This post appeared about a year ago in my old blog. I found it in one of my old Shred folders and decided to publish it again. It’s a night I still reflect on from time to time, where I wonder if I could have done anything differently, and if so, how different my life would be if I made other choices. . .
I’ve been unable to stop thinking about an article in a recent issue of The Walrus. The article, an interview with former CSIS operative Grant Bristow, who infiltrated the Heritage Front – a racist organization here in Canada that was active in the early 1990s – and rose to a position where he was responsible for dirty tricks campaigns against their opponents in the anti-racist movement. His position is that in order to prevent the violence that the organization wanted, he had to do something that would satisfy the organization but not hurt anybody. He developed something they called the “It Campaign.” Basically, how it worked was a Front member would make repeated harassing and threatening phone calls to a member of the anti-racism movement until they were either completely intimidated or had enough and they gave a name and number of someone else associated with the ARA, and that new person became “It”.
The effect from that was more effective than if the organization’s members laid a beating on somebody. I remember going to an ARA (Anti-Racist Action) meeting shortly after the riot in Ottawa in May 1993 and heard a person talk about the calls they were getting, and the chill that went through the room was unmistakable.
But let me back up a bit. May 1993 was, personally, a pivotal time. I was making a little bit of money booking all-ages punk rock shows at Café Alternatif on the Ottawa U campus. But, because I decided to do a favour despite my better judgement, I lost a heap of money on a Shitfit/General Fools gig on May 7 that 30 people showed up to, and I was banking on making it back on my next show, and also pay back some money I owed to Mike Caffery, the sound guy I hired who gave me some cash back out of his fee at the Shitfit show. Plus, I was hoping to cover my next month’s rent. It was one of those shows where if there was ever a sure thing, this was it. I had booked the CD release show for Problem Children, a veteran punk rock band from Southern Ontario; a singalong punk band from Toronto called The Blundermen, and a local band called Resin Scraper. Again, this was supposed to be The One: Everybody would get paid well, and I would get out of the red.
The day before the show I come home from postering and found a message on my answering machine from Arun, the music director at CHUO, the campus/community radio station that sponsored my shows and thus allowed me to operate at Ottawa U. He told me that I had to come to the station for a meeting with campus security and the Ottawa PD later that afternoon.
When I arrived, he pulled me aside and told me something to the effect of “Be careful, this is bad.” The police officers at the table told me that they had received information about a Nazi skinhead concert somewhere in Ottawa the same night as the concert I had organized and they were asking me to cancel. I asked them if they were sure the skinhead concert was Saturday. I heard rumours about this, too, but my info had the concert happening on Sunday night.
The police officer told me that if I refused to cancel, they would shut the gig down before it started. I thought of the bands travelling four or five hours just to get shut down, and worse, people getting pepper sprayed and/or arrested, and I sat there knowing I had to cancel but had to work through the fact that between the Shiftfit disaster and this, I had flushed close to 1000 dollars down the toilet, which I just couldn’t afford to do.
“Well, what is it going to be?” asked the Ottawa PD officer.
Again, I just sat there. When I finally said, “Ok”, I could feel the relief in the room. At the bottom of it, we all wanted the same thing, but for different reasons. But also, I knew that if a punk rock gig and a skinhead gig happened on the same night, there would be violence. And I was sure that the violence would happen at my show. There was really no choice.
Publicly, I didn’t want to look like a wuss, so I blamed it on the Ottawa cops. I got on the phone and tried to track down the Blundermen and Problem Children. The Blundermen had already left for Ottawa, but I knew where they were staying so I called the house and told them the situation. I left a message on Problem Children’s machine. Jamie from the band couldn’t get a hold of me later in the day, so he called Shawn Scallen at CKCU, who, in a move that forever ingratiated himself to me, told a steaming Jamie Problem that it obviously wasn’t my fault the show got cancelled and to calm the fuck down. I got a hold Jamie later on that evening and he was still a little pissed off.
“All that’s going to happen is 10 skinheads are going to show up, the cops will bust them and that will be it. It’s the same thing every fucking time” he said. We talked for a bit and agreed that we would talk again in a week or so and try and reschedule.
But, to be honest, I was beyond angry. I was angry at losing my money, yes, but I was also angry that these awful racist Toronto people were trying to entrench themselves in a city I cared about. I mean, sure, Ottawa had its share of skinheads and Quebecois Pride thugs, but their numbers were small, and all they seemed to do is drive by gigs and shout stuff from their car. This new threat from the Heritage Front was worse — it was pure hate, with a ridiculous strategy aimed at mainstream Canadians.
I thought about making a sign to hang outside Café Alternatif that said “Show Cancelled. Thank the Heritage Front” but I just couldn’t be bothered. If someone hadn’t heard, which was unlikely thanks to the guy who ran the 234-PUNX line at the time, I can’t remember his name, who put it at the front of the message, they certainly would. Ottawa is a small enough town that news as juicy as a gig being shut down due to a skinhead threat was going to spread pretty quickly.
I did, however, go to an anti-racism rally at the park on Elgin St the next night. The point of it was to bide time until we found out the location of the Heritage Front’s concert. It was all a big secret. We heard rumours that the whole thing was called off, but I also heard from a friend that worked at Song Bird Music that a Heritage Front member was in their store earlier in the day looking to rent sound equipment. They were told that there was none available.
I ran into Pat from the Blundermen and apologized for not being able to contact him, and he said it was ok, that there was no way they were going to miss this.
The word came that we found the location: The Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa-Carleton. Gee, we thought, they must have told some tall tale to get that place. The downtown location catered to a lot of minority youth and we figured that the lie they told about what the event was going to be could possibly invalidate their contract for use of the facilities. A member of the ARA went to track down the manager of the place while several hundred protestors marched on down there.
When we got there the police had set up barricades and kept shouting for everyone to keep back. It was one of the most intense things I’d been a part of. The police and activists were trying to communicate with the people in the crowd, but these fucking Trotskyists (Trotskyists?? I mean, really) kept using their bullhorns to drown out anybody who tried to talk.
About an hour into the stand off, the riot police arrived. They piled out of their truck and, military-style, occupied the space around the entrance to the Boys and Girls Club. As the building was at the end of a dead-end street, no one could circle around to try the back entrance to the club without having to go the other way about two blocks, walk a block up, and come back.
One of my most vivid memories of that night was standing less than a meter away from the riot police and making eye contact with one of them, a woman probably only a few years older than myself, but she was the definition of concentration. She looked at me and I know she didn’t see me as a person, but a potential threat who she would take down if the need arose.
I have no idea what negotiations went on inside between the racists and the police, but it was decided that once the concert was over (letting the concert happen was a detail that particularly irked me considering what I gave up. I mean, who was causing the trouble?) then the skinheads would exit out the back of the building. When this finally happened people tried to get past the riot police, who stepped between the two groups and pushed us back. The skinheads took this as an opportunity to taunt, sieg heiling and running toward Bank St. Some protestors found a way around the police and followed the skins up Bank St toward Parliament Hill. I didn’t follow. I walked to a friend’s house a couple of blocks away and a bunch of us sat on the steps and talked about what happened that night.
When the news came on at 11 p.m, there was a live report of what happened on Bank St and Parliament Hill. There was footage of skinheads seig heiling and running at and beating on protestors. We saw people we knew get kicked and punched. We were also worried about the fallout from this night. But, as it turned out, it was the Heritage Front’s final stand in the city as they were exposed for what they really were: a bunch of hateful, pathetic people hopelessly at odds with the average Canadian whom they thought they could reach.
The Walrus article says that Bristow was in Toronto when all this happened. This is an important point because when he was exposed as a CSIS operative in the Toronto Sun article I wondered what he had to do with the Ottawa concert, and if he had anything to do with the skinhead’s actions once they were let out the back of the Boy’s and Girl’s Club.
But a part of me knew that he had to make some tough decisions, that being a high ranking operative inside a hate organization involved doing some things he might not feel so good about. The It Campaign is a case in point. It scared the hell out of a lot of people, but at least no one required surgery or a hospital stay. It was a difficult and probably personally embarrassing job and if there wasn’t someone with the progressive tendencies of Grant Bristow keeping an eye on things them maybe that chore may have fallen on someone who was more willing to crack heads.
Epilogue
A couple of weeks after the riot I was packing my apartment when my phone rang, It was Jamie Problem with an idea about how to make up the gig. I sat on a box of packed belongings and sadly told him that I couldn’t be a part of any rescheduling. I was broke, I was moving out of my apartment and probably going to spend the summer picking fruit in Niagara. We talked about this and that, me being appreciative of the fact there were no hard feelings – Problem Children were, after all, one of my favorite bands at the time and I felt good in the connection I made with band. We both wished each other well and I hung up the phone and finished packing my stuff.