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Title: Anarchism in Canada Author: Allan Antliff Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Canada, history Source: Antliff, Allan. “Anarchism, Canada.” In The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the Present, edited by Immanuel Ness, 110–111. Vol. 1. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
The history of European-influenced anarchism in Canada begins in the
late nineteenth century as the process of colonial state-building
reached its apogee. Two US-based French-language anarchist-communist
journals, La Torpille and Le RĂ©veil des masses (produced by exiled Paris
Communards), circulated in Quebec during this period, but their
readership remains elusive. Just before World War I, anarchist groups
are documented in urban centers such as Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and
Toronto and in the newly established western province of British
Columbia. The anarchist-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) was mobilizing unskilled and racially oppressed workers (Chinese
immigrants, for example) in the thousands. The IWW also circulated a
bilingual French/English newspaper, Travailleur/The Worker, in Quebec
and Ontario. Responding to government repression during World War I, a
competing organization, the One Big Union (OBU), was formed in the
spring of 1919 by former IWW activists and members of the Canadian
Socialist Party. Co-opting IWW organizational tactics, it rejected
anti-state syndicalism in favor of reformism. Within months of its
founding, the OBU was organizing general strikes in Calgary, Winnipeg,
and Edmonton, but the tenor of militancy quickly fell away. Weakened by
defections to the OBU, the IWW’s last large-scale organizing drive swept
the logging camps of British Columbia in 1924. Thereafter the union
declined so precipitously that by the 1930s it was “little more than a
debating society.”
In the 1920s and 1930s, the anarchist movement survived among emigrant
populations, primarily within Jewish communities. When Emma Goldman
resided in Canada in 1926–8 and again in 1933–5 and 1939–40, she drew
support from such groups in Montreal, London, Toronto, Winnipeg, and
Edmonton. In the 1930s anti-fascist activists from Italy, Spain, and
Germany brought renewed energy to the movement, and before her death in
1940, Goldman campaigned (successfully) to save an Italian militant,
Attilo Bortolotti, from deportation. Bortolotti and other exceptionally
committed émigrés (notably Spanish Canadian Federico Arcos) kept
anarchism alive during the 1940s and 1950s, when many more grew
discouraged and fell away. At this juncture, anarchism’s most
significant impact was in the arts. On August 9, 1948, Paul-Émile
Borduas, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Françoise Sullivan and 13 other
French-speaking writers, painters, and sculptors issued a manifesto of
social revolt through anarchism in art – Global Refusal –which
scandalized Quebec’s cultural and political establishment. The
“Automatists” are now a celebrated movement in the history of modernism.
After a period of hiatus, the upsurge of the Vietnam era generated a new
wave of anarchists who, in the course of the 1970s and 1980s,
transformed the face of radicalism in Canada. Anarchists were involved
in the feminist movement, ecological protests, indigenous solidarity
work, prison support work, the punk movement, and local community
initiatives including housing cooperatives, back to the land communes,
and info shops. A plethora of journals came out in the 1980s and 1990s –
Demolition Derby, Rebelles, La Nuit, Bulldozer/Prison News Service,
Endless Struggle, Reality Now, No Picnic, Anarchives, DĂ©manarchie, Open
Road, Kick it Over, Resistance, and BOA form a partial list. At this
juncture, armed struggle also enters the picture. In 1982 the
Vancouver-based Wimmin’s Fire Brigade firebombed a chain of video stores
marketing violent pornography. That same year a second underground
group, Direct Action, ended the Canadian production of guidance systems
for nuclear-armed cruise missiles by bombing Toronto’s Litton Systems
plant. Previously, the group had disrupted industrial expansion on
Vancouver Island by destroying a hydro substation. Both actions
inflicted massive property damage, leading to an intense manhunt that
ended with the arrest of all five members on January 20, 1983.
As the 1990s drew to a close, the anarchist movement in Canada was
growing exponentially. Anarchist-run bookstores, cooperatives, and
social centers had spread across the country and cities in Quebec,
Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia, and annual anarchist book
fairs were hosted. Anarchists spearheaded militant anti-globalization
protests beginning in 1997 with demonstrations against the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation Summit in Vancouver and culminating in April 2001
with “Carnival Against Capitalism” actions targeting 34 heads of state
convening to discuss a Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in Quebec
City. Anarchism also made inroads in academe. Sociologist Richard Day’s
influential study, Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest
Social Movements (2005), is but one example of recent scholarly
contributions to the movement.
When considering the nation-state called “Canada,” we must never forget
it is a colonial project imposed on indigenous peoples whose homelands
were forcibly seized by European colonizers. Indigenous peoples continue
to struggle against colonial occupation to this day, and vast swaths of
“Canada” are in fact unceded lands, illegally occupied and administered
by the colonizing state. Under these circumstances, anarchist solidarity
with indigenous struggles has been complemented by the growth of
anarchist theory and practice in an indigenous context. Kanienkeha
(Mohawk) scholar Taiaiake Alfred has played a leading role in this
regard. Theorizing “anarcho-indigenism” as a path to the revitalization
and renewal of indigenous peoples, Alfred is transforming anarchism yet
again, as befits a movement that regards diversity as integral to its
realization.
SEE ALSO: Anarchism and Gender ; Anarchocommunism ; Anarchosyndicalism ;
Canada, Indigenous Resistance ; Canada, Labor Protests ; Global Justice
Movement and Resistance ; Goldman, Emma (1869–1940) ; Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW) ; Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 ; World Trade
Organization (WTO) Protests, Quebec City, 2001
Alfred, T. (2005) Wasáse, Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom.
Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Antliff, A. (Ed.) (2004) Only A Beginning: An Anarchist Anthology.
Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.
Borduas, P.-E. (1978) Ecrits/Writings, 1942–1958. Halifax: Nova Scotia
School of Art and Design.
Cyr, M.-A. (2006) La Presse anarchiste au Québec (1976–2001). Mascouche,
Quebec: Editions Rouge et Noir.
Day, R. J.-F. (2005) Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest
Social Movements. London: Pluto Press.
Leier, M. (1990) Where the Fraser River Flows: The Industrial Workers of
the World in British Columbia. Vancouver: New Star Books.
Moritz, T. & Moritz, A. (2001) The World’s Most Dangerous Woman: A New
Biography of Emma Goldman. Vancouver: Subway Books.
Woodsworth, A. (1972) The Alternative Press in Canada. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.