it was not me at LaGrenade.” He says, “You're gonna tell me everything.” He says, “Yes.”

Geoff Turner: That confession was like a dam breaking. By the end of the night the police knew the names not only of those behind the shoe factory bombing, but of some of the ideological leaders of the FLQ as well. We'll hear more about that investigation and its consequences in episode three.

Geoff Turner: But coming up in episode two...

Sound Clip: [man speaks French]

Geoff Turner: How a Hungarian‑born, Austro‑German raised, veteran of the French Foreign Legion became a revolutionary soldier in the fight for Quebec independence. That's coming up on the next episode of Recall: How to Start a Revolution.

AG: And we'll have that next episode for you tomorrow. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Q fashion contributor Mosha Lundstrom Halbert will speak with guest-host Falen Johnson about Old Navy's recent move to stop separating out plus size clothing in their retail stores, as well as H&M's new clothing re-sell program. I'm Anthony Germain. Thanks for listening to The Current.

The Current Transcript for August 24, 2021

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