Posts with the Quebec referendum tag

Barris Beat

Sovereignty of conviction or convenience

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
René Lévesque – sovereignty of conviction.

He stood at the lectern in front of hundreds of us. A lit cigarette dangled from his left hand (they were allowed indoors back then). He spoke almost entirely without notes, as if his words were a credo he’d crafted over years until the message came out as his own. I’m paraphrasing now, but here’s what this man from Quebec said on stage at the University of Toronto’s Convocation Hall that day:

“We are heirs to a fantastic adventure – an early America that was almost entirely French,” he said. “We are heirs to an obstinate group which has kept alive that portion of French America we call Quebec…”

The year was 1969. I’d sat mesmerized for the better part of 90 minutes inside Convocation Hall, listening to the man who wanted to lead Quebec out of Canada. (more…)

Barris Beat

Why has nationalism fallen from grace?

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Rally at Place du Canada in Montreal, Oct. 27, 1995. Edmonton Journal.

We travelled up Highway 401 eastbound that fall morning – from Uxbridge to Montreal – to make a statement to friends and strangers alike on the other side of the Ottawa River. We felt threatened by voices of separation in la belle province, but heartened by the “No” forces – both francophone and anglophone – that wanted Quebecers to give Canada one more chance. And that autumn day we car-pooled, bussed, hitchhiked, and rallied – some 100,000 of us – at Place du Canada in Montreal.

I remember one of our daughters who couldn’t travel with us to the pro-Canada rally that Oct. 27 morning, left a note on the bathroom mirror.

“I’m sorry I can’t go with you,” she wrote. “Please save my country.”

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Barris Beat

Being there for history

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Angela Davis has spoke up for concerns of women in America for a generation. Davis Facebook photo.

She and her friend walked among the multitudes, it seemed for hours. Some in the march were chanting, but she said it wasn’t particularly tense. Besides the obvious aspects of it being demonstration, she said she didn’t sense the men and women around her were targeting their frustration at anybody. And then the group came upon a stage, where Angela Davis, the American University law professor, was speaking.

“This is ground zero in the struggle for social justice,” Davis told thousands during her speech to the Washington Women’s March last Saturday. “Women’s rights are human rights all over the planet, (and) this is just the beginning.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Trusted anchor

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CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson speaking at Centennial College in 2006.
CTV News anchor Lloyd Robertson speaking at Centennial College in 2006.

It seems commonplace now, but for a long time those working in the media were not considered able, nor in some cases were they allowed, to do two things at the same time. Today it’s called multi-tasking. Thirty-five years ago, it was considered a violation of the working agreement between workers and managers in the media. The first person to break that barrier in Canadian news media will leave his revered spot on the air later this week.

“Unions were so powerful [when I worked] at the CBC,” Lloyd Robertson told a group of journalists a few years ago. “As an announcer there, all I was allowed to do was pick up news copy and read it on the air.”

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