Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Over the summer, o we're bringing you some of the highlights of our 2025-26 season, which wrapped up in mid-May.
Speaker: We're going to be back with our brand new fall season in September. Our first live radio broadcast will be on September 19th on Vancouver Cooperative Radio CFRO 100.5 FM and streaming live at coopradio.org slash red eye.
Speaker: Podcasts of interviews from that show will be posted the following week. On the podcast today, Laurent Chisholm speaks with Michelle Stevenson, the director of the film True North, which tells the story of the 1969 black student uprising in Montreal.
Speaker: True North, a documentary film by Michelle Stevenson, digs deep into the archival record to expose new insights into Black Canadian history. In particular, True North tells the story of a critical protest in Montreal at Sir George Williams University, now Concordia University, and brings to light the influences and solidarity behind it.
Speaker: It was 1969, and 97 students were arrested or faced deportation for their participation in the occupation, which aimed to address racism at the university.
Speaker: The film includes several recent interviews with activists who were intimately involved in the uprising, and those are powerfully interwoven into the archival material. Michelle Stevenson is the film's director. In her work, she draws from her Haitian and Panamanian heritage and experience as a social justice lawyer to transform nonfiction storytelling. I've reached her in Brooklyn.
Speaker: Hello, Michelle. Hello. It's a great pleasure to be talking with you today, and it's truly an amazing film. Thank you very much. Now, your first production about this chapter of Black History in Canada was part of a larger series on Black history made for CBC Gem. How did you decide you wanted to make a feature documentary about the student rebellion that unfolded at Sir George Williams in 1969?
Speaker: Well, we were presented in this 44-minute episode with just a treasure trove of archival footage documenting that moment, but documenting a larger part of Black Canadian life as well, that we didn't feel we could do justice to it in 44 minutes. and so Leslie Norville, the producer of the series, and myself decided that this chapter in Canadian history was deserving of a feature-length film where we would center the archive and the stories of the lived experiences of those who went through the occupation.
Speaker: It must have been a massive effort to uncover and organize all the archival footage and photos. How did your team work on unearthing the relevant material? Well, we had a team of exceptional archival researchers and producers who really dug through the Canadian archives, mainly CBC and the NFB archives, both French and English, and they dug deep, deep, deep.
Speaker: And what's interesting is this particular kind of effort involved not just looking for material, but questioning how things were categorized in the archive.
Speaker: For example, in the ONF archives, there was a ah folder that basically was just labeled the blacks, les noirs, from that period and from earlier, previous to the occupation. And so we realized that The negligence or the racism, quite frankly, was not only in the invisibilized nature of our lived experiences, but in also how it was archived and categorized. And so there was digging that had to be done in questioning the approach so that we left no stone unturned.
Speaker: And that particular folder, you know, ah led us into a treasure trove of materials. Now, you lay some early groundwork before the film gets to the pivotal events. What historical events and themes did you decide were critical to include to lay that groundwork?
Speaker: I think for us, there were a few pivotal things that were crucial. One is providing a larger understanding of the history of Black Canadian life through the lived experiences and the history, the genealogy of the people who were involved in the occupation.
Speaker: So that was one thing. The other thing that I wanted to really make clear is the diversity of the black community that was part of the occupation.
Speaker: We had people who were international students. There were people who were on scholarship from ah working class backgrounds. There were rich West Indians, Caribbean people who were there on their own dime. And then there were black Canadians who were part of the occupation. So there was Norman Cook who grew up in Toronto from an underground railroad ah heritage to this day. he celebrates family reunions every year back in Maryland that you know can total over 800 people in the extended family.
Speaker: We have Rodney John, who comes from a poor community in ah St. Vincent, too Rosie Douglas, who comes from a landowner class in Dominica. And so the diversity of these experiences really helped solidify for us the unification. They're coming together through an understanding of what justice looks like for Black people in Canada.
Speaker: You've mentioned a number of the the key people that you ended up interviewing to tell the story. Was it an obvious choice or how did you decide who to include? Oh, well, it was not necessarily an obvious choice. If you'll see in the episode, we have a few other voices in there that are not in the feature film.
Speaker: For us, there were a couple of priorities. One, this film would not involve any experts to explain anything that we really needed to honor and center those who lived through it. Because in some cases, they were never interviewed about this on any film, with the exception of Rodney John. i don't think any of our other interviewees or other participants really took part in more contemporary coverage of this occupation. including Brenda Dash, who herself was of Trinidadian descent. Her parents immigrated from Trinidad, and her father was a Pullman porter.
Speaker: So there was that. We needed it to be from those who lived through it. And then the voices of the women had to be front and center. so ah Josette, Pierre-Louis, and Brenda Dash were key people that I had to make sure their voices were in there because the documentation that exists of women's participation, which we know through the stories, was crucial both strategically, logistically, politically, diplomatically. They were heavily involved, so we had to make sure that that was documented as well and their specific backgrounds.
Speaker: So that was one, even, for example, Joan Jones, who at the time was Rocky Jones's spouse, ah she was crucial to his politicization. We know that through what we have read and the research we've done, but very little documentation, visual, audiovisual documentation exists.
Speaker: of her. And we were able to find a small nugget of her talking with her daughter. And we knew we had to include that. And that is included in the film at the end. So those were sort of our guideposts, our driving sort of North Star in terms of how the stories came together.
Speaker: Now, Michelle, the interviews came across as very, very rich, and you you filmed them in black and white. How did that aesthetic choice fit in into how you wanted to tell the story?
Speaker: Well, so it was quite ah serendipitous, the decision to go black and white in the interview. i think it was maybe our first or second interview where I was in conversation with our director of photography, Stephen Chung, based out of Toronto,
Speaker: about the archival material that we were sort of gathering, which was largely black and white. And in the conversation, he recommended, well, why don't you make this black and white? So the whole film is seamless and people are not taken out of the the story.
Speaker: And I was like, you know what? This is a great idea. Let's lean into it. And so we leaned into making the interviews black and white, giving them a 16 millimeter film effect as well. So we would feel like the entire film itself is an archival, but yet very immersive experience for the viewer. So you're not taken out of the moment to see something in color that then you have to be brought back into the past.
Speaker: In some ways, it's honoring the past, but I think there's something about keeping it black and white that also keeps it immersive, but also contemporary. For some reason, it does also feel contemporary and urgent. So that was the aesthetic choice. We did not want to pull people out of the experience by having ah ah different color tones to the film.
Speaker: It worked so well. And I think there was that the way that it was so well integrated. But on the other hand, there was this incredible close up detail of the interviewees that brought that forward as ah as a contemporary thing, but not in a jarring way.
Speaker: Yes, and you know, I love close-ups. I love extreme close-ups. And especially, interestingly enough, with elderly participants, there's something about the intimacy and immediacy of when they tell their stories that really draws you in. you There's something about that pull of the close-up, the intimacy that doesn't give you an opportunity for your eyes to wander and you're just completely ah ah keyed into it.
Speaker: So that was also an important aesthetic choice, the extreme close up. It was an intentional like, you're not going to veer from what they have to say. But, you know, also, I have to say, we were very lucky that our participants were extremely charismatic and magnetic as well, in how they told their stories, but also just in their presence.
Speaker: Totally. Now, Michelle, we both grew up in Quebec. In 1969, I was a 15-year-old white teenager raised in a Catholic context in Montreal. And for me, these events were mainly seen through a distorted mainstream media lens that often blind us or almost always blind us to the racism that kept Black Canadians oppressed. You have Haitian Panamanian roots and grew up in Quebec's eastern townships and later in Montreal. How complete and accurate was your knowledge of the events of that year at Sir George Williams?
Speaker: I knew nothing of this event ah growing up. And I knew little to nothing of the history of Black Canada in addition to the occupation. And this is in spite of the fact that I went to McGill University. I attended McGill University with the daughter of Rosie Douglas, who was my friend.
Speaker: um I met Stokely Carmichael at Concordia University through her connection with him, but the dots were never connected around the history of the occupation and the legacy, or even why she was close to Stokely Carmichael, Kwame Touré. So there was sort of this so this void, and I think it, this is part of the i would I would say Canadian mythology around hiding behind this, the underground railroad when slavery is spoken about in Canadian history. And yet, you know, once we dig in we understand that the Europeans, they arrived with enslaved Africans, both the French and the English to Canada. So it's little, it's not surprising with hindsight that the occupation or the civil rights movement or the movement for black liberation in Canada is not part of our historical canon in high school or otherwise.
Speaker: And so learning this and working on this became a healing process for me to better understand kind of how I belonged in Canada or my own sort of sense of Canadian identity.
Speaker: And I hope that this film also, you know, provides that sort of not just inspiration, but helps to heal that gap for those of us who still feel sort of alienated from larger Canadian culture because of what we're taught.
Speaker: And you have said that the work that you do is all about counter-narratives, and that certainly rings true in this film. Talk about that approach. Well, you see, I feel...
Speaker: There's an aspect of this process, as I mentioned, that's healing for me to be able to dig under the surface and question and challenge and reimagine.
Speaker: For example, i can just give you an example. You talked about the mainstream media covering the occupation. Well, you see in the film mainstream coverage, but when you look at it with the eye of today, you see how how racialized the interrogations and the questioning and the interviews and the talk shows that were part of the CBC mainstream at the time.
Speaker: would be deeply offensive today and how they're approached, right? So this counter-narratives is one way of putting it, but it's also another way of putting it is what Sadia Hartman talks about, critical fabulation or reimagining or relooking at what already exists, right? To provide a lens for me as a storyteller to question, but also to leave something behind so that we understand the complexity of our history.
Speaker: And so as an artist, this is largely what I do. Sometimes it's ah exclusively a contemporary lens, but oftentimes and more so even as ah my body of work ah builds, it's about relooking at the past so I can better understand the present, but also about leaving something behind for future generations that is opposed to or different from or comes from a different voice.
Speaker: than what we normally are exposed to. So I feel it's a duty, but it's also ah it's also a healing process. And it's exciting. I really enjoy this research. So yes, there are times of anger, of course, it's like, how could I have grown up not knowing this?
Speaker: I feel like I've been robbed. So there's this sort of anger relationship to the narrative that I've been taught. But then the exploration is' very, very healing.
Speaker: And the ability to share it with, in some ways, feel some level of inspiration from those who watch and are moved is important. I think the film itself...
Speaker: In some ways, if it is an archive as well. And it's an archive and a challenge, not just to content, right? Not just to what you mentioned in terms of counter narratives and stories that haven't been told, but I like to explore with form as well. So we use the archive to challenge form too. And there are there are creative licenses that we've done using archival footage that also express the interiority of our participants' lived experiences and that I hope, you know, we explore and that hopefully that gives other people a license to to explore not just content but form and how they tell their stories.
Speaker: Michelle, I want to talk a little bit about the music that helps shape the film and and the emotionality of the film. Andy Milne is going to perform at the Vancouver premiere Saturday. Did you work closely with him on the soundtrack?
Speaker: Yes, we worked very closely. it was a very ah intense process. And I'm very, very excited about what we were able to create out of this. And i had a very sort of clear vision about the use of jazz inspired by the jazz of that period, ah slightly earlier too, like some of the bebop, I was ah um inspired by new wave films, the French new wave films and their freshness in terms of how they use jazz soundtrack.
Speaker: And so it was very important that sort of jazz language be sort of at the foundation of it. There are certain levels of cacophony also that we use that are inspired by the work of Colin Stetson as well that I was very we wedded to in terms of how we reinterpret that.
Speaker: And again, the music is part of this larger sonic experience. The sound design was very important as well in helping us experience on an emotional level, not just on an intellectual level.
Speaker: to experience the story in a nonverbal way, right? You know, the right brain over the left brain, because there are things that we keep and we remember through emotion that didactic explanation can never replace.
Speaker: And so that language was deeply important too. And reflecting, in some cases, using the score to reflect the interior feelings of the moment of our ah participants.
Speaker: whether it's, you know, Norman's experience of discrimination as a child or ah Josette's nostalgia of her childhood in Haiti. That's just an example. Specific elements of interiority that we wanted to express through music and sound.
Speaker: Well, i I really hope many people see this film. What do you hope audiences will take from True North? And how do you hope it will impact the knowledge of this powerful episode of Canadian history?
Speaker: Wow, well, ah for me, as I say, I think True North is part of a project of healing both the Black community in Canada and the the legacy that we're a part of.
Speaker: but also a healing project for all of society in Canada, understanding the contributions, but also really honoring the sacrifices that these elders lived through.
Speaker: Someone like Brenda Dash, she had to leave the country. She left Canada for the United States, ironically. because of how she was being pursued by the state apparatus. And so there's a healing aspect, but there's also an element of speaking to a younger generation, understanding that the younger generations that are standing up for certain things, understanding that they really represent the moral compass of what we should be aiming towards as a society, that they are part of a long tradition of which the occupation is a part of that story.
Speaker: of which these elders and what they lived through is part of that. And so for me, it's the healing, the history, the contributions, and the understanding that only storytelling and emotional resonance can really translate for us. So it's more than just a history lesson. It's an emotional journey that hopefully moves us to understand each other better. Well, it's been wonderful to talk to you, and I really thank you for the film.
Speaker: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I've been speaking with Michelle Stevenson. Michelle directed the film True North. Michelle is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker, artist, and author, and co-founder of RADA Studio.
Speaker: You've been listening to the Red Eye Podcast, produced by an independent media collective based in Vancouver. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be great if you left a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people to find us.
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Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
