Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2016

The Current Transcript for August 24, 2017

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: The communists were doing all the attacking from the outside. They were throwing bricks.

VOICE 2: I got assaulted by Antifa as I was entering.

VOICE 1: Oh, I did too. We all did.

VOICE 2: Other people were sprayed with pepper spray or mace. I don’t know which one it was. It was absolutely terrible.

MATT GALLOWAY: That's white supremacist Richard Spencer and former KKK leader David Duke in Charlottesville, Virginia last week, complaining about the rough treatment they got at the hands of anti-fascist activists. Now you may not have much sympathy for them, but their complaints have caught the attention of, among others, U.S. President Donald Trump. There is a long history of fierce resistance to the extreme right and as we saw in Charlottesville, the battle between fascists and anti-fascists can sometimes become deadly. This morning, a look inside the contemporary anti-fascist movement known as Antifa and whether violence has a place in stopping white supremacy. That's up first and then—

SOUNDCLIP

Meeting the man who murdered my dad disrupted my life. At the time of that disruption, I was told to trust—trust what happens when authenticity of the heart guides your choice.

MG: That's Margot Van Sluytman. She met the man who murdered her dad and when that man got out of prison, the two of them became friends. The story of an unlikely friendship that was both painful and fulfilling—that's later on in the show. But first, the serious business of fighting fascists. I’m Matt Galloway. This is the summer edition of The Current.

Anti-fascist handbook explores long history of opposition movement

Guest: Mark Bray

SOUNDCLIP

How about all week they're talking about the massive crowds that are going to be outside? Where are they? Well, it's hot out. It is hot. I think it's too warm. You know, they show up in the helmets and the black masks and they've got gloves and they've got everything. Antifa!

MG: That's U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona on Tuesday taking a shot at the anti-fascist movement known as Antifa. The president was still trying to explain his remarks made the day an anti-racist protester was killed by a young man who was in Charlottesville, Virginia to attend a demonstration of neo-Nazis, KKK members and other far-right groups. The fight between fascists and anti-fascists has a long and often deadly history. And Mark Bray knows the Antifa movement up close and personal. He's one of the original organizers of Occupy Wall Street. He's also a lecturer in history at Dartmouth College and his new book is called Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Mark Bray joins me from Hanover, New Hampshire. Mark Bray, hello.

MARK BRAY: Thanks for having me, Matt.

MG: It's great to have you here. A lot of people knew of anti-fascist protesters and demonstrators—may not have heard the term “Antifa” until Charlottesville. What exactly is it? What does it mean?

MARK BRAY: Right. So it's a shortened version of anti-fascist obviously. And as you mention, the anti-fascist struggle goes back to the earliest socialists and communists who fought against Hitler and Mussolini. But the confusion stems with sort of its modern incarnation, which really grew originally in Europe in response to waves of xenophobia against migration from the Caribbean or South Asia; in the case of Great Britain, against migration from Turkey in Germany. And so these kinds of self-defence organizations and groups among leftists and migrants and other targets of really what was a neo-Nazi skinhead movement developed in the seventies and eighties. And then we can see that coming over to North America where both in Canada and the U.S., the scourge of neo-Nazi skinhead violence was really rampant, especially in the punk scene and alternative scenes and so into the nineties, anti-racist action was the network in both countries that these anti-fascists joined. And today it's really a key part of the broader anti-racist struggle against the alt-right and Trump in the United States. And really it denotes a form of antifascist that focuses on direct action that does not turn to the police or the state to shut down the far right.

MG: Is it an organized movement? Is it an umbrella term for people who are part of the anti-fascist movement?

MARK BRAY: It's essentially a politics or an activity. So anyone can form their own group. There is no central command, although there is a torch network in the U.S. and Canada that some of these groups are part of. But it's more of a mode or activity of collective self-defence against the far right.

MG: In your book, you go back to—you mentioned London—an event in 1936. What was the Battle of Cable Street?

MARK BRAY: Right. So in a certain sense, the Battle of Cable Street of 1936 is a kind of model of what a lot of anti-fascists look to in terms of popular resistance against fascism. So in London in 1936, the British Union of Fascists—which was increasingly anti-Semitic as the decade was moving along—planned to have a confrontational march through the East End of London, which was an immigrant neighbourhood but especially a Jewish neighbourhood. And so what happened is a lot of Jewish organizations, left organizations and other residents of the area decided that we will not let this march go through our neighbourhood because we're concerned, they said, that this will spiral into more violence. And so what ended up happening is essentially about 6,000 fascists show up, but more than 100,000 anti-fascists showed up, surrounded them and prevented the event from occurring. And so this kind of Battle of Cable Street—which was actually largely a battle between the police and the anti-fascists more than against the fascists per se—is sort of a key moment in the history of anti-fascism.

MG: They forced the fascists to retreat.

MARK BRAY: Right. Yeah. Essentially the police cancelled the march after a little while because they literally couldn't move. They were just surrounded with people.

MG: How has that helped shape the playbook of the Antifa movement?

MARK BRAY: Right. So the Antifa movement, to understand it, you really have to think of it historically. And one of the main arguments that these groups make is we can see historically that fascist and white supremacist groups that are tiny, that seem trivial and marginal—because for example, Mussolini's first fascist group had 100 members—that these can grow very quickly. And before you know it, it's too late to mount effective resistance. So by surrounding—for example as happened in Boston recently at the “free speech rally” there—by surrounding these small far-right demonstrations with thousands, tens of thousands of people and not letting them grow, not letting them express their message, whether done through confrontation or not, you can really stop the advance of fascist and far-right politics.

MG: People have said that's not just the words but some of the actions of the U.S. President Donald Trump have given if not new life, then certainly some licence to fascist organizations in the United States. What did his election mean when it came to fascism in the U.S.?

MARK BRAY: Well, that's undoubtedly true. We can see that since the election of Barack Obama but even perhaps earlier, there was this really strong surge of white nationalist backlash against what a lot of white people saw as the decay of their “traditional country.” Right? And so with Trump, he started early on dog whistling and giving these not so subtle hints to the far right about Mexicans are rapists and black people live in horrific kind of circumstances and are essentially suggesting that they're living in subhuman situations. And so he wouldn't disavow David Duke, the former KKK leader. And even if he sometimes is forced to denounce the far right, there is ample evidence on far-right message boards that they read what he's doing that he has to sort of play this game with the media. But the number of white supremacist groups has grown. The number of hate crimes against mosques and synagogues and LGBTQ centres has exploded since his election. And so part of what's going on here is not just responding to specific far-right demonstrations, but trying to shut them down in order to short circuit the connections between white nationalism and the White House. And since Charlottesville, that's become much more of a public and contentious matter.

MG: What did Charlottesville mean when it came to the anti-fascist movement in the U.S.?

MARK BRAY: Well, we can see that the term “alt-right” was originally designed really to mask the fascism of the far right and put Khakis on it, not wear hoods and not have shaved heads, but look middle class and respectable. And to some extent, in the media in the U.S., it was sort of considered as a position worth considering. Since the Charlottesville demonstration, it’s more clearly associated with fascism and white supremacy and Trump's refusal to single the alt-right out as being really the party to blame for this, has really shifted perspectives and made people more interested and more sympathetic towards direct action tactics to defend ourselves against the neo-Nazi menace, especially considering tragically Heather Heyer lost her life in this demonstration. So more broadly, there's a really important anti-racist movement growing—some of which identifies as anti-facist, some of which doesn't—that is I think really important to keep an eye on when we think of how to resist the growth of white supremacy.

MG: How do you distinguish between the two—you've done that right there—between anti-racist and anti-fascist?

MARK BRAY: Well, it's not so easy to do. I think of it more in terms of what do different groups call themselves? You know, I'm not trying to impose it. Some call themselves anti-racist, some call themselves anti-fascist, but I think that there's a lot of unity and solidarity there.

MG: You talked about tactics and this has been the subject of great discussion and debate in the wake of Charlottesville. In the introduction to your book, you write that Antifa views militant anti-fascism as—and this is a quotation—“a reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat.” You've been accused of condoning violence. Do you think violence is acceptable when it comes to fighting, whether it's racist groups or fascist groups?

MARK BRAY: Well, I think the first thing to obviously point out is that the violence—historical and present day—of Nazism and fascism is really unparalleled and is the greatest threat to humanity. What I'm talking about and what anti-fascists have talked about is how do we respond to that? And the liberal playbook historically is you wait for the police to deal with it. You assume that rational debate and parliamentary government can stop it. But we saw during the interwar period that that was sometimes not enough. And so I think the historical lesson is that communities who are under attack need to be ready to defend themselves, that self-defence is a legitimate response historically and present day to the threat of armed and organized white supremacists and neo-Nazis. And you know as a Jewish person who lost relatives in the Holocaust, this is a deeply personal issue for me and I'm determined and anti-fascists are determined to never make that mistake again.

MG: So does that mean then that violence is acceptable?

MARK BRAY: Well, self-defence sometimes entails that kind of conflict. But if you have no problem condemning the resistance of anti-fascists to Hitler in Germany, then you have to ask yourself: how bad does it have to get before that becomes legitimate? One person dead? A dozen people dead? So the idea is to me, if you can stop it before it even gets into that conversation, then that is what the goal is.

MG: That's what happened at the Battle of Cable Street. I mean protestors threw marbles, did everything that they possibly could, as you said, to disrupt the police but also ensure that the protest didn't happen. Is that the kind of violence to you that may be acceptable? Disrupting something before it kicks off or fighting people in the streets?

MARK BRAY: Well, I think that the first point to make is that anti-fascists try to shut down the far right as easily as possible and so if they can make a phone call to a local venue to cancel an event, they'll do that. If they can gather community to simply stand around in front of a march to stop it, they'll do that. But they're ready for the fact that fascists and white supremacists are notoriously violent and murderous and that if you show up to protest these people, you have to be ready for the fact that, as happened in Charlottesville, that police may not be there when they come at you. And so certainly in terms of the case of the Battle of Cable Street, when we can see that Jewish people across the continent of Europe were facing extinction, that using certain sorts of direct action to stop a fascist event and to sort of short circuit an anti-Semitic wave against a Jewish community was certainly a legitimate response.

MG: Doesn't that in some ways give white supremacists what they want? A chance for them to say listen, we were attacked. These people weren't kind, gentle protesters. They sprayed us with mace and pepper spray. And it opens the opportunity perhaps for someone like the president to say there was violence, as he said, on both sides.

MARK BRAY: Well, historically we can see that fascism is all about victimization. And so as long as fascists are organizing, they will claim to be victims of something, whether it's real or imagined or otherwise. And so to me, I can see historically that if we don't organize a popular resistance—agree or disagree about tactics—if we don't organize a popular resistance to this kind of movement when it's small, it may be too late when it's big and that is a risk that anti-fascists are not willing to take.

MG: It's interesting. The place that you work—Dartmouth College—has put out a statement in light of your comments, kind of distancing itself from your views. What does that tell you about how people interpret what it is that you're saying?

MARK BRAY: Well, I mean certainly what happened in that case was a far-right periodical misrepresented my views. And so I am not calling for, as the statement says, “violent protest.” I'm calling for community self-defence, grounded in a historical argument about how to defend ourselves from a threat that has been documented to be one of the greatest scourges of humanity. So that's where my position is and I feel comfortable that that is a reasonable response to such a grave threat.

MG: And for you it's rooted in that idea of denying them, even the first step.

MARK BRAY: That's correct.

MG: I want to play a clip from Meet the Press. You were there on Sunday, as you well know, and you were on the program with Richard Cohen from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here is what he said about Antifa.

SOUNDCLIP

Look, to some degree, there was a lot of ugliness of the Antifa brought there. And you know, I think they play into the hands of the white nationalists who say look, we're the ones who are embattled. The answer to bad speech is more speech.

MG: Is the answer to bad speech, Mark Bray, more speech?

MARK BRAY: Well, it's part of the answer. Right? We should be making more speech. We should be making arguments about why white supremacy and racism are wrong. But we also have to learn that discourse on its own without organizing behind it has proven historically to be insufficient to stop the advance of fascism and Nazism. We can see that in Germany prior to World War II before the Nazis took power, it was considered to be a country of enlightenment. It was considered actually to be one of those less anti-Semitic countries of Europe, especially compared to the east. And a lot of people held back from confronting the advance of Nazism on the grounds that they could reason, that they could work through the parliamentary system and it failed. And it seems to me that we can't make these kinds of mistakes again.

MG: A little bit of what Richard Cohen is saying—a lot of it—is about speech and the importance of free speech which has obviously great currency in the United States. And the question that often comes up is whether if you shut down things like a university speech, a speech by somebody who might be presenting views that some may find repulsive or worse, that that plays into the narrative that people on the left want to shut down the issue of free speech.

MARK BRAY: Well, I mean obviously first of all, we need to clarify that the far right is actually much more sensitive about these kinds of things, like if you cast a black protagonist in a Star Wars movie, they freak out. You know if you do something that they consider to be PC, it's the end of the world. So actually there's still a lot more complaints from the other direction than the left has in my opinion. But nevertheless, the question still remains: how do campus activists respond to speakers that come to campus and try to dehumanize sectors of the population? And in my opinion, universities have a responsibility to live up to their professed values of being diverse, of being tolerant, of being popular for the needs of all students, of all races, of all genders. And to me having a speaker on campus who says that transgender students are inhuman as Milo Yiannopoulos did at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, calling out a transgender student, essentially inciting harassment against them and he was planning on outing undocumented students at UC Berkeley before his event was shut down, that we need to think not just about the question of free speech but the violence that these kinds of speeches can do in a very literal sense to part of the community. And to me, organizing against it is a legitimate response.

MG: Is there a place in what is happening right now for civil disobedience through nonviolent protest? What we saw as such a hallmark during the civil rights era.

MARK BRAY: Of course. Yeah. I mean anti-fascists are not telling other people what to do. They're simply explaining what they're doing. And certainly in Boston, we can see that if you can bring out tens of thousands of people to surround and really drown out a far-right event, that that can work and that's a great response. But what Charlottesville shows us is that even if that's your intent, we can see that the clergy that showed up to commit civil disobedience in Charlottesville including Cornel West and others. Police were not around and they relied on the anti-fascists to protect them from severe bodily harm. And so that's the kind of comment—is not that everyone needs to do X or Y, but that there is a threat if you show up to confront these people. But nevertheless, we do need to confront them.

MG: Tina Fey got in some hot water for her comments saying that people should stay home and eat cake rather than be out on the streets. Do you think that someone like her has a responsibility to be more proactive in terms of generating that movement, as you say, to get people out and confront this?

MARK BRAY: Well, certainly people who are at the front lines of resisting racism, those who are most vulnerable are not looking to Tina Fey. But nevertheless, I do think that this kind of comedy—and of course it is comedy, I recognize that—but nevertheless it does send a not-so-subtle message to people who are comfortable in their privilege of not being threatened by these kinds of politics, that they can sit it out and they can feel superior by sitting at home and watching Saturday Night Live. But to me, regardless of whether you are a pacifist or you are in favour of more confrontational methods, it is incumbent upon us to present an alternative in an immediate physical sense to these kinds of far-right demonstrations to show that society will not tolerate this. And if we have disagreements about how to do that, at least recognize that we can stand in solidarity as anti-racist against neo-Nazis.

MG: One of the reasons why people perhaps may not want to participate in some of the direct actions is that they feel uncomfortable with some of the things that they might see, whether it's the violence that might occur, whether it's covered faces, black clothing, et cetera. Do you think that Antifa could gain more popular support if they moderated their image?

MARK BRAY: Well, the important thing to recognize there is that anti-fascists are predominantly socialists and communists and anarchists who really prioritize the immediate task of shutting down the far right and recognize that with their faces uncovered, that kind of activity can be very dangerous, both in terms of repression from the police and repression from the far right—being targeted, being harassed and so forth. I mean you know people are going to disagree. No one is ever going to come together to be on the exact same page about how to organize politically against the far right or against anything. I think the more germane question is how can we co-exist? How can we respect the fact that we're not always going to change each other's minds but we can both work productively towards a shared goal?

MG: Just about a minute left. What do you think would define success for the Antifa movement?

MARK BRAY: Well, really, anti fascism is predominantly about an activity of self-defence against the far-right threat. And if we could get to a point where white supremacists and neo-Nazis felt too ashamed of their politics to come out and organize in public and we could get on with the real work of building a more just society, of organizing in our workplaces, organizing to save the environment and save the planet, that's the goal. Let's shut down the far right so we can get on with that.

MG: Is it going to continue to grow, do you believe, the movement?

MARK BRAY: Well, I think in the short term it will, but if we can successfully drain the right of its appeal then it will probably die out as it has in the past because really anti-fascist organizing, its whole reason for being is fascism. If we get rid of fascism, we can move on to saving the planet.

MG: But in the meantime there is a real, you say, that there is a real place and a real urgency in this movement being as present and as forceful as it is right now.

MARK BRAY: We saw Heather Heyer die. We've seen the attacks on LGBTQ centres and mosques and desecrations of cemeteries. And it's better to take it a little too seriously now than to not take it seriously enough and pay the price later.

MG: It's great to talk to you, Mark. I appreciate it.

MARK BRAY: Likewise.

MG: Thanks so much.

MARK BRAY: Thank you.

MG: Mark Bray is a lecturer in history at Dartmouth College. His new book is called Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. He was in Hanover, New Hampshire. Your thoughts on this would be welcome. You can get in touch with us through Twitter @TheCurrentCBC. You can head to www.facebook.com/CBCTheCurrent or on our website, www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. The CBC News is next and then—

SOUNDCLIP

Part of the reason I cry is the paradox of being very good friends with Glen, who I respect and love very deeply and I loved my father very deeply. And the paradox of that is what makes me cry.

MG: Learning to forgive and love the man who murdered her father in our next half hour. My name is Matt Galloway. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

ENCORE | How one woman came to forgive the man who murdered her father

Guests: Margot Van Sluytman, Glen Flett

MG: Hello, I’m Matt Galloway. You’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: The Disruptors theme]

MG: As part of The Current’s special project this season, The Disruptors, Anna Maria Tremonti invited you to send in stories of your own personal disruptions in life. One of the letters stopped us in our tracks. It came to us from Margot Van Sluytman. I’ll let Anna Maria pick this up from The Current in March.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Hello, Anna Maria.

AMT: Margot, Could you please read the letter you wrote to us?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Yes. Meeting the man who murdered my dad disrupted my life. At the time of that disruption, I was told to trust. Trust what happens when authenticity of the heart guides your choice. Ten years later, that disruption has become an aspect that infuses my relationship to my family with deepened respect for each other and also shifts how we can talk with each other, even when we do not always agree.

AMT: There is a very big story in that short letter.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Yes.

AMT: Meeting the man who murdered my dad, you write. That man is Glen Flett.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Yes.

AMT: And you know him well now.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: I sure do, yes.

AMT: Hello, Glen.

GLEN FLETT: Good morning.

AMT: What's it like for you to hear Margot read those words?

GLEN FLETT: Well, it's difficult to listen to that. You know it's emotional for sure. It sort of touches me deeply.

AMT: The two of you now work together speaking in prisons about your experience. What exactly do you do?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: We share our story of how my dad and Glen met and then how Glen and I met. And we speak with people that are imprisoned. And we also speak with staff encouraging both of them to remember shared humanity.

AMT: And Glen, how important is working with Margot for you?

GLEN FLETT: Oh, it's been amazing. And like she says, it brings hope. It really changes people's perspectives of what's possible and how you can turn tragedy into triumph if you just keep hoping and keep believing.

AMT: And bridging a great big gap?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Yes.

AMT: And we're bridging time and geography right now, Glenn is in our Vancouver studio. Margot, take us back to that day—March 27, 1978. What happened to your father?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: That was Easter Monday. It was my father's day off. My father's name is Theodore by the way. So my dad it was his day off he went in. He worked for The Hudson’s Bay Company in Scarborough. He went in to get ready for a “Bay Day” sale. He was a salesperson, a very good salesperson, and a commission salesperson. So he went in just to make sure that everything was in place for that sale. And he was leaving and I remember saying to my dad I'd like to go with you. And he said oh you a little pest. I’m going to be back in a couple of hours, you know. And so we hugged and then my dad left and several hours later, I was in the basement of our house, my mom did home daycare. And there was a knock on the playroom door and I opened the door. There were two very tall people standing there, a man and a woman and I asked them what they were doing there? And they said we have some bad news. And so I said was my dad in a car accident? And they said no he was killed in a robbery today. And that was the beginning of a very painful time. That's an understatement, but yeah, it was brutal.

AMT: All these years later it's still so painful?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: it's painful Anna Maria, but there's a reason why I cry. I did work once with Sister Helen Prejean and she said something to the audience when I started to cry. She said she is not crying because she's weak and sad. She's crying for strength. And part of the reason I cry is the paradox of being very good friends with Glen, who I respect and love very deeply and I loved my father very deeply. And the paradox of that is what makes me cry. To be honest with you, it's so huge. But it's true.

AMT: That's a very profound thing that you've just said to me. How old are you Margot?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Sixteen.

AMT: Glen, what do you remember of that day?

GLEN FLETT: Well, I remember everything that day. It was the day in spring day kind of sunny. And we went there at about 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon the robbery took place. We hadn't planned on anything like that happening. We thought we had it all covered. I was with a crew of guys who'd been pulling robberies before and so we had some experience. And we said everything was going to go according to plan, but it didn't. We left. We got away. I still have a hard time forgetting the actual moment. It's there all the time.

AMT: It was a Brink's robbery, am I right? You were robbing that truck that came to pick up the money?

GLEN FLETT: Yes.

AMT: And you shot Theodore?

GLEN FLETT: Yes, I did.

AMT: Did you realize that you had shot and killed him?

GLEN FLETT: I didn't know I killed him, no. I did shoot him I thought I'd shot him in the shoulder. I didn't know if he was dead. I mean to be honest, it did occur to me. I mean I hoped he wasn't dead, but I was in panic at that moment to really consider whether or not he was dead. I was just trying to get away.

AMT: Margot, how did your mother react and cope with your father's murder?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: My father was 40 years old when he was shot and killed. My mom was 36 and she had four of us. They had four children and we were only in Canada—well, it was nine years. Her life it was horrific and it was horrible.

AMT: Not long after your father died, you convinced your mother to talk to a journalist. Tell me what happened.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: I was a young woman journalist that came to the door and the journalist said to my mom, will you ever be able to forgive the man who murdered your husband? I'm not sure if that was a wise or fair question two days after your love is killed. But I will always remember what my mom said. And Glen, I remember you telling me you remember this. Mom said I forgive them so I can live and there is a higher power that will take care of the rest. But I need to live. I have four children. And she was 36.

AMT: And it was two days after that?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: I'm almost 56 and I still can't believe my mom said that.

AMT: You remember that, Glen? When do you remember hearing about that?

GLEN FLETT: It was actually in the newspaper. They ran a big two-page spread and it really touched me at the time too. I realized the impact that I had on their family because of the trial. It came all out. Every detail of the misery we’d caused. And so for her to say that, I don't know. I didn't make me feel any release or anything. I was guilty and in fact, I was denying guilt at that time. But I kind of admired her and I thought wow, how could I have done that to somebody that feels like that?

AMT: Now you are found guilty. What was the charge?

GLEN FLETT: Second-degree murder.

AMT: How much time did you serve?

GLEN FLETT: I did 14 years altogether before I got full parole.

AMT: You make the point that at one point, you were in denial and in fact, I was looking at the news reports from around then. When you were sentenced, you told the court I feel the criminal justice system and due process of the law has not been seen here. I stand by my not guilty verdict. You were quite defiant at that point.

GLEN FLETT: Yeah, I was.

AMT: When and how did that change?

GLEN FLETT: Well, it all changed actually in about 1982. So it was four years of being just the creepy, defiant bastard that I was. And I finally had had enough of myself. My life was just crap. And a friend of mine, he was a Christian, invited me to come down to the chapel and meet people that were coming from the outside. And that sounded like a good idea. So I had no intention of becoming a Christian, but I went down there and I had an experience. And it changed the way I looked at myself and life and it saved me.

AMT: Margot, as Glen was being sentenced, you are now in your late teens, I guess. What impact did your father's murder have on you as you got older?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Well, I left home three months after my dad was murdered. And I did not leave home for sex, drugs and rock and roll. I left home because I couldn't breathe. Being there, it was really strange to be—we were a very close family and it was just strange to be in the environment. I just had to disappear. I struggled very hard. But when I was 18, I did try to take my life. And then when I felt my body just shifting, I called a family member, an uncle of mine and just told him what I had done and he picked me up and took me to Scarborough General Emergency. My mom came to the hospital and she says Margot, I have lost Daddy. I cannot lose you too. But through the whole thing I will tell you what saved my life—besides a few amazing people—it was language.

AMT: You started to write.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: I disappeared into books. I've always loved reading and writing and that's what we do that in the jails too. I actually do that with the men and women and the staff there. We write so we can still rise.

AMT: So let's jump forward about, I guess, 29 years or so. You're now a mother. You're a published author. You're a poet, which is again the writing. There's a thread here. There's an online fund raising appeal. What happens?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Well, I've got a micro poetry press it's called Palabras Press. Palabras means words in Spanish. I just had a donation button on it because I fund my own stuff. But one day I received a donation to Palabras from a woman by the name of Sherry Edmunds-Flett. And I saw the name and I'm just like ah. And one of my daughters, my Jessie, she was in the living room with me and I said Jess, I think I just got a donation to Palabras from the wife of the man who killed Grandpa Theodore. She backflipped off the coach and she says holy beep mom, what are you going to do? And I mean I was crying and I said well, I don't want to upset granny and Auntie Lor and Auntie Karen and Uncle Jerry, but I'm going to email him and I'm going to ask for an apology and that's precisely what I did.

AMT: So you write an email and say are you who I think you are?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: That's what I did.

AMT: And she writes back?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: She did write back. She did write back almost immediately and she said we saw the work you do and we didn't mean to cause any trouble, but we just wanted to support you. And many thoughts ran through my mind, many, many thoughts. But I said to her you've not upset me you've not caused me harm, but would you mind terribly asking your husband if he could give me an apology please.

AMT: And what happened?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Well, she e-mailed back and she said Oh my goodness he's been waiting for this for so many years. And then I e-mailed back and I said wait, wait, wait, wait wait. This is just for me. This is not for my family. I'm not my family spokes individual it's not like that it's just for me. And then I woke up in the morning to a very authentic, clear, beautiful letter from John Glendon Flett.

AMT: Glen, how long had you been thinking about reaching out to Margot or her family?

GLEN FLETT: Well, I think it happened just shortly after he became a Christian. I think that's when it started. The desire I had to somehow not just say I was sorry, but to show I was sorry to the people I’d harmed

AMT: So the two of you finally meet. You fly out to Abbotsford to meet Glen, Margot.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Yes.

AMT: What are you thinking as you get on the plane?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Oh my God. Sitting on the plane the plane is taking off and I'm thinking heavens, I need this to be honourable. I need my family to know that I'm not doing this to denigrate them or dad. And then when the plane landed, Sherry came to meet me and I saw Sherry and we hugged. There was already a warmth that developed. My main concern was that I just wanted to know that it has to be done. I have to see the man—the last human being—who saw my dad alive I was terrified but I had gratitude because it was going to happen then I could die in peace.

AMT: And Glen, you know she's on her way out. What are you feeling as it gets closer to the time that you're going to meet Margot?

GLEN FLETT: Well, I was quite anxious, but we had communicated intensely through e-mails. Oh, I sent I don't know how many e-mails.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Lots. We both talk lots.

GLEN FLETT: So every day we were sending e-mails each other, sometimes two or three emails a day. But I was from the very moment that my wife sent the money and I realized that she knew, I was just terrified that it was going to cause her more harm than we'd already caused pain. I didn't want to cause anybody more pain.

AMT: You're crying, Glen.

GLEN FLETT: I know. I’m just emotional.

AMT: Margot, you finally meet. What is that moment like when you actually see him, meet him? What happens?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: It was incredible. It was incredible. I just walked right up to him and I said you must be John Glendon Flett. And he said yes. I said I am Margot Van Sluytman and we hugged. We just hugged each other and he said I'm sorry. He was crying and I was crying. He said I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I said I know it's OK. And it was very powerful and it was very, very real. We had already done our safety checks, to say it this way. So the gift, because it is a gift, the gift is simply have time with Glen, just meeting human to human and then something funny happened. Because then he said to me so, would you like to go into the Abbey and say a prayer? And I'm like what is wrong with you? I have questions like duh. And then we spoke and we walked and we spoke and yes, my main question—my main question was what were my father's last words, Glen? And Glen told me. There was beauty and authenticity and a deep respect and I could feel it. And I treasure it and I will always treasure it.

AMT: What did you tell her, Glen?

GLEN FLETT: The last thing that her dad said to me was give it up son. It's not worth it.

AMT: You remembered that all those years?

GLEN FLETT: Oh yeah, I remember that.

AMT: What else do you remember about that first meeting with Margot?

GLEN FLETT: Well, it was an amazing day, like Margot says, and just hugging her and just feeling that there was a connection there. It was inspiring and I thought it would never ever, ever happen. I'd given up on the idea. So it was like a miracle and almost too good to believe.

AMT: What were you hoping would come out of that meeting, Glen?

GLEN FLETT: Well, I hoped Margot would go away feeling better and feeling empowered by meeting her me and hopefully being able to get over the grief that she had been feeling for years. And I just hoped that she'd see that it is not just words I was writing on those e-mails.

AMT: Did either one of you think this would become the friendship, the connection, that it has become?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: No. What I thought because we did, we spoke about this at one point. What I thought would happen that maybe, maybe, we would give a talk or two together, give a little hope to folks and then just say goodbye. But it's absolutely its natural. I'm a really tough customer and Glen says that’s a good thing. But it's true because it's like no and even ask my siblings, ask anyone who knows me. I have a very big heart, but I have very strict boundaries and no one can cross those boundaries. And I adored my father. There's no two ways about it. Therefore, every step in our work together or apart, I honour my father and I honour my mom. So no, I never suspected but this beauty of possibility would occur but that's exactly what it is.

AMT: How did your mother react to the idea of you going out there?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: I didn't actually tell my mom. She guessed. She says no, you've met him. I said no Mom, but I'm going to. And she why? He's already caused you and us so much grief. Why would you do that? I said because I need to. She says all right, Marg. What if he's lying? This is what I said to my mom. And keep in mind I have a very, very deep faith, but I don't like the politics of religion. But this is what I said to my mom. I said if he is lying, he will have to carry two crosses and then my mom said all right, you be safe.

AMT: And you weren't lying, were you, Glen?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: No, he was not.

GLEN FLETT: No I wasn't lying. I think that that I kind of knew it was going to be bigger than just meeting her. And in fact, the first indicator was when we had dinner the first night. And when she went to the washroom, my nine-year-old daughter said oh Daddy, it's so weird. She’s just like you. We’re pretty intense the two of us. And so I guess that's what impacted on my daughter. But there was also when I was going through that restorative justice stuff in the ‘80s I ran into something about Japan and how in Japan people who kill people sometimes don't go to jail, but rather they take over and start to look after the damage they’ve done and that's what I hope I can do. The word forgiveness, I remember when we first started talking and we didn't like using that word too much…

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: No.

GLEN FLETT: Because it's not really what we are talking about exactly. We are talking about moving forward and you know letting go, but we're not talking about you know saying gee, it's OK. It's never going to be OK.

AMT: I'm glad you brought that up because I know that like Margot tells the story of the reporter who comes and asks that. And I've never understood how anyone can ask that of somebody. It's sort of like this one little phrase and then it's supposed to just like change. So what does it mean to forgive or be forgiven? Or what does it mean to move on without using that word? What does it mean?

GLEN FLETT: Well, to find the gold. There's gold there, in every life situation. And you know even tragedies, there's things there that we can find to honour life. And I think that's what Margot and I are trying to do, is honour life.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: The other thing that I like to remind is that—I say this to crime survivors—I'm quite good friends with a couple of people who have lost children to brutal crimes. But you know what they say to me, which is the greatest compliment to me? The greatest compliment, the greatest gift to me, is they say Margot, you never say you have to forgive and you have to step into circle and you have to do restorative justice or mediation. You always say, just be kind to yourself.

AMT: One of the reasons we're talking is because this is not an everyday occurrence. A lot of people are killed. We don't hear about these stories that often. And you have both talked about the story together. What makes that possible? What do we need to think about as we say goodbye to you and think about you after all you've told us today?

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: I would like to say something that I think is extremely important, Anna Maria. Not everybody can, should or needs to do what Glen and I are doing. We do not do it to be a sales pitch. It's not like that. What I think everyone can do is know that they matter. Just know that you matter. You know when I first met Glen, I was interviewed and we were interviewed a couple of times. I was so terrified because I thought people are going to think that's what they have to do. And we've been faulted on that, like oh my God. I've written about this and meditated on it and thought about it. No, Glen and I don't tell our story to say Anna Maria, somebody harms someone you love. That's what you have to do. No, we do it because we're sharing our story—a very simple story of hope. You know an old nun friend of mine said to me once, if you want to know where God wants you to be, look at your feet. So I think that looking at your feet and knowing that hope can accompany you is okay and you don't have to. You don't have to forgive. You don't have to be bigger than big. Stand in a place of love towards yourself and if you can't love anybody else, then just love yourself, that's OK. Just be helpful to yourself because murder and rape and brutality are horrible things. But just remember: life is not horrible. The acts are horrible. The acts are horrible, but not our humanity.

AMT: Do you want to add anything to that, Glen?

GLEN FLETT: Well, how can I add anything to that? That's amazing, Margot.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Thank you. Thank you. I learned a lot from you, Glen. Thank you.

AMT: Glen Flett in Vancouver. Margot Van Sluytman in Toronto. Thank you both.

GLEN FLETT: Thank you, Anna Maria.

MARGOT VAN SLUYTMAN: Thank you.

MG: That conversation first aired in March as part of The Current’s season-long project, The Disruptors. You can hear other highlights on the summer show, The Disruptors with Anna Maria, Fridays right after the summer edition of The Current at 9:30, or find it online at www.cbc.ca/thecurrent. That is our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Short Cuts from the BBC. Josie Long presents short documentaries about communicating across the divide. That’s coming up on CBC Radio One. My name’s Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Ending theme]

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

August 24, 2017 full episode transcript

Social Sharing

More from this episode