Canada has long painted a picture of itself as enlightened rather than racist while looking smugly and askance at worse offenders elsewhere and this film seeks to redress the balance. Entirely in black-and-white and borrowing heavily from a wealth of archival footage the film also brilliantly brings to life the energy and tensions of the 1960s where most of its story dwells.
Interviews and first-hand accounts guide us through, journeying with refugees escaping Haiti’s repressive Duvalier regime and then passing through Africville, the Halifax community of former black slaves which the city treated abominably then bulldozed. But the crux of the film focuses on Montreal’s 1969 Sir George Williams Affair, the largest – and most destructive – student occupation in Canadian history.
Led by a group of black students who demanded their allegations of institutional racism be taken seriously, the events took place at the peak of the Black Power Movement which helped provide impetus and agitators. One such was firebrand Rosie Douglas, of whom the film treats us to much electric footage.
Even though sometimes meandering unnecessarily, the film certainly helps debunk a few myths about Canadian complicity in institutional racism, and it must be one of the best insights into the George Williams Affair. But the title True North perhaps seems unnecessarily combative and doesn’t give Canada a fair trial.
It doesn’t mention that it was the progressiveness of George Williams’ university admissions policy that put the students there in the first place. And Canada deserves a bit of praise for the fact that the film’s protagonists have gone from villains to heroes inside a generation in the dominant narrative.
Yet of course such judgements can’t be so kind to the crowds outside the burning university who chanted “Let the n*****s burn” or the policemen who repeatedly stamped on student heads.
Perhaps the message is really broader. One former-student involved opines towards the end of the film that as a black person you’re “condemned to live under other people’s perceptions of you”. This holds true for any group at the receiving end of prejudice; and few of us can’t benefit from dwelling on our possible roles in this.
True North is showing at the RIDM which continues until November 30. Tickets and info on films can be found HERE.
