Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla Ann Hansen Guilty of Everything John Armstrong

145 BC STUDIES Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban Guerrilla Ann Hansen Toronto: Between the Lines, 2001. 493 pp. $19.95 paper. Guilty of Everything John Armstrong Vancouver: Transmontanus/New Star Books, 2001. 98 pp. CDN$i6/us$i2 paper. SCOTT BEADLE Vancouver HE AUTHORS OF Direct Action that were formed between some of the and Guilty of Everything made city's radical activists and punks in the Ttheir mark in BC popular late 1970s. culture during the first few years of the Although it is possible that Hansen 1980s. John Armstrong was a creative and Armstrong crossed paths at a punk force in Vancouver's independent rock concert at the Oddfellows Hall, or music scene, while Ann Hansen made rubbed elbows at the Smilin' Buddha her mark with a bang — literally — as a Cabaret, they probably did not know member of the urban guerrilla group each other at all. Armstrong and Hansen Direct Action, better known after their tell two different, but not necessarily arrest as the Squamish Five. opposed, sides of the punk experience. Authors Hansen and Armstrong Hansen's story is concerned with the revisit and confront their respective nature of political activism, commitment, cultural legacies. Both works are self-doubt, and the gritty day-to-day autobiographical and explore a narrow realities of being an urban guerrilla. segment of the authors'lives soon after Armstrong, mirroring the nature of his they had come of age. musical contributions, is totally Some reviewers will inevitably link unconcerned with punk's political Direct Action and Guilty of Everything dimensions; rather, he focuses on the with Vancouver's punk rock subculture romance of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle - indeed, that is why they are being and its outlaw mystique. Their stories reviewed together. In Armstrong's case are representative of the polarities of the punk link is self-evident because attitudes that existed at the core of the his story directly concerns his role in punk experience: one camp saw punk Vancouver's then developing punk as a musical and artistic rebellion - an scene. Hansen, on the other hand, is embattled, romantic reclamation of only distantly and accidentally related rock's lost passions; while the other to punk, so this linkage is a bit camp saw it as a socio-political misleading. However, Direct Action rebellion, an expression of the desire does offer a glimpse of the relationships for change, and an opportunity for noon i^evieivs ±4/ radical agitation. In punk's early days, Taylor was already a veteran of a these tendencies formed a more or less Yippie-inspired group called the natural alliance; but during the 1980s Groucho-Marxists. In 1977 Taylor the punk movement began splintering "pied" a visiting Joe Clark at UBC, the across these and other lines. first of several pie-throwing incidents While the audience for Guilty of for which the Groucho-Marxists were Everything will be more or less limited notorious in Vancouver. T h e Grouchos to those interested in the history of were a radical clique comprised of Vancouver's independent rock music, student activists, Yippies, former the appeal and significance of Direct Georgia Straight staffers, and founders Action goes well beyond its minor but of the anarchist paper Open Road. In interesting connections with Vancouver 1978 the Anarchist Party of Canada punk rock. It should be remembered (Groucho-Marxist) organized a May that, during their spectacular trial, Day anarchist festival in Stanley Park Hansen and her co-conspirators were that included a few local punk bands. nearly household names in Canada, The organizers followed that up with making headlines as the country's first an Anti-Canada Day punk rock concert post-FLQ_guerrilla group. In 1982 Ann in Stanley Park in July. These events Hansen, Brent Taylor, Doug Stewart, marked the start of a lengthy rela- Julie Belmas, and Gerry Hannah tionship between this group of activists began a bombing and arson campaign and some key punk rockers. Two that eventually culminated in their members of this anarchist-Yippie axis, arrest in January 1983 on a highway just Ken Lester and David Spaner, became north of Vancouver. Dubbed the the managers of seminal Vancouver Squamish Five (after their place of punk bands DOA and the Subhumans, capture) by local news media, they respectively. were charged with blowing up a BC Future Direct Action members Gerry Hydro substation on Vancouver Island, Hannah and Julie Belmas were both blowing up a Litton Systems plant in active in the punk scene. Hannah, as Toronto, and helping to fire-bomb some Gerry Useless, was a bass player and one Red Hot Video stores in Vancouver. of the songwriters for the Subhumans. They were finally apprehended while Belmas also played bass, and, in 1980, in the final stages of planning an she co-wrote a punk "fanzine" called armed robbery of a Brinks guard in a Opposition. After Hannah quit the Burnaby shopping mall. Subhumans in 1981, the two began Hansen was an activist in the Toronto living together. It was Brent Taylor area in the mid-1970s. At a political con- who introduced Hannah and Belmas ference in Toronto she met Vancouverite into the small circle of political Brent Taylor, and she was drawn to his activists that included Ann Hansen infectious energy and activist incli- and Doug Stewart. nations. T h e y became fast friends, and In Direct Action, Hansen weaves a a couple of years later Hansen visited tale that is very readable and perhaps Vancouver and looked up Taylor to surprisingly enjoyable. She carries the renew their acquaintance. Hansen reader effortlessly through a cinematic- stayed in Vancouver and eventually style narrative, populated by believably moved in with Taylor as their mutual complicated characters, and she builds political and intellectual attraction suspense like an accomplished fiction transformed into romantic involvement. writer. Its only weakness is that, 148 BC STUDIES because Hansen is from Toronto, she Where Hansen is able to describe inner is not able to provide a historical turmoil and self-doubt, Armstrong's background or context for Vancouver's writing is notable for its lack of anarchist-activist underground. She personal insight. There is little vulner- engages in some slight fictionalization ability to Armstrong's Buck Cherry - for instance, a composite police in- character; there is no awkward trans- vestigator character was created to formation or embarrassing past. Any help tell "the other side" - but this does embarrassing revelations invariably not impede an essential sense of ac- involve other people, not Armstrong. curacy. The quality of Hansen's writing One of the most interesting things is much greater than is usually expected about punk was the way that indi- for works of this nature. viduals who were often outcasts or Sadly, the same cannot be said for misfits felt they could reinvent them- John Armstrong's slim memoir. As selves, carve new personae, lifestyles, Buck Cherry, Armstrong was the and avenues for self-expression within singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the the precincts of an encouraging sub- Modernettes, arguably Vancouver's culture. Armstrong seems to want us finest pop-punk band of the early to believe that he has always been "cool." 1980s. Guilty of Everything chronicles When Jean Smith's Ghost of Under- Armstrong's career from his first band standing was released a few years ago, in White Rock in 1977 to his tenure in it was criticized for its lack of historical Los Popularos, a group that also insight into Vancouver's punk sub- featured Armstrong's friend and culture. That criticism was a little mentor Art Bergmann. Armstrong's unfair as it was ostensibly a work of narrative ends abruptly when he quits fiction. However, it is not unfair, in this Los Popularos before its ill-fated move case, to say that Guilty of Everything to Toronto. He does not describe the suffers glaringly from a lack of his- reforming of the Modernettes or his torical context. We learn littie or nothing semi-retirement into journalism (he about the other bands and individuals wrote for the Georgia Straight before that made the Vancouver punk scene becoming an entertainment columnist - and stories like Armstrong's - for a major daily newspaper). possible. .

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