Expert urges skepticism over Taliban's promises to respect women's rights in Afghanistan

Guests: Zahra, Maritne Van Biljert

SOUNDCLIP

Those issue of women is a very important issue. The Islamic Emirate believes that we have rights for women in Islam. All our sisters, all our women are secure. Our God, our Quran, says that woman is a very important part of our society, they can work, they can get education, they are needed in our society and they will be actively involved. If they continue to live according to Sharia, we will be happy, they will be happy.

AG: Well, the message from that Taliban leader was clear; under their control, there is a place for women to live, work and go to school in Afghanistan. But the women he's talking to and about, they're not so sure. Many are trying to flee the country. My next guest is one of those women. She's a journalist who has applied to come to Canada as a refugee. Now, I spoke to her yesterday before word came out that the last Canadian operated flight out of Afghanistan is expected to depart later today. Also, this was before reports of the threat of an imminent terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that had many countries warning their citizens to stay away. Zahra was in a safe house when I spoke to her. It's not her real name. We've changed that for fears about her safety. Here's our conversation.

AG: Can you tell me what life is like for you right now?

ZAHRA: It is a very distressing, depressing, and it's really hard. We don't know what is happening next because we really I'm really stuck in a home. Couldn't go outside, although there have been some statements that there will be no issues with women in the community of women's working in the different organisations and particular journalists. But I don't really feel it's the reality and I don't feel comfortable going outside. It's not only about going outside at the moment. You're really seriously concerned about our life, our future, because at the moment I feel myself at very serious risk. So it is that I feel that life is going to stop any moment.

AG: So are you trapped?

ZAHRA: Well, it's not clear, but I've already highlighted as a woman activist, human rights activist, so it is really a serious matter for me and I have been already highlighted.

AG: Right. And this is largely because you you became active in radio and journalism because of your affiliation with a Canadian programme, right?

ZAHRA: Yes.

AG: And this is all about empowering women in journalism and in the radio station. What are you hearing from other women and journalists in your country right now?

ZAHRA: Well, then I have the connection with other journalism. They are all not feeling safe. They feel themselves hopeless at the moment, especially women at the moment, because right now we are here. You might have heard that even the Taliban's announcing womens can be actively participating in different role. But at the moment, they are not allowing them to come and do the work, even for humanitarian work. Women's are not yet allowed, and it's not easy. When I was talking to one of the doctors today and they are not feeling any sort of guarantee for the future of their job. So it is very difficult comparing to journalism. It is not an easy work. And all the journalism, they feel that, during their working period, this is the first moment, our first weeks, our days, that they feel really helpless. They feel that they can't do anything. Their hand is banded. So this is how they feel. It's not only one person.

AG: Zahra, I just want to be clear on one point when when the Taliban suggest to the world that they have changed, do you have any reason to believe that as a woman you will be able to continue to work in journalism if you can't come to Canada?

ZAHRA: Never, never, ever going to happen, and I can't believe, I never believe it, because they are really announcing that women can work based on the Sharia law and it's not really clear what it means. And they have their own understanding and explanation of the Sharia law, which is not the reality of the Sharia law. And even I have seen some of the statements. They are saying that it is good at the moment. Women should be staying at home until we have a clear instructions and guidance for them. So what does it mean if they are not against women? So there shouldn't be any sort of restrictions, any sort of padre's against women's working in different fields? I never feel it is going to be happening. And even right now, at the moment, the male journalist also has been threatened, has been beaten. So it's not possible it's going to happen.

AG: You know, as you probably recall, one of the justifications for the war two decades ago was actually to to confront the oppression of women in Afghanistan beneath the Taliban. What do you think is going to happen to women's rights that were that were gained? You know, if you look at some progress that was made, what do you think is going to happen? Is that all going to be erased?

ZAHRA: Well, it is really concerning me and I'm really disappointed. I'm really hopeless at the moment because during last 15 to 20 years of struggles, all the world supported Afghanistan to strengthen women's rights. But at the end, it was not stamped. It was not kept. I think we are losing all the human rights and women's rights achievements at the moment. It's really unfortunate that all the humanitarian workers and all the international community have been doing a lot of investment here. But at the end, in a very unexpected moment, they have left us without any support. This is really concerning and really putting us in a stressful moment. At the moment, you know, I am in contact with human rights and women's rights activists. They have not been supported. Even there is a lot of news is coming up that international organisations are going to support women's rights and human rights activists. But it's not happening at the moment. Everyone stuck here without any support.

AG: These are all very bleak indicators. I'd like to ask you a personal question, Zahra. You were you were just a young girl when the Taliban were last in control of your country. What memories do you have about that time, if any?

ZAHRA: Well, you know, that was the moment has changed all my life. I was 14 years when the Taliban first was here in Afghanistan. The main challenge and fear I have is I don't want my girls to experience the same life as I have been experiencing. And that was the reason because of the Taliban. So it is a big story. I was hoping someday I would be able to share my life story, how it was started and how I struggled to take myself into the next step. And I really do want my girls to experience the same situation.

AG: I was going to ask you now, with the Taliban on the verge of reclaiming control of the country, when when you look at your 14 year old daughter, do you see the 14 year old you?

ZAHRA: Not me, actually. But I don't want to see it's happening to me again, because they're the generation at the moment, the negative experience of myself was the reason that I was really struggling to [unintelligible] the same situation of my girl. But if we stay here, if we don't have any support to get out of the country, especially, I am requesting Canadian government, please, please help me, help my family and especially my young girl. I don't want to see her self in the same situation that I have been experiencing. And if I stay here, if we are not going out with any sort of support, I feel she will be having the even worse situation than me.

AG: When you look at the situation at the airport in Kabul and the fact the time between now and August 31st is running out. Have you thought about the plans that you'll have to consider in the event you can't escape from the airport?

ZAHRA: There are a lot of women's and journalists, women's rights activists. I'm sorry, I'm a little bit of the emotional. Sorry. I can do my own thought,s myself unless there's no support. And that's the only international communities who can support us. As I mentioned, they came they started up that we could, I could grow up, I could learn, improve myself and see a different world even staying in Afghanistan and be really strong fighting against all the challenges on all the boundaries. But they all left us behind at the moment. So this is a situation we still need their support. So that's the only opportunity. I have no resources that are then our international colleagues, our international community supporting us. So that's the only request. I really I beg that request. I beg that support from our international community, particularly Canadian government, to support us.

AG: Zahra, I hope that you get some some answers to your requests for help and assistance to to get out of Afghanistan with your with your daughter. Thank you for your time.

ZAHRA: Thank you so much. Thanks so much for the opportunity that I could talk to you.

AG: And that was a woman formerly working as a journalist in Afghanistan, recalling her Zahra, not her real name, because of concerns over her safety. Martine Van Biljert is the co-founder of Afghanistan Analyst Network. That's a Kabul based non-profit policy research organisation, and she is currently in Maastricht in the Netherlands. Good morning, Martine.

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: Hi. Good morning.

AG: Now, you've had a chance to listen to how similar is her story to what you're hearing and seeing from other women in Afghanistan right now?

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: Well, basically, there's a lot of different kind of stories you can tell about women in Afghanistan because they're not a monolith. But for an active woman in Afghanistan, a journalist, a civil society activist, someone who lives in the city, this is very similar to what I'm hearing. Women are very much afraid. They don't know what the Taliban rule is going to look like. They also don't know whether they're going to be targeted because a lot of active civil society activists, men and women are really fearful of specific targeting. And yet there are a lot of people are hiding and and hoping to get out.

AG: Now, we spoke to several prominent Afghan women, former governors, members of the Afghan parliament, heads of NGOs, and all of them were afraid to speak to us on fear for that, that, you know, they would be putting their family's lives in danger. Based on your research, how well-founded is that kind of fear?

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: It's been quite murky for a while because it's as you say, it's difficult to speak to people in the country at the moment because people are really preoccupied, are really trying to figure out what the situation is, whether they should stay, whether they should go. They don't know who's listening into their phones. They don't know yet what kind of regime they're going to be living under or what you might be punished for. So a lot of us initially have been relying on reporting on social media, which has been all over the place, basically welcoming Taliban rule. There's been a lot of reports, unsubstantiated often. So it was difficult to figure out what was going on. But slowly, the picture that is emerging is that there is a cohort of people that's very much at risk, that there are Taliban fighters looking for people, that they are going to houses, that they're asking after people. So there's a very specific risk at the moment for people who are known, men and women. And then there's the general just uncertainty of what's it going to look like. But at the same time, these indications that this is not just a crude, undirected movement, but that there has been information gathering and that it is still ongoing.

AG: Do you think people make the distinction between the Taliban leadership and and the goons like the foot soldiers who seem to decide who they're going to beat in the streets, or at least, you know, from what we saw in the Taliban in the past?

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: I mean, at the moment, I think we're seeing three faces of the Taliban. One is the leadership who are telling the world what the rules are or what they might be or what they're still thinking about. The other one of the fighters in the street who are already implementing what they think are the rules and how people are supposed to behave. And they're not being actively- it seems they're not being actively reined in for whatever reason. And then we have the face of the Taliban that we don't see very much of from the outside, but that that's the plight of the Taliban that is actively going after people and that is not undirected, blunt violence. That's very, very specific, very concerning.

AG: Now, you lived under Taliban rule back in the late 1990s. In what way is the Taliban of then different from what we're seeing today?

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: Well, they themselves say that they that they've changed. I mean, basically, they say we're we're still the same. We still believe in the same things. But at that time, we were inexperienced and we made a lot of mistakes. And we've learnt now and we're not going to make those mistakes anymore. And in practise, you do already see things that would have been unthinkable then and that are happening now. But we don't know whether they're going to stay and we don't know whether they're just kind of window dressing. But we have seen that girls schools, girls primary schools have opened, which didn't happen under the Taliban rule in the 1990s, and only patchily in districts that they ruled over the last few years. They've not been clear about what they're going to do about secondary school. Yet we've seen discussions in Herat with university personnel about how to a. Allow women to continue to study, and there they decided that it would be separate classrooms, female teachers, when the staff said we don't have that many women teachers, they agreed on that older men could teach as well. And so there was some room for negotiation, but we don't know whether that's a local temporary case that might be pushed back. But it is something that wouldn't have been able to even discuss at that time. So there is more space to for manoeuvre, but we don't know yet how the how the queen is going to drop.

AG: Right. And it's an important nuance which may or may not exist into the future.

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: Yeah, yeah. I mean, basically, they're very keen to show a face that knows what it's doing that's going to be good for the people. They keep saying give us time to be patient. But obviously a lot of Afghans and Afghan women don't trust it at all. And I can't blame them.

AG: When you and I speak of Afghan women, I think much of our focus is on educated urban women, possibly, you could say an elite within Afghan society. What what are we missing when we talk about women like that to the exclusion of others?

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: Well, there has been in the past this view that the women's rights activists were urban and because they were urban and elitist, they didn't represent the rest of the country and that the rest of the country had different priorities. And we did we did research on that as well. And basically what we found was that a lot of the considerations and what people cared about was very, very similar. But like even in remote and conservative areas, women really cared about education. They cared about education for their daughters. They hoped that if peace came, they could maybe get themselves educated. They wanted to travel. They needed the freedom to go to family gatherings. Well, we also found is that it wasn't just the Taliban that limited that freedom, but it was also war. And that security was was had a huge impact on people's lives. And so in the areas where the war was ongoing in the last few years, if the Taliban rule brings peace and stability in those areas, that's going to seriously improve their lives. At the same time, if we're going to get a nosedive with the economy, that's going to be a problem, too. But it complicates things as well now because some people will say we should accept the Taliban if it brings an end to war. But then once the war ends, you still want to have a good life. And so, yeah, that's that's going to be a complicated one.

AG: It almost seems to me, Martina, that you're saying, you know, we should really take a step back and see what this this I don't know, new Taliban, which is more aware of its image, is going to do.

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: We should take a step back, but we should look very, very critically. And I do think that the large parts of the West have quite a shallow way of engaging with the Taliban and that on one hand, there's this response to the expectation of brutality of the Taliban, which kind of clouds looking at what's really going on. But on the other hand, we shouldn't be naive because, I mean, the face we're seeing of the Taliban now is really the curated, smooth talking phase. So, yeah, basically the world needs to look very closely. But I'm afraid of this, that the is that a lot of the international community is going to be focussing mainly on its impact and its and its domestic politics. But for the sake of Afghanistan, it's important that we engage.

AG: So what should the international community be doing at this point?

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: Well, it's important that the international community at least engages with the Taliban so that it keeps open the possibility of having leverage. I mean, we're facing the possibility of a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, could be very, very difficult if there are sanctions or a complete stopping of aid. So, again, it's really it's this delicate balance of not stepping away, but also not being fooled too easily.

AG: Martine, I appreciate your thoughts and analysis. Thank you very much.

MARTINE VAN BILJERT: It's a pleasure.

AG: Martine Van Biljert is the co-founder of Afghanistan Analyst Network, a Kabul based non-profit policy research organisation. The CBC News is next. And then.

SOUNDCLIP

We know that black people are seen as more criminal, more threatening, remorseless, all these things that are attached to black skin and all these negative ideas of criminality that come out in the courtroom and the culture of what is supposed to shift that perspective and really show a human side.

AG: A landmark decision in a Nova Scotia court will change sentencing for black people in that province by putting history on the scales of justice in six minutes. I'll speak to a social worker about the national impact of that court case. I'm Anthony Germain. You're listening to The Current.

How a N.S. court decision will be used to recognize systemic racism when sentencing; Fraggle Rock makes a comeback

Guests: Robert Wright

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

[Musi: Theme]

AG: Still to come, we'll take you on a trip down memory lane to where the Doozers live, some Gorgs too and Fraggles. We'll visit the old world of Fraggle Rock just as it's being reimagined in shiny new ways for a reboot. But first, to a Nova Scotia courtroom.

[Music: Theme]

AG: Well, you may not have heard the name Rakeem Rayshon Anderson, but his story may have a profound and lasting legacies for people across the country. He was convicted after police found a loaded handgun in his car during a routine traffic stop in Nova Scotia. And he'll be doing house arrest as well as probation. And now that province's Court of Appeal has ruled that judges have a responsibility to take into account the history of racism and oppression of black people when sentencing. Now, any black Nova Scotia and facing a sentence will be able to have an impact of race and culture assessment. Also known as an IRCA social worker and sociologist, Robert Wright was the first person in Canada to develop and write an America report. Good morning.

ROBERT WRIGHT: Good morning.

AG: So why is this so significant?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, it's so significant because now we have a decision from a higher court saying, well, confirming really everything that we've been saying since 2014 in the first Sterckx, and that is that it is absolutely essential that courts actually hear this information when sentencing a person of African descent. In fact, they're saying that if these issues, the issues of how race is affected, the person is not in front of the court when a judgement like this is being made that the courts may be actually making an error in law.

AG: So obviously, this is a fascinating case. Just so we can back up a bit, the Anderson case, it's not the first time that a race and culture assessment has been used in Nova Scotia. And you were the first person to write one which was used in a court back in 2014.

ROBERT WRIGHT: Yes.

AG: Tell me, what was your goal in developing these reports for black people facing a sentencing?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, for years, myself and many others have been studying the fact that systemic racism in policing in our criminal justice system has resulted in black people being overpoliced over charged, over incarcerated. And and this has been accepted even by the the criminal justice system. So, for example, in the Donald Marshall Jr wrongful conviction enquiry, the they said systemic racism affected Donald Marshall's wrongful conviction. But no one had actually created a tool to help judges consider these things when there is a black person standing in front of them. And so I was asked by lawyers actually starting in 2012 to figure out how to put that evidence in front of a judge at sentencing. And so I created a circus.

AG: So when you do this, can you give me some examples of what kinds of facts you you write into these IRCAs?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, if you think about it, the IRCAs kind of trace the effect of systemic racism on a person's life. And so if you have a person who's black and because they're black, they grow up in poverty, poverty is a factor that contributes to criminality. If the person has been systemically kind of excluded from education or did not get the proper resources so they could have a successful education, that's a factor. If the person has been subjected to, you know, kind of vitriolic racism and marginalisation and systemic exclusion and bullying and violence themselves, these are things that the court should understand so that when they look at the person in front of them, they not just see a person who is a criminal, who committed a criminal act, but also can see that the individual has been a victim of systemic racism in our society. And to criminalise that person or to overly sentence them would just be further harming them and perpetuating the racism right experience.

AG: So what's actually changed with this Court of Appeal decision?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, what has changed, I guess what I would say is that courts run on the thing called precedent. So if one judge makes a decision, a lawyer in arguing another case can reference the earlier decision. But when those decisions happen at a lower court level, they don't have as much weight. And so by appealing Rakeem's sentence and ultimately, really, they they stop. They the crown put the appeal in front of a higher court, a federal appeals court in Nova Scotia. And that appeal court reviewed the decision and reviewed the case law and reviewed the science around this and said, hey, IRCAs are important. It is important that every judge who sentences a black person has this information, and it's important that that information come in the form of IRCA. And so now that that appeal court decision has much more weight and it actually spells out these principles in much greater detail.

AG: How effective have these IRCA reports been up until now and actually changing or modifying the outcome of a judge's sentencing in Nova Scotia?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, I'd say that they've been fairly influential. In fact, we've had a number of written decisions and not just in on Nova Scotia, but in also in Ontario. I wrote the first IRCA in Ontario, the Jackson case. And and the judges have been making comments, very, very strong comments about how the IRCAs are assisting them to see the person that they're about to sentence more clearly. The IRCAs are helping them to understand how racism works and affects the criminality of individuals and how systemic racism is present in the courts, of course, have an obligation to sentence people fairly. And so this information is helping them to make fairer sentences.

AG: I just want to make sure I get this question in, because this is sort of something I think comes to a lot of listeners minds as we're discussing this. You mentioned the landmark Marshall case, which was, of course, huge and important with respect to indigenous rights. Why specifically are these IRCAs being offered to black offenders and not other minority groups, whether they're indigenous or or other groups?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, I think that we need to recognise that in Canada, Indigenous peoples, First Nations and people of African descent have a very unique history when it comes to the nature of the systemic racism that they've experienced. First Nations peoples, of course, were where there was an attempted genocide. They've been removed from their land. In many cases, many peoples lost their languages. We know the legacy of the residential schools when it comes to people of African descent, people, black people in Canada were initially enslaved in many places and even freed blacks who came to Canada were later enslaved. And then, of course, the kind of anti black racism that resulted in real marginalisation and segregation for black folk, that these types of racism are very unique and different and have systemic, very deep, systemic roots. So I think it's important to start with these peoples, of course, other peoples, South Asians and others have similar concerns. But I think that before we start to use IRCAs in other places, we need to firmly establish their role in meeting the needs of African Canadians.

AG: I just want to ask you a question, because I gather part of this has to do with the fact that judges are socialised within the dominant culture and they need to be educated. What about other members of the dominant culture who are listening to us right now and who may be interpreting what you're saying as a system or an interpretation that might go easier on black offenders?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, that's interesting because some people say, oh, well, black people are now looking for special treatment. Actually, the science, the history tells us that black people have been disproportionately policed and charged and incarcerated and even once incarcerated, are held in much higher security locations. They spend, they do more time behind bars for the same sentences that white counterparts. So burqas are trying to give them a racial pass. They are providing the courts with information so that the courts can start making judgements and sentences that are not based on racism.

AG: Right. If I gave you 30 seconds, this ruling applies only in Nova Scotia right now. Will it have any impact outside of the province?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Absolutely. In fact, the federal government has recognised the importance of IRCA's and has made funding available to roll IRCAs out right across the country. And so I'm currently involved in a project to train and recruit IRCA assessors right across the country. There's a plan to train lawyers in their use. And the National Judicial Institute is even going to receive some funding to train judges in how to use them in the courtroom.

AG: No doubt we'll be following this up as it unfolds across the country. Mr. Wright, thank you very much.

ROBERT WRIGHT: You're very welcome.

AG: Robert Wright is a sociologist and social worker based in Halifax. I'm Anthony Germain, and you're listening to The Current. Well, if you grew up in this country in the 1980s, you might remember a world of Frankel's Deusen and Georg's. Fraggle Rock was a co-production between the CBC in Canada and broadcasters right around the world. And the Fraggles, you may have heard, are getting a reboot. And like the original shows being made in Canada, that first series filmed in Toronto. This time the magic happening in Calgary, Fraggle Rock featured the Muppets of Jim Henson. And even today, it's considered by some people to be one of the most creative kids programmes of all time. So with a new version in the works, The Current took a look back at the original Fraggle Rock with some of its creators earlier this year.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I always say as much fun as you would think it would be to produce Fraggle Rock, it was way more fun than.

[Music]

VOICE 1: I learnt more than I am, a visceral Fraggle Rock, I came in at Episode 13 and produced the best of the series up to Episode 96. Peter worked and ran what was called Henson International Television, which was the distribution arm of of Henson's. What Peter says to Jim is, you know, we could do a children's show that was puppets.

VOICE 2: Look at this rocket peach pie on blueberry.

VOICE 1: You could you could dub all the puppet voices in different languages. But this is what you could do. Now, this is a business idea. So what is Jim Henson doing with this idea? So he brings these other people together with him and he says, do you think we could do a show that would stop war?

VOICE 2: What are you doing with your show against me hitting Schimmelpfennig with a pie in the face? You'd you'd leave me, which you don't even like.

VOICE 3: So he takes his distribution idea, this deal idea and turns it into. Yeah, we're stopping more because it's going to be children all over the world. I mean, what else would we do? Hello.

VOICE 1: Jim always said that he wanted to do a show about interconnectivity. He wanted to do a show that was about species having to learn to live together and how that was connected in a way that they probably didn't understand. But we the audience would see that. And then seeing that take that away and we realised how we are connected.

VOICE 2: Wake up in the morning,

VOICE 1: the Fraggles are just doing incarnates, you know, and they're very musical people. They you know, one of the reasons the songs work so well, I think, is because they naturally burst into song. One of the things with songs and in shows is that you you know, the audience says, why are they suddenly singing right now? But because the music is built into who they are. They play the role. They play all day. They play all day. You can have as many birthdays as you wanted. You know, Ed, you know, they were definitely all about playing.

VOICE 2: But do you really enjoy your 30 minute workweek?

VOICE 4: Oh, yes. Why? Sometimes I put in two, maybe three minutes of all the time.

VOICE 1: The Doozers. They're an industrious sort. They don't appear to play at all, although they get huge pleasure from what they do. They build, build, build, build, build these all these structures.

VOICE 2: It's not all fun and games. They just look at the Doozers.

VOICE 4: Yeah, tedium and drudgery are good for the soul.

VOICE 1: And then then you had the Gorgs and the Gorgs were, you know, thought of themselves as the ruler of the universe. Of course, they're the only three people we ever seen in in their universe. So they don't really seem to have any subjects.

VOICE 2: Oh, who goes there?

VOICE 1: What do you mean who goes there?

VOICE 2: But your mother and father, the king and queen.

VOICE 2: The Gorgs appealed to me because they were funny. And I love the sort of pseudo royalty of them, the mockery of monarchy. You know, I'm an immigrant. As kid of an immigrant. You know, my parents grew up in the British Raj. You know, I got attitudes about royalty, you know, the password.

VOICE 2: But you said, you know the password. Oh, you said you knew the password was yesterday's password.

VOICE 1: I'm [unintelligible]. And I wrote every word of every draught of ten episodes of Fraggle Rock. Jim had been coming to Toronto since the late 60s because all those early Muppet specials like the musician Muppets of Breman and all those shows, they were shot in that studio, which was our studios on Scollard Street, downtown Toronto. And so I think when Fraggle Rock happened, you realise that Fraggle Rock was the very first TV show that HBO commissioned. Long before The Sopranos, Fraggle Rock was HBO's first TV series, and as part of that deal, Jim went to the CBC and CBC became a co producer with HBO and Hensen, and that was who made the show.

VOICE 5: My name's Trish Leeper and I played Moggach on the series.

VOICE 3: You know that this is Kissing Rock where your father and I first went.

VOICE 5: It was like a family, like I like being part of an orchestra. And I tell you, Jim Henson was a wonderful conductor. You know, when the conductor taps the baton or whatever, we're all picking up our instruments and ready to go. Sometimes you'd go to Hanson and say, do you have any notes? And he'd go make it better. You know, he didn't have to tell you. You know, there was that wonderful respect. I think that kind of spirit always existed. And I think that was Jim's genius. Some people called him the man with the whim of Steel.

VOICE 3: I, Jocelyn Stevenson and I worked on the original series of Fraggle Rock from the very, very beginning as a cocreator and then as a writer. I have my personal favourite, which was read in the minstrel. And I that's my personal favourite, because you have to understand, I spent much of the first couple series feeling like I probably really wasn't very good at this, but when Minstrel's was the first group that I that I wrote that I felt really said what I wanted to say. And it was about Red finding her song.

VOICE 2: I fear I'm losing my implacable call. I've never had a song. You've always had a song.

VOICE 3: You know, the endless quest to get really strong female characters who can also be goofy. She just had her obsessions. She was incredibly and she's incredibly enthusiastic. She absolutely thinks she can do whatever she, you know, I can do and I can do it on my own. There was one song that was that was her singing. I could do it on my own.

[Song]

VOICE 3: I can't sing and I can sweep it clean. I can have the popcorn, I can feel the machine. I can even be the driving creative. I can do it on my own. She was a great character. So it was my favourite bit about all about all of that. It was it just it was such a great collaboration between writer, writer and performer.

VOICE 1: We never thought of it as a kid show, by the way. None of us did never even Jim didn't think of it as a kid show. We we really thought of it as a you know, as a as a show that was for families, perhaps. But and in fact, because it was for families, it had to cater to sort of the adult viewer as much as it had to cater to the kids viewer. You know, when I watched that show with kids later on, I realised we could have had the Fagles jumping up and down for half an hour and done nothing else. And the kids would watch. But the adults were watching my scenes with the Gorgs, having, you know, sort of flirting with with each other and really enjoying that which went right over the heads of any kids watching you get.

VOICE 2: What's all this to break my make up. After all, this is our second honeymoon.

VOICE 1: in Canada at the CBC where we're with the national broadcaster. So we're all over the country. And we we would get about two and a half million to two point seven million a week. And we were airing opposite 60 Minutes on Sunday nights. So sometimes we would beat sixty minutes, which was a big deal. We didn't always do that, but it was a big deal and we weren't paying. I sound like I paid a lot of attention to these things, but we really didn't. But what I'm bringing it up is that the what we call the fragile consciousness was much greater in Canada because of the CBC than it was, you know, in the United States. And so it took a lot, lot longer for that to happen. And subsequent broadcasters got involved with, you know, after HBO finished with the show and all that. And Canadians love the show. We did it. It just was a hit from the beginning.

VOICE 4: We ended up doing what did we do? Ninety six episodes. And and we we could have done more. But Jim wanted to stop while we were still you know, he didn't want it to be a series that had to end because nobody was watching anymore. And so I think it's Mutz says much more about it, that it's thirty five years later or forty years later now. And we're doing another version. I think that's pretty. I mean, because we didn't know it could have just died when we were doing it. We had no idea really how popular it was. I mean, we were you know, we were doing international versions. And I all I remember just we just had to get through it. I don't remember. And then and we were going to keep doing it until they stopped us.

VOICE 1: I loved the world that Fraggle Rock was because I feel that that show really did change the world or had the potential to change the world. And thirty five years later, it feels like we need that show even more than we did thirty five years ago. I mean, the issues that that show tackled, we tackled nuclear war. It tackled racism and tackled inequality and tackled so many things in a way that you didn't know they were tackling you.

VOICE 3: You mean you shrunk yourself because you wanted to be friends with Frank? No, I didn't have Vinit relief, and it made me smile so that I could see the universe in a way I never did before. What balderdash.

VOICE 3: And and it felt like the embrace of by the world, really, of the show was a sign of change and progress. And, you know, we've seen that that change in progress hasn't been sustained and we're maybe in bigger trouble than we were thirty five years ago. And so I hope the reboot does a little bit towards fixing that. I just know that it was deeper than from the outside in. It was a show that worked from the inside out. And and I think if the reboot is going to be successful, it has to have that in place. And I hope it is.

VOICE 3: I think people really want that kind of big vision now. I mean, with everything that's happening in the world being positive, you know, hopeful vision, I'm you know, I'm vamping here. But that's what I think. And I think it's also that, you know, the people that are redoing it, they grew up on it. And I mean, there are some major fans. It's hugely important to them. And I can't tell you how much that I mean, it's just so meaningful to me that they want this world to live on.

[Song]

AG: That piece about the remake of Fraggle Rock was produced by Jennifer Keene in Calgary and at first aired in March. Well, coming up after your regional update, it's episode three of the CBC podcast, Recall How to Start a Revolution. Host Jeff Turner will take you back to the October crisis. And inside the mind of paravalvular journalist, writer and firebrand for separatist sentiments in Quebec. I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current.

Episode 3 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution

AG: I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current. This week we're bringing you an original CBC podcast that will take you to Quebec, in the 1960s. It is called Recall: How to start a revolution. Today's episode tells the story of a man who was the intellectual father of the FLQ ... how his revolutionary book sparked separatist sentiments in the province... and ended up being used in court against him. Here's Geoff Turner.

Geoff Turner: Before we get started, I want to make a note about language. I'm going to be making reference to a book in this episode. And the English title of the book contains an ugly, hateful word, maybe the ugliest word in the English language. I'm not going to use the word because nobody needs to hear it. I'll just say ‘N‑word’. But you need to know about the book, because it's pretty essential if you want to understand the FLQ, the Quebec Liberation Front. The title of the book translated to English is 'The White N‑Words of America.' The subtitle calls it, "A precocious autobiography of a Quebec terrorist." And as you might have guessed from that title, the author aligns the experience of French Canadians to the struggles of Black Americans. The author was Pierre Vallieres.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Vallieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: A man who says he's always been judged for his ideas and the way he denounced injustice.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Vallieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Vallieres was a self‑proclaimed revolutionary, someone who questioned the system and raised awareness against perceived injustice. The book itself is a mix of essays and personal history. Above all, it's an expression of alienation and anger, anger rooted not just in politics, but in bitter memories of family life in working‑class Montreal. Vallieres challenged Quebeckers to harness their anger and to take up arms in the name of independence. In order to attain this objective, he says, and here I quote, "We must first organize together a violence, a force, capable of liberating us all from the multiple forms of slavery, domination, and alienation that subjugate us collectively and individually from the time we are in the cradle."

Geoff Turner: The tone of the book grew from Vallieres's experience, but it must have been shaped by the immediate conditions under which it was produced as well. You see, Valliere wrote the book while in a New York jail. He churned it out in longhand on scraps of paper in his cell. He smuggled a manuscript out with an unsuspecting prison guard who thought he was ferrying notes to Vallieres's lawyer. The book caught the eye of a 'New York Times' reviewer who wrote that it would, quote, "Take its place alongside the writing of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Regis Debray. For it is an eloquent revolutionary document that clutches one's throat like a drowning hand.

Geoff Turner: But Valliere would be made to answer for that revolutionary message. Passages from the book, a book published at least two years after the crimes in question, were produced as evidence of Vallieres's guilt at trial for manslaughter in connection with two bombings. The prosecution built its case around his ideas. It appeared they were just as afraid of words as they were of weapons, and maybe for good reason. The book and the trial and conviction of Pierre Vallieres only inflamed separatist sentiment. It made Vallieres the philosophical father of the movement. Suddenly a man that police viewed as a killer and a villain, had the aura of a folk hero, a prisoner of conscience. Prosecutors thought they'd cut the head from the snake. They were wrong.

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

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

News reporter 3: The damaging of a section of track apparently with dynamite has been blamed on the so‑called Suicide Commandos.

Sound Clip: [man speaks French]

[cheers and applause]

News reporter 4: That they intend to murder in cold blood two innocent men unless their demands are met.

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 Geoff Turner, and this is Recall: How to Start a Revolution. Chapter Three: The Mastermind.

Geoff Turner: Pierre Vallieres had been getting his words out into the world for years before he published his book. He'd been a journalist for ‘La Presse’, the biggest French language daily in Montreal. And he'd written about Quebec in progressive journals, but he was also spreading his ideas on the down low. He wrote under a nom de guerre in the newsletters of the FLQ. They were called ‘La Cognee’ and ‘L'Avant-Garde’. The newsletters were full of inflammatory language and calls to sabotage and bombing, interventions, and labour struggles. And that might have seemed like empty talk, except for what happened on July 14, 1966.

Geoff Turner: That morning Jean Corbo woke up in the comfort of his upper‑middle‑class family home. His mother was French Canadian, but his father was an Italian immigrant, a very successful notary public. It was summer vacation. Jean was 10 days away from his 17th birthday. He washed and dressed, and then with his brother he sat down to a meal prepared by the cleaning lady. He left the house about 1pm. There are gaps in the story from there, but he would eventually meet up with Serge Demers in front of the Montreal Forum, a temple of hockey and home of the legendary Canadiens.

Geoff Turner: Demers was 21, a student, and also a bomb maker for the FLQ. He pulled up in a Volkswagen van. The pair went over some instructions, and then they drove the few blocks to Dominion Textiles. It was a sprawling factory on the north shore of the Lachine Canal. Today it's a relic of the glory days of Canadian manufacturing. In the summer of 1966, the company was in the midst of a labor dispute. And that made it a target of the FLQ. So once they got to the plant, Demers handed Corbo a bomb in an Air Canada carry‑on bag. They shook hands. The plan was to meet later at a restaurant. Corbo made his way towards a parked car in the alleyway, right next to the factory.

Jean Corbo: So it's that classic red brick that almost everything was made out of in Montreal of that era. You can see the marker on that building, 1899.

Geoff Turner: This was Jean Corbo's final destination that day.

Jean Corbo: But it's wild, eh? You get a sense of how huge this business would have been.

Geoff Turner: That night a security guard heard what he called a stunning explosion. He rushed to the scene to find several people gathered near a badly‑damaged car. There was smoke coming from the vehicle.

Jessica Linzey: Oh, yeah, that's the corner. Yeah, that's it. Oh, yeah, well, we got the window ‑

[Geoff Turner] And there's that window right there.

Jessica Linzey: Oh, and there's the bottom ‑ there's that part right there.

Geoff Turner: Yeah, this is exactly ‑ so we're actually parked where his body was lying, like, literally right where his body was.

Geoff Turner: My producer Jessica and I have been driving around for the last 10 minutes trying to figure out where the explosion happened based on photographs of the scene that night.

Geoff Turner: Yeah, so in the photograph the car is basically right there.

Geoff Turner: Standing here now, it's easy to picture. Corbo kneels between the car and the exterior wall of a factory. His job is simple enough, arm the bomb, set it down, and walk away. But it explodes before he gets the chance. In a photograph from the scene, his badly‑mangled body is lying about 20 feet in front of the car.

Geoff Turner: His clothes are gone, totally gone. The blast must have just blown them right off.

Sound Clip: [speaking French]

Geoff Turner: In the course of researching this podcast, my producers and I got a chance to spend hours at the Quebec National Archives in Montreal. We poured over documents, including the coroner's inquest into the death of Jean Corbo. I flipped to the back of the case folder. And here are more photos from the scene. There's a close‑up of Corbo, his body dismembered, but his face intact, thick head of dark hair, his eyes open. He's just a kid. And then something else slips out of the folder, a business card. On the back in tidy blue‑ink handwriting there's a note about picking up a photograph of Jean Corbo from his family. On the front of the card it reads, "Julien Giguere, Sergeant Detective, Montreal Police."

Jessica Linzey: Monsieur Giguere? Oui, Jessica…

Geoff Turner: Julien Giguere is enjoying the quiet life in Terrebonne, an hour northeast of Montreal. It's a retirement complex. There's a bustling recreation space off the lobby, and it's packed with friendly faces, people playing card games, crowded around the pool table, chatting in the hair salon. It's a world away from the gritty, crime‑fighting life that he led for decades as a detective with the Montreal police. It's December 2019, and Giguere still seems every inch the gruff homicide cop. I wouldn't want to be on the wrong end of his interrogation, even now, let alone back in the summer of 1966. The death of Jean Corbo capped a deadly couple of months for the FLQ. On May 6, Therese Morin had been killed in the bombing at the Lagrenade shoe factory.

Julien Giguere: I guess it was around 1:00. And my lieutenant told me, says, hey, you started a job there, then the bomb exploded. So I drove with my own car on the scene.

Geoff Turner: Giguere says he knew right away that it was the FLQ.

Julien Giguere: Yeah, it couldn't be nobody else.

Geoff Turner: But he didn't know much beyond that. Then his colleagues at the RCMP shared a name. Earlier that spring there had been a robbery at a cinema. Movie theaters were low‑hanging fruit for stick‑ups back then. The case had gone unsolved for months, but on August 27, police picked up three people in connection with the crime. One of them was a 19‑year‑old lab technician, Rheal Mathieu.

Julien Giguere: So two days later the lieutenant in charge of the FLQ squad came to me says, hey, guy, there's a guy in Bordeaux, Rheal Mathieu, you are looking for. Go ahead and pick him up.

Geoff Turner: The Bordeaux he's talking about is not French wine country, it's Bordeaux Prison, a provincial jail on the north side of Montreal. Giguere got there by late afternoon. They settled in for a long night of interrogation, and pretty soon the information began to flow.

Julien Giguere: At one time he says, “OK, I will tell you everything.”

Geoff Turner: At first, Rheal Mathieu denied involvement in the shoe factory bombing. Giguere was getting pissed off.

Julien Giguere: He says, “Listen, it's not me at Lagrenade,” I says, “What the hell? I says, “You're gonna tell me everything.” He says, yes. It was not me, but...OK, but what else? He says, it was Gaetan Desrosiers.

Geoff Turner: Remember Therese Labbe from episode one? She was right there when that bomb exploded at the Lagrenade shoe factory. And she described this skinny little boy who delivered the bomb. That boy was Gaetan Desrosiers, 17 years old and still in high school. As the night of interrogation went on, Rheal Mathieu offered more names and a clearer picture of the events leading up to the Lagrenade bombing.

Sound Clip: [Geoff Turner] What was the truth according to Rheal Mathieu?

Julien Giguere: Well, the truth was it was decided to put a bomb at Lagrenade Shoes by the council. I say, “What council?”

Geoff Turner: He told Giguere that Lagrenade was chosen as a target by a council. That council was essentially the leading members of the FLQ cell led by Pierre Vallieres and Charles Gagnon.

Julien Giguere: I would say the grandfathers were Vallieres and Gagnon.

Geoff Turner: Julien Giguere exaggerates a little bit, but Vallieres and Gagnon were about a decade older than most of the cell.

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Rheal Mathieu, on the other hand ‑ this is him you're hearing now ‑ he was the youngest member of Vallieres's group. And he says he was audacious.

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He wound up with the job of stealing dynamite, weapons, and almost as importantly, printing equipment. He was also put in charge of recruitment. He's the one who signed up Gaetan Desrosiers and 16‑year‑old Jean Corbo, who he met through a girlfriend, the same Jean Corbo who wound up blown to pieces planting a bomb at Dominion Textiles.

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He says he had no qualms about recruiting other teenagers.

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Besides, he says, a 17-year-old is mature enough to know what he's doing when he's sent to deliver a bomb. We did reach out to Rheal Mathieu for his side of the story, but he declined to speak with us. In a Facebook message to my producer Francis, he called the CBC a propaganda tool for the Canadian government. So while some of the former FLQ members have mellowed a bit over the years, Mathieu has stuck to his ideological guns.

Sound Clip: [female reporter] The guy with the briefcase is this man, Rheal Mathieu, 53 years old. He was arrested last night, along with his son…

Geoff Turner: In 2001, he was sentenced to six months in jail for a firebomb attack on three cafes in Montreal.

Sound Clip: [male reporter] It's part of a pattern for him. In the '60s he was involved in the Front de Liberation du Quebec, a nationalist movement that used violence to promote its cause.

Geoff Turner: The cafes were outlets of the Second Cup chain. He was angry that the company's signs have the name in English only.

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: These clips you're hearing of Mathieu are from a 2014 YouTube interview with a communist activist named Pierre Klepock. In the same conversation Mathieu managed to at least partly answer a nagging question of mine: how do you end up in a clandestine organization in the first place? It's not like they can put an ad in the paper, "Wanted, separatists with bomb‑making experience."

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Starting when he was 17, Mathieu went looking to join up with organizations fighting for independence. The secretary of one of these organizations was a guy named Pierre Vallieres. When someone new signed up, Mathieu says Vallieres would hand them a questionnaire.

Sound Clip: [Rheal Mathieu speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The last question on the forum was a doozy: Are you for or against the use of violence in a political context? Mathieu says that if you answered in favor of violence, well, Pierre Vallieres would tuck your questionnaire into a secret folder. Well, I bet you can guess how Mathieu answered. Soon enough he was part of an FLQ cell led by Pierre Vallieres and Charles Gagnon. But while he might talk tough now back in 1966, Mathieu cracked under the interrogation of Julien Giguere.

Geoff Turner: That opened the floodgates by revealing those noms de guerre, he had unmasked some of the ideological leaders of the FLQ. Within weeks, police had arrested 15 people and seized guns and explosives by the crateful. This was followed by coroner's inquests and preliminary hearings and eventually nine people charged with 49 offenses, everything from petty theft to murder. As 1966 drew to a close, there was a feeling that police had broken the back of the FLQ. Over the next few months virtually all of the accused would stand up and admit to their part with guilty pleas. There were two notable exceptions, a couple of the biggest fish, well, they got away. Charles Gagnon and Pierre Vallieres had been in the States drumming up support for their cause when police began rounding up members of the FLQ. They saw the writing on the wall and they stayed put.

Geoff Turner: Now remember, the FLQ was a diffuse operation. The activities of the group - robberies, stick‑ups, and bombs - it all came in waves. It was small cells of radicals working with only modest coordination. There was no grand hierarchy directing individual members, but then along came Pierre Vallieres and Charles Gagnon, the closest thing the group had ever had to conventional leaders. With a combination of intellect and working‑class pedigree, they'd come to symbolize the ambitions of the FLQ.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Ballieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Pierre Vallieres grew up on Montreal's south shore in what was then an informal settlement, a slum, as he puts it. His father worked in the Angus Shops, the Canadian Pacific Railway's massive works and maintenance facility. A strike at the shop would shape Vallieres's views of what working‑class Francophones experienced. As a young man, Vallieres spent a few years in a Franciscan seminary. He seemed destined for the priesthood. Instead, he eventually left with some education and some cold feelings for the Catholic church.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Ballieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He kicked around France for a bit, another bitter, penniless stretch for Vallieres. He returned to Montreal and found work as a reporter at ‘La Presse,’ the city's major French language daily. He was covering international affairs. And soon he found himself in some lofty intellectual circles.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Ballieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He was briefly involved with “Cite Libre,” a journal of progressive political ideas. It was co‑founded by Pierre Trudeau. Yes, that Pierre Trudeau, the father of our current prime minister. It's also where he met Charles Gagnon, but Vallieres locked horns with the others there, including Trudeau. The two were on opposite sides when it came to the question of Quebec independence and certainly about the means to achieve it. Vallieres would later write that his time at ‘Cite Libre’ led naturally to picket lines, protests against the war in Vietnam, and the FLQ.

Geoff Turner: In 1964 Vallieres and Gagnon came together to found their own journal called ‘Revolution Quebecoise.’ It combined revolutionary leftist ideology and Quebec independence, the same basic intellectual foundation as the FLQ. The journal didn't last long. And when his bosses suspected he was caught up in the FLQ, Vallieres lost his job at ‘La Presse.’ Soon Gagnon and Vallieres actually did drift into the FLQ. They began writing for the FLQ newsletter, ‘La Cognee’. Vallieres was talking about a revolution. He wrote, "Here, as in Algeria and Cuba, the development of the revolution towards socialism will not be the result of a precise doctrinal choice made by the people and the combatants, but the result of the Quebec people's march towards independence." By the fall of 1966, right around the time that Julien Giguere was rounding up suspects in the Lagrenade bombing, Vallieres and Gagnon were far from Montreal, far from Canada.

Geoff Turner: The fact is for three weeks almost no one knew where they were, but at the end of September they turned up in New York City, at the United Nations Headquarters to be exact, where they introduced themselves and their cause to the international press. Then they took their message to the streets. Archival footage of Vallieres and Gagnon shows the two men walking the sidewalk outside the UN. They're clean cut, dressed in suits, each is carrying a sign that reads simply "Hunger Strike, Front de Liberation du Quebec." One in French, one in English. There's no one else around. It looks like a lonely crusade.

Sound Clip: [news reporter speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It's here that a reporter from Radio Canada caught up with them.

Sound clip: [Pierre Vallieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: What we intend to do, says Pierre Vallieres, is draw the attention of the whole world to the fight for liberation in Quebec. The authorities refuse to recognize us as the revolutionaries we are. They treat us as common criminals. So we're protesting against that too.

Sound Clip: [news reporter speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The reporter then turns to Charles Gagnon and asks him if he considers himself to be a revolutionary as well.

Sound Clip: [Charles Gagnon] Oui.

Geoff Turner: Yes, he says. And we'll stay here at the United Nations until the end, he adds. But we have the impression we could be arrested soon enough.

Sound Clip: [Charles Gagnon speaking French]

Geoff Turner: His hunch was correct. Police in Canada wanted them back home to face charges in the Lagrenade bombing. New York police arrested the pair, but there was some messy cross‑border stuff to deal with. Vallieres and Gagnon would spend three months at the charmingly‑named Manhattan House of Detention for men, known as ‘The Tombs’, before finally being sent home. Julien Giguere was at the airport to welcome them when the plane landed. Now bear with me because we're going to take a bit of a detour here. It'll become clear why in just a couple of minutes. But you have to know that 1967 was a big year for Canada. [Clip of "Canada" by the Young Canada Singers]

Geoff Turner: The country was marking its centennial anniversary, 100 years since Confederation and getting ready for a party to celebrate the occasion. To this day, just about anywhere you travel in Canada, you'll find centennial parks and theaters and swimming pools, lavish birthday presents that communities gave to themselves. This incredible song you're listening to was also commissioned for the occasion. Composer Bobby Gimby wrote two versions, one in French and one in English. But the real focus of the celebration was Montreal. The city was hosting the world's fair, Expo 67. And almost from the get‑go Expo was a smashing success. Millions of people from all over the world visited the city, and thanks to the wave of arrests and convictions connected to the Lagrenade bombing, the FLQ would have a very quiet year, no bombings at all during a months‑long event that might otherwise have been an obvious symbolic target for separatist action. So Expo was this chance for Canada to show off. And leaders from around the world arrived to fete the young nation.

Marc Lalonde: During the Expo we had the visits of heads of state by the dozens. There would be about one a week, type of thing, during months.

Geoff Turner: Marc Lalonde was policy adviser to Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1967. He says that as part of the Expo diplomatic protocol, every leader whose country would exhibit at the world fair got an invite.

Marc Lalonde: And the rules were pretty simple. The heads of state would fly to Ottawa, be received by the Governor General and meet the Prime Minister, and then they would come to Montreal and do whatever they wish to do.

Geoff Turner: This was Canada's party, after all. And most of those visiting dignitaries were happy to comply, most, but not all.

Marc Lalonde: We got indication that the general would not fly in. He would arrive aboard one of the French navy cruiser.

Geoff Turner: That general was French President Charles De Gaulle. And he was headed for Quebec City, not Ottawa.

Marc Lalonde: Although we thought this was not appropriate protocol, we decided that we would buy peace and not make it a big quarrel.

Sound Clip: [fanfare]

Geoff Turner: De Gaulle arrived in Quebec City to military fanfare. Dressed in his green military uniform, the 76‑year‑old general struck an imposing figure as he stood before the welcoming party and made a vibrant speech.

Charles de Gaulle: Vive le Canada. Vive les Canadiens français. Vive le Quebec. Vive la Nouvelle-France! Vive le France.

[cheers and applause]

Geoff Turner: The next day De Gaulle climbs into a Lincoln Continental limo to make the 270‑kilometer trip to Montreal. He's visiting picturesque towns all along the Saint Lawrence River. And he's greeting the crowds and speaking at every stop. And the word starts to catch on, the crowds are getting bigger and the chanting is getting louder. So following this motorcade there's a young activist named Roberta Comeau. He's packed into his small car with a bunch of his friends. He claims eight or nine of them, which seems outrageous, but maybe it was a clown car or something. Anyway, they're supporters of the fledgling separatist party, the RIN, and they're trying to get the attention of the general.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: To do that, they'd learn the words to the French national anthem and they'd sing along at each stop. Comeau says De Gaulle would turn to see who was singing. That's when they'd shout, "Vive le Quebec libre," long live free Quebec.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: They'd make sure the general heard them, he says. So at 7:30pm that day de Gaulle finally reaches Montreal. He's greeted at city hall by the Mayor, Jean Drapeau. And by this time thousands of people have gathered to hear him speak. And of course, Robert Comeau and his eight or nine friends are among. De Gaulle steps out onto a balcony. It's draped with red, white, and blue bunting for the French flag. And then someone hands him a microphone. And de Gaulle starts to speak.

Sound Clip: [Charles de Gaulle speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He begins by comparing the atmosphere in Montreal to that of the French liberation in 1944. And then he says this:

Charles de Gaulle: "Vive le Quebec."

[cheers and applause]

Charles de Gaulle: "Vive le Quebec libre."

Geoff Turner: Those four little words would make headline news. In Montreal, the French language daily ‘Le Devoir’ devoted seven, front‑page articles to parsing the speech and its meaning. The English press was a little more dismissive. One magazine even suggested that de Gaulle was senile. But if you ask any Quebecker where they were on that day and you can be sure they remember.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Robert Comeau says it was a fantastic moment. It gave the separatist movement legitimacy. Marc Lalonde was at his summer cottage just outside of Montreal when de Gaulle stepped onto that balcony.

Marc Lalonde: I remember going to swim in the lake before dinner and getting into the cottage as the television was on and hearing de Gaulle's speech. And I must say, I almost dropped my swimming suit. I still remember being completely wet and looking at this and saying, that guy is crazy.

Geoff Turner: President de Gaulle never did make it to Ottawa. He flew back to France aboard his presidential DC‑8 in the middle of a storm. All told, de Gaulle was in Canada for just 48 hours. And even Marc Lalonde, a staunch federalist, said the visit had a lasting impact.

Marc Lalonde: There's no doubt that de Gaulle's declaration gave an appearance of international legitimacy to the claim for independence. It was obviously a very powerful interference.

Geoff Turner: Soon enough though, the de Gaulle visit faded from the news. Canada was in the midst of a party, after all. But Pierre Vallieres was not feeling so festive. He spent most of the centennial year in a Montreal jail cell awaiting trial. And maybe it's just bitterness after the fact, but Vallieres was long convinced that he was held all that time so he couldn't be a party pooper. And when his book was finally published, it happened to include this passage, "The Canadian Confederation is at the point of death at the very moment when it is beginning to celebrate its centennial in an effort to believe it will survive, like a half‑unconscious victim of cancer who refuses to make his will and persists in denying the death that is devouring him." But for the time being, Canada was very much alive and well and looking to serve justice to Pierre Vallieres.

Geoff Turner: Eventually the case against Charles Gagnon would fall apart and he would be acquitted. Vallieres would face the court alone. Almost from the moment it began, the trial of Pierre Vallieres was a circus. Supporters feared it would be postponed again and they showed up in droves outside the courtroom. There was a false‑bomb threat. The daily 'Montreal‑Matin' noted the large number of bearded students in attendance. Vallieres defended himself, which might not have been the best legal tactic, but it made for quite a political spectacle. He'd been charged with murder in the death of Therese Morin. In earlier proceedings, bombmaker Serge Demers testified that Vallieres had personally planned the shoe factory bombing that killed her. It seemed like a slam dunk for the prosecution.

Geoff Turner: But Demers, the main witness, recanted, claiming that police had fabricated important parts of the story. Without the evidence linking Vallieres directly to the death, the prosecution had to pivot. The charges were reduced to manslaughter and the case was built around the writings of Vallieres. His work for 'La Cognee' and 'L'Avant-Garde' was presented as proof that he had encouraged and directed the bombings. And he had definitely written about the labor struggle at the Lagrenade shoe factory. He'd called for direct action against the company. He even spoke in support of strikers on Radio Canada once.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Vallieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: At some point Vallieres had even been arrested while picketing at Lagrenade. There's a dramatic picture of him being taken down very unwillingly by three cops.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Vallieres via translator] I still find it a little puzzling that they chose to focus on the Lagrenade strike. It was, after all, a francophone family business. But Vallieres saw the opportunity for separatists to make common cause with workers by supporting them in their real‑life struggles.

Geoff Turner: In any event, there was plenty to suggest that the situation at Lagrenade was a bit of an obsession for Vallieres. Whether that made him guilty of a crime was another question. But the prosecution set out to show that in his own words and ideas there was enough evidence to find Vallieres criminally responsible for the death of Therese Morin. In court, Vallieres found himself a stage to voice and defend his political beliefs. By choosing to submit FLQ literature as evidence, the prosecution unwittingly amplified his revolutionary message, and more importantly, politicized the trial. By November a legal support group had formed made up of Montreal intellectuals and artists. And they stuck by Vallieres through his first trial. Remember Robert Comeau, that young separatist who was following Charles de Gaulle around? Well, by now he was a 22‑year‑old history professor at a Montreal college.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And he saw Vallieres's trial as a chance to show his students history, history that was unfolding before their eyes.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It was a revolting spectacle, but his students loved it, he says. He recalls a judge fiddling with elastics and pretending to sleep while Vallieres made his case. Pure provocation, says Comeau, showing the judge's contempt for the FLQ message. And to be sure it was no ordinary day in court.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Comeau says actors and artists would show up yelling and making speeches, until the judge would order them out.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And when he wasn't bogging down the trial with procedural delays, he was haranguing the court with his political views. And as if there weren't enough controversy swirling around the trial, right in the middle of it Pierre Vallieres's book hit the shelves. Vallieres asked the court if he could be excused to attend the book launch. The court demurred. In the end it took the jury just a few hours to arrive at a verdict. Pierre Vallieres was found guilty of manslaughter in the bombing death of Therese Morin. His supporters decried what they saw as a travesty of justice.

Michele Lalonde: It's impossible not to feel a co‑responsibility with Vallieres, Gagnon. I guess they are as a symbol of the fight for freedom in Quebec.

Geoff Turner: Vallieres was sentenced to life in prison. Police and prosecutors once again believed they had finally extinguished the FLQ, but the trial and conviction had the opposite effect. The FLQ was invigorated. And now people were willing to stand up and show their support for the group in public. There were benefit concerts around the province. Packed houses heard poets, musicians, and artists. They spoke and sang their undying support for Quebec independence and for the men they saw as the heroes of the movement.

Michele Lalonde: Speak white. [speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Poet Michele Lalonde was inspired by Vallieres's book and wrote her most famous poem for the occasion. 'Speak White' is about the subjugation of colonized people generally, and the Quebecois in particular. The title refers to a nasty slur used by Anglo‑Quebeckers who wanted to be spoken to in English. The origins of the phrase are unclear, but somehow it seems anti‑Black racism and language prejudice were conflated into one ugly put down. We spoke to several people who remember being told to “Speak white” in '60s Montreal.

Geoff Turner: It's probably crossed your mind that it was a stretch to compare the lot of French Canadians to that of Black Americans. But Vallieres and Gagnon did receive a telegram of solidarity in French from an American civil rights leader, Stokely Carmichael. "Courage nos freres...We support you in your trial. Your experiences are no different from those of true patriots everywhere and at any time who resist against tyranny. We are confident of your complete vindication. Nous vaincrons." And in the end they were vindicated, at least by the courts. There were appeals and further charges to come for Pierre Vallieres as well. But in 1973 his manslaughter conviction was overturned and he was free. Vallieres eventually grew disenchanted with the movement that he had helped create. The FLQ became, in his words, “A terrorist menace,” but he remained an activist for the rest of his life - for gay rights, for First Nations self‑governance, for mental health. He died of a heart attack in December 1998. He was just 60 years old.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Vallieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Years after it was first published, Vallieres told Radio Canada that he was surprised by the success of his book.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Vallieres speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Clearly, he tapped into something. Vallieres's trial would have a lasting effect on many Quebeckers, including the students that Roberto Comeau had brought to court.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: In September of '69, one of those students came to see Comeau in his office. He wanted to join the FLQ. He was asking for Comeau help.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Comeau told that student that he would be honored to connect him with the terrorist group.

Sound Clip: [Robert Comeau speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Comeau's own involvement with the FLQ was minimal at first...giving a bit of money, lending his car, those sorts of things. But gradually, he'd become more and more involved. He was moved by Vallieres's descriptions of the Quebecois plight and his revolutionary call to action for all who were oppressed. "Our battles," wrote Vallieres, "The battles of the Quebecois, the French‑speaking people of America, the white N‑words interest, the other oppressed people as their battles interest us and concern us directly. We are all interdependent and responsible for each other. Vallieres wanted to cultivate that interdependence, and to some extent he succeeded.

AG: We've been listening to the CBC podcast Recall: How to start a revolution. Tomorrow, how radical Québec separatists were inspired by - and in turn inspired - decolonization movements around the world, including the Black Panthers. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Guest host Falen Johnson speaks to Patrick Downie about the re-release of his brother Gord's first solo album - Coke Machine Glow. First out in 2001, the album is back with a new collection of demos, outtakes and a special audiobook - Dozens of Gord's friends and family got together to read some of his poetry, for the project. Earlier in the program - I hope you were singing along to a few of the tunes in our story about the reboot of Fraggle Rock - filming in Calgary. We can't get enough of the old stuff though and hey, feel free to sing along. This is the Fraggle Rock. I'm Anthony Germain. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

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The Current Transcript for August 26, 2021

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Prologue

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How a N.S. court decision will be used to recognize systemic racism when sentencing; Fraggle Rock makes a comeback

Episode 3 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution

Tuesday 26 August, 2021 Full Transcript

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