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The RCMP Thought Rita MacNeil Was a Communist

What do you know about Rita MacNeil? Probably not much.

Rita putting in work while standing in a field of weed. Hearts abound. via.

What you know about Rita MacNeil? Probably not much. That’s not totally your fault, because her Wikipedia page is pretty short—but in my humble opinion that’s just because she wasn’t editing her own page like certain other vain Canadian celebrities (lookin’ at you Steven Page) who I suspect of self-aggrandizing. Maybe your Mom had some of her records lying around with her smiling in a floppy hat on the cover, and you were most aware of her by jokes you now realize are dumb (right?) based on her weight and appearance while you were around Grades 5-9. Well that’s a goddamn shame your knowledge of Ms. MacNeil is so superficial, because we’ve lost an angel.

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MacNeil was born and raised in Cape Breton which—while Canada has its fair share of places tough to grow up in—is a pretty tough place to grow up. She lived through sexual abuse, plus she faced rampant alcoholism in her immediate family: an ailment of the Maritimes that’s notoriously underlooked and almost shrugged off as simply part of the culture at some points. The Maritimes are a labour economy that have, since Confederation, revolved around industries now collapsed or collapsing such as lumber, mining and fishing, and Cape Breton is sort of the hub of that maltreated wheel.

But have you ever noticed it’s the people who come out of the pretty grim places that always exude the most PMA and are ingrained with the best senses of humour? If you watch any interview with MacNeil she’s always got this great, coy little smile going on and responds to questions like “Why are you so happy?” with something resembling a shrug. The girl was a duck in a raincoat. Her natural sense of humour finally got its due though, when she was asked on as a recurring character on Trailer Park Boys. MacNeil said she, “Waited for that part for years.” A role where she harvests weed at gunpoint.

She also was never one to expose any challenges she faced growing up around as fodder for gaining celebrity, citing simply, “I had challenges, but who doesn’t.” She always credited coming up in a place like Cape Breton responsible for instilling her with an ingrained sense of the importance of community. Community where traditionally, stories were told and passed along through music, a tool she found fairly easy to weld in terms of her own, gifted voice, though an almost crippling sense of shyness stunted her at first.

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This sense of community was what got her involved in the feminist movement. She moved to Toronto as a single, working, mother, and also gave the women’s liberation movement credit for opening her eyes to the shortcomings of the traditional framework of marriage and partnership which permeated just about everything at that time. A framework she said was, “good…while I was in it, but better when I was out of it.”

Chalk it up to our ever dutiful and always on-point RCMP to target MacNeil in something of a communist sting in the late 1960s, citing that her involvement with the feminist movement and the Toronto Women’s Caucus was grounds for an undercover investigation she was only made aware of in 2008. Because, as a notion, feminism was radical, and anything radical was leftist, and therefore anything leftist was communist.

Uncovered RCMP memos that seem almost comical in their base observations read: “She’s the one who composes and sings women’s lib songs.” Damning evidence. The report further went on with observational gems about anti-abortion rallies “consisting of about 100 sweating, uncombed women standing around in the middle of the floor with their arms around each other crying sisterhood and dancing." Keep in mind this was the handiwork of our now defunct Canadian Secret Service, bang up powers of deduction, my dudes.

It’s true though, MacNeil first lent her voice out to cry sisterhood before she gained any recognition as an independent singer. And she always cited that it was the framework of feminism and the growing advent of women’s rallies within an outdated and pretty shell-shocked Canada of the time that gave her the confidence to get over her crippling stage fright and just do the damn thing.

Though she never considered herself a radical, she gained notoriety with the authorities by being outspoken, and was one of the first to champion causes like equal pay for equal work—issues that are still being fronted on in Canada by ignoramuses nationwide. For MacNeil, there was nothing radical in the notion of trying to “empower women to reach the potential they have.”

Her only regret of not being privy to her RCMP-imposed renegade classification any sooner? "The only thing I'm sorry about now is I didn't know I was under surveillance, or I would have got them to drive me home." Amen, sister.

Follow Katie on Twitter: @wtevs Previously:

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