Afghan researcher prepares family for new life in Canada after fleeing Taliban

Guests: Mohammed Ehsan Saadat, Ashlynn Fisher,

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I like to stay in Canada because I work more with Canada and I like Canada, good year to settle there. Problems we suffered from the last 20 days. It is unforgettable for me. I lost my country. I lost everything. I lost my hope.

Anthony Germain: The voices of two new Canadians, they were not on the last Canadian flight out of Kabul last week. Instead, they were rescued by the Ukrainian army. They will soon join thousands of other Afghans who have lost their own country, now trying to make a new life in this one. I'll speak to a new arrival to Kitchener, Ontario, in just a few moments. Also this morning,

SOUNDCLIP

there have been people that said, why don't you just burn the place down, blow them up? I say, no, we have to keep the evidence.

AG: It was Old Sun residential school and now it's Old Sun community college. And it teaches the very culture that residential schools were designed to iRace. We will revisit The Current documentary about the evolution of education on Sick Sick of First Nation. We'll also bring you Episode five of the CBC podcast Recall How to Start a Revolution. It tells the parallel stories of the man setting bombs for the FLQ and the one defusing them for the Montreal police. But we begin this morning with a fresh start for one Afghan refugee. I'm Anthony Germain in St. John's, in for Matt Galloway. And this is The Current.

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August 31st is not a cliff after August 31st, we believe that we have substantial leverage to hold the Taliban to its commitments to allow safe passage for American citizens, legal permanent residents and the Afghan allies who have travel documentation to come to the United States. We will use that leverage to the maximum extent, and we will work with the rest of the international community to ensure the Taliban does not falter on these commitments.

AG: Today is not a cliff, according to U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. But it may well feel like one for the many people in Afghanistan who are still desperately trying to get out of the country. Early this morning, Kabul time, the last U.S. troops left that country and the Taliban marched onto the runway of Hamid Karzai airport, declaring that their country is free. Canada made its last government flight out of Kabul last week. Officials said on Friday that Canada has evacuated approximately 3700 people, including 2000 Afghans. Mohammed Ehsan Saadat. His wife and four children are amongst them. He's a policy researcher and worked with Canadian funded NGOs in Kabul. He and his family finished a two week quarantine in Toronto last week, and we've reached him in Kitchener, Ontario. Good morning.

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Good morning.

AG: Mohammed. How are you doing?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: I'm fine.

AG: Obviously, you've been through quite a bit. Tell me, as it started to unravel, were you and your family surprised by how quickly the Taliban began to make its move to take over the country?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Absolutely, they start taking the districts in Kandahar and also in Iraq, I was surprised no one was thinking about this. Even I, even international community, also a lot of people that do work with the Secret Service in Afghanistan, they didn't know about that. Even Minister of Defence didn't know about that. Everyone was surprised.

AG: So given how quickly it happened and as you know, Canada announced it would take applications from people at the end of July. Were you worried that the Taliban might target you because of your work as a researcher with foreigners?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Yes, honestly, when I was thinking that if Taliban came to Kabul, if Taliban found us, because before I already received threats, for example, in 2009, they shot my brother, my older brother, they mistaken it with me. In 2019, they crashed my car. And at the car, my children were in it. 2021, They stopped us on the highway from Kabul to [unintelligible] to clear the question.

AG: So, so clearly you were known to them. I just want to ask you a question about your family. I know you have you have four children, three of them daughters and a son. How did they influence your decision to say, OK, this is it, we have to go?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: There was a lot of things that it makes me to move to Canada. But one of the things that I was thinking about 1996, about my sisters, one of my sister is doctor, another one is graduated from the Education Department, another was graduated from [uninteligible]. All of them became housewife during the Taliban. One of the things that I was, that makes me to move to Canada was my three daughters. At the same time, I had a very good salary. I had to fully paid apartment, I had a car. I had carpets, televisions, everything that is in the house, I have everything in Afghanistan.

AG: And so even though even though you had a good life, obviously you became fearful. You made the application and it was accepted and you were able to leave. But there was one condition that the government imposed. You weren't allowed to tell anybody about what you and your family were doing. How difficult was it to keep that secret?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Yeah, well, when my brother come to my house and I asked him to come to my house and you do. And I didn't tell him through my voice message to WhatsApp. And he came and he just sat with me for one or two hours, and we were leaving after 1:00 in the morning like 11 o'clock, he understand leaving to Canada because my child told suddenly that we are leaving.

AG: All right. So one of your children, one of your children couldn't keep the secret.

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Yes, but he was my older brother. But the other brother to brother and five sisters, they didn't know about this. And I called one of my brother and he started crying and he said, You are not a good brother. Why didn't you told me, I need to hug you, you and your children physically. But later on, I explained it to him and he said that, OK, you have to have a good life and please take care about your children and do not say even one word bad about Afghanistan, because Afghanistan is not bad. There are some politics that you are not good.

AG: Mm hmm. What was that conversation with your brother like when when he told you he wanted to hug you and and you weren't a good brother for leaving without telling him.

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: It was at the morning that I was leaving to the plane.

AG: I don't think anybody can imagine how difficult that would be. So you managed to make it here to Canada, where you and your family staying.

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Now we are staying in touch in there, but before we were in Toronto for 14 days in the hotel was confidential. We cannot share it because of other immigrants. But now we are in Kitchener. We are close to a university and we are still in the hotel.

AG: Mm hmm. How do you think you and your four children, your family, how do you think you'll settle into to life in Canada?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: I'm thinking positive. I'm optimistic. We have everything now and I have the ability to where I have the knowledge degree to work in Canada. And I already talked with lots of professors, students, shopkeepers, traders, businessmen. I'm very positive about living here. We will find a job. My children will go to school, my wife will start her studying English and she can start taking her driver's licence. But now what's important for us is finding a house for ourselves, then looking for a job. But it will be difficult to find a job that I like it but it will be easy to find a job that we have to have some amount of money to help our children.

AG: It is good to hear your optimism. Just one question for you. Do you think Canada could have done more to get people out of Afghanistan faster?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: As I said before, it was very difficult for everyone to analyse the situation, even for America, even for Germans, even for Russia and even for Pakistan. When you ask the people there, there was just, wow, the Taliban took the control of Kabul in one day. It was difficult for everyone. But what Canada can do now, they can start negotiating with the Taliban and also with the neighbouring countries. I didn't want the Canada to start talking with the Taliban, not to start helping with them. Want to recognise that the government, just for the left behind, they have the public

AG: To try to get more people out. Yeah. Mohammad, I appreciate your time. And I want to wish you and your family the best of luck. Thank you very much.

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: Thank you very much. And that's very nice of you to talk with me.

AG: Mohammed Ehsan Saadet and his family recently arrived in Kitchener, Ontario, after leaving their home in Kabul, Afghanistan, while other families like Mahatma's are leaving quarantine now and moving to communities across the country. Katherine Doree Blasco is with the London Cross-Cultural Learner Centre, which is helping to resettle refugees.

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So we have received 36 refugees, so we have individuals ranging as young as one all the way to 80 are new arrivals seem to be in good spirits and happy to be here. They're going to get quite a comprehensive support system. So we are working with the local Afghan community. So we'll have volunteers who speak Pashto and other languages that they're familiar with. So they'll have a familiar face, the feeling of home a little bit while they're here.

AG: Ashlynn Fisher and Faryal Anwari are two friends in the Toronto area who've been watching what's been unfolding in Afghanistan and trying to figure out how they can help. They both have family ties to that country and they've started putting together what they call smile boxes for children who are arriving here in Canada, Ashland, Fisher and Faryal Anwari. Good morning.

FARYAL ANWARI: Good morning.

ASHLYNN FISHER: Thank you for having us.

AG: Pleasure to have you. Hello, Ashland. What has it been like to watch the news out of Afghanistan these past few weeks?

FARYAL ANWARI: It's heartbreaking. It's we feel helpless. We want to do something, but we can't do anything right now for people who are in Afghanistan except pray. And we've been praying a lot for them that they'll be safe and that they'll find a way out.

AG: So tell me about your family, Connexions to the country and how that's affected you as you watch the news.

FARYAL ANWARI: My husband is originally from Afghanistan. And he came here, he left Afghanistan as a child, so he still does have an aunt there and a lot of cousin. So he has loved ones in Afghanistan who I've never had the pleasure of meeting, but I hope one day that I can meet them.

AG: Faryal, like Ashland's husband, who also came to Canada from Afghanistan as a child, what what have you been hearing from family members who are still there in your case?

FARYAL ANWARI: My families are very devastated. They're worried. They're scared. And I keep getting calls, messages from my friends, families, cousins, that they're just really worried for themselves, for their daughter especially. I have my sister in law right now that she's a teacher. She was asked not to go to work. So she's taken home and she's just words way for her and as well as from my aunts and my uncles. And we're basically supporting them financially. And it's really hard to do that right now due to the bank and foreclosures. So it's just everybody's just really worried about her life.

AG: So she's one of the female teachers has been told not to go to work?

FARYAL ANWARI: That's correct. She teaches, I believe, grade five year old boys. And she wanted to go back to work. And she was told that she's not allowed to go,

AG: right with the Taliban, forbidding women from teaching boys as they did in the past. Or are any of your relatives talking or discussing, obviously privately and secretly some kind of plan to get out of Afghanistan?

FARYAL ANWARI: We are. We trying to get my aunt especially because her husband had passed away, that she will he got killed by the Taliban and recently one of her older son was stabbed and he had to go to the hospital. And we're just trying to figure out something for her because we are the financial support for her right now, although we can't even support her in any way. We are trying to get her out. But unfortunately, where borders are closed, they don't have the money to get their visas. Even, you know, the stores of the visas and passports are closed as well. We're trying every way, but unfortunately, it's really hard for us because I'm like I've been on the phone. My brother's been on the phone trying to get them out. However, we haven't been successful and we don't know what to do.

AG: If it's not too intrusive, Faryal, what happened to to your family member who was killed?

FARYAL ANWARI: It was a while ago he got killed. Not sure the exact story, but I do know that my aunt is alone right now. She has young children and the oldest son was working. Same goes for him where he went to work and he was sent back home saying, we're not there. You won't work until we tell you to. So currently right now, we're just really worried that they don't have any money to provide for themselves in terms of food and anything at all. Just words like what to do financially for them.

AG: Now, when you describe the upheaval and a stabbing or the violence and the chaos, how do you think the children arriving in Canada are feeling as they get here to this new place?

FARYAL ANWARI: I know that they're all like, I was just watching the news. I watched the news almost every day. And I try not to because it's so hard. It's putting a lot of pressure within my family. Everybody's just stressed, worried. These children are in fear. They're worried, they're scared. And at that age, like coming to new country, it's like, oh, am I going to go through this again? And I myself, like, I was a very young age. I had to leave because of the war. And I still remember that. I was, you know, like I had to my parents had to hide us in the basement because we would hear rockets, we hear guns. And I saw, like I have in the ears right now, every time I think about these children, I go back to the situation. I go back to what we went through. So, Ashlan, let me get back to you. Obviously, you're trying to do something to help these kids. Tell me about this idea of creating these these SMIL boxes where that come from.

AG: Flashbacks.

ASHLYNN FISHER: So Faryal and I, we messaged each other on Facebook when things started deteriorating really badly in Afghanistan just to see how each other's families were doing, and we started saying, we feel so helpless that we can't do anything for the families in Afghanistan and how could we help here? So we started brainstorming. We thought we could collect clothes. We could do food hampers. We kept our minds, were racing to every thing we could possibly do, and then our hearts kept going to the children because we were both early childhood educators. I'm a mom, but most importantly, we're human beings. So we feel they're suffering. And we wanted to do something to give the children something every child deserves, which is happiness. And if we could give them a basket, it was supposed to be a box, but it turned out to be a basket because we got so much amazing stuff inside. Mm hmm. So we could give them some happiness.

AG: Sorry, I took open up one of these baskets for me and describe what's in it.

ASHLYNN FISHER: So in each basket, what we tried to include was one crafts set. So we have a lot of beading sets we have. So I'll tell you, for example, in a girls that there's a beating, that there's stickers, there's a doodle pad, there's a colouring book, the school book, there is a stuffed animal. Of course there's a doll or a Lego set. That's another craft. But it's just jam packed full with fun stuff. Stuff. Yeah, just stuff to keep them busy while they're in the hotel, because our goal was to be able to get these baskets to them as soon as they reach Canada so they can start their life in a positive way. It's already a positive way that they're safe, but with really happy memories. And kids love to receive things like this. So we thought it would be a good chance.

AG: And maybe, you know, years from now when they recall when they came here the way Faryal did, they'll think about, hey, I remember getting this this basket.

ASHLYNN FISHER: Exactly. And we're hoping to plant that seed in their mind that. When you see someone who's going through a difficult time, you can reach out to them and no matter what kind of gesture, just to make them feel welcome, to make them feel safe. And they're the future leaders, future leaders and future doctors, lawyers, teachers of this country. There's going to be the ones that are going to be helping us as we get older. All right. So I just want them to be happy,

AG: Of course. Faryal, Obviously, there's lots of children coming. How are you actually putting these boxes together? I understand it's, you know, something of an operation.

ASHLYNN FISHER: That's correct. We are right now, so Ashland's in Brampton, I live in Toronto, so we have as soon as we posted, we got a lot of our friends and families and especially co-workers. I'm an educator that approached us and said we're willing to help you. And the most amazing part was that we have also strangers. Like as soon as we post on social media, everybody shared. So we got a lot of great response. So I was doing her part. She's collecting money. And as well as we have an Amazon wish list where people can order and it will directly go to Asherman and she will be making the boxes and saying, go for me, where I have friends and families dropping gifts. They give BASKIS itself or even purchasing or sending me money so that I could purchase private health.

AG: Right. And Ashlynn, I understand this is something of a family effort in your house.

ASHLYNN FISHER: Yes, it is. My two year old is involved. My nine year old involved my mother and my 95 year old grandmother. We've been working together every single night. So as soon as we have enough for the boxes, we've got the basement set up like a workshop and we just get to work packing the box. My kids will help me choose what to put in them. And then my mother and my grandmother will wrap them and put ribbons on them. And each box is packed with not only some stuff, but a lot of love for the kids. There's a lot of thought we're trying to put into it because we want to. We were imagining how happy they hopefully will be when they receive them.

AG: Right. And very, very quickly, how do you think they'll feel once you once you give them these these things?

MOHAMMED EHSAN SAADAT: I hope they'll be happy. I hope. I really hope they'll be happy today we're actually taking to seven families, so looking forward to dropping them to them. And I really hope they enjoy them. And I wish them all the best as they start their lives in Canada.

AG: Well, listen, it sounds like a, you know, a beautiful thing that you're both doing. And I'm glad to hear that many people are making donations to you. Thank you both for your time and good luck as you deliver them today.

ASHLYNN FISHER: Thank you very much. Thank you so much for having us as well.

AG: Ashlynn Fisher and Faryal Anwari are two friends in the Toronto area putting together smile boxes or smile baskets for Afghan refugee families. The CBC News is next.

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When I knew I had to talk about residential school, I got very emotional. As soon as I woke up, when I asked her, can you come and join me? I couldn't even get the words out. Can you come and just be by my side in case I fall apart?

AG: Vivian, a young man, knows how important it is to tell her story, which she does again and again as a teacher in the same building that houses the residential school that scarred her. The story of old son from residential school to community college. That's in six minutes. I'm Anthony Germain, filling in for Matt Galloway. And you're listening to The Current.

Former residential school now a place to teach and celebrate Siksika culture

Guests: Vivian Ayoungman

AG: Hello, I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

AG: Still to come, the bomb man, on both sides. Episode five of Recall: How to Start a Revolution tells the stories of an FLQ bomb-maker, and a Montreal police bomb defuser. Old Sun Community College in southern Alberta celebrates its fiftieth anniversary next month. It's an anniversary all the more notable because of its beginnings. The building started out as the Old Sun Residential School. It's one of only a few residential school buildings still left standing in Canada. But instead of demolishing it, the Siksika First Nation reclaimed it to educate their people on their own terms, creating a college for adult learners to take upgrading and post-secondary courses, and to study their culture. Vivian Ayoungman is an instructor and the coordinator of the Siksika Research and Development Department at the college. She has vivid memories of the institution's past. She was seven years old in 1954 when she, along with her brothers and sisters, were forced to go to the Old Sun residential school. She shared her story during a tour and a speech at the college's year end ceremony. Her story first aired on The Current in June and a caution that this story refers to distressing details about residential school.

SOUNDCLIP

PRESENTER: A nice round of applause to Dr. Vivian Ayoungman.

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: [Indiginous speech] I bring you greetings, heartfelt greetings. This morning, I very purposely started my greetings in our beloved Siksika language, and I'm wearing my women's [unintelligible], the women straight up headdress. I have the full transfer rights, ceremonial rights to wear this headdress. I'm wearing my outfit for the many that were stripped away from who we are supposed to be as indigenous people.

[Sound: Door opens]

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: I was recruited here in 2010, I was retired from my job as treaty director of education, and my condition for working here on accepting the job was to be able to work with ceremonial knowledge keepers, because by then I knew that they were the ones that knew our roots and our history. And so I worked with a team of ceremonial knowledge keepers and it has been a hoot. It has been really wonderful working with them because I quickly learnt that I was hanging by a thread emotionally, mentally, spiritually, everything, because I did not know my roots or was disconnected, very disconnected as to who I was supposed to be as a Siksika woman. Let me give you a little bit of my background. I came to school here at the residential school at the age of seven. I didn't speak a word of English. And and I came to school... Every single one of us went through these atrocities. We didn't get to be happy. Fun-Loving giggling mischievous little brats. We became, some became institutionalised, quiet, obedient robots. I was one of them. I had to live in this place for nine years and the first six years I had to go to school here. And then the next experiment came along. I guess they weren't taking the Indian out of us fast enough. They started bussing us off the reserve and I got bussed of to Gleason's school. You know, the punishment that we endured was horrendous. We got the strap. Our parents were threatened with jail if we were truant, if we didn't come back. So my first day of school, we had to put all our stuff in a sack and then it was locked in the closet. And we got our standard issue of school uniforms that we had to wear. And later on in life, I began to think it was almost as if they told us, put everything you brought from home into this sack; your clothing, your language, your culture, your family affiliation. Tie it in that sack and throw it in the closet and we'll lock it up until you're ready to go home.

[Sound: Footsteps]

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: We're on the girls side. We're going downstairs to the prayer room and the cafeteria. So this room is used to be the girl's playroom right now, there's a lot of desks and so on, but this is- I do have a story about this room. I was seven years old and we were playing troll. We were jumping back and all the girls were in the game. If you got tagged, you became a troll. And we were really screaming and having fun. And my cousin was going to get tagged. And I said, [Indiginous speech], that means look out. All of a sudden, the whistle blew. We all stopped. We all stood straight because that's what we're supposed to do when you hear the whistle. So we knew somebody was in trouble and the supervisor came right towards me, grabbed me, shook me because I spoke Blackfoot. So I got sent to the principal's office. I went upstairs, I got strapped on the hands. And when I came back down, I was really crying and all the students were in a straight line. They couldn't play anymore. Group punishment, because somebody spoke Blackfoot. And I was standing up here at the front and the supervisor was telling everybody, this is what happens to you when you speak your language. I was teaching a Blackfoot language class in here, and I told the story to my students. And all of a sudden my students were cheering, clapping, and they said they didn't beat it out of you. Yay! You were so resilient. We're so thankful now you're teaching it to us. And I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, I never even thought of it that way. So a good testament to what we're doing here. We're trying to do it here. And the irony of it is that there was so much pride. And the very same people who were doing all of these atrocities to our people were forcing us to pray. How many times a day? Well, from the time we get up, we pray. We have breakfast, we pray before we eat. Then we all have to go to the chapel and pray. At supper time, we prayed. And we went for evening service. It was prayer, prayer, prayer, but just words.

[Sound: Footsteps]

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: We're going to is now a staff lounge area, but way back in the day of residential school, it was what would we call it, Angie? I think they call it the infirmary. But one day I was with my colleagues and we came in here and here my colleague said, oh, I'll never forget the day I came in here with your mom and she told us about how she had to spend almost a year in here because she was a TB suspect. I was totally surprised because I never even knew my mom was isolated in here. Yes, she did spend the year. She never, ever talked about it. This is my youngest sister, Angeline. [Indigenous speech], and I brought her along because I when I knew I had to talk about residential school, I, I got very emotional as soon as I woke up. Like when I asked her, can you come and join me? I couldn't even get the words out. And so I asked her, can you come and just be by my side in case I fall apart? Yeah. So this Angie. She's my emotional support and my little sister. Yeah.

ANGIE: There's 10 of us in our family and seven of us came here, and because we're- since the boys and girls are separated and then there's the junior girls and senior dorms and we never spend time as a family, we had to stay with our group.

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: Like she was in a different grade and I was in a different grade.

ANGIE: And, you know, when we're going to our classrooms, you know, we're all lining up and we go. And that's about the only time sometimes I see my siblings and I can't even talk to them or even smile at them or else you get punished. And but I was always so happy to see my older siblings, even just in the hallway and in the dining room because we all ate in the dining room. I was always so happy to see them, but couldn't even talk to them.

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: In the dining room. We couldn't even talk. Both of my parents also came to school here. She hardly ever talked about it. No, they never, ever really talked about it. Like none of us ever really talked about our residential school experience. So now we're going to the adult literacy classroom, the adult learners that are coming back just starting on their adult learning journey. So this is a literacy classroom and it's half of what was the girls dormitory. And there were rows and rows of cots. And I remember those girls used to stand at the window and put their face against the window and look out to try and see their house to see if they could see their parents. So it was like a prison. There are days when I get really angry about how we were ripped away from our parents. I think about how I was cheated of knowing the things I'm supposed to know because I was in this place. So really, really many bad memories and anger. But learning from our knowledge keepers who know these roots that are embedded in our ceremony, in our total being, I'm not as angry anymore because I think to myself, I always thought that knowledge was gone forever. I would say that working in developing this curriculum, implementing it, sitting through the courses myself, it has been, yes, a really healing journey for me.

[Applause]

[Indigenous speech]

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: Today is the student recognition day, but they added on a commemoration of all students who ever attended residential any residential school, and especially to acknowledge those graves, those unmarked graves that have been found. The balloons. We encourage you to send positive healing thoughts to all of the children that we found. All the children that will be found, all of those children that attended residential schools. This is for you.

[Sound: Wind]

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: Looking at that, it's such a beautiful, beautiful sight, but it also brings about a lot of mixed emotions for everyone here. None of us are surprised about all of these discoveries. You know, the 750 new ones that they identified in Saskatchewan and more to come. Very, very sad. And when I first heard about the Kamloops discovery, I was really upset. It's been said. It's been said and no one believed it. And then right away, I was thinking, there we go again. Everyone else out there is going to be lining up to fix things for us. No, it's got to go to the First Nations people themselves, to the communities themselves to decide exactly what it is they need to do. I know that a lot of people are eager for people to go out and do the ground sensing here at Siksika, with with all of these discoveries going on, I deferred to the tribe. I think it's got to be led and coordinated by our tribe, which they are on top of. They've talked to archaeologists that will be going out and starting next week. I do not know of any unmarked graves. I've heard stories, but I've known of students who did pass away. There were three girls that ran away from school and there was a blizzard and they froze. Two of them froze. So those I personally knew. There were others who were sick that passed away, but not like overwhelming numbers. So I know that there were students that didn't make it home. I always make claims every single space, like the dormitories, are divided into two classrooms, the girls dormitory, the top floor is the licenced practical nurse programme. This room was the supervisors. I don't really know why our leadership decided to repurpose this place as an adult learning centre when people are so traumatised to come here. I know over the years a lot of people have said I cannot set foot in that place. And a lot of people will say regardless of how much it's renovated, I can still hear the sounds, smell the smells, hear the footsteps, you know, those kinds of things. For me, when I ended up coming back here, I was really focussed on the educational journey of people, of making lives better. And I've always thought that our our leadership were really wise to turn the building into something more constructive. And our late president always used to say, you know, it's not the building, it's the people who were in the building. And then another person up north had said, you know, our elders tell us where they took your language away, that's where you have to go to get it back. You know, so there's different thoughts about these buildings. Today, what we say is, well, if it took them to find all these graves, to believe that we didn't fabricate this, it's more important for the few buildings that remain standing to stay standing as a testament to what really happened to us. So when people, I've read lots of social media, there have been people that said, why don't you just burn the place down, blow them up? I say, no, we have to keep the evidence. Olsun Community College. This building was constructed in 1929 and shut its doors in 1969. So 40 years as a residential school. And it opened as the Old Sun Adult Learning Centre in 1971. And this September 2021, it will have been a post-secondary institution of the tribe for 50 years. So we've been post-secondary institution of the tribe longer than it was a residential school. Ironically, we've been undoing what this place tried to do as a residential school. We've been teaching our language. We're reconnecting our students and our students are so grateful. And it gives me hope that our people are, not are only learning skills and tools to live in the current day and age, but to also know who they are as Siksika people. So that's what gives me hope, because we went through generations of people who didn't have the opportunity.

[Applause]

VIVIAN AYOUNGMAN: So to the young people, my message is embrace who you are, learn. Don't let them win and beat the Indian out of us. Commit to learning your language, commit to understanding more about ourselves. We were so brainwashed that so many of our people are afraid of our ways. They're scared of our ways. They're sceptical. There's no scepticism there. It's a beautiful life. It's a loving life. So I hope I have given you something to think about today. And I hope I've given a little bit of hope on the path we're on because we're resilient. We're going to bounce back. Yes. Well, we'll cry for all those that are still trying to find their path and for those that never made it home. But at the college, we're trying our very best to help our nation find that path to be Siksika strong. Thank you.

[Sounds: Indigenous cheers and applause]

AG: That was Vivian Ayoungman at the Old Sun Community College in Alberta. There is a national Indian Residential School Crisis Line to provide support for survivors of residential school and those affected. They offer emotional support and crisis referral, at 1-866-925-4419. That's 1-866-925-4419.

[Music]

AG: I'm Anthony Germain and this is The Current. Louisiana is in crisis, after one of the strongest storms the U-S has ever faced made landfall on Sunday. When Hurricane Ida hit, it was Category four. It hit the same day that Hurricane Katrina did, 16 years ago. Two people are confirmed to have died, but officials warn that number is likely to climb as the full effects of the devastation become clear. Ida knocked out power to all of New Orleans, and the governor says the damage to the electrical. You don't need power to play a tune, though. And that might be what New Orleanians do best.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

AG: It's the sound of a lone trumpeter in the French Quarter on Sunday as the rain came pounding down and that man was local jazz legend Kermit Ruffins, who cites Louis Armstrong as the biggest musical influence on his life. The storm destroyed the shop where Armstrong bought his first cornet. Here's Kermit Ruffins with Drop Me Off in New Orleans.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

AG: Coming up after your regional update. Episode five of the CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution is here to take you back to the October Crisis. It will introduce you to both the man setting bombs. And the man working to defuse them. I'm Anthony Germain and you're listening to The Current.

Episode 5 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution.

AG: I'm Anthony Germain. You're listening to The Current. It's time to continue the original CBC podcast that takes us inside Quebec's separatist movement of the 60s. This is episode five.

SOUNDCLIP

Sound Clip: [News reporter 1] A bomb exploded today in a federal government building in downtown Montreal.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 2] Would you say that this is a communist‑backed subversive group or would you say it's French separatist terrorism?

Sound Clip: [man speaks French]

[cheers and applause]

Sound Clip: [News reporter 3] The damaging of a section of track apparently with dynamite has been blamed on the so‑called Suicide Commandos.

Sound Clip: [News reporter 4] That they intend to murder in cold blood two innocent men unless their demands are met.

Sound Clip: [Woman] Your letters have moved me to hope that we will soon be together again. I do hope the FLQ will continue to allow you to write to me.

Geoff Turner: I'm Geoff Turner. And this is Recall: How to Start a Revolution, Chapter Five: The Bomber.

Geoff Turner: Spending time with Bob Cote, you get the feeling he would never tire of telling tales of his life as a cop and that he would never run out of stories to tell. He's illuminated murky corners of the FLQ story for me, brought them to life with vivid and frank recollections, but the other side of the story was always a bit shadowy. And the one man who was responsible for the most bombs and the most nerve‑wracking late night calls for Bob Cote, well, he's been like a ghost in this story. His name is Pierre Paul Geoffroy. And he's hardly spoken publicly about his brief career as a terrorist, which is understandable. Over the years Geoffroy was more than once approached by reporters, but politely declined. So as badly as I wanted to hear a story, I didn't have much hope that he would want anything to do with us, but you gotta try, right?

Sound Clip: [phone ringing]

Geoff Turner: In February, my producer Francis reached out to him. It was a hail Mary; we had some other interviews lined up in Montreal a month later, maybe he'd be willing to meet with us.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Paul Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The conversation lasted for several minutes. Geoffory asked a number of questions about our intentions, about our research...

Sound Clip: [Pierre Paul Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He made no commitment, but he suggested we call once we get to town.

Sound Clip: [phone ringing]

Geoff Turner: I was fully expecting this to be our last contact with Pierre Paul Geoffroy, that he would just stop answering the phone, but I was wrong.

Sound Clip: [phone conversation in French]

Geoff Turner: And by early March we were sitting at his kitchen table in Terrebonne, just outside Montreal.

Sound Clip: [Jessica Linzey and Pierre Geoffroy chatting in French]

Geoff Turner: It's a modest apartment in a three‑story walk‑up complex near the highway. He's a small man with pale skin and a trace of red in his thinning hair. He's in his 70s now, but he's slim and he looks fit. He has questions for me about life in Vancouver, about environmental politics in my home province.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Before he became the FLQ's busiest bomber, before he spent more than a decade in prison, Pierre Paul Geoffroy was just a middle‑class kid from the suburbs of Montreal.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He grew up in Berthierville, then a little town about an hour north of Montreal. For a time Geoffroy went to a private Catholic boarding school. His dad, Maurice, was secretary treasurer of the local school commission.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: His father had progressive ideas, and he got involved in politics as an organizer for the Liberal party. Now for some FLQ members their radicalism seems to be rooted in a reaction to family life, bitterness about working‑class conditions or conflict with their more conservative parents. But for Geoffroy you get the sense that his ideology flourished at home. The house was a gathering place for political talk. And Geoffroy was coming of age just as the Quebec independence movement was coming into its own.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He remembers hearing about the separatist party, the RIN, hearing them talk about a future for a free independent Quebec. He was still in high school when he decided to join. After graduation, he trained to be a printer, but he never took up the trade. Instead, he enrolled at College Ste Marie and studied political science. Politics and culture were becoming the center of his life.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He opened a ‘boite a chansons’. They were these intimate little coffee‑house‑type spaces where a new generation of Quebecois songwriters were cutting their teeth.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Singers like Raymond Levesque, whose 1967 song 'Bozo Le Culottes' is a tribute to the FLQ. It tells the tale of a hapless Quebecois security guard who comes to an awakening about Anglo‑oppression. [Clip of “Bozo Le Culottes” by Raymond Levesque] That verse directly and unpoetically translated says: He stole dynamite, then in a neighborhood full of hypocrites he blew up a monument in memory of the conquerors. So all in all, it was an exciting moment of cultural and political awakening. And Pierre Paul Geoffroy wanted to be a part of it. But there were setbacks too. In the 1966 provincial election, the right‑wing Union Nationale came back to power. The RIN failed to elect a single candidate. For Geoffroy that was a bitter loss.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And the more he thought about it, the more he started to question the possibilities of the democratic path.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He read Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Marx, and he began to embrace their philosophies.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And he came to see the FLQ as the best detonator, that's his word, not mine, for those ideas, a path to an independent Quebec built on anti‑capitalist values.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: But there was a hitch, by 1968 when he finally resolved to join, the FLQ was kind of a mess. The Vallieres-Gagnon cell was in jail. And Pierre Vallieres, the intellectual leader of the FLQ, was on trial. So Geoffroy tried to create his own independent group. They'd act in conjunction with another cell from the south shore of Montreal.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: At first, he called the new cell the Quebec Workers Liberation Front, the FLQ sounded too nationalist for their taste. They quickly abandoned that idea. The FLQ had name recognition by then. It would be a waste not to capitalize on it. But labour issues were front and centre for the new cell. And there was plenty of labour unrest in Quebec at the time. On February 27, 1968, Geoffroy attended one of the most violent demonstrations in Quebec later history. Several thousand people marched in support of workers at the 7UP bottling plant. The conflict had dragged on for months.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The protesters came from a cross section of leftist and separatist politics. Even future Quebec premier Rene Levesque took part. Some demonstrators waved red flags and chanted, "Revolution, revolution." They were met with strong police presence and things got ugly quickly. Molotov cocktails were hurled at the building, nearly starting a fire.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Dozens of people were injured and dozens of people were arrested.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Geoffroy himself was clubbed and hauled off by the police.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: As he tells us, the police played rough. Protesters were regularly beaten. A former FLQ member claims he became sterile after being kicked in the balls at that protest but I found no independent verification on that. That nasty experience at the 7UP protest galvanized Geoffroy and gave him the nerve to consider direct action.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He says it helped him pick his first target too. At some point around this time, Geoffory met a guy named Mario Bachand.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He remembers Bachand as a big talker. They loved talking politics together.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And Bachand was persuasive, quick on his feet. They became good friends.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Bachand played a key role in Geoffroy's education and his radicalization.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It was from Bachand that Geoffroy first got his hands on copies of 'La Cognee,' that's the official publication of the FLQ.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And believe it or not, that's how he learned how to make bombs. It really was as simple as that. Apart from providing space for ideological essays and revolutionary calls to action, 'La Cognee' was a how‑to guide for budding radicals.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: As Geoffroy points out, bomb making is very dangerous. You risk your life every time you put one together, but it's not complicated.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He's right, all you need are some wires and a cheap clock. FLQ bombers got theirs from the same place where Bob Cote got his wire cutters, at the same low price of a buck 25. And of course, you need dynamite. You really need the dynamite. By this point in the series, you may have already asked yourself, where the hell were these guys getting all that dynamite from anyway? Because the FLQ went through a lot of it over the years. As a bomb technician, Bob Cote was keeping track.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] In 70 we knew they had close one ton to one, 1,000 pounds of dynamite. And we recovered 700 pounds of it, 300 in the form of bombs, the rest was seized. The rest blew up.

Geoff Turner: Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of lethal explosives. Of course, you don't just walk into a hardware store and buy a box of high explosives. Today you need a license, which involves a screening process. And even if you qualify to purchase and use explosives, there's strict regulation about how you transport and store the stuff. But Montreal in the '60s was a very different world. You didn't have to look too hard to find it. For starters, as Bob Cote explains, there was a lot of legitimate need for dynamite at the time.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] Montreal was a huge construction site. We were building the subway, Expo, and all the big buildings that you see in downtown Montreal.

Geoff Turner: In this old footage, you can see some of the dynamite being put to work on the Expo 67 site. They were taking rock blasted for the subway and dumping it into the Saint Lawrence River to create the islands that would become home to the World's Fair.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] Montreal is a big rock and huge quantities of dynamite were required at the time one rules on conservation of dynamite was very relaxed.

Geoff Turner: I read at least one account of FLQ members lowering children on ropes into the metro tunnels to retrieve dynamite. Pierre Paul Geoffroy was one of those young talents that Bob Cote refers to. As he explained it to me, you didn't have to go to mission‑impossible lengths to get your hands on it.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He says when they wanted to stock up, they headed to Laval, a suburb north of Montreal. They knew of a quarry there where dynamite work was happening.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The dynamite was kept in a small shed.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The detonator's in another one. All they had to do was load it in the car. Even all these years later, Geoffory seems incredulous at the easy availability of explosives.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It wasn't until 1969, and only after years of pleading from law enforcement, that Quebec tightened up that lacks regulation.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: One of the lasting legacies of the FLQ.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy laughs]

Geoff Turner: So anyway, by May 11th, thanks to a visit to that quarry in Laval, Geoffroy had enough dynamite to supply a years' worth of bombing. He and his cell set the plan in motion.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Geoffroy and a fellow FLQer arrive at the 7UP factory just after midnight. Along with the dynamite bomb, they have a flashlight filled with black powder, an improvised pipe bomb.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: They set it all near the back of the building where it was least likely to hurt anyone.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: As you can imagine, Geoffroy is nervous. The first time he says, you don't know if the bomb is going to blow up in your hands.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It's a delicate connection to make between the dynamite, the clock, and the detonator. And you're doing it all on location.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Once it's armed and in place, they call the local radio station, CKAC to send out a warning. Then they send a communique.

Geoff Turner: I know you were expecting to hear an earth‑shaking explosion here, but no, word reached police and they disarmed the bomb in time, which in Geoffroy's mind made the mission a great success.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It made the news the next day. Their bomb had drawn attention to the cause of the 7UP workers.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The goal was not to destroy the factory or to hurt anyone, just to scare the employer.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And it worked. In the weeks and months that followed Geoffory and his cell would find more targets. The bombs would get bigger and the cycle was repeated.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Remarkably, nobody died as a result of Geoffroy's bombs. They wanted to avoid making victims, he says, because he knew that would not help the cause.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: There was a rationale and a sense of morality about the way he was planning his terrorist attacks, but some of it was just plain crazy.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: None of the group had cars, so they transported their bombs in bags or in their hands on the bus or on the subway. He laughs about it now, but part of him also knows that what he did was dangerously foolish. By September, Geoffory had dropped out of school.

Sound Clip: [Geoff Turner] Full‑time job?

[Pierre Geoffroy, laughing] Ouais…

Geoff Turner: He relied on student loans and bursaries to get by.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He was thrifty and the bank of mom and pop helped pay the rent as well. At one point Geoffory planted a device that exploded near the Bordeaux jail. It was a show of support for Pierre Vallieres and Charles Gagnon, the two FLQ members who were imprisoned there and waging a hunger strike. A week later an explosive device was discovered at the base of a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first Prime Minister. This was in Dominion Square. And there were more bombs targeting companies and organizations with labour trouble. By early 1969, when a bomb exploded at The Queen's Printer on Ste‑Catherine Street, the threat of bombs was just a part of daily life in Montreal.

Sound Clip: [News reporter] The bombing attracted a small crowd, but Montrealers are fairly blaséé about these things. Three ladies working next door were more impressed.

[Reporter] What did you hear, ladies?

[Woman] The bomb went off and it went like a shock. It goes like a shock through your body.

[Reporter] Did you feel the place shake?

[Woman] Yes, I felt the floor shake a bit before. The floor was shaking quite a bit.

[Reporter] What did you think?

[Woman] Hey? I said to myself, “We are going to be bombed and let's get out of this shop fast. “

[Reporter] Did you get out?

[Woman] Yes, we did.

Geoff Turner: Facing the interviewer, the three women look undeterred.

Sound Clip: [Reporter] What do you think is the answer to all this bombing? Who's doing it?

[Woman] I wish I knew the answer. And I try to do something about it. But they're not going to gain anything by it, because we're all going to fight back.

Geoff Turner: As the fear of the bombs grew, Bob Cote became the face of the fight against Geoffroy's FLQ. Here he is in early 1969 speaking with local media.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] Well, dismantling a bomb is not something that you get used to, no matter how many cases you may have handled. And also you have to watch yourself so that you don't become overconfident.

[Reporter] Any close calls in the last year and a couple of months?

[Robert Cote] Well, the closest one I would say was one in November in the downtown store. We found out after the bomb was dismantled that it would have gone off within five minutes.

Geoff Turner: Right in the middle of the interview, the phone rings. There's a bomb in a mailbox. So Bob and the reporter take their conversation on the road.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] We make the best with what we have. We make the best of the situation. And so far we realize that we have been more than lucky, but we also realize that our chance may break in a day.

Geoff Turner: In public, Bob Cote cast a reassuring figure, confident, heroic even. But he carried the stress of the job home with him. Bob's wife Pierrette was his personal stenographer. She woke with every call, waited up for him, and then wrote detailed field reports for him when he came home. She was also carrying twins. It was their first pregnancy. She was just a month away from her due date when that bombing at Eaton's happen. That's the downtown store that Bob mentions in that interview. It was all beginning to take a toll. And the worst was yet to come. Daytime bombings had never really been a thing for the FLQ. They wanted to make symbolic statements. And they mostly agreed that killing people wasn't the way to do it. So most bombs were set to detonate at 4am. There were two exceptions. The first was the bomb that Bob Cote dismantled with only minutes to spare at Eaton's in November 1968. The next daylight bomb was less than two months later, and it was more than a scare.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: By February 1969 Pierre Paul Geoffroy felt the stakes were higher than they'd ever been. And he knew the police were looking for him. He was running out of time to make a statement. So this was going to be his masterpiece.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He'd chosen the ultimate symbol of capitalism as his target. It's February 13, 1969. It's coming up on closing time at the Montreal Stock Exchange, so it's crowded. Visitors love watching the chaos of the final hour of trading. Between the gallery and the trading floor, there are a few hundred people milling about.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Geoffroy has arrived by metro, about 30 minutes before closing time at the exchange. He's carrying a black fiberglass briefcase.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And in it is a bomb, six sticks of dynamite, each weighing two pounds. He's pretty sure he stands out with his beard and mustache.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And you have to remember that people were scared and suspicious then. There'd been so many bombings, but he makes his way into the building anyway. He runs into a group of people as he steps off the elevator on the fourth floor. It unnerves him so he ducks into the men's room to kill some time and to arm the bomb.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Once he's in the visitor's gallery, Geoffroy places the bomb behind a concrete pillar. And then he just ‑ he walks out.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He calls in a warning to a local radio station. He also calls the stock exchange.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Sound Clip: [Newsreader] Another powerful bomb blast rocks downtown Montreal.

Sound Clip: [Reporter] The force of the explosion shattered the outside wall of the 47‑story tower.

Sound Clip: [Witness] But I could see other fellows were thrown right out of their booths who were directly under the blast.

Sound Clip: [Newsreader]Ten people were taken to hospital, three had back injuries, the other suffered cuts, bruises, and shock.

Geoff Turner: Bob Cote is at police headquarters when the call comes in. It's only a few blocks away, but it takes them ages to get there.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] There was so much confusion. Ambulances, fire trucks, we just could not move. The police department in those days had a fleet of ambulances. And I suppose all of them were here. And it looked like a war zone.

Geoff Turner: The force of the bomb was so powerful the walls buckled. And enormous concrete slabs on the outside of the building shook loose. One of them came down shortly after Bob Cote arrived at the scene. It was so thunderous, he thought it was a second bomb.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] I was faced with people full of blood. I had never seen that before. And we finally see the scene of the bombing, wow…

Geoff Turner: Bob's telling us all of this from the warmth of our rental car. We're idling in the financial district. It's December in Montreal, beautiful and clear, but cold. The scene is hard to square with the picture bob is painting for us, not to mention the literal picture he's showing us.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote, chuckling] Now, that date I was...

Geoff Turner: Bob's one of those rare cops who actually loved to testify in court. He was always ready because he was a meticulous investigator, combing through wreckage to retrieve the tiniest clues, but this was not like any other scene. For one, there were people just wandering through it.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] How can we look for small fragments of a clock when you have dozens of people walking around, including policemen who have nothing to do there? We had a tremendous job to do of recovering enough evidence, as we had to do in every scene of explosions to be able to testify in court. So here it has taken us days, patient search among tonnes of rubble.

Geoff Turner: Brokers on the 21st floor reported feeling the building shake and the floor lift. 27 people were injured, including a woman who lost her legs, but no one was killed.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Pierre Paul Geoffroy says that from the way the room was laid out, he hadn't realized that the explosion would cause as much damage as it did. He'd place the bomb behind that pillar thinking it would do less harm and protect people from the blast.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: In retrospect, he says he's grateful nobody died. We press him on this point and he admits to having mixed feelings about the bomb going off, about people being hurt.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He was upset that the building hadn't been evacuated, but he was also happy he'd done it.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: The symbolism of blowing up the stock exchange, the ultimate symbol of capitalism, it was very powerful.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: After the bombing, there was a reward put up for the arrest of the responsible party. Geoffroy can't remember how much 10 or 50 maybe a hundred grand, he says. It was actually $61,000.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: For two weeks he avoided capture, but there was the growing gallery of evidence, funny little details, like the fact that Geoffroy placed a bomb in a shopping bag from his local grocery store. And then there were the more‑than 200 tips from people keen to get that cash reward. You put it all together and police are closing in on their man.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: It's late the night of March 3rd, 1969 when three cops show up at Geoffroy's apartment on Rue St. Dominique.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And when they come through the front door, there's Geoffroy, right in the middle of building a bomb. As it turns out, Bob Cote is in the middle of a meeting with an informant when he gets the call sometime after 11pm. By the time he gets to the apartment, Geoffroy has been taken away in handcuffs. Cote disarms the bomb and then turns his attention to a trunk that's just been pried open.

Sound Clip: [Chief Jean-Paul Gilbert, at press conference] At approximately 12:30 this morning a person was arrested in a house in Montreal.

Geoff Turner: Next morning the Montreal Chief of Police shares the discovery with the public.

Sound Clip: [Chief Jean-Paul Gilbert] And the detectives found three bombs, 200 sticks of dynamite, 100 detonators. One of the bomb was a booby trap.

Geoff Turner: There's more dynamite in a second trunk.

Sound Clip: [Chief Jean-Paul Gilbert] The investigators found also literature...communist literature from Russia, China, Cuba with posters of Karl Marx, Che Guevara.

Geoff Turner: There's also a handwritten list of bomb sites and copies of the FLQ's newsletter. The bombers had targeted French and English Canadians, Jewish businesses, provincial and federal buildings. Nobody seemed immune to their wrath. The discovery seemed to have left reporters and police confounded about the FLQ's motivations.

Sound Clip: [Reporter] So when we say FLQ, it connotes separatist terrorism, yet communist literature was found. Would you say that this is a communist‑backed subversive group, or would you say it's French separatist terrorism?

[Chief Jean-Paul Gilbert] Well, I'm not ready to comment on that.

Geoff Turner: On March 5th, Montreal's daily 'La Presse' would report on the discovery of a notebook with a list of about a hundred names. According to police, those people were seen regularly around town during protests. A number of them would be arrested. Other members of Geoffroy's group would escape to the US, then to Cuba.

Sound Clip: [News reporter] Today the Premier of Quebec saw the face of the enemy, a bearded young separatist arrested with a half‑made bomb in his hand. After months of terror, 11 big blasts this year, a state of anger and confusion in the city and worse, sort of cynicism about the road ahead.

Geoff Turner: The Premier of Quebec ordered a public inquiry.

Sound Clip: [Premier Jean-Jacques Bertrand] We stand against terrorism and violence. And we do not think that in a democratic society this is the way to help the case.

Geoff Turner: Police were still trying to figure out who they had on their hands.

Sound Clip: [News Report] If today's suspect turns out to be the ringleader or even the maker of the bombs, then the question of who's to blame becomes clear. The FLQ was supposedly crushed and its leaders jailed in June 1963. And that ended that series of bombings.

Geoff Turner: At the police station Geoffroy is greeted by two investigators.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: His interrogators leaned on him heavily for more names, spilling would earn him a more lenient sentence, they said.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: But Geoffroy says he had nothing to lose. And his lawyer didn't think he'd get more than 10 years whether he talked or not. So he opted to not rat on his friends.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Instead, he took sole responsibility for 31 bombings. In his kitchen, Geoffroy opens a dossier for us. It's a record of his time with the FLQ, carefully curated by a group of supporters. At the back of the file is a list of those 31 bombings he claimed as his own. The Stock Exchange is here, the 7UP Factory, and then we get to Eaton's.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: This one, he says, wasn't his. Though he told the judge he planned it.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: That was the other cell, the one on the south shore, he says. Geoffroy preferred to plant bombs at night when the risk to the public was minimal.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: But the Eaton’s store bombing was different. It happened during a Christmas parade on Ste‑Catherine Street in Montreal shopping district.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: There were innocent passersby...kids, women. And that was a line he was not willing to cross, he says. He told the leader of the south shore group that he didn't like it. Now you may be wondering what exactly his point of principle was by drawing that line. He did, after all, drop a bomb in a visitors gallery at the Stock Exchange in the afternoon when there were plenty of people around. The way he explains it he had no choice. The Stock Exchange was only accessible during the day. And it was too big a symbol to pass up. Also, he says, he chose a time of day when it would be the least busy, but he was still willing to take the rap.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: To the court it made no difference if he admitted to planting one or 31 bombs. The sentence would be the same.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He also felt they were all equally responsible. So he wasn't going to cherry pick which bombs were his and which weren't. He wasn't trying to be a martyr.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: Besides, he says, it seemed pointless to try to protect his fellow FLQers. They'd been seen together so many times, he figured they'd probably be caught anyway.

Sound Clip: [Geoff Turner and Pierre Geoffroy talk in French]

Geoff Turner: In court, Geoffroy pleaded guilty to all charges, much to the surprise of the judge, who asked him if he understood how serious the charges were. He did. He was proud of what he'd done, he said, but he wasn't prepared for the sentence - 124 life sentences. It was the longest sentence ever handed down in the British Commonwealth. Geoffroy flashed a victory sign when the judge had finished.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] You see, all of these houses were built roughly the same time in the 1930s. Many of them had wooden columns. I'm the only one who has retained the columns. And I promised my wife, my late wife, I would never get rid of them.

Geoff Turner: Bob Cote still lives in the first house he bought with Pierrette almost 50 years ago. Pierrette grew up in a house just down the street. And when it was time to move in, they just wheeled her piano right across the road. In his living room, he gives us a tour of his photographs.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] Would you like to take a coffee, or…

Geoff Turner: We sit and chat over coffee for a while before Bob takes us downstairs to sift through his archives. Pierrette's old sewing room is now a little library, a wall of books, Montreal history, stories about the FLQ, wanted posters, banker's boxes full of file folders perfectly organized. As this profile grew, Cote became a target himself.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] I was invited to my own funerals. I have the letter here, but it was not serious. It says, “Robert Cote, police headquarters, Gestapo de Montreal.” No stamp. But it landed at police headquarters just the same. “Sergeant Cote dismantles the third bomb in 24 hours.” I was young at one time. [laughs]

[Geoff Turner] How did you manage your nerves during all of that, because it must have been ‑ you had to be very focused, but you must have been terribly nervous.

[Robert Cote] Well, the scenario was always the same, that's it. I had volunteer for the job, and when you called, well, you gotta go. You realize all of a sudden that you have your nose over a bomb. If you don't do nothing, it may detonate, so might as well try to get out of there and do what you have to do. Then come back home, try to go back to sleep, nuh-uh, very difficult. So...a couple of times I said, no more. No more. No more. I had enough. Phone would ring a couple of days later, here I go again.

Geoff Turner: It began to take a toll.

Sound Clip: [Geoff Turner] It must have been difficult for Pierrette.

[Robert Cote] Yeah, on one event, 13th of December of 1968. On that particular night Pierrette was pregnant. And she was eight and a half months. We got a call. Whenever I left on a call, she would wait. She would wait for me. She would never go to bed. And she would wait for me all the time. Got back here three or four in the morning. She typed the report. Then the following day she has pains. We go to the hospital. And she lost ‑ we lost twin girls, twin girls, yeah. And Dr. Payette attributed that to a state of nervousness, which made sense. And every year, every year until her death 2006, on the 13th of December I would give her two roses for our daughters. They would have been 50 last year.

Geoff Turner: And somehow, even after that enormous loss, Bob carried on. And later Bob will tell us that Pierrette did as well. She wanted to try again for a baby.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] And she said, I don't want it. She knew that was a very risky job. I said, I don't want to be left alone. I want to have a child. So OK. What had to be done was done. And Pierre Richard was born in July of '71.

Geoff Turner: Bob and Pierrette had a son and then a daughter. She now lives upstairs with her own 19‑year‑old twins.

Sound Clip: [Robert Cote] And my wife, I always thought it was the providence who had managed us to finally have twins. Yeah, that's life. That's life.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French, chuckles]

Geoff Turner: It was only once he was locked up that Pierre Paul Geoffroy finally realized what 124 life sentences meant.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: He says the first few weeks were hard. He was depressed. He tried to hide it.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: And then he started hoping that other FLQ members would come up with some plan to get him out. We asked him about the risks he took, the price he had to pay, and why he was willing to take it.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Geoffroy speaking French]

Geoff Turner: When you're convinced of your ideas, he says, convinced that deep down you can make your dream happen, well, you act on it, no matter what the consequences. Thanks to the vagaries of sentencing and parole in Canada, a life sentence, well, even 12 life sentences doesn't necessarily mean you're in prison for life. In the end, Geoffroy would be paroled after 12 years behind bars. That time in jail was hard, he says, but in a way the transition to freedom was even harder. He'd studied to become a phys‑ed teacher, but he didn't actually graduate. There was a strike during his last semester and he refused to cross picket lines. For a while he managed a house where young homeless people could stay and get back on their feet. He became an outreach worker for people who had spent much of their adult lives in jail. Then he ran an art gallery that showed work by inmates. At 75, he's now retired.

Geoff Turner: But in the Spring of 1970, Pierre Paul Geoffroy, the FLQ's most prolific bomber, was in jail with 11 years between him and freedom. It felt as though the movement had stalled again. And there was a growing sense among members that it was time for new tactics. From his jail cell, FLQ author Pierre Vallieres had written to a friend about the urgency for more dramatic action. He wrote, "If you really want to get us out of here before independence comes, you'll have to take drastic steps and organize a spectacular operation - a political kidnapping, two influential members of the Quebec government or the Trudeau government or maybe two judges who would only be released in return for our freedom." But some remaining members of the Geoffroy cell who had escaped were considering even darker possibilities.

Sound Clip: [news report] This is the voice of Palestine, the voice of the Palestine liberation organization.

Geoff Turner: It's late May. And CBC reporter Pierre Nadeau is conducting interviews in the desert mountains of Jordan. It's for a documentary on Palestinian resistance. With his cameraman he's at a training camp organized by a revolutionary Marxist group, the Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Nadeau in news report] Their weapons are the finest in the world, the Russian or Czechoslovakian made Kalashnikovs, which the commandos called Kalashnikovs.

Geoff Turner: And then Nadeau makes a discovery.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Nadeau in news report] Amongst the fedayeen two strangers, two young men from Canada, who feel that their province, Quebec, should separate from the rest of the country.

Geoff Turner: He approaches them for an interview.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Nadeau] Why are you here?

[Quebecker Man] We are here for training, military training, mostly training.

[Pierre Nadeau] In what purpose?

[Quebecker Man] Purpose is to make a socialist revolution in Quebec first and in North America second, because we understand that the revolution in Quebec will never be finished if there's still American imperialism.

Geoff Turner: The two men hide their faces behind keffiyeh, the traditional scarf of the region.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Nadeau] Your name is Selim?

[Quebecker Man 1] Salam.

[Pierre Nadeau] And your name is?

[Quebecker Man 2] Salam.

[Pierre Nadeau] What is the signification of Salam?

[Quebecker Man 2] It means peace.

[Pierre Nadeau] What is your main goal when you go back to Quebec?

[Quebecker Man 2] Our main goal is to modify our military strategy, instead of continuing to bomb some place we will make selective assassination of certain leader in Quebec.

Geoff Turner: Selective assassination.

Sound Clip: [Pierre Nadeau] Merci beaucoup.

[Quebecker Man 1] Salut. [speaks French]

[Quebecker Man 2 speaks French] Vive le FLQ.

Geoff Turner: It was later learned that the pair was connected to the Geoffroy network. They'd avoided arrest by fleeing Canada. Shortly after that story aired, Nadeau was at a political event when he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was the Deputy Premier of Quebec, Pierre Laporte. He told Nadeau, “You scared us so much with that report.” Laporte was right to be scared. In just a few weeks he would play a tragic role in the dark final chapter of the FLQ. That's coming up in Episode Six of Recall: How to Start a Revolution.

AG: And we'll bring you that next episode tomorrow.

[Music]

AG: I'm Anthony Germain and this is The Current. Well, here we go again. Pencils, books, shiny new school shoes. Another September means another back-to-school season -- and plenty of the same questions we were asking at this time, last year. How dangerous is COVID-19 for kids? Should masks be mandatory in classrooms? How about in the lunch room? Can students play sports, or sing in music class? And how long before kids under age 12 can be vaccinated? As Canada gears up for yet another pandemic school year. We want to hear your questions. Write us. Our email is thecurrent@cbc.ca. Or Tweet us @TheCurrentCBC. And tune in on Labour Day. Matt Galloway will be back in the host chair and he'll put some of your questions to two medical experts who will try to offer some clarity. That's coming up next week, on The Current. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for q. Guest host Talia Schlanger will be talking to Mexican cinema royalty, Eugenio Derbez. His mother Silvia Derbez is generally considered the first telenovela star. Eugenio's been on-screen since childhood. He's also the executive producer and one of the stars of Dora and the Lost City of Gold, a live-action, big-screen take on the Dora the Explorer children's cartoon. He'll talk about the film, his life in movies and the political context this family movie found itself in when it premiered. I'm Anthony Germain. Thanks for listening to The Current.

The Current Transcript for August 31, 2021

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

Afghan researcher prepares family for new life in Canada after fleeing Taliban

Former residential school now a place to teach and celebrate Siksika culture

Episode 5 of CBC podcast Recall: How to Start a Revolution.

Tuesday 31 August, 2021 Full Transcript

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