The Little-Known Story Behind Canada’s Largest Student Occupation

When black students at Sir George Williams College (now Concordia University) alleged white professor Perry Anderson was discriminating against them by giving them lower grades, the administration did little to intervene. In response, the group organized a peaceful anti-racism protest, which then escalated into a 400-person sit-in at the campus' computer lab before turning into a full-fledged riot. The standoff only ended when the building mysteriously caught fire.

The 14-day student occupation in the spring of 1968 was the longest in the country's history, and led to the arrest of 97 people. But you'll seldom read about this incident; for most Canadians, these events have been forgotten, if they were ever heard of at all. That's something filmmakers Mina Shum and Selwyn Jacob set out to change with their 2015 documentary Ninth Floor. The film tells the story of the six Caribbean students who started the movement and details how the tensions that ensued triggered one of the most incendiary uprisings Montreal—and Canada—had ever seen.

The award-winning film, which was shown at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, is now being celebrated at Canada's Top Ten Film Festival.

We sat down with writer/director Shum and producer Jacob last year to find out why it took 45 years for this story to come out.

VICE: This is a really emotional story that somehow a lot of people didn't know about. How did you find out about it?
Mina Shum: Someone told me the nuts and bolts of the Sir George event three years ago, and immediately I was intrigued, because I'd never heard the story before. It really shocked me, growing up in multicultural Canada, that this story had never been told. I really wanted to speak to the participants and investigate why we didn't know about this. And it ties into the themes of surveillance of the film: if you disempower people by labelling them or excluding them or watching them, then you can also take a story like this and completely hide it. So I saw a lot of themes that could be cinematic in the film.
Selwyn Jacob: I came to Canada in 1960 and went to the University of Alberta, but I had very close friends who went to Sir George Williams, and so when this incident happened I was taking a course from a prof who always tried to get me involved in classroom discussions. He knew I was from Trinidad and this particular morning, he said, 'Selwyn, I hope we're still friends.' I hadn't heard the announcement yet but later in the day I heard that six students from Trinidad were arrested and were part of this occupation that got out of control. Right away I felt connected to this story, and it's always been in the back of my mind that if I became a filmmaker at some point I'd tell this story.
Shum: I joke that he was waiting for us to meet.

How did you pull everything together? You managed to get so many people, including the son of Perry Anderson, the professor accused of racism. Who did you want to give a voice to in this film?
Shum: Selwyn and I said it would start with the six original complainants, that we'd start from there and trace forward. And immediately I spoke to Rodney John. He led me on to Terrence Ballantyne, and it was just one person after another that kept opening up the story. Nantali [Indongo, daughter of protester Kennedy Frederick] was one of the first people I interviewed, and we had a great researcher who compiled a list of who is here, who is still alive. Because 97 people were arrested, the spread was huge. But one of the most surprising ones was Duff Anderson, Perry Anderson's son. We had been mistakenly told Perry Anderson was dead, and so we did an interview with the [Montreal] Gazette while we were filming, and in the article it said that he was dead. His son then contacted our publicist and said, 'No my father's not dead.' I got into conversation with him at that point, a very intelligent cinema-lover who was comparing his father's situation to a film called The Hunt, which is about what happens when you get accused of something —in that film it's of a sexual nature— but when you get accused of something and you don't get to speak to it, to defend yourself. I knew he had a lot to say, so I tried to get the father but eventually the son said, 'No I'll do it' because the dad was just too traumatized by what had happened, he wouldn't speak.

Why did it take so long?
Jacob: People asked why we waited 45 years and I say, "The film is richer for the time we waited." It's just a certain pattern, the story had moved into a second generation… If we had waited only 20 years, we would have tried to get Perry Anderson, we would have tried to get Rosie Douglas, Kennedy Frederick. By waiting those extra 25 years, we got Nantali, Duff, and Rosie Douglas' son [who does not appear in the film]. Every time I discovered a certain amount of information about the story, I found it was getting more and more layered.
Shum: Even Ann Cools [one of the Sir George protesters who went on to become Canada's first black Senator] who I don't think 20 years ago would have… She was in the middle of her political career at that point, she would not have spoken. This is the first time she's ever spoken about the events, in our film. I think that has to do with having time. Maybe it's time to lay that story down.

What's important to you, when people watch this?
Jacob: If you watch the film and you don't know about it, you come out in a state of disbelief. It depends on which side of the racial fence you're actually sitting on. For me, I've always known that story; for people in the black community, they've always known that story. So what are the reasons why it wasn't told? If you look at racism and how it manifests itself, if you look at who was making films back in the 70s, there wasn't a black filmmaker or a black producer to shepherd this story and say, "I'm going to produce this." So, in a way, the film had to be a function of how society was evolving. When I was making films back in the 70s, if I approached the CBC or the NFB to make a film on this subject, it wasn't the kind of topic that somebody would have been proud of, so nobody wanted to touch it.

But as fate would have it, I became a producer, I now work for the NFB, and instead of me having to take this story to people, I'm the gate keeper. So I think that's the answer to that question. This story is told from the inside out. Mina is not part of the exact community that the film comes from—and neither am I—but together we were able to become part of it through the collaboration. And so we were able to delve into issues that would not have been delved into if we didn't take the time.

When you show the film people, say, "This is not a unique experience," meaning there were similar incidents to what happened at Sir George that were also happening right across the country. And unless you get someone who is connected to those stories who is actually telling the stories, they're going to remain untold.

Do you think now is a groundswell moment for those stories to come out?
Jacob: I think we've had groundswell moments gradually, there are people who have made films in Halifax, I've made some films before, about sleeping-car porters, which was set across the country, so gradually. But I don't think anything has been as high profile, I mean this was a real Canadian incident. It was of international significance at the time.
Shum: I can't believe how timely this film is. We were at the Toronto Film Festival and I had to pick some clips to show at a composer's' symposium. And I'm watching the movie and I'm watching the people in the film—scenes that I've shot of them walking across the snow or Trinidad with suitcases—and I'm thinking about Syrian migrants. The discussion of power and how we see each other can't be more timely [than last year's election, where] one of the big points [was], who has the power to tell another what to do, and who has the power to do what they want to do, and are we actually delineating between people? Aren't all Canadians Canadian?

It was very important for me that the film resonate on an emotional level, that it isn't just a film about this small community of black people, because the Sir George Williams event was not just about black students. It galvanized the entire protest culture at that time—white people, chinese people, francophones, anglophones, everybody was there saying "justice must be served." And I think that kind of energy, you can feel it in the air today that we can actually have some influence if we talk to each other and decide what we can and cannot stand. It was important to me that the audience member feel betrayed, feel heartbroken like those students did.

If we can actually make you put yourself in the position of the student, or the scared cop, even then that's going to penetrate deep so that next time you look at someone and judge them and decide you're more powerful than them, or cooler than them, you actually think about that and ask why, what is that about. Change starts with the individual. It's not signing a petition that says "Let's end racism," because everyone would sign that and then do nothing. It's actually looking at yourself and asking, in every interaction: Am I inclusive? am I exclusive? Because you can't be both at the same time. You can't say you stand for inclusivity and then judge a woman for the colour of their hair. I want people to take a vow at the end, to those participants, to those students, and say, "I will do better for you."

We can say we've come a long way since those days but there is still discrimination. What should people vow to do, exactly?
Jacob: I think one of the ways is just—as an example—that in 2015 a story like this is being produced by a minority producer with a visible minority director telling a quintessentially Canadian story. That might be an opening in the way visible minorities are perceived. The NFB is a Canadian institution, and I would say 25 years ago this film could not have been made because I did try, many many years ago. I went to somebody and they just ignored it because the whole concept of putting race on the radar, on the table, is something that was not acknowledged. So until and unless you acknowledge that there is racism, you wouldn't be able to go beyond that point. This film, we are putting it on the table and it is affecting people.
Shum: We tend to shy away from things that make us uncomfortable and the discussion of race and judging people is uncomfortable. We all want to think we're really good. My personal philosophy is to go, "I'm flawed," and to work on the flaws and make it better. And if we could all admit that to ourselves that, OK, this is uncomfortable, the conversation of race is uncomfortable but we need to do it if we're going to move forward as a society. I feel very hopeful because the film has been made and the conversations are happening you see it at the screenings that we're ready for this. That we as a society do want to make real change.

There's a lot of terrible things going on still but at least people are calling it as opposed to before where we would just let it happen. I grew up in the punk rock movement in the early 80s and the idea to question everything is really important to me. You can't stop doing that, because at no point is a relationship vital if it's at statis. Sometimes the friction creates the movement and change and the beauty at the end. I have no problem with being uncomfortable. It's not easy but we have to dig deep if we want to bring change. You can't decide to lightly disregard racism, I mean, then nothing would ever get done.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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