SLĀV backlash highlights Canada's history of denying racism, says poet George Elliott Clarke

Guests: Ingrid Monson, George Elliott Clarke

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[Singing] Swing low sweet chariot coming for to carry me home. Betty Bonifassi says she has a black soul. How is that not racist? I'm sorry but the only person who has a black soul [woman shouts] is a black person! [Man continues] is black souls. Shut it down.

MF: And shut it down they did. Those were people protesting against SLĀV, a controversial new show that had been part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. SLĀV features African-American slave songs but most of the performers on stage, all but two, were white including the show's star and cocreator Betti Bonnifassi and its renowned director Robert LePage. Critics accused the show of cultural appropriation and yesterday the festival canceled future performances and apologized to anyone who was quote "hurt by it". In an interview with the Montreal Gazette Ms. Bonnifassi rejected the idea that it represented cultural appropriation. She said: "We don't talk about black and white in the show. We talk about human pain experienced together, all cultures and ethnicities suffer the same". Lucas Charlie Rose is one of the organizers of the protests.

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It's a victory for show like it came as a relief, really, because we've been working very hard this past week. Playing music is more than just music. And I think that a lot of people who take these songs and put shows together see it as music, but to us it's the liberation. Those are music that saved my ancestors. Without those types of songs, I wouldn't be here today.

MF: Well indeed this all raises the issue of music sung by enslaved people and it's critical storytelling role and how the meaning and the message behind the music has a long and complicated history. Joining us is George Elliottt Clarke a poet playwright and professor of English at the University of Toronto. George Elliottt Clark is also Canada's former Parliamentary Poet Laureate and his latest book of poetry Canticles 1 is one is a collection of dramatic monologues based on slavery and resistance and anti-imperialism and George Eliot Clarke is in our Toronto studios. Hello.

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Hello Michael.

MF: We just heard one of the organizers of the protest calling the cancellation of the show a victory. What do you think about the Jazz Fest's decision to cancel future representation?

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: A drastic conclusion to an unfortunate lack of forethought on the part of the show's creators. I also think that there's a very complicated and complex backstory to all of this that involves Quebecois Nationalist intellectuals and their thinking, especially from the 1940s and 1970s, that the struggle of African-Americans and the struggle of North Africans, Algerians especially, as a kind of preface to their own struggle to achieve greater sovereignty, greater respect for the views of the English Canada.

MF: There was actually quite an identification as you say between Quebec francophones from that era and African-Americans. And there was even a book that was written at the time that put it really baldly. Tell us about that.

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Yeah well the most famous or maybe infamous or notorious example of this attempt for identification was Pierre Vallieres and his work Les Negres Blans d'Amerique du Nord, or to use the English translation title which was the actual title used, so forgive me for using the 'n' word here but this was the English title of the book: White Niggers of America. And what Vallier argues in the opening pages of that book, two things which are really quite problematic. First of all, that Quebecois working class white citizens suffered as great an oppression as African-American slaves, visa of the English Canada. And the other argument that he makes in that work is that there was no racism. There is no racism, anti-black racism in Quebec. And this is a view held and is still held by many white Quebecois despite the fact that there is a long and deep history of racism in Quebec, as well as in the rest of Canada, to be quite sure and frank about that, that goes right back to the fact that New France, the origins of Quebec, contemporary Quebec, was a slaveholding society, where there are more slaves in Quebec or New France than they were in any other part of the country or what's become Canada since. And so anti-black racism and anti-indigenous racism has a deep history in Quebec as well as in the rest of Canada. At the same time that's true. There was this pronounced effort on the part of sovereigntists and nationalist, intellectuals and artists to identify powerfully with the civil rights movement with anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggling North Africa. The FLQ was modeled on the FLN in Algeria for instance. And one of the most famous rallying cries for the Quebec sovereigntists movement in 1968 was a poem by Michele Lalonde.

MF: This is an important one because Quebeckers Francophones were told at the time, and this is the name of that poem, To speak White. In other words by English people who had the power then they were told that speaking English speaking quote "white".

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Absolutely. And yes that was the title of the poem Michele Lalonde and historians disagree about whether or not anyone actually ever said Speak white. But in order to tell Francophones that they should speak English. But certainly it became a truism. People felt that it was true, whether it was or not.

MF: I didn't realize there was some question about whether it actually happened.

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Well there has there has been but we have to say that it certainly does fit with the motif of Francophone versus Anglophone struggle being identified as a black versus white struggle during the quiet revolution.

MF: Can we come to these songs and could you tell us about the significance of these songs sung during the decades and decades of slavery in the black consciousness?

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Well yes I would say that that these songs were spontaneous collective creations on the part of African-Americans, deeply oppressed of course in that massive oppressive institution of slavery. And the songs do reflect the sorrow and grief of family separation, of the pain of the physical torture and starvation and so forth of the slavery centuries. But at the same time these were also songs about eventual triumph, about victory, about overcoming, about transcendence, about finding relief in a spiritual identification with the God of Israel, with the struggle of Israelites Hebrews verses Egyptian captivity and their Egyptian captors. And all these stories about deliverance were extremely crucial to the mindset, the political consciousness of the spirituals. And we have to understand the spirituals were a framework of political resistance and consciousness about oppression and the promise that black people saw in Hebrew and Greek scripture and old and New Testament of the idea of eventual liberation that God existed, that God exists, God is active, God is going to help you out. Keep the faith. And at the same time that was true in a spiritual and political sense. Some of the songs also contained instructions; Steal A Way to Jesus, I'm not Going to be a Slave Anymore, Before I'll be a Slave i'll go to my Grave, Let my People fo. All of these songs are understood by people who heard them as being code for escaping, Getting to the North Star, Going North, Making Their Way to Canaan - which of course for the slaves was Canada - Underground Railroad and all that. So these were songs of resistance, not just of suffering of the songs of resistance. And one other very important thing about both the spirituals is that they haven't died. They're not finished. They're not over yet. The spirituals became transmogrified into freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. In Nova Scotia where I'm from Africa India all say black Nova Scotia, African Nova Scotia, spirituals continue to be used continue to be sung and my child in my youth in my early adulthood to protest contemporary injustice. We would spontaneously sing spirituals, myself and other protesters to protest contemporary white racism in Nova Scotia. So this was we saw this as being part of our active heritage living heritage of opposition and resistance to racism and white supremacy.

MF: Okay. George Elliott Clarke stay with us in the studio. We want to bring in here another voice. It's Ingrid Monson who's the Quincy Jones professor of African-American music and a professor of music at African American Studies at Harvard University and she's in New Bedford Massachusetts Ingrid Monson Hello.

INGRID MONSON: Hello.

MF: What a view from your position in the United States been thinking about this whole controversy over SLĀV and now its cancellation?

INGRID MONSON: I think that canceling the show was the correct decision. The idea of using the slave songs, the spirituals the songs of liberation, and not having African-American voices singing them, would be seen in the United States as an act of appropriation. It would be remind people of minstrelsy and the idea that white Americans performing cannot fully represent the African-American experience. And I was very interested in hearing your previous caller talk about the history in Quebec of identifying with the African American struggle. And it reminds me of a kind of mistake that any white Americans make which is that you identify so much with the cause that you think you can represent it. And I think that's the line that liberal white people and people who are sympathetic with anti-racism need to recognize. It's one thing to identify with it but when you're doing projects you got to bring people on board who have that as their personal experience. You can collaborate.

MF: You as a white woman who works in a predominantly black field of study, how does that affect the way you go about your work?

INGRID MONSON: Well I very much feel that you need to be a team player and that's what I've done out my career. I'm a scholar, it's something different than being a performer, but I was very committed to it including anti-racism and my message of how I talk about this music. And from the beginning my work - I am trained as an ethnomusicologist - my point of view was to try to represent the voices of the people I've talked to about it. Over time you build a network. So I worked in an interracial network of scholars and, as you build your into virtual relationships, people often appreciate what you do because at from your position of White Privilege sometimes you can say things that you or African-American colleagues can't say. So I've very much tried to be a team player in all of this and opening the doors of academia to engaging with black music and its history of race and racism.

MF: And I'd like to hear you both on this, George Elliottt Clark as a playwright as well as the other endeavors you're involved with, how would you how could you have seen this production mounted and could it be done sensitively or properly, in your view with, its white co-creators?

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Absolutely. I think it was a really horribly missed opportunity on the part of the show's creators to bring African Canadian voices, singers, musicians, stories and especially the stories of slave resistance, in Quebec, in New France back in the 18th century to the fore. Certainly given the great theme of Mr. LePage and others they could have parleyed that cultural power into helping to empower currently underrepresented black performers and black artists and so forth. And just the history, black history in Quebec which like black history and the rest of Canada is repressed. Now that's one of the reasons why this great mistake and again missed opportunity happened.

MF: Ingrid Watson on the same point is is it possible for white co-creators to mount this sort of production?

INGRID MONSON: Well you need to work very closely with African-American performers and communities that are represented. I think there are different points in history when I would argue that the racial walls go up and the racial walls go down. Right now in the United States I would say that the racial walls are up and African-Americans do not trust white Americans right now and why should they. And so I think the possibility of mounting that kind of production in the United States today would not go over very well. I think there is a sense among many African-American artists and cultural leaders that these things should be done by African Americans themselves, which is not to say it's impossible to have those kind of collaborations at a less tense time. People build on the personal relationships they have with different kinds of people and if an artist feels comfortable with a white former they'll include the White performer.

MF: You look like you want to say something, George.

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: Well just very quickly. First of all of course as Professor Monson recognizes the history of collaboration between African Americans and European Americans across the last century and a half is very complex. Think of the development of jazz for instance and Broadway musicals, many of which have been integrated and continue to be integrated in the last 50 60 so ten twenty five years and so on so far I don't think any of that is going to end. And I think it's extremely important to have that kind of collaboration in order to break down the current walls that seem to be springing up all over the place in the United States. But I also wants to understand and accent and emphasize the fact: This is Canada. We have a whole different situation in terms of racial relations which is the denial of racism, the denial of slavery which is also in the background of these of this current uproar in Quebec, and probably - I haven't read any of the French commentary on this at the moment. I'm going to presume that some of it is related to this very easy identification that's been going on in Quebec intellectual and artistic circles of gains since the 1940s and through the quiet revolution especially LE Revolution Tranquille of the 1960s and 70s that they can very easily compare their struggle against Anglophones with the African-American struggle for independence and power and empowerment and so on. But I think it's important recognized that that identification also was a two way street. We have to remember that Malcolm X, the great anti-imperialist anti-racist Muslim intellectual of the 1960s himself, recognized as compared African-American struggle with Francophone struggle in Quebec. He talked about the fanatical struggle in his autobiography of six million Quebecois, French Canadians, the term he used, to empower themselves vis a vis the English candidate. So there were African-American intellectuals in the 1960s and 70s who also saw a parallel. Which is not to say that one can unthinkingly appropriate other histories of resistance to oppression and say easily that these are these are our own. Especially when one is practicing one's own alienations and exclusions against others which certainly has been the case in Quebec as in the rest of Canada. Got to keep saying that black people suffer from racism all across Canada and have been, for centuries, and there was slavery in Canada too as there was in the United States.

MF: George I want I just want to make time before the end of the half hour to hear exerpts from your great aunt. To conclude things and I think appropriately who was Portia May White and she was Canada's first black concert singer. We're going to play a song from her. But could you just tell us a bit about the spiritual we're about to hear?

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE: It's titled Ride on King Jesus. She was a great classical concert singer but she always included spirituals. This one of her signature pieces stands you can hear in the lyrics. It's a song of triumph not a song about suffering. It's a song about overcoming the refrain is no man can hinder me. It's feminist. It's anti-racist. It's humanist. It's powerful.

MF: Ingrid Monson and George Elliott Clarke thank you both very much. And we leave you with the sounds from George Elliott Clarke's great aunt Portia May White and her rendition of Ride on King Jesus released in 1968 recorded in the 1940s. This is the summer edition of The Current.

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[Song: Ride on King Jesus by Portia May White]

THE CURRENT | This author believed her family was fleeing the Mafia. Then she uncovered the real story

Guests: Pauline Dakin

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PAULINE DAKIN: Welcome to Atlantic Voice, I'm Pauline Dakin.

ANNOUNCER: We're starting with the CBC's Pauline Dakin.

PAULINE DAKIN: Pauline Dakin CBC News Halifax.

ANNONCER: Pauline Dakin picks up this story.

PAULINE DAKIN: I'm Pauline Dakin, thank you for listening.

MF: If you're a regular CBC listener, then you may be familiar with Pauline Dakin's name and voice. But what you may not know is that the journalist has lived a real life story that was often stranger-than-fiction. These days the long time CBC reporter, producer and host is an assistant professor at the University of King's College School of Journalism. But she's also been hard at work reporting her own life story. She recently released a memoir titled, "Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood". Twice, while growing up, and without any notice, Pauline's mother moved her and her brother across the country, wrenching them from their daily lives with no explanation. She grew up with a palpable sense that something menacing was always looming. But who - or what - that was were questions that always remained unanswered. Until one day, in 1988, when a 23-year-old Pauline Dakin met her mother at the Bluebird Hotel, in Sussex, New Brunswick. Here is Pauline Dakin reading from her book:

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PAULINE DAKIN: I walked over to Mom's car and got in said hello, leaning across for a hug. She held me just a bit longer, tighter than normal, as she pulled back. Her smile was sad almost apologetic. She handed me a note and an empty envelope. She put one finger over her lips hushing me although I wasn't speaking. She pointed at the note. Puzzled I unfolded it and read in her distinctive handwriting: 'Don't say anything. Take all your jewelry off and put it in the envelope. Don't talk until we get out of the car again. I will explain.'

MF: Pauline Dakin spoke with Anna Maria in September from Halifax. And here again is that interview.

AMT: What was it that your mother had to say to you that day at the Bluebird motel?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well she was there with a long-time family friend, who surprised me with his presence as well. They sat me down and they told me that all the odd things that had happened, while I was growing up and when my brother was growing up, was because we had been on the run from the mafia. And that's why we had disappeared twice. That's why we would suddenly without notice go on a hiking trip. “Oh! But we're missing school. Oh it's kay.” So strange things happen. And so the Mafia had was an ongoing threat in our lives and part of the reason for that, they told me was that my father had been involved in the Mafia in Vancouver.

AMT: So much to absorb.

PAULINE DAKIN: [Chuckles] Oh yes.

AMT: Why did she have you hand over your jewelry?

PAULINE DAKIN: Because there was concern that perhaps there would be listening devices in my jewelry, particularly the jewelry that had been a gift from my father or his wife.

AMT: Okay now you mention there was a family friend there, Stan Sears. Tell us a little bit about who Stan was and what role he played in this.

PAULINE DAKIN: I first knew Stan Sears as the minister at a United Church we started going to when I was six. You know this really kind of outgoing friendly guy. And what I didn't know was at the time my mother was in the process of leaving my dad. She was very fearful. He was alcoholic and so she had gone to Al-Anon and she was suffering from depression. At Al-Anon somebody said “well you really need to go and see Stan Sears. He works with a lot of the family members and he's a really great guy and we think he can help you.” And she did that and sure enough over about six months her depression began to lift and she could see the way forward. And she did leave my dad. Then she needed to get work so she became his secretary for a period of time. His other one had retired. And so she filled in.

AMT: I should stop you. He was a clergyman?

PAULINE DAKIN: He was a clergyman. He was with the United Church of Canada. Also he had some training in psychology. And so that was you know why he was used in the community as a counselor as well. And so that night, when I was 23 in the motel room trying to make sense of all of this, I kept saying why us? But why us? And so Stan told me the story about how, before he'd ever met my mother, he had been doing counseling with somebody who'd been involved at a high level with the mob on the waterfront in Vancouver. And he'd been counseling this man who was regretful and repentful and wanted to change his life and the Mafia found out and they killed him. And so that's how Stan had come to the Mafia's attention. Then when my mother began going to him for counseling and then working for him, what he said was that the Mafia realized or felt that my mother was sharing information and that they were probably going to authorities with information about them.

AMT: And again, because your father was involved they said in with the Mafia as well.

PAULINE DAKIN: That was the thinking that because you know my mother would have information, supposedly from the time they were together, that she would be sharing that information with Stan.

AMT: And the story they told you became even more complex. What was the place of hope?

PAULINE DAKIN: The place of hope was a shadowy secretive - we called it inside. We called it the weird world. So what it was kind of a very secret penal institution that was only for people who were arrested because of their involvement with organized crime. And what they told me was that this organization reported only to the Privy Council. It received its funding through military budgets that people who were arrested and imprisoned there were tried by military tribunals. So that was a penal part of the place. But also we know he called it inside because it was also a place where people whose lives had gotten caught up with the mafia through no fault of their own, but who had become targets of the Mafia could be taken there for their own safety. They could go inside to be safe. And by the time Stan was telling me this he was telling me that he had gone inside. He'd been a big target because he told me he'd started to work with the weird world, this group the anti-organized crime task force. So he'd gone to work with them and become even more of a target. And therefore my family was even more of a target.

AMT: And so he told you he had protectors.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. So part of what the weird world did was provide protection for people like my family who had for some reason become targets. And so I was asked would I agree to have locating be beacon put on my car, so that they could the people who protected me and followed me, what they called my coverage, would have an easier time keeping track of me and making sure everything was okay around me. I was given a special little radio, looked just like a little transistor radio from the 70s, and I was instructed on a way that I could put the settings to call for help if I've ever felt my life was in danger.

AMT: And he communicated with these protectors. How did he do that?

PAULINE DAKIN: I called it the butt receiver. He had a vibrator, a little vibration tool, in the lining of his wallet and he could get messages through that. You know it would be kind of like the Morse Code of vibration in his wallet pocket.

AMT: And you saw him actually take notes from this. What was that like? What would you do?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well as things went on, and sometimes I would end up being asked to go on the run with Stan and mom, because something was going on that was threatening. I would see him occasionally pull a notepad and start making all of these notes in numbers and letters, and then he would sort of figure out the message afterwards. He'd look, decipher and figure it out and come back with a message.

AMT: So they told you this one night, in this motel, totally by surprise, you were not expecting this. How did you react to all of it?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well you know I was a young journalist but I did understand you know the value of critical thinking and healthy skepticism. My first reaction was you're crazy. This is crazy. Nobody can keep this kind of a secret. A world like that would not be kept secret. So you know that was my initial reaction and then I started to think “Well. God! if this is true? Maybe I should go to Australia. Maybe I could get lost somewhere in the world. I don't want this to be part of my life.” The other thing that Mum had told me was that she was getting ready to go inside, that she wanted to go inside. After so many years on the run she was exhausted and that was her plan. But you know as my thinking evolved, during that weekend but also in the weeks that followed, I just had to think that you know here these two people, good people. People who were very idealistic, who were doing good things in the community, who showed nothing but empathy and for the world around them, and they had been the two people I could most trust in my life. They were always there for me Stan ultimately had become like a father to me and they never once in my life let me down. And I thought “Wow! If I can't believe these two people, of all people, the game is over anyway.” You know what's the point of anything? And so I eventually decided I had to believe this because of who was telling it to me. I was never without doubts. You know I struggled with that, mightily, but I always came back to that; it is Stan and Mom and I trust them.

AMT: Now your parents were divorced. What was your relationship like with your dad during your childhood?

PAULINE DAKIN: My dad was alcoholic, so there were periods of time I didn't see him. And he struggled with that disease. When there were some court ordered visitation - My father and mother had been in a very long and ugly court battle over access and child support payments and so on. So that for a period of time I did see him before we left Vancouver. But then that summer, that we supposedly went on vacation to the prairies, we didn't tell him. We told him we're going on vacation but then we never went back and we didn't talk to him again, for a very long time. So I for great parts of my life I had no relationship with my dad.

AMT: And tell me a little bit more about your childhood, about the sense of fear in your childhood.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yeah you know there was always a sense that something was wrong but we could never put our finger on it. My brother [unintelligible] this. “What do you think this is all about,” because even if we were just going on a vacation or out for dinner, we were just always told “You can't. Don't talk about this. Don't tell anybody this.” Why can't we tell the simplest things in our lives. So there was this sense of secretiveness all the time and that something bad was going on.

AMT: Give me an example of some of the unexplained or disturbing events that you saw as a child.

PAULINE DAKIN: Well one time I came home from school and we were very quickly ushered out the door and told that we couldn't be in the house because the furnace was malfunctioning. And then went on that weekend in at the Bluebird motel. I was told now; I remember that well what was actually happening is that people were coming after us. So we were getting everybody out to be safe. And I guess you know the one that that really rattled me was one time when we came home and we were told “Well we're going over to the Sears for a sleepover.” So the other thing you need to know is that every time we disappeared, Stan and his wife disappeared with us. That of course always seemed very strange. We were moving around the country in lockstep. So this was in Winnipeg and we were told we were going to their house for a sleepover, which seemed odd because it was a school night and I didn't realize that adults did sleepovers like that. So we had this very strange dinner and then went to bed. And I was just going to sleep when there was this terrible ruckus in the basement. It sounded like things being thrown around. It sounded like a big fight. And I put the light on. I was so scared. It was that moment where it like in a nightmare, where you know somebody is coming at you and you can't run because you're frozen. I was frozen with fear. And mom came into my room. Ted was in the room across the hall and stand and Sibyl were out in the hallway. And they came in they said: “It's okay, It's the dog, the dog is all upset.” And that just did not make any sense with what I was hearing. Then of course, years later, I was told about that that the Italian Mafia people had actually come across the pond and come after us. And there were some of the good guys, our guys, our coverage was waiting in the basement. And what I heard was the Mafia guys come in through the window and our guys fighting them off, and that in fact people were killed that night.

AMT: Hmm. And Sibyl, is Sibyl Sears, his wife.

PAULINE DAKIN: That's right.

AMT: And again, these were all events that you remember from your childhood, but that night in the motel, they tell you this is why. They can actually point to things that now make some kind of sense to you.

PAULINE DAKIN: Right. Yes. You know, [chuckles] as mom said: “You know you always wanted to know, well here it comes.” And that was part of the reason that you know it's so strange but it makes some kind of sense when those puzzle pieces all start coming together. And there is an explanation for so many things that were so strange.

AMT: Okay, so you're 23 years old and you find this out. You're working at the Telegraph journal right out of St. John, at the time.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes.

AMT: Okay. And so after you know this, and the years immediately after your mom and Stan make this revelation to you, what is your life like?

PAULINE DAKIN: Increasingly my life felt is just completely irrelevant. I just couldn't talk to anybody about any of this, and this was taking up a large base in my head. I was afraid. I was told that people were following me, for my protection, but that still felt creepy. And of course I was always trying to spot them. And I never knew, you know, when somebody might be coming after me. So, I regarded the world with a lot of suspicion. I still had some doubts that I was struggling with that but you know deciding that I had to take this seriously, in case.

AMT: And you couldn't talk to anybody. You were living with a boyfriend at the time, but you couldn't tell him anything.

PAULINE DAKIN: I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell my best friends. I was told: “You can't tell anybody this. It could put people's lives in jeopardy.” So I told nobody and I found myself increasingly isolated and somehow the idea that I would go to work and go cover some council meeting, or school board meeting, or something, just I thought: “What's the point of all that?” It just seems so irrelevant when all of this big threatening crazy stuff was going on in the background.

AMT: And you've still got this little device he gave you. You're putting it in every purse. You move it around. You keep it with you in case you need to call for help.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yup. It was always there. I was told never to be outdoors without it.

AMT: And so now you know, and you're part of the inside knowledge and things are still happening. Give me example. There's one really is at the front of my mind. The story of the boat full of injured and dying refugees who have been trafficked. What was the story? What happened?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well, we were on the run. Stan was visited- By this time he had retired to the west coast and then gone inside. But he was back and out and visiting and we were asked to leave town. So he and moment I got in the car and drove to Cape Breton. I was told that that was good because rural areas it was easier to keep us safe, with fewer people around. So we were up there and suddenly I could see him taking notes and that there was something going on. This was quite a frequent occurrence. You know he would be getting messages. Sometimes the message was: “Take the next right. We're checking out a car behind you to see if they follow”, that kind of thing. This time he was obviously very upset and he said that he was getting messages that a ship had been found floating just off the coast of Nova Scotia, and when it was boarded they found that it was - He called it a death ship. It was a bunch of illegal immigrants who had been in the U.S. who had had their organs harvested. They'd been kidnapped for the black market in organs. And so that when they went on board that ship, we were told that there were people who were dead because all their organs were gone. There were people who were dying and there were people below in a hold that didn't know what was going on. And something there had been surgeons on board, you know, organized crime people who had been scared off and had just left the boat to drift.

AMT: That that's just like so upsetting and you're a reporter you can't churn out obviously either, right?

PAULINE DAKIN: Right. Oh there were so many times that there were stories that I thought: “Oh my gosh! I can make my career with this story. You know this is amazing.” But no I couldn't tell.

AMT: And so Stan is living in B.C. because he's living in the Place of Hope, but he comes back. And what's the explanation that the feds are paying for him to come back?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. You know he became - His work with this organization got to be a bigger and bigger part of his life, and he became a leader in that community and that the government he worked within that military budget. And so that's how he got around. There was an aircraft - military aircraft that he called the bird - and he would sometimes fly in on the bird. And other times he would take, what he called very risky, commercial flights. And so he would be spending time here quite frequently.

AMT: And by this time you know and they are very open with the fact that your mom and Stan are in a relationship. They've fallen in love.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Yes.

AMT: And Stan has a wife but she, you're told, knows this, or that issue had been dealt with long ago kind of thing.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. That they had gone back to retire. He had bought her a place on the west coast and then gone inside and that their relationship ended when he went inside, because she didn't want to. She wanted to stay outside.

AMT: And morphing into one other point of this, Pauline. Your dad was an investment guy. And one of the things they also told you was that he had put your name as part of that sort of in his work with the mob, that you were listed in something that was related to the mob, which is why you were vulnerable as well. Am I right?

PAULINE DAKIN: That was part of it, that a number of money laundering businesses and that kind of thing had been put in my name and my brother's name. And there was the expectation that we would join that business, that we would become part of organized crime with our dad. And we were told that our half brother and sister had been before us, and that many people we'd known around us had also been involved. You know people that were around my dad. So yeah that there was an expectation that we would get brought in.

AMT: And some of those people started writing to you.

PAULINE DAKIN: Well the people who started writing to me were people who had been involved and then been arrested and taken to the Weird World and they were imprisoned in the Weird World. And then some of them had ultimately changed and became trusted and began to do jobs in the Weird World. I received letters and lots of them from people who had known me as a small child. They were writing to ask me to forgive them for the things that they'd been involved in, that had harmed my family and sent us running.

AMT: And they knew things about you as a child. They were very familiar letters.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. You know I had letters from people who had been neighbors, my godparents, my half siblings who I was told had been arrested and now we're there. Yes, people who knew things about me.

AMT: Your brother doesn't know anything yet.

PAULINE DAKIN: Not yet.

AMT: Okay. So they've told you this story about the mafia and they made it clear that you two are a target. And, at some point, you realize you should go into permanent hiding with Stan and your mom to this Place of Hope. That was pretty drastic turn for somebody so young to think that you have to go into hiding permanently like that.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes it was. It was definitely desperation. You know I just found it so difficult to live a normal life when I knew, or I was always being told, about all these things other things going on around me. As I say, it isolated me it made me feel distant from the people in my life. It made my life's work feel less relevant to me. And I thought “Oh. What the hell I'm going inside”. You know and I was told that there would be work for me there and that there was a community of people that would welcome me. I was told there would be a horse for me [laughs], because Stan knew I really liked horses when I was young. And you know, I would be welcomed.

AMT: So you've been told this incredible story, of your mom being on the run with you kids, you and your brother your younger brother, and your childhood on the run from the mob. Something isn't sitting right with you. You have doubts about their story.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Always there were doubts. When that happened, you know, it was a terrible agony. Do I believe these people that I trust, who have never given me any reason not to trust them? In fact, quite the opposite, have been the most reliable people in my life. And so I kept coming back to that. But you know as we would be running together, we'd be traveling to get away from some kind of threat. I began to notice strange little inconsistencies and little patterns that just alerted me that something wasn't quite right. And Stan knew so much, had so many stories about this what had gone on in the weird world, and all the people who lived there. It just seemed incomprehensible that anybody could make this stuff up but something wasn't quite right.

AMT: Hmm. But at the same time, like a couple of years are going by. You are trying to live your life. You get engaged. Your brother eventually finds out about this.

PAULINE DAKIN: And I did not go inside and my mother did not go inside. We were told it was because there were threats that either one of us disappeared again that our remaining family on the west coast would suffer for it. So yes, we were still outside for a long period of time and I had begun to lose hope that that would ever happen.

AMT: And as you do that you start looking at these inconsistencies again, and that brings us to another part of this story the truth. When did you seriously doubt the story your mom and Stan were telling you?

PAULINE DAKIN: There were a number of incidents that built the case, I guess. I told you about the little radio that I was given, and my brother was given the same radio. He and his wife - he married quite young - they were traveling through Vancouver one night and thought that they were being chased. And so he pulled over. This is in the cell phone era. He pulled over to a payphone and - Oh he had also been given a 1 800 number. So at one time he pulled over and went to a pay phone and called the 1 800 number, or the number and it didn't work. There was no answer. And then another time, when he thought something was going on, he'd use the little radio receiver. And again nothing happened. So he lost faith very quickly. Now, you know, when these things happen the answer always came back “Well oh this is serious. This is going to require an investigation. We have to find out why,” you know. And it would come back that somebody mistakenly cut a line or you know something like that.

AMT: There was always an answer right.

PAULINE DAKIN: Always.

AMT: Pre-cell phone era. What years are we talking about?

PAULINE DAKIN: We're talking about the late 80s, early to mid-90s.

AMT: Okay. And so your brother has these consistencies that he starts to share. Keep going.

PAULINE DAKIN: I'm also noticing kind of an odd thing. My mother was all about you know trust. If I we don't have trust, we don't have anything. Tell me the truth every time. I don't care how hard it is , it is better than a lie, that kind of thing. And a couple of times I saw her get very upset with Stan because she thought he told her something that wasn't the truth. And I watched how he deflected her anger by bringing up the death of his son. He had had a son die, and he would you know get very sad. And she would say: “What?” And he'd say: “Well I just found out something about Michael”, his son. And so the second time I saw that happen, he just knew that my mother had such empathy for that loss that she could not press him when he was feeling sadness about it. And I thought that seems like he's using that sadness. So eventually I just couldn't live with the uncertainty of the situation. And I decided I have to know. So I guess I set up a bit of a sting to find out one way or the other whether there was any truth in this whole story.

AMT: What did you do?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well I I waited until I knew that Stan would be in the area, visiting my mother, and then I called her and I said: “My house has been broken into. What should I do?” And she said: “Our friend is here.” Of course she would talk that way because in case anybody was listening on the phone. And she said: “Our friend is here. I'll check and I'll get right back to you”, and then I hung up and I just sat waiting. And she calls back and she said: “Yes, we know about that break in. There were two people. We've picked them up down the street in a car. The car had your pictures in the back. They'd been watching you. They were looking for the China that your father sent you.” And in that moment I just knew the whole thing is a lie. Our whole lives are a lie. It was excruciating.

AMT: It must have been devastating.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes, yes.

AMT: Did you have a physical reaction to that?

PAULINE DAKIN: Oh, yes. I thought I was going to be sick. And of course I was shaking. I was shaking when I made the call. I was still shaking. It just - I was aware that by doing this I was turning our lives back upside down again. And my whole understanding had to change again.

AMT: So much of the story seems fantastical. You go to a wedding and you're told that the family has body doubles, and that's the aunt that you're looking at you know isn't. It's an actor. Even right down to the way she does something with her toes in her sandals, everything. Like the Canadian government’s figure this out and they're protecting you all. It's a very deep rabbit hole, huh?

PAULINE DAKIN: It really was. Yes. The doubles were you know a very disturbing thing to get your head around. But you know the argument was Winston Churchill had a double, lots of people have had doubles. We spend months training our doubles. But of course organized crime does too. So you never know which double you're looking at. It was mind bending .

AMT: Right and we know people go into witness protection so it's just like a stretch from that. And so did you confront Stan and your mom and at some point?

PAULINE DAKIN: I confronted my mom first. I honestly believed - I knew she had to believe this because I knew she would never fool us she would never do anything to hurt me and Ted. She really - honesty was her highest value really. So I knew that she was following his lead. So I decided to try with her first and I told her and she was so upset. But what she was upset about was that if I didn't believe this story it meant that I might put myself in danger. I might put myself at risk.

AMT: Hmm. I should have said spoiler alert here. But there's so much in this book that we're not going to take away from anyone's sense of suspense or awe as they read through your story, Pauline. But if it wasn't the Mafia, why did Stan and your mom tell you all this?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well in my mom's case, you know, she met Stan at a time that she was so vulnerable, leaving a marriage she'd been abused in, she had not had a great relationship with her dad either. He was abusive in some ways. Then she met this man who she always said saved her life. She said that she'd been suicidal by the time she met him, and she credited him with saving her. And he was a gentle guy and he was a good guy. He was right thinking. He was a great preacher and very interested in social justice. So she had huge admiration for him. So that's why my mother believed it, until the day she died, in fact. With Stan though, that was always the question. Why would he do this to us? He was like a dad to me. Why would he ever do this? And it was the mystery. I nearly turned myself inside out trying to figure that out over the years that followed. Obviously once I decided I didn't believe, I was now an outsider. You know I retained a relationship with my mother and to a degree with Stan as well. But you know we were on opposite sides of a pretty vast chasm. And I knew that he loved me. I loved him. Why? And then some years later, I happened to read an article in a medical journal and all the lights went off and I went: “That's why.” This article talked about an under-diagnosed, under-recognized, understudied condition that's quite rare called delusional disorder. It's far more rare for example than schizophrenia. Although in reality I think people who have specialty in that area would say “we don't really know how common it is” because people who have this condition typically don't go looking for help.

AMT: And they're very good at hiding it. Well depending on their intelligence. Somebody with high intelligence, suffering from this, oh yes. They can they can fool all kinds of people.

AMT: So what his delusional disorder? What did you learn about it?

PAULINE DAKIN: Okay. Well it involves delusions but non bizarre delusions. Now you may say “Pauline, that's all pretty bizarre” and it is. But you know with somebody with schizophrenia for example they have the kind of delusion that they maybe are hearing voices, or somebody is sending signals from space, things that are clearly not possible, not reasonable. With delusional disorder, the delusions are, yes maybe very unlikely or unusual, but they're possible. Not probable but possible. And then they, if there are intelligent people, they can build entire worlds. And it's kept in kind of an envelope. So they can live very normal looking lives. Quite often people with this condition are diagnosed a little bit later in life. So they tend to be educated. Maybe they've had a family. They're established in a career.

AMT: So this is Stan that you're explaining. Yes.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. And they have credentials in the world. So they're not suspect initially. And then something tips and I don't think anybody can tell you what actually goes on in the brain. There's lots of theories but they begin to develop delusions. There are subtypes of this condition. You would you probably would have heard of the Erotomanic subtype of delusional disorder. This is where you hear about somebody who's been chasing a Hollywood star because they think that that person is in love with them, has been sending the messages that they want to connect. So, occasionally, you hear about that one. Or you might hear about one that's called somatic, where somebody thinks that they have maybe something growing under their skin or they emit a bad smell. And those people do go look for help. They go to see doctors who can't find anything wrong. But in Stan's case, the two subtypes that I think were at play - and others have backed me up on this - is persecutory, where you believe that somebody is coming after you, trying to harm you, is plotting against you. And I would say that was kind of the primary one. And the second one being grandiosity, where you have some secret knowledge or ability that other people don't have. And when I read everything I could get my hands on about this condition. Those things really describe Stan for me. You know it was him to a T. And so I got in touch with the guy who wrote this article in The Journal and his name is Dr. Manschreck. He's a psychiatrist at Harvard in Boston and we spent a long time on the phone. He's spent a long time saying: “Wow! Really? Wow!” He thought this was interesting because you don't hear a lot about these cases. He said a psychiatrist could typically work an entire career and never see one of these people.

AMT: And you were living it, and you could document after the fact. Well, I mean, you talk about they have to be a high intellect, because that's the thing that struck me as well. What kind of intellect you have to have to create such a sophisticated web of, not only lies, but of concrete examples? Like you had all these letters from people who knew things about you. Your mom had a huge collection of letters. He did put a lot of work into this.

PAULINE DAKIN: Oh. And how did you do that and have a career and all. He was involved in all kinds of things in the community. And I don't know. I mean there are things about this story that will always be a mystery to me. How did he pay to be flying back and forth across the country? I don't know. I managed to track down his son, in B.C. We had a visit.

AMT: Did they know about this?

PAULINE DAKIN: They had some indicators but he said - His name is John - and he said until I sat there and told my story he didn't know whether it was real or not. His dad, just at the time that his dad was meeting my mom, he was noticing strange things at home. And you know he would come in and say: “Oh there's danger out there tonight. There are people with guns you can't go out there”, that kind of thing. Eventually, John said look that's ridiculous and unless you want to prove something to me, stop talking to me about it. And so I think John had always wondered. But Stan died some years ago and so he figured he always would wonder about that. But I have to say we had quite an interesting conversation.

AMT: Hmm. And so Stan has died, your mother has died and your dad has died, right?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes they're all gone now.

AMT: Are you certain that it was delusional disorder?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes I am. I am completely certain in my head. So, you know, Dr. Manschrek, who is you know one of the leading authorities on this, agrees with me. When we've talked about the situation in detail and he said to me: “Pauline you know there's somebody who's like the world expert on this. Somewhere in your neck of the woods, maybe Dalhousie?” [Laughs] Which is just down the block for sure. I now work on that campus and. And so I did track down Alistair Munro who is professor emeritus at Dalhousie in the Department of Psychiatry. We also met and talked and he said yes this does seem to be what's going on here. So you know two very well-credentialed people with expertise in this kind of rare area have agreed that that's probably what was happening.

AMT: I have to admit to you halfway through the book I was starting to wonder if it was an elaborate cover up for Stan to have an affair with your mom.

PAULINE DAKIN: That had crossed my mind too.

AMT: And did you ever learn what he was telling his wife Sibyl to explain why your mom would move you kids to follow them in like the whole bit about one was in one part of the country one was in another?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. He told Sibyl the same thing. She was you know part of the moving and believed that. I went to see her shortly before she died and I asked her a few questions. She was you know quite old and quite frail and I did not want to upset her but I did ask her. I did say to her you know I've been told what was going on when I was growing up and she said oh yes. And I said: “Do you think there's still a threat?” And she said: “I don't know I just live my life.” But she was in on it. But you know Stan obviously didn't go inside. And John says he continued to live with her until he died. And there would be times that he would say he was going away for various reasons and that would have been when he was on the other coast. Yes.

AMT: And you made the point that your mom believed this in some very important way right until she died.

PAULINE DAKIN: She did. My mother was, you know, she was not somebody that fell for things very easily. And so my brother and I have talked a lot about why would she fall for this. And I think it was just you know a very vulnerable time in her life and she met what she considered a very fine person. And he had he was a minister in the United Church and she'd been brought up in the United Church. And you know you respect people with those kinds of credentials and ideas in a way that we no longer do in society.

AMT: And she met him as well when she was vulnerable and he took advantage of that.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Although the interesting thing, I realized now, that has been transformative for my understanding and my feelings about this whole story, is that yes he took advantage of things and he co-opted circumstances to make thing to support the story that was being made up in his head. But he believed it too. He never thought he was manipulating people. And it's a very bizarre thing but I had long conversations about this and how could it be. But yes people can make things up to support a story and not feel that they're making it up.

AMT: and that's how he could go on living his life, even as a man of the cloth. I accept what you're saying. But on another level his illness, your mom's vulnerability to believing in him, it hurt you and your brother.

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes. Yes it really did. You know there were many people that we lost touch with, people that we were I guess ripped away from. And there was a sense of being alone. You know that we were always different we were other.

AMT: How do you process that now?

PAULINE DAKIN: You know the process of writing this book. I originally decided to write this book as a way of telling my kids what had gone on in my life. I wanted them to hear the story in a nuanced way that wouldn't have them kind of automatically judging people, including my mom. My kids were very close to my mom. So that was originally why I wanted to try and make some sense and put it into narrative form. But the process has been remarkable for me, in terms of sorting things out. I had just tried to forget about this and move on with my life. And you know you can only push this stuff down for so long. And so yes it's been therapeutic for me. And you know the discovery about delusional disorder has allowed me to forgive the people who harmed me because I know it was not malevolent or intentional.

AMT: And what about yourself and your own - I don't know what the word would be - your own vulnerability or delusion in believing that story? Were you hard on yourself?

PAULINE DAKIN: Yes.

AMT: Have you changed? Talk to me about that.

PAULINE DAKIN: I felt a lot of shame that I had fallen for this. I'm supposed to be a journalist for crying out loud. And I did feel a lot of shame and also shame for, you know, other people who kind of got caught up in it because of me. I was married for a period of time and caught somebody else up in the story. I guess I had started to think differently as I was opening up the door to this again and trying to sort it all out. But I think it really had a lot to do with the way my kids reacted to this book. They read it, parts of it, while it was in the works that let me kind of forgive myself. Their response was full of empathy for some but for a little girl who had no control and just got caught up. And then as an adult followed the person she loved you know my heart was leading my head.

AMT: It's interesting that you say that you didn't want them judging your mom because you I guess you felt that she was open to judgment.

PAULINE DAKIN: Well yes. You know if I tried to proof my kids when they were 10 and 13 or something, they couldn't have imagined it and leaving behind everybody they knew.

AMT: With no explanation.

PAULINE DAKIN: Without explanation. So yes I could see how easily that could turn into some judgment. And so on. But my mother, despite her faults and her vulnerabilities was a remarkable person. And I wanted them to know that about her too. And they do. They have complexity of thinking on this which pleases me very much. It's very easy to slide into black and white. But they can see the truth and still feel love.

AMT: What do you want the rest of us to learn from this story?

PAULINE DAKIN: Well I think the obvious one is that things aren't always as they appear right. I appeared to have a pretty normal life, most of the time I think. The other is I do hope people, this under recognized illness could be hijacking a lot of other lives too. I know it's so hard to find the people to do the studies but it seems to me that there needs to be somebody paying more attention to this. And also there are probably kids out there that were in a similar condition to me. And I often wonder Anna Maria when I disappeared and didn't turn up for school on Monday. Were there adults in my life at school or other places who thought “Gee I wonder what happened to her?” Does anybody know? Did anybody look? Did anybody worry about these kids who just disappeared? I don't know.

AMT: And these are questions we need to ask ourselves. Yeah. Pauline Dakin, it's a remarkable story, a remarkable life. Thank you for sharing.

PAULINE DAKIN: Thank you for being interested.

MF: Anna-Maria speaking with Pauline Dakin in September and Pauline Paulina's the author of Run Hide Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood and she was in our Halifax studio. If you want to learn more about her story you can head to our Web site cbc.ca/thecurrent. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Now earlier in today's show we spoke with George Elliottt Clarke, the former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate for his thoughts on the recently cancelled Montreal theatrical productions Slave. Mr. Clarke was recently commissioned by our colleagues at CBC Radio ideas to write a poem about Canada's Secret History of Slavery that was to accompany an ideas series on the topic. We're going to link to that series from our website again cbc.ca/thecurrent. But we're going to leave you with George Elliott Clarke reading his poem which is intitled Snow Job: why is Black Slavery Whited out in Canadian History? An Incorrect Sestina. I'm Mike Finnerty. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current. We'll see you tomorrow.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

Why must we be 35 million slaves to lies, that slavery never darken Canada's chores, or that Canuck masters were sweet and polite, or that underground railroad tracks ran due north and never south, or that slavery was only a crime against humanity that has darkened American history whose masters, prof's in white sheets, are hurtling underground but tempers jealously with troops, both south and north so that slavery seems no crime, or that Canada never boasted slaves. Canuck historians are equal masters at snow jobs, so slaves vanish underground, whited out as if only in the South did blacks clink chains were, down there, that damned crime got overthrown by war. Thus freeing slaves at gunpoint. But Canucks never darkened a lot of books. We smirk with any underground Negro phobe inkling so unlike the South where blackness Negritude became a crime. Yet New France Quebec chained thousands of slaves, as did New Scotland, new darkness darkened by blue nose, red hand ex Dixie masters lording it over thousands. But north south Canada to New England, once their crime became the claim that humans can be slaves, streambed fugitives from colonies darkened by British or French violent masters, who complained that livestock gone underground fleeing the great white north were states of crime. Those Yankee republics now free of slaves, having tossed out George Third, had now dark and great Britain Lilly White empire, masters who slaving genteel not underground as they clinked teacups round the global south. Our letters have not fathom the numbers of slaves darkened and bloodied by masters North. Gone underground erase our hours sleep. But bled south and north that crime.

[Music: Theme]

The Current Transcript for July 5, 2018

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

SLĀV backlash highlights Canada's history of denying racism, says poet George Elliott Clarke

THE CURRENT | This author believed her family was fleeing the Mafia. Then she uncovered the real story

Thursday July 5, 2018 Full Trancript

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