‘All the Messy Details’: Two Case Studies of Activist Mobilization in Halifax, Nova
Scotia, 1960-1982
by
Matthew James J. Baglole
Master of Arts, University of New Brunswick, 2002
Bachelor of Arts, Dalhousie University, 2000
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Graduate Academic Unit of History
Supervisors: Gail Campbell, Ph.D., History/Canadian History Margaret Conrad, Ph.D., History/Canadian History
Examining Board: Paul Howe, Ph.D. Political Science, Chair David Frank, Ph.D., History/Canadian History Linda Kealey, Ph.D., History/Canadian History
External Examiner: Matthew Hayday, Ph.D., History/Canadian History
This dissertation is accepted by the Dean of Graduate Studies
THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW BRUNSWICK
September 2011
©Matthew James J. Baglole, 2011 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada
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This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum and Muriel
Duckworth, whose tireless dedication to their vision of a better world was unsurpassed, uncommon, inspiring and transformational. ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the history of activist mobilization as process, analyzed through case studies of feminists and African-Nova Scotians in Halifax, Nova Scotia between the Bill of Rights (1960) and Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). Drawing on archival records, oral history interviews, and secondary sources while applying social movement theory, it explores mobilization as a process characterized by four challenges: creating a political consciousness, establishing formal organizations, mobilizing resources and designing tactics. Mobilization allowed local activists to join other state and non-state actors in a series of dialogues then shaping Canada’s ‘rights revolution’: a period of significant rights reform. Feminist and African Nova Scotian mobilization occurred within a shifting historical context characterized by local manifestation of trends within the North Atlantic world. The local context — including pervasive racial and gender inequality, (international rights movements, a state interest in human rights and demographic shifts — influenced how local activists met mobilization challenges.
Examining mobilization as a process unfolding in a particular time and space, this study explores the extent to which historical context shaped local activism. It argues that the
Canadian state, directly and indirectly active in the process of rights reform and activist mobilization, was central to African-Nova Scotian and feminist mobilization in Halifax.
The history of these local movements, from inception to action and outcome, suggests that the blurred lines between social and political actors, actions and goals comprised part of the dynamic historical context in which action/reaction shaped the environments where mobilization occurred. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Special thanks to my loving wife, Dawn. Her support sustained me during this long journey. My family and friends also lent considerable support, in every conceivable way.
Great thanks are due to my supervisors, Dr. Gail Campbell and Dr. Margaret Conrad.
Their patience and commitment to this project, was vital to its completion. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my examining committee whose suggestions further strengthened this dissertation.
The University of New Brunswick, Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies and the Atlantic Human Rights Centre at St Thomas University offered much-needed financial support. I am also grateful to the many people with whom I have worked and learned: the History Department, library staff, Human Rights Programme and the wonderful people I had the pleasure of working with at the ETC.
The archivists and staff at Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, Provincial
Archives of New Brunswick, Library and Archives Canada, University of New
Brunswick Special Collections, Dalhousie University Archives and McMaster University
Archives were invariably helpful as was Senator Noel Kinsella, who agreed to share his personal papers.
I am especially indebted to the activists who shared their personal histories with me and to the Gorsebrook Research Institute and to Peter Twohig for his time, support, encouragement and advice. Table of Contents
‘ALL THE MESSY DETAILS’: TWO CASE STUDIES OF ACTIVIST MOBILIZATION IN HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, 1960-1982...... i Dedication...... ii Abstract...... iii Acknowledgments i v Table of Contents...... v List of Acronyms...... vi Introduction...... 1 Chapter One: Social Movement Theory...... 27 Chapter Two: Political Consciousness: The Wellspring of Political Action...... 57 Chapter Three: Formal Organization: A Vehicle for Polical Action...... 119 Chapter Four: Resource Mobilization: The Means to Political Action...... 169 Chapter Five: Tactics: Taking Political Action...... 234 Conclusion...... 299 Bibliography ...... 307 Appendix A: Select Newsletters of Social Movement Organizaitons Active in Halifax, NS from 1960 to 1982...... 329
Curriculum Vitae
v List o f Abbreviations
ACLM Afro-Canadian Liberation Movement
AUBA African United Baptist Association
AWP A Woman’s Place-Forrest House
BEA Black Educators Association
BPWG Black Professional Women’s Group
BUF The Black United Front
CACSW Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women
CCDPP Canadian Communities Development Projects Program
CCIL Colored Citizens Improvement League
CEC Colored Education Centre
CEDAW Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
CFUW Canadian Federation of University Women
CHRC Canadian Human Rights Commission
CMHC Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation
CR Group Consciousness-Raising Group
CRIAW Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
CUCND Combined University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
CYC Company of Young Canadians
HBPWC Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club
HDWL Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Liberation
HERO Historical Education Research Organization
HRAC Halifax Human Rights Advisory Council IWY International Women’s Year
IYHR International Year for Human Rights
LCW Local Council of Women
LIP Local Initiatives Program
MOVE Citizens Movement for Voice and Action
NAC National Action Committee on the Status of Women
NBCC National Black Coalition of Canada
NDP New Democratic Party of Canada
NSAACP Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NSACSW Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women
NSHRC Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission
NSWAC Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee
OFY Opportunities for Youth Program
PCW Provincial Council of Women
RCSW Royal Commission on the Status of Women
SMO Social Movement Organization
SNAP Scotia Non-Violent Action Project
SOS Secretary of State
SUPA Student Union for Peace Action
UN The United Nations
UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights
VOW-Halifax /Voices Voice of Women-Halifax Chapter
WINS Women’s Institutes of Nova Scotia
vii 1
Introduction
In the early 1840s, young Hegelian Bruno Bauer argued that ‘Human rights are.. .not a gift from nature or a dowry from history.. ..They are the results of culture, and only he can possess them who has acquired them and won the right to them.’1 As Bauer implies, rights are won only after struggle which, in turn, requires people and resources. This dissertation examines the process of activist mobilization — people mustering the resources to systematically pursue their goals — through the lens of two successful postwar social movements in Halifax, Nova Scotia: the Black power and women’s movements. Between 1960 and 1982, these two movements contributed to a period of significant public policy reform, which historians have termed Canada’s ‘rights revolution.’ In fact, the revolution was more akin to a series of dialogues among a large cast of local, provincial and (international actors promoting different agendas for reform.
I came to an interest in social movement dynamics by way of Canadian political history. While researching a Master’s thesis on an anti-bilingual, right wing party that emerged first in Alberta and then in New Brunswick over the course of the
1980s, I began to ask myself the question that led to this study: how do individuals mount an effective challenge to comparatively well-resourced rivals, such as powerful economic interests or political systems? Challengers did not meet political authorities, or even other challengers on an equal playing field. Yet, after centuries of inequities, many oppressed Canadians suddenly rose to demand political, social, cultural and economic change. Or so it seemed. Upon closer scrutiny, it becomes clear that the movements under study here had been active for decades. The central 2 tensions driving this history — between the state and individual; oppression and agency; domination, resistance and consent; critique and hegemony — relate to the issue of power and have attracted the interest of social historians since at least the
1970s.
Through a longitudinal case study analysis of two social movements operating in the same time and space, this study examines a period during which activists throughout Canada participated in the dialogues shaping and reshaping rights and citizenship. Activists seeking change always face significant mobilization challenges. Without constitutional standing or significant revenue streams, local activists meet better-equipped social and political actors on an uneven playing field.
An examination of local movements in Halifax over the course of 22 critical years reveals the common challenges faced by social movement organizations (SMOs) and the extent to which historical context shaped mobilization. It affirms many of the themes emerging in the national narrative of rights development. In this study, readers will discover, among other themes, the differences and cooperative strategies between activist ‘generations’, the importance of state funding programs and the adaptability of each movement under study.
This study also presents a case for local histories of rights activism in Canada, arguing that activists mobilized according to a local logic. Activists occupied particular historical contexts in which (international trends assumed local dimensions. This study describes how Haligonians’ historical context influenced the timing of mobilization as well as the size and complexion of movements, the means by which groups mobilized, the degree and range of manoeuvrability open to them 3 and the outcomes realized. Halifax participated in the economic, social and political developments taking place throughout Canada and the North Atlantic World.
However, (international trends manifested themselves in unique local ways. For example, urban growth — driven by high birth rates and immigration throughout the
North Atlantic world — was driven by high birth rates and municipal annexation in
Halifax, where immigration was less vigorous than in other Canadian cities.
Generalizations risk masking the local dimensions of Canada’s rights revolution, which, owing to Canada’s federated political structure, occurred as much in provincial and municipal arenas as it did in Ottawa.
To determine the significance of the local dimensions of both context and the revolution itself studies of the local history of Canada’s rights revolution are in order. These studies promise to strengthen our understanding of the relationship between national trends and local experience, reveal the logic of local and provincial developments, and add essential detail and subtlety to the story of Canada’s rights revolution. More generally, local studies promise to enrich our understanding of social movement dynamics, state-movement relationships and state strategies for exercising influence over its dissenting citizens. National studies are necessary and informative but they do not capture the diverse local context(s) or components of a revolution that occurred within localities throughout Canada.
The 1960s and 1970s offer a natural setting for longitudinal case studies of social movement mobilization. As historian Dominique Clement has recently argued, ‘never before, nor since, has the country experienced such an explosion of activism.’3 Further, the period between 1960 and 1982 has been characterized as the ‘second phase’ of Canada’s human rights revolution. In the decades after 1960,
Affican-Canadians and women generated two of Canada’s most visible and
influential rights movements.4 Drawing on the Halifax experience as a case study,
this dissertation focuses on the process of mobilization to illustrate how activists, a
critical group of participants in Canada’s rights revolution, struggled against
considerable challenges to raise their voice in the national dialogues on rights. I
argue that Halifax, between 1960 and 1982, was deeply rooted in the North Atlantic
world but nevertheless unique as a jurisdictional authority and city with particular
social, economic and political realities.
The years between the federalBill o f Rights in 1960 and theCharter o f
Rights and Freedoms in 1982 saw significant public policy reform related to rights
and citizenship in Canada and in much of the Western world. Although inequality
persisted throughout Canada, by 1982 it was clear that the previous two decades had
introduced significant public policy reform related to rights and citizenship, at both
federal and provincial levels. As it played out, the ‘rights revolution’ was a series of
related ‘revolutions’ comprised of events, legislation, programs and state agencies.
Each was shaped by dialogue(s) in which a great many actors, including local
activists, promoted agendas for rights reform.
Events
The International Year for Human Rights (1968) and International Women’s Year
(1975) sponsored by the United Nations, marked the ongoing ‘rights revolution’ in
Canada and fostered dialogue on rights issues. Although the events supported by 5 federal and provincial funding rarely satisfied local activists, many of whom preferred action over celebration, the contrast between rights rhetoric and local reality often had a powerful effect. While local activist leaders used these moments of self-reflection and celebration as rallying points, provincial and federal legislators used the opportunity to conduct studies (suchHerself/Elle-Meme, as the report of a provincial taskforce on the status of Women), strengthen legislation (such as the
1968 amendments to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act), introduce new programs
(including funding programs tied to each year) and establish rights agencies (e.g. the
Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women).5
In Ottawa, one rights issue commanded the attention of the federal government above all else: the status of francophones in Quebec. The Royal
Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism carried out its work from 1963 to
1969, producing a multi-volume report. In response, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot
Trudeau introduced Canada’s Official Languages Act in 1969 as well as a civil service recruitment campaign that became a blueprint for affirmative action programs throughout Canada.6 Within a year, Trudeau’s enactment of the War
Measures Act during the October Crisis in 1970 defined the limits of state tolerance in Canada. A public discussion of rights and new rights campaigns resulted.7
Concerned about the potential backlash of having suspended fundamental rights and instituted martial law, Trudeau launched a media campaign to repair the breach and directed resources toward the celebration of Human Rights Day throughout Canada,
o which likewise contributed to the dialogue on rights.
Meanwhile, international movements for racial and gender equality were on the rise. Beginning with the American Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, which was joined by the Black Power movement in the mid-to-late-1960s, African-
Americans demanded equality with pen and sword. In Canada, media coverage of
events in the United States inspired local activists, many of whom also had personal
and/or professional connections to African-American activists and movements. The
women’s movement blossomed in the United States in the mid-1960s and caught
most Canadian politicians unawares. After much prodding from club women led by
Laura Sabia, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson appointed the Royal Commission on
the Status of Women (RCSW) in 1967.9 The RCSW convened meetings throughout
Canada, pulling into Halifax in the fall of 1968, and, after three years of hearings
and briefs, published a report in 1970.10 According to the New Left journalOur
Generation, the Report included ‘information to make squirm a society which, in its
rhetoric holds dear the values of equality and individual freedom.’11
Legislation
Human Rights legislation in Canada began slowly following the Second World War
but gained momentum through the 1950s. In 1947, Saskatchewan introduced
Canada’s first bill of rights, a year before the UN declaration, and it was
Saskatchewan’s John Diefenbaker who, as Prime Minister, introduced a Canadian
Bill of Rights in I960.12 The Bill applied only to discrimination in areas of federal jurisdiction but Diefenbaker reasoned that the statute would function as well as a
constitutional amendment because no future parliament would be so reckless as to
court public wrath by repealing or diluting a freedom statute.13 By that time Nova 7
Scotia had followed Ontario’s lead in enacting a series of anti-discrimination laws including fair employment (1953), equal pay (1956) and fair accommodations legislation (1959).
More provincial legislation followed in the wake of the Bill of Rights. In
1963, Premier Robert Stanfield again followed Ontario by codifying Nova Scotia’s antidiscrimination legislation inHuman a Rights Act.14 Four years later, Nova Scotia passed theHuman Rights Commission Act and, by the end of the decade, the two acts were united underHuman the Rights Act (1969). In 1972, responding to the
Royal Commission on the Status of Women and studies conducted by its own
Human Rights Commission, Nova Scotia prohibited ‘sex’ discrimination under the
Act. Ontario and Saskatchewan did the same in 1972, as Alberta had one year earlier. Between 1975 and 1977, Nova Scotia responded to the public attention given to women’s issues during International Women’s Year by creating new state agencies and introducing legislation including BillAn 102,Act to Amend the Statute
Law Respecting Women, which addressed 19 discriminatory laws.15
Federal legislators also passed several rights statutes, and ratified international conventions. When the federal Liberals (returned to power in 1963) focused on rights in the late-1960s, their efforts centred on intergovernmental negotiations related to constitutional reform, including an entrenched bill of rights.16
Following the failure of the first-round of constitutional negotiations in 1971, stymied federal authorities drafted the Canada Human Rights Act, which received royal assent in 1977.17 International agreements also shaped Canada’s rights program.18 Before 1975, ad hoc consultation facilitated Canada’s ratification and implementation of a number of international agreements including the UN
Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1957), the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (1970), International Labour
Organization Convention 100 Concerning Equal Remuneration for Work of Equal
Value (1972), and many others.19 Thereafter, specialized intergovernmental human rights bodies facilitated Canada’s accession to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, its optional protocol, and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and, in 1981, the Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.20 One year later, the second phase of Canada’s rights revolution was crowned when Trudeau successfully negotiated a deal to repatriate the constitution with an entrenchedCharter o f Rights and Freedoms, though not before overcoming considerable provincial opposition and politically alienating Quebec.21
State Agencies
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it became clear that legislation alone was not enough to protect citizens against discrimination. By 1958, Premier Robert Stanfield had privately expressed an interest in strengthening Nova Scotia’s antidiscrimination program.22 The following year, he established Nova Scotia’s Interdepartmental
Committee on Human Rights: a provincial body created in 1959 to formulate policy on human rights matters. The Committee first met in 1962, when a scholarly study highlighted the plight of African-Nova Scotians living in Halifax.23 Five years later, in August of 1967, Nova Scotia became the second Canadian province to establish a 9
Human Rights Commission.24 The Commission became fully operational in
December 1968, when a full-time director, staff and commissioners were announced.25
Three rights bodies created in 1975 addressed the need for intergovernmental
consultation and cooperation in the field of human rights. Early consultation
occurred within the Canadian Association of Administrators of Labour Legislation
(CAALL), as rights issues strongly correlated with employment issues.26 As early as
1966, Dr. Daniel Hill, Director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (1962-
1971), was ‘convinced of the necessity for more direct communication among
human rights administrators in Canada, both federal and provincial.’27 In 1972,
human rights administrators in Canada established the interprovincial Canadian
Association for Statutory Human Rights Agencies (CASHRA). During early
CASHRA discussions, which focused on the importance of international human
rights instruments, it became apparent that Ministerial involvement was necessary.
In 1975, Ottawa announced that it would organize a first ministers’ conference on
human rights. Planners seized upon the opportunity to create more permanent human
rights structures. The result was the Continuing Committee of Officials for Human
Rights and the ongoing First Ministers Conference on Human Rights. Both helped
Canada achieve the intergovernmental coordination necessary for Canada’s
accession to international rights instruments.
Meanwhile, as the UN promoted International Women’s Year (IWY) and the
federal government organized a first ministers’ conference on human rights and
drafted its Human Rights Act, Premier Gerald Regan struck Nova Scotia’s 10
Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women. The Committee was charged with monitoring and advising on the implementation of the report, titled
Her self/Elle-Meme, recently tabled by Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of
98 Women, a temporary body established in recognition of IWY. At the first monthly meeting, held on 16 November 1976, Regan tasked the Interdepartmental Committee to “recommend those legislative changes which lend themselves to easy implementation, have definite policy appeal, and do not stir up undue controversy at this time.”29 The result was Bill 102(An Act to Amend the Statute Law Respecting
Women). In 1977, Nova Scotia followed the federal lead when it announced the
initial appointees to Nova Scotia’s new Advisory Council on the Status of Women
(NSACSW).30 The fifteen-member Council advised the Minister responsible for the
status of women on matters brought before the Council by either the Minister or
Nova Scotian women.
Programs and Policies
Rights programs and policies gave meaning to equality and citizenship in Canada. In
1965, Premier Robert Stanfield introduced the Education Fund for Negroes: a
scholarship fund to support African-Nova Scotians enrolled in high school and post
secondary programs.31 The Stanfield government also introduced a series of targeted
employment programs including: priority placement of ‘suitable Negroes’ in
industrial development projects; a full-time job counsellor for African-Nova
Scotians to be partially funded under the Canada Assistance Act; and a proposal,
submitted under the federal War on Poverty program, for an employment program in 11 the rural community of Beechville, Nova Scotia.32 An extensive advertising program, designed to foster support for human rights and forestall a possible public backlash, complemented Nova Scotia’s accelerating human rights program.33
In the late-1960s, federal authorities also used public funds to foster participatory democracy, build support for rights and indirectly pressure provincial governments throughout Canada.34 Officials formalized and expanded public funding programs for activist organizations. New programs, like ‘Opportunities for
Youth’, which targeted youth unemployment, joined other programs such as the
Local Initiatives Project Program (LIP): a competitive grant program for community based projects.35 In Halifax, news articles reported on the importance (and potential hazards) of public funding for social movement organizations.36 Meanwhile, the
Secretary of State expanded grant programs to encourage participation among the alienated, neglected and/or silenced.37 Beginning in 1972, Ottawa granted women priority in Secretary of State funding programs and, one year later, introduced a grant program administered by the Women’s Program in the Secretary of State.38
In 1972 and 1973, affirmative action programs were introduced in Ottawa and in Nova Scotia. The federal Public Service Commission launched the Equal
Opportunities for Women Program in 1972 and, one year later, introduced the Black
Employment Program following meetings with local ‘Black Organizations’ in Nova
Scotia.39 Nova Scotia designed affirmative action programs for the same target groups and, by 1972, a number of agreements were in place.40 Bureaucrats working in new rights agencies also advanced affirmative action in the province:
The Human Rights Commission is already involved in Affirmative Action programs in the government, private industry and business 12
and unions; notably, the Civil Service Commission, the Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company Ltd., Michelin Tire Company Ltd.. ..We are encouraged that profound changes are taking place as a result of the implementation of this program.
During International Women’s Year, the federal Department of Labour introduced new legislation and affirmative action programs designed to rid the
Labour code and department of gender discrimination.42 Also in 1975, Cabinet approved a new affirmative action program for women.43 In 1980, Nova Scotia considered a proposal for a contract compliance program to encourage affirmative action principles in any contract let by the provincial government. In the same year,
Ottawa targeted aboriginals, people with disabilities and women with an affirmative action pilot in three departments. Although evidence of a backlash had surfaced by the early-1980s, the previous two decades saw the introduction of public policies that (re)shaped Canadian citizenship and the rights upon which it was based.
On the Case: Rights Activism in Halifax, Nova Scotia44
Acknowledging both the strengths and limits of a field dominated by national studies and evidence drawn from across diverse times and spaces, scholars interested in political activism have issued calls for the production of carefully conceived studies of activist movements in their local context. Paul Pross, for example, has argued that
‘political scientists, myself included, have succumbed to the temptation to propose grand theories, but we all know these theories are no more than informed
speculation, flawed because the studies on which they are based are not comparable.’45 As exceptions mount and challenge the insights of grand theory, a consensus is emerging that ‘big protest waves are built from smaller 13 campaigns., .[each with its] own logic.’46 Because grand theories can be tested only through comparable case studies and because large protest waves rise on the momentum provided by smaller movements, the need for local studies is manifest.
Case studies offer a single geographic, political, and temporal space in which movements can be situated and more reasonably compared. As Lisa Young and
Joanna Everitt have argued, ‘there is a pressing need for large-scale studies of
Canadian advocacy groups, particularly those operating at the provincial and local levels.’47 Therefore, to gain further insight into the ‘rights revolution’ in Canada, this dissertation focuses on the post-1960 period, using a case study approach.
Options for Halifax case studies are not limited to African-Nova Scotians and feminists. Halifax was also home to labour, peace, gay rights and environmental movements between 1960 and 1982. Faced with so many options, the first question becomes which movements to choose for comparison. Shirley Tillotson has argued that rights instruments are like prisms which refract light to reveal the struggles from which they were bom.48 When viewed in this way, Nova Scotia’s rights instruments reveal the movements for racial and gender equality as key rights claimants. My decision to focus on these two movements as distinct but interrelated case studies was based on their longevity, size, visibility and success in influencing public policies related to rights.
Halifax is a strong choice for a case study such as the one undertaken here.
Since its founding, Nova Scotia — and Halifax in particular — has been shaped by trends in the North Atlantic world.49 The local histories told here are not removed from the larger world around them, or from the national historical narratives already written. The local struggle for greater equality rose from, and contributed to, larger liberation struggles in Canada and the North Atlantic world. So, this study focuses on, but is not limited to, one comer of the world. It affirms and enriches national narratives by demonstrating that local histories resulted from a dynamic interplay of
(inter)national, provincial and local actors, developments and forces, all of which and whom contributed to a national dialogue now known as Canada’s rights revolution, which was, in fact, a series of related and overlapping dialogues and revolutions.
Following World War II, Nova Scotia’s economic modernization gave rise to the ‘new’ economy then emerging throughout Canada.50 Among the notable trends was the changing nature of work.51 Traditional resource industries (coal, fish and apples for example) and the manufacturing sector declined while new resources, including the Sable Island oil reserves, were put into production. As was the case elsewhere, jobs in the ‘tertiary sector’ (sales, service and communication) rose in economic importance during this period. In Halifax, and throughout Canada, the
‘new’ economy drew heavily on female labour. Between 1968 and 1973, the annual increase of women entering the paid workforce in Atlantic Canada was 8.5 percent.53
Women overwhelmingly accounted for new union membership and organized labour spent considerable time and effort trying to organize important postwar sectors. Yet, organization of the service sectors and civil service could not forestall the overall decline of union membership rates.
Politicians played midwife to the new economy. Premier Angus L.
Macdonald established a Department of Labour; improved the provincial workers’ compensation scheme and laid the legal foundation for collective bargaining.54 The importance of civil service employment increased. Locally, the defence sector played a significant role in the economy, which was not new. However, with military commitments in western Europe and Korea and a Cold War deepening, the defence sector grew even more important to the local economy. Fully 25 percent of
Haligonians relied on employment associated with the defence sector. Meanwhile, in the civilian workforce, post-industrial labour required a skilled and highly educated workforce and new public investments further increased the local importance of the education and health sectors.55 Additionally, as was the case in provincial and regional capitals throughout Canada, the number and size of government programs introduced beginning in the late 1950s expanded the local public service.
A range of new federal economic and social policies, introduced beginning in the late-1950s, strongly influenced modernization in Halifax.56 Cost-sharing programs channelled federal money to all Canadian provinces and fostered national standards in federal policy priority areas under provincial jurisdiction, including education and healthcare. Economic development programs and equalization payments, meanwhile, targeted regional disparities. The field offices and agencies created to administer new programs were located in provincial capitals, including
Halifax. Thus, funds supporting regional economic development, equalization and cost-shared programs, flowed through Halifax, solidifying the local economic base, further consolidating power in the provincial capital and facilitating the city’s emergence as a regional centre.57
In the period after World War II, Halifax grew in both landmass and population. Although not benefitting from immigration to the same extent as many other Canadian cities, population growth in Halifax was driven by the baby boom
CO and rural depopulation, as it was elsewhere in Canada. The city’s size and population also grew when areas beyond the peninsula were annexed. As a result, growth in Halifax greatly exceeded national increases. In 1941, Halifax county was home to 122,656 people. Twenty years later the county had almost doubled, to
225,700 people. By comparison, Canada’s population as a whole only grew by 37 percent. During the next two decades, the rate of population growth in Halifax slowed to better align with national rates, growing by another 27.7 percent as compared to 26.5 percent for the Canadian population as a whole.
Nova Scotians, like their national counterparts, were on the move in the years following World War II. Halifax attracted rural residents in search of work as well as a host of other permanent and transient populations. Yet, population movement was broader than just rural depopulation. Local universities and vocational schools attracted students from across Canada and the United States. So too did Cold War defence spending ensure a regular supply of military personnel. Urbanites also moved to work in different cities, as the profile of feminists active in Halifax suggests. A number of Americans arrived in Canada to avoid forced military service during the Vietnam War. Other youthful baby boomers simply sought personal growth ‘on the road’ and local Councillors and residents opened hostels and youth centres during the summer in anticipation of an influx of migrant youth.59
In response to economic and social transformations, the Halifax municipal council adopted a reconstruction master plan detailing a program of urban renewal. 17
Starting in the 1950s, in response to the postwar baby boom and supported by enormous provincial and federal investments, Halifax, like other Canadian cities, built new schools, hospitals, recreation facilities, university buildings and residential complexes. The liberalization of antiquated municipal liquor laws, meanwhile, facilitated the modernization and expansion of the city’s entertainment sector.60 New transportation infrastructure, population pressures and limited peninsular real estate as well as federal home ownership programs drove a local process of suburbanization facilitated by the municipal annexation of the areas immediately west of the peninsula.61 As the relatively affluent moved to suburbia, the residents of
Halifax’s poorest neighbourhoods were displaced during a process of ‘renewal.’
Slum clearance facilitated the construction of new mixed-use complexes like Scotia
Square but simultaneously led to the loss of home ownership among the city’s low- income citizens including many African-Nova Scotians.
Local Patterns of Inequality
The benefits of municipal modernization were not equally shared. Like their contemporaries living elsewhere in Canada, gender and racial inequality shaped the lives of African-Nova Scotians and women in Halifax. In 1947, African-American artists visiting from the notoriously oppressive American south reported that they had never witnessed living conditions as poor as those found among African-Nova
Scotians living in Halifax.63 Many local businesses refused to hire or serve African-
Nova Scotians. Black workers in Halifax earned a fraction of the income of their
Caucasian contemporaries while working the few, unstable jobs available to them.64 18
Though women entered the workforce and pursued post-secondary education in record numbers in this period, they also faced considerable local discrimination:
educational streaming into gender appropriate fields, occupational ‘ghettos’,
gendered civil service jobs, exclusion from jury service and a municipal franchise
based on the payment of tax.65
During the same period, the working class saw hard won gains slipping
away. Paralleling continental trends, Cold War paranoia led to a weakened position
for organized labour in Halifax.66 Many hoped that the decline in regional postwar
union membership would be balanced by the organizing occurring among the
increasing numbers of service sector workers and civil servants but a trend of
decreasing union membership continued. During the period, Halifax witnessed the
contradictory trends of an increasing rate of unionization among women and
African-Nova Scotians at a time of overall decline for organized labour.
Residents of Halifax were more than spectators to the changes shaping their
lives. Groups representing local business and labour interests were joined by
organizations representing African-Nova Scotians and women. Few records exist to
document the formation of the integrationist and gradualist African-Nova Scotian
organizations that emerged in the 1930s, including The Colored Citizens
Improvement League (1932) and Colored Education Centre (1938).67 The Nova
Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People was established in the
immediate aftermath of World War II, drawing its initial support from both the
Colored Education Centre and a local legion for African-Nova Scotian veterans. An active local women’s movement, led by the Provincial Council of Women and 19
Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club, had been seeking equal access to public life and a voice in public affairs since the suffrage movement.68 The citizens organizing, joining and leading these organizations and their campaigns for equality were not deferential to authority, but their preference for low-key tactics, integrationist aims and a gradualist approach made them less visible than later activists.69 After 1960, the city continued to grow, diversify and modernize and local citizens assumed an active role in the process.
Building the Case: Historical Evidence and the Sources Used
Based largely on primary research, this dissertation is grounded in a rich and diverse range of secondary sources, including the literature related to social movement theory, the history of the city of Halifax and the province of Nova Scotia, the history of feminism and of African-Nova Scotian activism in Halifax and beyond, as well as the rapidly expanding number of sources on the rights revolution in Canada. Primary research was conducted at university, provincial and national archives, in private collections and through public materials (including television shows, newspapers and newsletters). Historians studying the history of Canadian social movements are fortunate that a number of organizations deposited their papers in archives. Yet, these archival collections are rarely complete. Stories are pieced together only after consulting many, often diverse, collections and through much cross-referencing.
A number of activists agreed to be interviewed for this dissertation. Although
I originally imagined that the oral histories collected might fill archival gaps, the number of interviews is smaller than I had hoped. The ‘snowball technique’ of 20 identifying interview subjects ground to a halt when no further activists responded to my requests for an interview. Consequently, the number interviewed can be treated as neither a statistically significant nor a representative sample of social movement activists in Halifax between 1960 and 1982. However, this is not an oral history project — oral histories are used here to supplement, enrich and corroborate archival and secondary evidence.
The research is laid out in five chapters. Chapter One introduces the analytical frame of this study through an exploration of social movement theory.
Chapter Two presents a local context for activism in Halifax and then explores the root of collective action — the creation of a political consciousness. Chapter Three explores the process of formal organization, highlighting how, in the context of a growing political consciousness, formal organization coalesced around leaders, communication networks and organizations. Chapter Four addresses resource mobilization strategies, arguing that the rise of public funding programs for SMOs led to increased activity but presented a new series of challenges to activists. Chapter
Five explores activists’ tactics, arguing that activists often emulated their forebears and, aware that political influence flows through well-established channels, used many of the same tactics as their elders. Among the significant tactical developments of this period was the emergence of a radical flank within each movement.
Applying a longitudinal case study approach to rights activism in Halifax will yield several results. It will test a theory of social movement dynamics by bringing comparable local evidence to bear. At the same time, it presents a model for 21 future studies of social movement mobilization — regardless of time, space or issue.
Lastly, this study presents mobilization as one critical element within the historical process known as Canada’s rights revolution — an element that allowed comparatively disadvantaged citizens to engage their social and political contemporaries in a series of dialogues that would ultimately (re)shape the meaning of Canadian rights and citizenship. Throughout, activist determination and effort is linked to their historical context — with a particular focus on state influence — to respond to the original question: how do relatively disadvantaged challengers mobilize to influence public policy?
1 Qt. Bruno Bauer, in Karl Marx, A World Without Jews, trans. with an introduction by Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), 16. 2 Canadian historians and social movement scholars have previously acknowledged the challenges associated with social movement organization. See, for example, Leslie A. Pal, Interests of State: The Politics o f Language, Multiculturalism, and Feminism in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 271. 3 Dominique Clement, Canada’s Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937- 1982 (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2008), 3. See also: Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: the ironies o f identity in a rebellious era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009). 4 The term Affican-Canadian and African-Nova Scotian are used here, in line with the preferred terminology o f the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia. The word ‘Black’ is occasionally used as an adjective. ‘Blacks’ is not used as a noun unless the term is part o f a direct quote. In the period under study activists were divided over the use of the terms ‘coloured’ and ‘Black.’ Rather than alternate, I use presently accepted nomenclature. 5 On the national and provincial celebrations o f International Year for Human Rights, see: Canadian Commission, International Year for Human Rights, International Year for Human Rights 1968 in Canada (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, 1969). Canadian Activist Norma Walmsley remembers that the declaration of International Women’s Year was no small feat in an environment dominated by men — many o f whom believed that women’s concerns in development were addressed through UNICEF. On Walmsley’s recollections and involvement at the United Nations, see: Norma Walmsley, “A Decade for Women — At Last,” in Clyde Sanger, ed. Canadians and the United Nations (Ottawa: Communications and Culture Branch, Department o f External Affairs, 1988), 147- 152. On International Women’s Year, see also: Secretary o f State, International Women’s Year, 1975 (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, cl975), np; Library and Archives Canada, Record Group 106-A-4, Volume 22, No File Number, International Women’s Year; and Interview: Muriel Duckworth, conducted 20 May 2005; Farmer Brown, The Fourth Estate, 6 February 1975, 8; Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status o f Women, Herself/Elle-Meme. 6 Morton Weinfeld, “The Development of Affirmative Action in Canada,”Canadian Ethnic Studies 13.2(1981): 23-39. 7 See, for example: Staff Writer, “The Santo Domingo o f Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” The Fourth Estate, 5 November 1970, 11-4; “George Bain on War Measures Act: The Government Must Still Answer Some Questions,” The Fourth Estate, 12 November 1970, 7; “Has Trudeau Forgotten His Own Words?”The Fourth Estate, 26 November 1970,4; and NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2912, Muriel 22
Duckworth Fonds, Folder 16, War Measures Act, Broadsheet. 8 LAC, RG 6, Accession 1986-87/319, SOS Fonds, Box 147, File CB-17-3-2, Human Rights Day in Canada, letter from Duncan Trafford dated 1 December, 1970; and LAC, RG 6, Accession 1986- 87/319, SOS Fonds, Box 147, File CB-17-3-2, Human Rights Day in Canada, memo from Ranjit S. Hall dated 27 October, 1970. 9 NSARM, HQ1901 C212 U58, With Enthusiasm and Faith: Sixty Years of CFUW, 116-20. See also: Judy Rebick, Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005), 6; Sue Findlay, “Facing the State: The Politics o f the Women’s Movement Reconsidered,” in Heather Jon Maroney and Meg Luxton, eds. Feminism and Political Economy: Women’s Work, Women's Struggles (Toronto: Methuen, 1987), 34. 10 Maijorie Griffin Cohen, “The Canadian Women’s Movement,” in Ruth Roach Pierson et al., eds. Canadian Women’s Issues, Volume I: Strong Voices (Toronto: James Lorimer and Co. Publishers, 1993), 1-31. Cohen identifies the RCSW as the “most significant single event in establishing a sense of a woman’s movement in Canada.” (5) 11 “Report o f the Royal Commission on the Status o f Women in Canada,” Our Generation 8.2 (Winter/April 1972): 108-115. 12 Carmela Patrias, “Socialists, Jews, and the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights,” Canadian Historical Review 87.2 (June 2006): 265-292. 13 John G. Diefenbaker, One Canada: Memoirs o f the Rt. Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, Volume II, Years of Achievement, 1957-1962 (Toronto: MacMillan o f Canada, 1976), 27; and Peter C. Newman, Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (Toronto and Montreal: McClelland and Stewart, 1963), 224. 14 NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, Copy of Bill No. 53, Second Reading, dated 14 March, 1963. Ontario introduced its Human Rights Code in 1962, becoming the first province to adopt a modem human rights program. Ontario based its initiatives on the human rights program then taking shape in New York State. 15 NSARM, RG 89, Volume 1, Nova Scotia Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, various. See also: Janet Guildford, “A Fragile Independence: The Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women,” in Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, eds.Mothers o f the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 281-304. 16 For a discussion o f federal-provincial relations during this period and the related subjects of intrastate versus interstate relations and the ‘embedded state,’ see: ‘Introduction,’ in Matthew Hayday, Bilingual Today, United Tomorrow: Official Languages in Education and Canadian Federalism (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005). 17 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, Record Group 85, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 15, Conference of Human Rights Minutes, Verbatim Report, 19-22. 18 Senate o f Canada, Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights (Ottawa: Senate of Canada, c2003), 4:4-6. See also: Unidroit, Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Legislative Techniques for the Implementation o f the Preliminary Draft Convention on Harmonised Substantive Rules Regarding Intermediated Securities, Study LXXVI1I - Document 26, 1. Available at: http://www.unidroit.org/english/publications/proceedings/2006/studv/78/s-78-26-e.pdf. 19 Irwin Cotier, International Human Rights Law and the Canadian Charter (Montreal: Canadian Human Rights Foundation, 1992), Appendix 1, 159-168. 20 Lee Waldorf and Susan Bazilli, “Country Papers: Canada,” in Marilou McPhedran, Susan Bazilli, Moana Erickson, Andrew Byrnes, eds. The First CEDA WImpact Study: Convention on the Elimination o f All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: Final Report, 36; and Secretary of State, Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women: Report of Canada (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, 1983), introduction 21 See: Michael D. Behiels, “Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s Legacy: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” in Janet Miron, ed.A History of Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc, 2009); Beverley McLachlin, “Canada’s Coming of Age,” in Joseph Eliot Magnet et al., eds. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Reflections on the Charter After Twenty Years. Canada: Lexis Nexus Butterworths, 2003; LAC, Manuscript Group 31- H155, Daniel G. Hill fonds, Folder 8, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Statement by the 23
Honourable Jean Chretien, Minister o f Justice, to the Special Joint Committee on the Constitution. Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management, Record Group 89, Volume 2, Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 9, Research - Women and the Constitution, 1980-1, “Charter o f Rights Request ‘Ludicrous’” Mail Star, 20 May 1981. 22 Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management, Manuscript Group 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, Preface, 1. Similarly, Jennifer Smith cites 1959 as the date the Interdepartmental Committee was founded. See: Jennifer Smith, “Provincial Social Policy During the Stanfield Era,” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 6 (2003): 1-16. The first meeting o f the committee, according to official records took place on 14 November 1962. See: NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, Minutes of Meeting, dated 14 November 1962. 23 Robert Stanfield in Bridglal Pachai, ed. Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, 25lh Anniversary, 1967-1992, 32. Stanfield connects the study, The Condition o f the Negroes o f Halifax City, Nova Scotia to his motivation to establish an Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights. 24In 1963, the committee met quarterly but the committee was convened only three times in 1964. Between November 1966 and August 1967 no meetings were held. Additionally, few complaints lodged with the committee resulted in convictions. See: NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1(a), Study o f Negroes, Minutes o f Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 13 January 1965; and RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1(a), Study o f Negroes, Minutes of Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights Meeting, 15 June 1965; NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, Robert Stanfield Folder 16-1 (a), Study o f Negroes, Organization and Administration o f the Human Rights Program o f the Province of Nova Scotia, 14; NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 45, Robert Stanfield, Folder 18-3, Legislation, Speech from the Throne, Fifth Session o f the 48th General Assembly, dated 9 February 1967, 6; NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1(a), Study of Negroes, Memo from Robert L. Stanfield dated 15 June 1967; NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-l(a), Study o f Negroes, Minutes of the Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 9 August, 1967. For more on the history of the Commission and its activities, see: Bridglal Pachai, ed. Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, 25th Anniversary, 1967-1992: A History (Halifax: Province o f Nova Scotia, 1992); and NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds. 25 Volume IV, 1968-9, Letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum, 19 November 1968; copy o f Wayne Adams, ““Don’t Want Violence”: Negro spokesman hopes premier will act soon,”The Mail Star, 31 October 1968, in NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Brenda Large Fonds, Folder 6, Black United Front; NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume IV, 1968-9, memo from G.I. Smith dated 10 December 1968; and NSARM, RG 85, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 2, Premier’s Report on Human Rights, various. On the national and provincial celebrations o f International Year for Human Rights, see: Canadian Commission, International Year for Human Rights, International Year for Human Rights 1968 In Canada (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1969). 26 Established in 1938, in the wake o f the Labour Conventions Case, CAALL facilitated communication and collaboration among Canada’s labour officials until the 1960s when human rights emerged as a more significant policy field. See the CAALL proceedings from the annual conference between 1959 and 1968. 27 Canadian Association o f Administrators o f Labour Legislation, Proceedings o f Twentieth-Fifth Annual Conference at Fredericton, October 3-7, 1966, 116. 28 NSARM, RG 89, Volume 1-067700013.1, Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 10, Correspondence, 1978, Memo dated 28 September 1977, 1-2. 29 NSARM, RG 89, Volume 1, Nova Scotia Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, Minutes 16 November, 1976,4. 30 Betsy Chambers, “Members named to new N.S. advisory council on women,” The Chronicle- Herald, 15 September 1977,4. See also: Guildford, “A Fragile Independence,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 284. 31 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Folder 33, Province of Nova Scotia Inter-Departmental Committee on Human Rights - Financial Aid to 24
Further Education o f Negroes - Terms o f Reference, approved 2 April 1965. 32 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-l(a), Study of Negroes, 1965, Newsletter from Chairman o f Inter-departmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 15 October 1965, 1-2; and NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1(a), Study of Negroes, Meeting o f the Inter-departmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 13 January 1965,4. 33 NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume III, 1966-7, memo from Jean Dobson dated 7 July 1966. Beginning on 1 September 1966 and culminating on 10 December, Human Rights Day, the campaign used media advertising, mail, public speakers, a poster contest and essay competition. 34 Pal, Interests of State, 3. 35 Pal, Interests of State, 106; Pauline Janitch, “Seven Projects at HQ: Transient Youth Flock to Halifax Despite Cool Reception from Residents,” The Fourth Estate,, 24 June, 1971, 10-1; Nancy White, “Opportunities for Youth,”The Fourth Estate, Volume 3, No. 13, 8 July, 1971, 7; Susan Perly, “Bureau Has 4 Major Projects: Helping Women Achieve Equal Rights in Nova Scotia,”The Fourth Estate, 22 July 1971, 3; and Staff Writer, “Women and the Law in Nova Scotia,” The Fourth Estate, 14 September 1972, 11. 36 Staff writer, “Project Officer Defends OFY: “The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened to This Country,” The Fourth Estate, Volume 4, Number 7, 1 June, 1972,12-3; and Staff Writer, “Atlantic Region to Receive $17 million in LIP funds,”The Fourth Estate, volume 6, number 26, 3 October, 1974,13. 37 Pal, Interests of State, 107-109. 38 Ibid, 119-120. 39 NSARM, Record Group 85, Box 1, Folder 4. Proposal for Provincial Contract Compliance Program, 1980,4. 40 See: NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Box 1, Folder 4, Proposal for Provincial Contract Compliance Program, 1980,4; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/018, BUF Fonds, Folder 19, Federal Equal Opportunity Program, 1980-2. 41 NSARM, Record Group 85, Box 1, Folder 1. Evelyn Jackson et al. Visible Minorities in Nova Scotia: A Call for Equality (Halifax: NSHRC, 1973), 12. 42 LAC, RG 106, Volume 21, IWY Fonds, No File Number, Interdepartmental Committee - Departmental Activities, Report. 43 LAC, RG 106, Volume 21, IWY Fonds, No File Number, Equal Opportunity for Women, Office of the Public Service Commission, Memo from the Treasury Board and Public Service Commission, 20 November 1975, 1. 44 For an early argument on and demonstration of the value o f case studies, see Franca Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson, On the Case: Explorations in Social History (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1998). 45 A. Paul Pross, Group Politics and Public Policy, Second Edition (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992), 87. 46 Pamela E. Oliver and Daniel J. Myers, “Networks, Diffusion, and Cycles o f Collective Action,” in Diani and McAdam, eds. Social Movements and Networks, 176. 47 Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt, Advocacy Groups (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004), 9. 48 Tillotson, “Human Rights Law as Prism,” 532-557. 49 This belies the popular stereotype (sometimes promoted by academics) of the province as a conservative bastion and cultural backwater. For perhaps the best known challenge to this stereotypical view, see E.R. Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype: Essays on the 20th Century Maritimes (Fredericton, NB: Acadiensis Press, 1989). For a scholarly example o f the ‘conservative’ argument, see: J. Murray Beck, “An Atlantic region political culture: a chimera,” in David Jay Bercuson and Phillip A. Buckner, eds. Eastern and Western Perspectives (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 147-168. 50 Conrad, “The 1950s: The Decade o f Development,” in Forbes and Muise, eds.The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 382. 51 Reid, “The 1970s,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 473. 52 Reid, “The 1970s,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 473. 25
53 Della Stanley, “The 1960s: The Illusions and Realities of Progress,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 453. The national average was 8.1 percent. 54 Conrad, “The 1950s,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 385. 55 Smith, “The Stanfield Government and Social Policy in Nova Scotia,”Journal o f the Royal Historical Society of Nova Scotia: 11. 56 Smith, “The Stanfield Government and Social Policy in Nova Scotia,”Journal o f the Royal Historical Society o f Nova Scotia: 5-6. 57 Conrad, “The 1950s” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 386; and Reid, “The 1970s,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 475. 58 Conrad “The 1950s” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 384. 59 Janitch, “Seven Projects at HQ,”The Fourth Estate, 24 June, 1971, 10-11. 60 Fingard, Guildford and Sutherland, Halifax, 169. 61 Fingard, Guildford and Sutherland, Halifax, 167-170. 62 Institute of Public Affairs Dalhousie University, The Condition o f the Negroes o f Halifax City, Nova Scotia (Halifax, NS: Dalhousie University, 1962), 13-5. On Afficville see: Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis Magill, The Africville Relocation Report (Halifax, NS: Dalhousie University, 1971); George Elliot Clarke, “The Death and Rebirth o f Africadian Nationalism,” New Maritimes XI.5 (May/June 1993): 20-8; Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis William Magill, Africville: The Life and Death o f a Canadian Black Community (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1999); James Jennings, Race, Neighbourhoods and the Misuse o f Social Capital (New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007); and Jennifer J. Nelson, Razing Africville: A Geography of Racism (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2008). 63 Staff Writer, “American Artists Score Racial Discrimination,” Halifax Chronicle, 15 September 1947,1 64 NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 40, "Human Rights Board Named: Aid For Negroes First Goal," Newspaper Article, n.d.; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth, Folder 2, VoW Constitution, Voice of Women: Education through Involvement; and Folder 9, VoW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960 - 1985, Minutes, dated 10 May 1963. See also: Wanda Thomas Bernard and Judith Fingard, “Black Women at Work: Race, Family, and Community in Greater Halifax,” 205; and Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 265-6. 65 On feminist campaigns including jury duty, the municipal franchise regardless of whether a woman paid tax, and gendered job advertisements, see: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Marjorie Grace Wombolt Fonds, Volume 55, Letters, Papers, Legal Status o f Women etc. 1938-54, various; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Wombolt Fonds, Volume 60, Lectures and Papers - Women in Political Life, 1954-1958; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Wombolt Fonds, Volume 64, Lectures and Papers: Right o f a Married Woman to an Independent Domicile, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Right o f a Married Woman to an Independent Domicile;” NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Wombolt Fonds, Volume 65, Letters and Papers, 1949-52, “A Woman’s Role, Her Rights and Responsibilities;” NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Wombolt Fonds, Volume 82, HBPWC Fonds, 1949-52, various; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 711, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 8, Minutes o f Meeting May 1959-May 1960, Minutes of Board Meeting, September, I960;” NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 65, Women Jurors: Data 1951 and 1978 Item 65.7, Club History, 24 March, 1958, Information for 20 Question Challenge Program on CHNS; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 716, HBPWC, Volume 73, Coastwise, 1947-1976, October 1947, 2; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 716, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 73, Coastwise, Item 73.38 A Round Up of Women: Business and Professional Women’s Club of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia;” NSARM, MG 20, Volume 717, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 91, Booklet: Choosing a Career; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 717, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 2, “With Enthusiasm and Faith: History o f the Canadian Federation o f Business and Professional Women’s Club, 1930, 1972;” and NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Nova Scotia’s Ethnic Community Fonds (Blacks), Volume 19, Nova Scotia Human Rights Act, Item 32, Human Equality — Nova Scotia's Human Rights Act. See also: Judith Fingard, “Women’s Organizations,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 25-48. On interwar and postwar black activism, see: Bridglal Pachai, Beneath the Clouds o f the Promised Land: The Survival o f Nova Scotia's Blacks, volumes //(Halifax: The Black Educators Association, 1990). 26
66 Margaret Conrad, “The 1950s,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 391. 67 Pachai, Beneath the Clouds o f the Promised Land, 165. 68 E.R. Forbes, “In Search o f a Post-Confederation Maritime Historiography, 1900-1967,” in Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype, 61. See also: E.R. Forbes, “Battles in Another War: Edith Archibald and the Halifax Feminist Movement,” in E.R. Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype. For sources on the campaigns launched during this period, see Note 86. 69 See: E.R. Forbes, “Battles in Another War: Edith Archibald and the Halifax Feminist Movement,” in E.R. Forbes, Challenging the Regional Stereotype, 91 and Pachai, Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land, 135-196; and Jules Ramon Oliver, "Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People: an historical evaluation of the NSAACP and the role it has played in the area of employment," MSW Thesis, Maritime School of Social Work, 1969 (Halifax: Maritime School of Social Work). 27
Chapter One
Social Movement Theory
The objective of the following chapter is two-fold: first, to provide, an overview of the major schools of social movement theory and, secondly, drawing on the former, to outline the theoretical approach that informs this study.
Canada’s Rights Movements and Historical Scholarship to Date
In Canada, political change results from a process that is no more easily confined within legislatures than it is the exclusive domain of those political parties called upon to form governments. Political change also involves citizens who, though they may be partisan voters or members of official political parties, also organize to influence public policy. In arguing this point, cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead
(1901-1978) once famously warned readers to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”1 Throughout the 20th century, Canadian activists struggled for greater equality on multiple fronts. As historian Matthew Hayday has demonstrated in a case study of official language activism in New Brunswick, Canada’s political structure provoked multipronged campaigns by presenting ‘multiple points of relevant access on the national, regional, and local levels.’2
Historical studies cast Canada’s rights revolution as an event in at least two phases. The ‘first phase’ spans 1930 to 1960. Studies of this period have generated important insights including: an early focus on issues related to religion and rights; an alignment between international concerns and local/national concerns; a state- 28 focused approach to activism; a strong preference for ‘respectable’ (often quiet) tactics rather than disruption; the importance of inter-movement cooperation; and the predominance of integrationist and gradualist approaches. After 1960 the context in which activists operated, the size and diversity of Canada’s rights movement and the character of rights activism changed dramatically. Studies of the second phase of
Canada’s rights revolution, between the Bill of Rights (1960) and the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms (1982) demonstrate the local relevance of international thought, the importance of state funding programs, the differences among
‘generations’ of rights activists, the heterogeneity of social movements and the state use of surveillance and detention.3
Our understanding of the decades before 1960 period is essential to an understanding of development in the second phase of Canada’s rights revolution. In
Halifax, mobilization and the course of the movements for racial and gender equality
after 1960 is closely linked to developments from the first phase of Canada’s revolution. Notwithstanding important changes, Canadian activists in both periods
sought political reform through social movement campaigns which were launched
and sustained by local activists and organizations linked through national and
international networks.4
Social Movement Theory: Political Form and Heterogeneous Network
Important as they are to political reform in the 20th century, social movements were not a recent development, but had their roots in the eighteenth century. In his survey of historical protest movements, Charles Tilly notes that, by 1770, western 29
Europeans and North Americans had laid the foundation for a new political phenomenon that we now call the social movement. Tilly defines the social movement by its actions and the historical continuity linking protest actions.5 Doug
McAdam and Mario Diani have made similar arguments, suggesting that social movements ‘cannot be reduced to specific insurrections or revolts, but rather resemble strings of more or less connected events, scattered across time and space.’6
Nor can they be reduced to single organizations or individuals but ‘consist of groups and organizations with various levels of formalization, linked in patterns of interaction which run from the fairly centralized to the totally decentralized, from the cooperative to the explicitly hostile.’7 Drawing upon such insights, this dissertation recognizes social movements as highly heterogeneous networks of citizens animated by an opinion or belief representing a desire to change some
o aspect(s) of the social system or reward distribution or both.
In particular, this dissertation focuses on one element of social movements
— social movement organizations (SMOs) — as formal expressions of the more diverse movements from which they arise. SMOs form a critical social and political interface with the wider movement by acting as an identifiable face for the movement and channelling movement resources and skills toward particular objectives. By quantifying support through membership lists, petitions and public protests, SMOs assert the consequential presence of a belief system in ways that aggrieved but atomized individuals cannot. Finally, SMOs generate and leave behind the records upon which historical studies are based - subsets of which find their way into archival collections. 30
The analytical utility of recognizing a social movement as a network lies in
its ability to explain the operation of other significant factors. Doug McAdam and
Florence Passy agree that social networks ‘create an initial disposition to participate by developing specific meaning structures,’ present opportunities to participate, and
structure participation once the decision to contribute is made.9 The common
experience discovered through network relationships short-circuits the ‘fundamental
attribution error’: a tendency among atomized individuals to blame themselves for
their situation.10 As McAdam has argued, ‘cognitive liberation [from repressive
structures] is most likely to take place within established interpersonal networks.’11
From the moment of inception, social movements are inextricably linked to the
networks surrounding their constituent members.
Despite a high degree of continuity, the networks surrounding these
comparatively successful rights movements diversified and shifted during the period
under study. Between 1960 and 1982, an interracial movement for racial equality
faced challenges integrating a younger generation of activists who publicly
abandoned interracial alliances and formal interracial organizations in favour of
racially exclusive structures. Similarly, a younger generation of feminists in Halifax
emerged, embraced new issues, adopted more confrontational tactics, spoke a
different language of activism and created their own organizations, thereby
diversifying the feminist network. In both cases, diversification reflected the
coming-of-age of Canada’s postwar generation, whose numbers and passion
attracted the attention of both activists and legislators.
Formal and informal, direct and indirect, permanent and ad hoc relationships 31 defined a local network that connected Haligonian activists to each other, to provincial organizations, to national communities and to international rights movements. Whatever public divisions existed between 1960 and 1982, even as black and feminist Haligonians withdrew from mixed identity groups to continue the quest for greater equality, each self-defined community remained formally and informally tied to the other, and to a wider activist network and a supportive public.
Social movement scholars refer to that conglomeration of activists, their constituent communities, wider activist network and supportive public — all those who lent support to the campaigns for equality in a spirit of common interest — as a movement’s mass base. This ‘mass base’ is distinct from a movement’s elite allies
(such as governments) who, working in part in their own interests, nevertheless offered resources to political challengers. Through local struggles launched by the mass base — and increasingly enabled by elite allies — Haligonians negotiated provincial rights instruments while also contributing to wider national struggles and staying abreast of international developments. As a result, activists in Halifax and beyond contributed to what Michael Ignatieff termed the ‘rights revolution’ by launching campaigns and winning local, provincial and national rights recognition.1")
For many Canadians, the period from 1960 to 1982 brought increased levels of civic engagement. Although social movement organizations (SMOs) proliferated in the 1960s, they predated Canadian confederation. Business interests, for example, had organized for political influence since the arrival of Europeans in North
America.13 The significance of the groups studied here is rooted in their contributions to Canada’s rights revolution, which, built upon local struggles, might 32 be considered a series of related revolutions, each with its own local history. The significance of postwar activism has been demonstrated by historians, political scientists and sociologists.14 This dissertation is premised on the assumption that
Canadian activist groups played a significant role in the development of rights instruments. Their legislative legacy, however, says little about the means by which victories were won. Specifically, this dissertation addresses the means by which activists launched and sustained rights campaigns, linking mobilization to historical context to demonstrate the local character and logic of each movement.15
Social Movement Theory Camps
Scholars have applied a number of theories to the study of activism, social movements and their relationship to public policy. Some have applied ‘rational choice’ or ‘policy community’ theory. Others work from a legal positivist or natural law perspective or adopt an approach rooted in queer or feminist theory. Still other scholars apply or layer conservative or liberal frameworks in their studies — these
scholars are often found wringing their hands over the issue of litigation as an activist strategy and whether Canada benefits from, or suffers under, an ‘activist court.’ Some scholars apply frameworks that prize agency and individualism - such as pluralism or rational choice - while neo-Marxists and Canadian ‘new’ political economists (embracing the tradition of Harold Innis) apply structural theories to their studies. In recent decades the insights provided by Jurgen Habermas, whose studies of civil society first appeared in English in the late 1980s, have inspired a growing body of literature. And, through theories such as Theda Skocpol’s historical 33 institutionalism, sociologist and political theorist Max Weber has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent years.16 Each of these approaches provides a theoretical framework yielding insight into aspects of the nature of activism, social movements and their relationship to public policy, but none offers a felicitous framework for the study of the systematic process of activist mobilization within a specific historical context.
While acknowledging and drawing upon the contributions made by other scholars, this dissertation focuses on themeans by which Canadian citizens organizing outside of formal institutions mobilized to achieve public policy influence in pursuit of greater measures of equality. It therefore draws its theoretical frame from social movement theory. Specifically, the framework applied is an expanded version of Doug McAdam’s political process model as first articulated in
Political Process and the Development o f Black Insurgency, 1930-1970.11 Asserting
the continued utility of the political process model, authors Doug McAdam, Sidney
Tarrow, and Charles Tilly responded to mounting criticism regarding the static
nature of the earlier model. While the earlier iteration of the political process model
focused on political opportunities, shared understandings, indigenous organizational
potential and resource mobilization, in application it resulted in static structural
explanations for collective action.Dynamics o f Contention put the model ‘in motion’
by exploring the interactive processes at work and the elements of human agency
essential to social movement activism. Political opportunities, claim framing, and resource mobilization continue to dominate social movement studies, even as those
elements are balanced by considerations of human agency.18 This approach found a 34 recent expression in Jeffrey Cormier’s study of the Canadianization movement: a mid-20th century nationalist social movement which fought for Canadian content and appointments in the academy.19 In his analysis of the emergence, survival and
success of the Canadianization movement, Cormier notes that political opportunity, claim framing and resource mobilization ‘combined enhance considerably our understanding of the logic of collective action.’20
Long before Cormier’s study, the earliest factor seriously explored by
collective action scholars was the individual decision to engage in activism. In the
mid-1960s, Mancur Olson publishedThe Logic o f Collective Action, thereby
launching the rational choice theory of collective action. Olson roots his theory in
the basic micro-economic principles of supply, demand and cost-benefit analysis.
Since individuals act rationally in their own best interest, Olson insists that
collective action also be viewed as rational and calculated. Olson observed,
however, that among many latent collective identities, few groups successfully
organized. Therefore, he reasoned, selective benefits (those enjoyed only by group
members) were the surest means to induce activism among rationally motivated
citizens. When individuals stood to enjoy collective goods regardless of their level
of commitment or participation, those benefits offered little inducement to
•y i activism. Olson reasoned that limited inducement would lead most citizens to act
as ‘free riders’ - those that would enjoy and exercise the benefits won but would not
expend time, energy or money to win them.
The key, according to Olson, was winning the rational, self-interested citizen
over to collective action when reason warned against it. Early rational choice 35 scholars emphasized selective material benefit as an impetus to mobilization.
Rational choice, in its later iterations, looked toward the nonmaterial rewards compelling citizens to action. In those studies, socialization, social contact and psychological satisfaction, for example, are viewed• as ♦incentives to mobilize. • • 22 More recently, scholars have asserted the importance of ‘solidary’ incentives — the myriad interpersonal rewards that provide the motive force for participation — as a solution to Olson’s ‘free rider’ problem.23 While some scholars expanded Olson’s definition of selective benefit, others challenged rational choice theory on a number of fronts.
In the 1970s, theorists shifted the focus away from individual inducements and towards activists’ collective ability to gather and use the resources necessary to mount a campaign. In summarizing this new resource mobilization paradigm,
William Gamson argues that ‘the collective goals of political actors rather than the personal goals of members are assumed to be the relevant part of an explanation of collective behaviour.’24 Turning away from questions of personal participation, resource mobilization theory focuses on the resources necessary to achieve
'ye collective goals and the structures necessary to mobilize resources.
Resources, in part, define the range of viable tactics. Through mimicry and
improvisation, social movement organizations learn tactics from their
contemporaries and forebears. Arguing as much, Tilly introduced the idea of ‘action repertoires.’ Tilly argues that activist tactics ‘are learned, limited in number and
scope, slowly changing, and particularly adapted to their setting.’ Thus movements within a particular democratic state, for example, are unlikely to invent tactics. 36
Tactically, by the 1960s, little was new under the sun. Rather, the well-adapted and demonstrably effective tactics of contemporaries and forebears formed the bedrock of organizational action repertoires. Addressing how organizational repertoires evolve, Pamela Oliver and Daniel Myers argue that ‘over time, the action set of each actor evolves in response to the actions of the others and, thus, the.. .actor is constrained and influenced by the characteristics and actions of all other actors.’27
Yet, organizations are clearly only able to adopt the tactics for which they can mobilize the necessary resources.
While a consideration of resources and mobilizing structures is necessary, it provides an insufficient explanation for the timing and strength of social movements.
In 1975, William A. Gamson argued that ‘large-scale structural changes such as urbanization and industrialization are important’ because they ‘strongly affect the
number, identity and organization of contenders which in turn determine the predominant forms and loci of conflict.’28 Other scholars also recognized the effect
of external forces on activism. Moving beyond resource mobilization theory, Tilly
laid the foundation for the political process school.From In Mobilization to
Revolution, he outlined the ‘polity model.’ Citing an argument Alexis de Toqueville had posited over a century earlier, Tilly pointed out that if ‘the general effect of
sustained repression is not to build up tensions to the point of a great explosion but to reduce the overall level of collective action,’ then the attentive scholar must look to changes in the political structure to explain collective action.29 Central to Tilly’s model was the process by which interests are either organized into or out of the political landscape (or ‘polity’). 37
McAdam drew on Tilly’s observations, arguing that, because oppression and grievances are more or less constant, any explanation of mobilization must assume that activists were aware of and troubled by their oppression for some time prior to mobilization but that their interests remained outside of the polity.30 In 1982,
McAdam expanded the polity model and laid the foundation for the theoretical perspective adopted here. Although McAdam admitted that resources play an important role in the emergence, development and decline of social movements, he developed his ‘political process’ model in response to what he viewed as the shortcomings of resource mobilization theories. Whereas resource mobilization perspectives assume that an influx of resources typically precedes the fairly sudden emergence of social movements, McAdam took a longer view of the process.
Addressing the origins of social movements, his ‘political process model is based on the assumption that movements only emerge over a long period of time in response to broad social, economic and political processes that afford insurgents a certain structural potential for collective action.’31 Nor did McAdam believe that change had to occur at a macro level, arguing that ‘regardless of whether the broad social processes productive of such shifts serve to undermine the structural basis of the entire political system or simply to enhance the strategic position of a single challenger, the result is the same: a net increase in the political leverage exercised by insurgent groups.’32
Political opportunity represents only a potential for influence. To capitalize on moments of opportunity individuals must achieve a political consciousness and organize for change. Identifying ‘cognitive liberation’ as a key to mobilization, 38
McAdam argues that ‘before collective protest can get underway, people must collectively define their situations as unjust and subject to change through group
action.’33 Shifting political conditions supply the ‘cues’ necessary to instil the sense
of political efficacy essential to collective action. Once members of a community identify their condition as unjust and subject to change, ‘indigenous organizational potential’ — a descriptive measure of the community resources available to
insurgents in their effort to organize formally, including leaders, communication
networks and existing organizations — determines the extent to which activists can
capitalize on the opportunities for mobilization. In laying out his model, McAdam
therefore attributes the generation of a social movement to the confluence of three
factors: expanding political opportunities, the mobilization of indigenous
organizational resources and the shared cognitions which mediate the former.34
According to McAdam, the life and decline of a social movement is dependent on
the relative stability of these three factors sustaining the social movement.35
Although he rejected resource mobilization as a theory capable of explaining
the emergence of social movements, McAdam does not deny the role played by
resources in the life of a social movement. Once mobilized, the movement must be
able to create ‘more enduring organizational structures’ and routinely gather
resources ‘as a hedge against the uncertainties of the environment they confront.’36
Social movement organizations assume the ‘centralized direction of the movement previously exercised by informal groups’ but the transition can only occur if ‘the resources needed to fuel the development of the movement’s formal organizational
structure can be mobilized.’37 39
Prior to the emergence of formal SMOs, activists require resources related to the spread of political consciousness and building the foundation for strong organizations. Leaders, communication networks and existing organizations increase the possibility of successful mobilization. In Halifax, between 1960 and 1982, owing to the prior existence of movements for gender and racial equality, each element was present. Inter-wave feminist organizations and interracial organizations including the
Councils of Women, Canadian Federation of University Women, Nova Scotia
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Colored Citizens
Improvement League; leaders drawn from various activist causes including
Reverend Dr. W.P. Oliver, H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum, Pearleen Oliver and Muriel
Duckworth; and the social-religious-professional-activist networks linking them aided the emergence and evolution of local movement organizations.
While elite linkages — such as government funding — often address resource requirements, resource mobilization scholars have traditionally misjudged the timing and cost of such involvement. According to McAdam, the mass base
initially provides the requisite resources for social movement mobilization, while elite involvement occurs at a somewhat later time. As McAdam suggests, and as activists in Halifax debated between 1960 and 1982, the cost of elite resource mobilization strategies spanned a spectrum from cooption to the withdrawal of essential resources. Thus, local activists spent considerable time and energy in efforts to ‘balance the conflicting demands of movement goals with the interests of
•5 0 their elite benefactors.’ Should activists fail to achieve this balance, the organization increases the risk of cooption on the one hand or dissolution on the 40 other. And yet, in a social movement comprised of a diverse multi-organizational field supported by many individuals, organizational collapse does not necessarily trigger the collapse of a movement. Indeed, a social movement’s ability to reconstitute itself, a reflection of activist determination, is one measure of its strength. A number of scholars have argued as much, suggesting that one of the great strengths of the feminist movement has been its adaptability — allowing for reconstitution following organizational collapse.
By the mid 1980s, a number of social movement scholars turned away from material considerations to consider cultural and cognitive aspects of the mobilization process. They based their theoretical model on the notion of cognitive ‘frames.’
Expanding Erving Goffman’s ground-breaking work,Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization o f Experience — from which McAdam drew his concept of ‘shared cognitions’— a number of scholars presented ‘claim framing’ as a central social movement process.39 The claim-framing school was premised on observations
similar to those underlying McAdam’s ‘shared cognitions’: that activists must awaken to struggle and then awaken the public to their plight.40 As William Gamson argues, ‘the trick for activists is to bridge the public discourse and people’s experiential knowledge, integrating them into a coherent frame that supports and
sustains collective action.’41 More specifically, Robert D. Benford observes that
‘before collective action is likely to occur, a critical mass of people must socially construct a sense of injustice.’42
Central to the ‘framing’ process is the struggle for a collective identity that calls latent activists to action. Activists are not free to conjure up any identity they 41 choose. The many possible identities from which an actor might construct his or her activist identity ‘are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group.’43 Even among similarly situated citizens, the socially located actor carries a multiplicity of ‘selves’ replete with ‘intersectionalities’ — any number of which might compromise efforts to forge, or identify with, a single self.44
In a matrix of identity, the construction of a single common identity, onto which potential activists will latch, is problematic. Notwithstanding the difficulty of forging collective identities, and whether we emphasize ‘shared cognitions’ or a
‘collective action frame,’ the communal sense that one belongs to an aggrieved community is essential to activist mobilization.
Among depoliticized communities (or those fractured by intersectionalities), activists regularly surmounted division when contradictions in their socio-political environment bred the sense of common injustice essential to collective action.
McAdam acknowledged this insight in 1982 when he suggested that the political environment offered the ‘cues’ from which shared cognitions were forged. As
McAdam wrote of the United States, in postwar Canada ‘the distinctive material and ideological contradictions in postmaterial society’ played a central role in the emergence and development of social movements.45 More specifically, among potential activists, a perceived widening between postwar expectations and reality
— regardless of whether reality was signified by material, social or symbolic achievements — rooted the sense of injustice around which activists mobilized.46
Claims do more than call activists to action, however; they also cultivate public support. 42
To ensure a proper hearing for one’s claims, the substance of an argument must be comprehensible to the public. When arguments do not closely align with the dominant cultural discourse ‘they are likely to be regarded by the potential audiences...as irrelevant, unrealistic, artificial and overly abstract, or worse, their producers will be unlikely to receive the support necessary to carry on their work.’47
Indeed, a number of scholars, including Joanna Everitt, point toward the importance of public opinion in activist success.48 In Halifax, activists courted public opinion
through a variety of tactics including public demonstrations, meetings, public
gatherings or conferences and media statements.
Many activists used the mainstream media to disseminate their message. The
mainstream media’s characteristics — its ideological slant, preference for the
dramatic and sound bites — produce effects that, to date, remain unclear 49 As
Pamela Oliver and Daniel Myers observed, ‘the news media are not unbiased
samplers of events. They are rather intentional actors who select news stories for
reasonably well-defined reasons, and it is well established that the size and
disruptiveness of an event increase its probabilities of news coverage, as does the proximity of the event to the news organization.’50 Although the mass media may
remain influential in shaping public opinion, recent research suggests that the
impetus to mobilize is more strongly correlated to information that flows through
social connections, suggesting that information delivered by mass media outlets is less effective in drawing new citizens into collective action.51 Despite the risk of misrepresentation or, worse, limited coverage, activist media use in Halifax was practically guaranteed by the central role news organizations play in public 43 discourse.52
By the mid-1990s, researchers interested in the study of social movements were approaching the topic from a variety of interrelated but largely isolated theoretical perspectives. Consequently, leading social movement scholars called for a theoretical synthesis. As Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Mayer Zald put it,
‘scholars have tended to study only one aspect of a movement...The challenge, of
course, is to sketch the relationship between these factors, thus yielding a fuller understanding of social movement dynamics.’53 And yet, notwithstanding the further
development of resource mobilization and framing theories, McAdam’s original model has withstood the test of time. Recently, social movement theorists —
McAdam included — have rejected its more structural aspects in favour of
approaches that, while drawing on the essential processes traced, explore the human
agency involved in each. It is from this amended version of political process theory
that the current study proceeds.
However valuable a synthesized frame may be, it remains unlikely that any
single model can capture the contingent nature of the great variety of social
movements. As McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly argue Dynamicsin o f Contention, each
element may be described separately or in connection with another element, but in
reality they combine in complex, subtle and often unpredictable ways.54 Jeffrey
Broadbent suggests that each element exists in ‘fuzzy synergy’ with the others.
Broadbent means that the elements and their ultimate outcome must be studied and
explained ‘in situ.’ Drawing on the common observation that social movements must navigate a continually shifting environment, and therefore remain adaptable, 44 commitment and adaptability are only the beginning for activists whose fate is equally dependent on timing, luck and unpredictable external forces.55 In a complicated and unclear mix of external factors, often unpredictable interactions of key processes shape the movement and its success.
Approaching Social Movements in Halifax
Accepting the myriad of subtle dependencies among the processes at work in social movements, this dissertation adopts the synthetic theoretical frame now animating scholars in the field. Specifically, it draws its theoretical framework from the political process school of social movement theory. First described by Doug
McAdam inPolitical Process and the Development o f Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, the model has since come to incorporate the insights provided by other scholars.
From the outset, political process theory proceeded from a synthetic approach, incorporating the insights from the rational choice, resource mobilization and claim framing schools of social movement theory. Currently, political process theorists, and this dissertation, assert that four key elements define the process at work within any social movement. Specifically, the emergence of a social movement and its sustained activism turns on its ability to forge and maintain a collective political consciousness, create and sustain formal organizational structures, mobilize resources and design appropriate tactics.56
In advance of political action, activists must reach a collective political consciousness. Without a common understanding of the problem, collective action is unlikely. Most often, latent activists are called to action, and existing activists find 45 new direction, through social interaction. By discussing issues, citizens discover their common plight and move beyond the tendency, among isolated individuals, to attribute one’s difficulties to a personal shortcoming or to believe that their situation is unique and linger in atomized frustration. In the process, a sense of injustice and a new resolve to remedy that injustice is likely to take root. Some of those involved in early discussions may not take action and, where disagreements arise as to the best course of action, the initial group may splinter into smaller collectives. A common consciousness may take root among existing activist or community organizations, social groups, or publicly when events and public discourse highlight collective problems. Once established, its maintenance is often achieved through meetings, informal discussion, newsletters and special events in which collective concerns are asserted. If not maintained, the social movement organizations built upon the neglected collective political consciousness will collapse.
To pursue collective aims citizens create formal organizations. Loose affiliations are less likely to influence public policy. This is so for two reasons. First, loosely connected citizens are less likely to sustain their activism over time.
Structure unites activists and allows for recruitment through communication networks, it gives the group direction through leadership and delegated authority, it maintains the collective political consciousness through ritual and the exchange of ideas and information, it channels resources toward collective aims and it creates a body that can survive the loss of members and train leaders. Membership in such a body identifies participants as supporters. Secondly, structure offers an identifiable face for the interests promoted and thereby offers an interface for the movement, 46 wider public and political or social institutions. Without an identifiable public face, activists and their cause may pass unnoticed or be dismissed as an inconsequential political force.
Formal organization typically coalesces around an identified leadership and within a communication network based on ties that include social, activist and professional contacts. Such organizations are most often built on foundations established during periods of consciousness-raising and draw upon the resources of other organizations or institutions. To sustain organizations, leaders must be retained or trained while communication networks must be maintained and, ideally, expanded. Communication networks give direction to the movement and guard against activist burnout or loss by drawing new members into the fold. Once formal organizations are established, resource mobilization becomes increasingly important to sustained activism. Neither the loss of human resources nor the loss of any other resource can be sustained over long periods of time.
Resource mobilization bears upon organizational form and tactical approach.
Although few resources may be required during the early stages of organization, once citizens create more formal structures, survival becomes more dependent on activists’ ability to mobilize resources in support of both those organizations and their action repertoires. Collective action demands that resources be continually mobilized. Activists generally do this in one of two ways. First, organizations may look inward to their membership and the communities from which they draw their membership for support. Community-centred approaches maximize activist control and, barring a massive activist exodus or the loss of community support, offer 47 stability over time. The drawback of community-centred resource mobilization strategies is that they often generate limited resources which, in turn, demand significant volunteer labour. The structures created and tactics adopted by community-centred organizations must be sufficiently modest to avoid activist burnout.
The second approach to resource mobilization involves the creation of alliances with (often elite) individuals and institutions that have the capacity to offer generous resource support. While this approach promises greater resource support, and therefore the ability to create more elaborate organizations and adopt more ambitious mandates, activists are forced to surrender some control to their benefactor. The dangers of elite alliances range from cooption at one extreme to sudden resource withdrawal at the other. Unless other benefactors can be found, withdrawal of support threatens to precipitate organizational collapse as community- centred strategies rarely generate resources equal to those provided by elite benefactors. Activists might also rely on hybrid resource mobilization strategies - drawing resources from the membership, wider community and elite benefactors.
Regardless of the strategy adopted, the loss of resources requires an appropriate rescaling of activism if organizational collapse is to be avoided.
Tactics, or ‘action repertoires’ are heavily dependent on resource mobilization — both for the range of activities pursued within a social movement and for determining scope and scale of activism. Notwithstanding the improvisation of new challengers, tactical innovations are incorporated slowly, and only when they prove effective. Tactics typically evolve over long periods of time, are particularly 48 adapted to their environment, are applied by a great range of movements and are slow to change, partly because they have proven successful and partly because the state resists new forms of dissent. For example, many of the most successful rights claimants of the mid-20th century used tactics similar to those employed by the labour movement. Well-established action repertoires were adopted not only because they were tailored to their political environments but also because they signal respectability. Yet, after 1960, declining deference, rising levels of frustration and increased personal efficacy led to the rise of radical elements alongside of moderate groups. In Halifax, radicals combined highly disruptive and/or innovative activities with well-established forms of political lobbying. Nevertheless, Canadian officials
fretted about radical intentions and influence. In a Cold War climate that equated dissent with subversion, authorities monitored and intervened when activists strayed too far, as did the young men and women occupying the computer lab at Sir George
Williams University in the winter of 1969, the highly creative and disruptive
feminists participating in the Abortion Caravan during the spring of 1970, the violent militants of the Front de Liberation du Quebec and the young African-Nova
Scotian militants who publicly threatened to lay down their lives for the cause of racial equality.57 Activists working too far beyond acceptable patterns of political interaction limited their own public policy influence and fuelled the backlash that would emerge in later years. But radicalism also encouraged authorities to negotiate with moderate activists in an effort to forestall further radicalization and channel reform in desirable directions — which is to say nothing of radicals’ social
influence. 49
When combined with a political context that aids or hinders activists in their efforts, these four elements define the essential process underlying social movement activism. As political process theorists acknowledge, the four, largely internal, challenges do not tell the whole story, for activists do not operate in isolation.
Rather, they exist within a particular historical context. When activists made decisions about how best to capitalize on developments in their wider environs, the mix of opportunity and individual agency determined the timing, size, diversity, organizational character, financial footing, resource mobilization strategies and tactics of each movement. In the two decades after 1960, a range of (inter)national and local elements shaped the unique historical context for activism in Halifax, including: international movements for racial and gender equality (especially the
American movements); the rise of an international human rights discourse which, in
Canada, found greater institutional expression throughout the 1960s and 1970s; a growing federal interest in a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights after Trudeau’s ascension to the Justice Department; a Cold War culture that equated democracy with freedom and equality; inequitably distributed postwar prosperity; regional development programs and federal funding programs for activist organizations;
Canada’s postwar demographics including birth rates; Halifax’s emergence as a regional economic and political centre; the presence of local movements for racial and gender equality that predated 1960; and a period of socio-economic and political modernization including a local program for urban renewal.
A number of the elements affecting activism in Halifax were closely related to the Canadian state. In Halifax, activists’ relationship with the state was 50 complicated — as it undoubtedly was throughout Canada. The activists under study
challenged political actors and sought liberation through a range of political and
socio-cultural goals.58 They also looked to the state for essential resources, joined political parties, ran for office and accepted public service positions, including those through which their activist agenda might be realized. State actors responded in
ways that encouraged the mobilization of the ‘right kind’ of activists and monitored
worrisome actors. The state played also enlisted activist support during the process
of policy development, creating policy networks that benefitted both the state and
activists. So too did other groups, including the media and the wider public play a
role in group formation and policy formulation. The media carried valuable
information to activists and communicated their message. It also labelled local
activists as respectable or radical and carried coverage of local activities to the wider
public. In turn, public opinion and the bounds of social tolerance in part signalled the
limits of reform. By focusing on mobilization as process, this study acknowledges
the barriers to mobilizations and suggests how two movements active in Halifax,
Nova Scotia overcame those obstacles.
This study acknowledges that state structures and interests influenced local
mobilization. First, the impetus to formally organize and the structure adopted by
groups seeking policy influence reflected their intention to engage the state. Such
groups built structures around an identifiable leadership and mass base via formal
membership. While an identifiable leadership presented a state-movement interface
and gave both visibility and voice to movement demands, the mass base asserted
political strength. Secondly, that local rights activism was necessary in 1960, after 51 nearly three decades of struggle, spoke to state intransigence and the ineffective policies adopted, though it also reflected the gradualist approach of integrationist organizations. Persistent and pervasive inequality after 1960, shaped by earlier state- movement relations, encouraged a new generation to mobilize and reject the gradualist approaches of their integrationist forebears and political targets.
Far from a neutral arbiter of interests, a Canadian state anxious to defuse the potential for violence and channel activism in acceptable directions adopted an active, multipronged approach to rights activists in the two decades after 1960.
Authorities used surveillance as well as the power of arrest and detention to discredit and deter (potentially) militant activists in Halifax and throughout Canada.59 State authorities also funded organizations and projects that forestalled radicalization, advanced state interests or aligned with the state’s liberal vision of human rights.
Officials also ignored demands by groups with incompatible views and, instead, compromised with moderate groups. Finally, the state absorbed dissent by employing pragmatic activists in new state agencies and programs designed to deliver human rights programs. After 1960, state approaches to political dissent shaped the local movements for racial and gender quality by granting moderate organizations the funds required to raise a public voice, and therefore exaggerating the prevalence of moderate views, and by granting greater policy influence to moderate activists. Radicals continued to form an essential element within each movement, though they did not enjoy the state-bestowed advantages of their moderate contemporaries. Though moderate elements would not have exercised the public policy influence they did without radical persistence, during the decades after 52
1960 Canada’s liberal order confronted its challengers and maintained its hegemony with a carrot-and-stick approach designed to channel dissent in directions closely aligned with liberal notions of human rights.
Conclusion
Between 1960 and 1982, a common process lay beneath activist mobilization in both
Haligonian movements. Citizens forged a collective political consciousness, created formal organizations, gathered resources and designed the tactics that would gamer support for, and allow them to press, their claims. Mobilization turned on human agency, but activists were not removed from their political or social context.
Products of their particular time and place, activists operated within a local, national and international milieu which presented opportunities upon which they were able to capitalize in order to meet the challenges before them. Historical context played a powerful role in the emergence and course of each movement. Only a mix of process, local context and activist effort explains the mobilization and public policy influence of African-Nova Scotians and feminists. Linking these social movements’ external environment to their internal dynamics will enhance our understanding of
Canada’s rights revolution, and social movements generally. Through a history of two local movements involved in the national struggle for equality after 1960, this study suggests that the national revolution was, in fact, comprised of several related local, provincial and national revolutions, which evolved through a series of
(international, provincial and local dialogues on rights and citizenship. Activists were a key, though unequal, player in those dialogues and mobilized according to a 53 local logic.
1 According to the Institute for Intercultural Studies, the citation for this quotation has been lost to history. It captures a sentiment that Mead often expressed — one rooted in her academic work. See: http://womenshistorv.about.com. 2 Matthew Hayday, “Mad At Hatfield’s Tea Party: Federalism and the Fight for French Immersion in Sackville, New Brunswick, 1973-1982,” in Marie Hammond-Callaghan and Matthew Hayday, eds. Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements: Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements (Halifax, NS: Femwood Press, 2008), 147. Quote is drawn from: Hanspeter Kriesi, “The Political Opportunity Structure of New Social Movements: Its Impact on their Mobilization,” in J. Craig Jenkins and Bert Klandermans, eds. The Politics of Social Protest: Comparative Perspectives on States and Social Movements (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 171. 3 For a good overview o f Canadian social movement activism, see: Miriam Smith, ed.Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008). For an overview of rights activism, see: Janet Miron, ed.A History o f Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars Press, 2009). On the use o f surveillance and detention and the importance of international thought, including postcolonialism, Black Power and women’s liberation, in the context o f Montreal, see: Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2010). On the difference between first and second generation activists, the importance o f national funding programs for activists, as well as the use o f state powers o f detention, see: Dominique Clement, Canada's Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937-1982 (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2008). On the sites through which women struggled for equality, see: Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2005); and Joan Sangster, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Post-War Canada (Toronto, ON: University o f Toronto Press, 2010). On surveillance, the importance of university campuses as a site for movement genesis and the link between education, youth and participation, see: Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan and the RCMP,” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 463-496. On the context o f the 1960s, as well as the importance and fluidity o f personal identity and a range o f movements active at this time including labour, the New Left, feminists and African-Canadians, see: Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: the ironies o f identity in a rebellious era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); and M. Athena Palaeologu, ed. The Sixties in Canada: A Turbulent and Creative Decade (Montreal, QC: Black Rose Books, 2009). On social movement dynamics, drawing on evidence from more recent times, including political opportunity and the links between demography and protest/movement participation, see: Marie Hammond and Matthew Hayday, Mobilizations, Protests and Engagements: Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements (Halifax, NS: Femwood Publishing, 2008). 4 Judith Fingard, “Women’s Organizations: The Heart and Soul o f Women’s Activism,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality, 25. 5 Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004 (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004), 3. 6 Mario Diani and Doug McAdam, eds. Social Movements and Networks: Rational Approaches to Collective Action (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2003), 1. 7 Ibid. 8 In addition to the sources above, see: Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” in Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy, eds. Social Movements in an Organizational Society (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1987), 20. 9 Florence Passy, “Social Networks Matter. But How?” in Diani and McAdam, eds. Social Movements and Networks, 41. 10 Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 51. 11 Ibid. 12 Michael Ignatieff coined the term ‘rights revolution.’ See: Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution 54
(Toronto: House o f Anansi, 2000). 13 Peter Clancy, “Business Interests and Civil Society in Canada,” in Miriam Smith, ed. Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008), 36. 14 For example, see: Myma Kostash, A Long Way From Home: The Story o f the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer & Co., 1980); Douglas Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History o f the Baby-Boom Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance', Dominique Clement, Canada’s Rights Revolution', and Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s. 15 For a similar approach to a different movement, see: David Camfield, “The Working-Class Movement in Canada: An Overview,” in Miriam Smith, ed.Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada, 63. 16 For a brief summary o f the various theories applied to the study of activism and social movements, see: Miriam Smith, A Civil Society? Collective Actors in Canadian Political Life (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2005). 17 The political process model was recently applied, and its utility affirmed, by political scientist Miriam Smith. See: Miriam Smith, “Identity and Opportunity: The Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement,” in Smith, ed.Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008. It was less explicitly applied in Matthew Hayday, “From Repression to Renaissance: French-Language Rights in Canada Before the Charter,” in Miron, ed. A History o f Human Rights in Canada, 182-200. 18 Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 19 Jeffrey Cormier, The Canadianization Movement: Emergence, Survival, and Success (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 20 Ibid, 10. Lambertson offers a similar observation, see: Lambertson, Repression and Resistance, 381. 21 Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965). 22 Terry M. Moe, The Organization o f Interests (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, c. 1980), 222. 23 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970,45. 24 William A. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest (Homewood, IL: The Dorsey Press, 1975), 138. 25 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 32-3. 26 Charles Tilly, “Repertoires of Contention in America and Britain, 1750-1830,” in Zald and McCarthy, eds. The Dynamics o f Social Movements, 131. 27 Pamela E. Oliver and Daniel J. Myers, “Networks, Diffusion, and Cycles of Collective Action,” in Diani and McAdam, eds. Social Movements and Networks, 173. 28 William A. Gamson, The Strategy o f Social Protest, 139. 29 Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1978), 228. 30 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970,21. 31 Ibid, 60. 22 Ibid, 4\. 33 Ibid, 51. 34 Here ‘indigenous’ refers to the network of potential rights claimants. 35 Sidney Tarrow has similarly asserted the centrality o f political opportunity to activist mobilization while also asserting the strategic importance of resources. See: Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 17. 36 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 27 and 51. 37 Ibid, 54. 38 Ibid. 39 Erving Goffrnan,Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Boston: North eastern University Press, 1974). For an overview and critical analysis on the development of the ‘framing’ school, see: Robert D. Benford, “An Insider’s Critique of the Social Movement Framing Perspective,”Sociological Inquiry 67.4 (November 1997): 409-30. 40 McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 46. 55
41 William A. Gamson, “Constructing Social Protest,” in Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans, eds. Social Movement and Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 85. 42 Benford, “An Insider’s Critique o f the Social Movement Framing Perspective,” 415. See also: Gamson, “Constructing Social Protest,” 85, 100-102. 43 Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New Press, 1997), 225 and 291. 44 On the intersection of selves see, for example: Rebecca Johnson, “Gender, Race, Class, and Sexual Orientation: Theorizing the Intersections,” in Gayle MacDonald, Rachel L. Osborne, and Charles C. Smith, eds. Feminism, Law, Inclusion: Intersectionality in Action (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2005), 21- 40. 45 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 7. 46 Samuel D. Clarke, J. Paul Grayson and Linda M. Grayson, eds. Prophecy and Protest: Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Canada (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1975), introduction. 47 Robert Wuthnow, Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (London: Harvard University Press, 1989), 3. 48 Joanna Everitt, “The Women’s Movement and the Gender Gap in Canada,”Canadian Journal o f Political Science, 31 (1998), 764. 49 Harvey Molotch, “Media and Movements,” in Zald and McCarthy, eds. The Dynamics o f Social Movements, 82. 50 Oliver and Myers, “Networks, Diffusion, and Cycles o f Collective Action,” in Diani and McAdam, Social Movements and Networks, 184. 51 Ibid. This observation contrasts with earlier studies presenting media outlets as tools for movement communication, recruitment, and opponent neutralization. For example, see: Molotch, “Media and Movements,” 71-93. 52 Media misrepresentation is not necessarily malicious. For an example of benign misinterpretation o f Native Women’s Association o f Canada claims, see: Joel Balkam and Miriam Smith, “Rights, Nationalism and Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics,” in. David Schneiderman and Kate Sutherland, eds. Charting the Consequences: The Impact o f Charter Rights on Canadian Law and Politics (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1997), 217-25. On public support for the Canadian environmental movement, see: John C. Pierce, Mary Ann E. Steger, Brent S. Steel and Nicholas P. Lovrich, Citizens, Political Communication, and Interest Groups: Environmental Organizations in Canada and the United States (Toronto: Praeger Publishers, 1992); Jeffrey M. Ayres, Defying Conventional Wisdom: Political Movements and Popular Contention against North American Free Trade (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1998); Kenneth M. Holland, F.L. Morton, and Brian Gilligan, Federalism and the Environment: Environmental Policy Making in Australia, Canada and the United States (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996), 50. 53 Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 7. 54 The authors remain “convinced o f the futility o f deducing general covering laws o f contention.” McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics o f Contention, 313. 55 Jeffrey Broadbent, “Movement in Context,” in Diani and McAdam, eds.Social Movements and Networks, 209. 56 Social movement tactics have become incorporated into the wider synthetic frame following Charles Tilly’s research into repertoires of action which revealed how social movements adopt and manipulate existing tactical strategies. 57 See: Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 463-496; Sean Mills, The Empire Within, and NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57 (G.I. Smith), Folder 16-l(a), Memo from Department o f the Attorney General, 30 July, 1969. 58 Alexandra Dobrowolsky makes a similar observation o f the Canadian Women’s Movement in Dobrowolsky, “The Women’s Movement in Flux,” in Smith, ed.Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada, 174. 59 On surveillance in Halifax, see: NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57 (G.I. Smith), Folder 16-1(a), Memo from Department o f the Attorney General, 30 July, 1969. On 56
surveillance and the Vancouver women’s liberation movement, see: Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 463-496. On the use of surveillance and detention in Montreal (in relation to several movements including those for racial and gender equality), see: Sean Mills, The Empire Within. 57
Chapter Two
Political Consciousness: The Wellspring of Political Action1
Political consciousness, the wellspring of political action, does not emerge among isolated individuals. Those reflecting upon their problems and difficulties in isolation are likely to blame themselves for their plight. Social movement scholars have dubbed this tendency on the part of atomized individuals the ‘fundamental attribution error.’ Lacking the insights and perspective that emerge through collective discussion, individuals fail to discern the larger patterns of systemic discrimination and, instead, attribute their situation to providence, bad luck or personal shortcomings. Until African-Nova Scotians and female Haligonians understood racial and gender inequality as a public issue, political action made little
sense. But once individuals recognized that others shared their plight and identified
larger patterns of systemic discrimination, they also recognized that pervasive
injustices might have political solutions.
Through study and discussion, activists reached a ‘political consciousness’
about the issues of racial and/or gender equality. There remained room enough for
Marxists, ‘Trots’ and Maoists, Christians and Jews, liberals and conservatives, radicals and moderates in each movement.2 What these many and diverse individuals
shared was a political consciousness that held inequality as a public policy issue. A
similar process of ‘consciousness raising’ (to borrow the feminist term) was underway among young African-Canadians and feminists throughout Canada, in
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver for example.3 In Halifax, the local realities 58 imprinted on the process made developments in the port city unique, even as they mirrored national developments.
In Halifax, the political consciousness calling women and Affican-Nova
Scotians to action began with individuals who, for a number of reasons, were sensitive to the political dimensions of racial or gender discrimination. A number of these individuals were new to the city and arrived at a time when, despite significant gains, Nova Scotia’s fledgling human rights program was in its infancy. As late as the mid-1960s, the legislation passed proved porous, at best, while few convictions were secured and the provincial Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights was irregularly convened. That postwar prosperity was still distributed along gender and racial lines was apparent and local and national publications periodically featured stories about racial discrimination in the seaside capital. Meanwhile, the city’s urban renewal program, driven by a clique of outside male experts and local male planners, at once disproportionately affected the urban poor, African-Nova Scotians among them. At the same time, Halifax was attracting individuals ‘from away’ for a variety of reasons, including educational and employment opportunities, and even a few individuals determined to address the widely-known inequality of Affican-Nova
Scotians.
Employing resources drawn from the community and state, in addition to the assistance of longtime local activists and their communication networks, politically conscious young men and women from Halifax and ‘from away’ facilitated the emergence of political consciousness by bringing aggrieved citizens together to launch a dialogue on their socioeconomic position, the inequities of postwar 59 prosperity, the dishonesty of Cold War rhetoric and the failure of both Nova Scotia’s human rights program and gradualist activist strategies. Through discussion, individuals awoke to a common plight and a number committed themselves to political action. As was the case throughout Canada, the most important political awakening, in terms of the future course of the local movements for gender and racial equality, occurred among a postwar generation who were coming of age during the 1960s. An increasingly robust political consciousness first spread among young African-Nova Scotians in the mid-1960s and then among young women in the late 1960s.
The process by which activists fostered an animating political consciousness proved remarkably similar in each local movement. Leaders used both existing and newly created organizations — often with support from older local activists, existing organizations, and the state — to attract the members of their disadvantaged communities to listen to their message. At the meetings they initiated, leaders launched a dialogue on the dimensions of inequality and their common plight. Yet, starting such a conversation was rarely easy. Though leaders might draw on theory and information from the United States, Britain or elsewhere, the information exchanged and experiences communicated had to resonate with participants while, at the same time, exposing the truth of racial or gender discrimination. Over time, the message — that Halifax provided ample evidence to support the claim that African-
Nova Scotians and women suffered because of their race and gender — proved compelling. 60
Expectation, Realities and Discontent
A strong dissonance between latent activists’ expectation of equality and the daily realities of life in Nova Scotia lay at the root of African-Nova Scotian and feminist rights activism. Disadvantaged by systemic discrimination, the daily lives of
Affican-Nova Scotians and women were shaped by popular conceptions of their race and/or gender. Racist and sexist ideas about the abilities and ‘proper’ place of
Affican-Nova Scotians and women clashed with the Cold War promises of freedom and equality in capitalist democracies, limited the opportunities available to members of each community and denied them their coveted right to self- determination. While financial means and family histories largely defined the opportunities available to any Haligonian, the personal and professional paths open to women and African-Nova Scotians were further circumscribed by the value assigned to their gender and race. The particular injustices suffered by any single individual varied. Yet, when compared to their Caucasian male contemporaries, neither Affican-Nova Scotians nor women enjoyed comparable opportunities. These groups were not merely ‘have-nots’ but were the Teft-outs.’ As scholar Janet Miron recently noted of postwar Canada generally: ‘Discrimination was public, private and pervasive.’4
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as Halifax emerged as a regional educational, military, financial and business centre, the benefits of development were skewed heavily along racial lines.5 Despite the anti-discrimination laws Nova
Scotia passed in the 1950s and the CanadianBill o f Rights (1960), racial and gender discrimination persisted. As a result, Affican-Nova Scotians were plagued by poverty, achieved limited educational success and lived in substandard housing. 61
Meanwhile, women earned less than their male counterparts for doing the same work, endured sexist cultural practices such as the tradition of ‘marital unemployment’ which ignored a woman’s desire for self-fulfilment, faced educational streaming into ‘gender appropriate’ fields of study and often laboured in occupational ghettos closely aligned with traditional notions of a woman’s reproductive role. Local inequity was not just a matter of differing details in continental patterns of discrimination. In peripheral economies such as Nova Scotia, regional disparities exacerbated the effects of prejudice by inducing greater competition among workers in a more limited, and therefore more competitive, job market. Not only was the average Nova Scotian poorer than her or his national counterpart but Affican-Nova Scotians were poorer than their Caucasian provincial counterparts and women were poorer than men.6
In 1961, Nova Scotia was home to 37 percent of Canada’s Black population.
Until immigration patterns changed in the 1970s, Nova Scotia was regarded as the
‘hub of Canada’s Black population.’7 Of the approximately 11,900 Black Nova
Scotians in 1961, census figures place 2,261 in Halifax proper (with more in the
surrounding areas). Concentrated near the city’s business and government centre,
o Black Haligonians were not so segregated as to live in racial enclaves. Living among whites, however, did not grant mid-city African-Nova Scotians access to the city’s economic mainstream. As more and more people moved from rural areas to find jobs in Halifax, competition among job seekers in metropolitan Halifax increased. Greater competition occurred at a time when waged work assumed new importance among Black families, which had enjoyed some degree of self-reliance a 62 generation before but now grew increasingly dependent on wages earned in Nova
Scotia’s urban centres.9 To their frustration, African-Nova Scotian applicants learned that a job open to white applicants meant Black workers need not apply.10
Limited class differentiation existed among African-Nova Scotians whose community was characterized by a disproportionately large lower economic stratum.
A Black middle-class, comprised of educators, ministers and an assortment of professionals existed in Halifax, but it was not large.11 In 1960, only two percent of
Halifax’s mid-city Black citizens earned more than $4,000 per year while 32 percent earned less than $1,000.12 By comparison, in 1961, only 11.8 percent of Halifax’s total workforce earned less than $1,000 per year while 23.8 percent earned more 1 ^ than $4,000. African-Nova Scotians earned meagre wages in working lives characterized by long periods of unemployment.14 While 80 percent of white city workers reported steady employment throughout the 1950s, only 50 percent of Black workers reported similar stability.15 Almost 25 percent of Black workers enjoyed less than twenty weeks of employment in 1959, while only five percent of white workers reported similarly sporadic work.16
If employment statistics caused alarm, housing among African-Nova
Scotians was also cause for concern. Poor housing conditions were prevalent among
Affican-Nova Scotians.17 Of 134 mid-city Black families surveyed in 1959, more than half reported that their accommodations were in need of major repair, and an equal number had no bathing facilities. Already high levels of overcrowding worsened after 1959, when Halifax began a process of rezoning and redevelopment as part of its urban renewal program. In the poverty-stricken urban core, the rising 63 number of condemned and demolished buildings forced Black families to ‘double up.’ A 1962 report warned that ‘public housing policies, however well designed for the city as a whole, may lead to loss of home ownership on the part of a considerable number of Negroes and to their being chronic tenants in public housing.’18
In 1960, scholastic achievement also remained disproportionately low among
African-Nova Scotians. Until the 1950s, formal education remained primarily a privilege of the White society in Nova Scotia. African-Nova Scotians, if they received formal education at all, most often received an inadequate education in segregated settings or under poor conditions at schools for poor Caucasians. Only in
1954 was the legal segregation of Nova Scotia’s schools officially ended.”19
Nevertheless, African-Nova Scotians continued to face discrimination in the school system well beyond that date. In 1960, less than two percent of Black Haligonians attended university. Almost twice the number of Black students left public school before Grade VII as stayed beyond Grade IX.20 If educational achievement might be used to explain the economic position of Black Haligonians, categorically low educational achievement pointed toward racial discrimination.21 Indeed, a contemporary study suggested that educational achievement was most ‘certainly affected in many cases by [the pupil’s] economic and social condition’ — a corollary of discrimination.22 A cycle of low educational achievement and socioeconomic status thus ensured that African-Nova Scotians were destined to remain on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. Students who managed to break this cycle often elected to escape from Halifax. In the early 1960s, one high-school 64 graduate, Sinclair Hampton, explained that racial discrimination was the reason he would seek employment ‘down the road.’
In the mid-1960s a Student Union for Peace Action activist described the conditions in Halifax in a report to head office. The unidentified author wrote:
Along a downtown section of Creighton Street, far from the Halifax water front, stretches an area known to its inhabitants as the Black Belt. In this area, families - both Negroes and poor whites - crowd together in shabby houses and apartments, often infested with rats and roaches. Bitter Halifax winters add to the unhealthiness of the houses and to the financial burdens of those poor people who are trying to make do in them. Over crowding makes the situation more desperate....Unemployment is great in this area. The introduction of automated methods into such industries as shipbuilding and lumber processing has reduced jobs available to Negroes and other poor people. Many people lack trades. Many who do work have jobs only from time to time...and the uncertainty of their income makes it impossible for them to budget what money they do have. People can afford to eat large, starchy meals but often cannot afford an adequate diet.
For the young...there are few playgrounds or recreational facilities. The lack of such facilities and such things as the city’s harsh eviction policy, have created bitterness toward the city. These factors plus lack of schooling and lack of jobs foster juvenile delinquency among the young...24
In 1973, a report entitled "Visible Minorities in Nova Scotia: A Call for Equality" found only token representation of African-Nova Scotians in most industries as well as sub-par housing and education among local Black residents.25
Women’s economic position within the paid workforce was changing in the postwar decades. Between 1951 and 1961, Nova Scotia’s female labour force grew from 43,000 to 58,000.26 In 1971, Halifax was home to 80,695 women aged 15 years or older. Approximately 44 percent of them participated in the labour force. In that year, women accounted for 38.8% of the workforce in Halifax. By contrast, the 65
Royal Commission reported that women accounted for approximately 33.3% of the
Canadian workforce. In Halifax, Women aged 15-24 were the most likely to participate, although the greatest increase in workforce participation occurred among women aged 25-44.97 The Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club reported in the 1950s that ‘married women form an ever growing number in
98 proportion to the workforce.’ Throughout the province, the number of married women workers, as a percentage of all women’s workers, significantly rose between
1951 and 1961, from 26.4 to 45.5 percent.29 By 1971, 53.4% of all working women in Halifax were married, yet the provincial numbers were even higher (56.9 percent).
By refusing to quit their jobs following their nuptials, Haligonian women challenged the tradition of leaving the paid workforce upon marriage.30
Gender discrimination was a fact of life in Halifax at a time when the dominant discourse and popular representations continued to present women as wife/mother first and worker/citizen second. Notwithstanding their increased participation rates, a large number of female workers earned a gendered wage performing similar work to that of their male coworkers in Halifax’s sales, clerical and expanding service sector. Gender stereotypes normalized the preponderance of female clerical and service workers.31 In 1961, only 4.1 percent of Nova Scotia’s working women classified themselves as managers.32 Approximately 24 percent of the province’s employed women worked in clerical jobs.33 Another 38.1 percent worked in the service sector.34 Among the 20.3 percent of women who identified their work as professional or technical, many likely worked in high-status ‘gender- appropriate’ healthcare and education jobs. Finally, many women earned a ‘meagre 66 living or supplemented a family income’ by working as domestics.35 In 1961,
Haligonian women earned, on average, $2,019 while men earned $3,446.36 Ten years later the gap had actually grown, with local women earning $3,091 per year while men earned $6,853 annually. Women’s economic position, vis-a-vis male contemporaries, was still worse by International Women’s Year (1975).37
The difficulty Haligonian women faced in pursuit of non-traditional employment or an equitable pay packet did not relate to their level of education.
•5 0 Female workers in Nova Scotia were better educated than their male counterparts.
In 1961, 5.6 percent of Nova Scotia’s female employees possessed ‘some university training,’ which was considerably more than the 3.8 percent of male employees similarly educated.39 By 1960, moreover, a postwar generation of women attended university in record numbers. On university campuses, women found a mix of accomplishment and disappointment in their academic careers, professional options and place in the social milieu. Once enrolled, women were streamed into gender- appropriate programs and discouraged from pursuing graduate work.40
Approximately 93 percent of Nova Scotia’s full-time female university students enrolled at the undergraduate level.41 Of those, 77 percent enrolled in Arts and
Science, Education or Nursing programs. Few enrolled in ‘the predominantly male professional fields. ’42
Practices which restrained achievement, signalled pervasive gender and racial inequality and clashed with the democratic ideals of freedom and equality were slow to change.43 Yet, something had changed. By the 1960s, greater expectations for equality had taken root among Halifax’s peripheral communities. 67
For those mobilizing around the issues of rights and equality, the material and ideological contradictions of postwar western democracies were particularly important. Among communities long plagued by inequality, a growing gap between members’ expectations for equality and a daily reality that was both gendered and racialized created conditions conducive to the formation of a political consciousness.44
Postwar rhetoric concerning the nature of liberal, capitalist democracies challenged earlier conceptions of racial and gender inequality as natural and immutable. The Cold War promise of equality and freedom created expectations among Canada’s citizens and gave the oppressed an agreed upon standard to which the state could be held accountable.45 In the decades following World War II, an expanding Canadian welfare state ‘became an omnipresent actor never far removed from even the most intimate concerns.’46 The postwar expansion of human rights on the international, national and provincial stages; local victories won by rights claimants before 1960; accelerating civil rights and feminist movements in the
United States (and, to a lesser degree, African decolonization); rising literacy rates and new educational opportunities all affected the postwar generation’s expectations of how the world would, and should, work.
In Halifax, politicians such as Robert Stanfield responded to local realities by strengthening Nova Scotia’s human rights program. Patient activists, sensing an opportunity to fight for greater equality, worked through organizations including the
Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Halifax
Human Rights Advisory Council, the Voice of Women and the Provincial Council 68 of Women. While developments encouraged citizens to expect equality, local realities taught the average African-Nova Scotian that the ‘real world’ worked otherwise. In 1962, a CBC reporter asked local African-Nova Scotian Arthur Ruck why his friend cut his hair. Ruck replied that most barbers — emboldened by porous local human rights laws — refused Black patrons. In contrast to Cold War rhetoric,
Ruck argued that these personal experiences only reinforced local perceptions that
‘democracy does not necessarily mean equality for all.’47 Likewise, local reporter and feminist Nancy Lubka reported that local women recognized their present condition as the result of ‘a society that propagates unequal opportunities for self- fulfilment on the basis of sex.’48 In the growing gap between rising expectations of equality and the realities of pervasive inequality, a political consciousness took root among African-Nova Scotians and women. Nova Scotian academic and feminist,
Margaret Conrad, then in the orbit of local groups, expressed a similar sentiment, arguing that emergent feminists had ‘been brought up in the western tradition which emphasizes fairness, equality etc. However, we felt cheated when we got into the work world. We simply weren’t treated as equal human beings.’49
A Context for Political Consciousness
World War II is a watershed in the history of human rights.50 By politicizing and creating legal standards of equality, international developments played an important role in the creation of new expectations for equality in Canada.51 As the war came to an end, human rights had assumed a new importance with the founding of the
United Nations (UN) and Canada emerged as a human rights champion on the international stage. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 politicized the issue of inequality and created greater expectations for equality.
Postwar developments on the international stage reverberated in Canada. In 1965,
Mark MacGuigan reported that ‘in the past two decades since the War there has been an increasing consciousness in Canada of civil liberties.’ Recent scholarship also demonstrates that ‘international concern in the 1940s and 1950s for universal human rights invaded not only the conference rooms of the United Nations but also the newsrooms, classrooms, and living rooms of Canadians.’54 Adding depth to the story, Canadian historians remind their readers that the domestic violations of basic rights — including displacing and deporting Japanese Canadians during the war — constituted an equally compelling context for the rights campaigns launched and outcomes realized in Canada.55
As a new generation of young activists rose to a political consciousness in
Halifax, between 1965 and 1975, Canada’s ‘rights revolution’ was taking shape.56
Canadian legislators promoted rights as a democratic hallmark, legislated greater degrees of equality, and thus contributed to a trend of rising egalitarian expectations.57 In Halifax, rights developments included new legislation, such as the
Nova Scotia Human Rights Act and subsequent amendments. Legislators also created a number of civil service and public rights agencies: the Interdepartmental
Committee on Human Rights (1959) and the Nova Scotia Human Rights
Commission (1967). Nova Scotia later created similar bodies to address the Status of
Women. Policies and programs designed to foster greater gender and racial equality were also introduced. Provincial scholarships for African-Nova Scotians and 70 affirmative action programs for both female and Black workers targeted barriers to education and private sector discrimination.
National developments also gave shape to Canada’s rights revolution and the overall context in which local activists mobilized. The federal interest in rights and citizenship had much to do with growing nationalist sentiments in Quebec but its effects were not limited to that province. Intergovernmental negotiations sought constitutional reform, a significant element of which was entrenched rights. The federal government introduced a series of competitive public funding programs, designed to foster participatory democracy and a culture of rights throughout
Canada. Other initiatives, such as the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and its 1970 Report, clearly had less to do with the issue of nationalism in Quebec.
Similarly, Canada’s governments (including provincial officials) sponsored public celebrations of rights, whether annual events such as Human Rights Day or more spectacular commemorative moments such as the International Year for Human
co Rights (1968) or International Women’s Year (1975). One feminist active in the city during the 1970s remembers that — although she had attended RCSW meetings in Toronto — IWY discussions on the issue of workplace inequalities encouraged her to become active in the feminist movement.59
International developments also formed an important part of the local context in which activists mobilized. Between 1966 and 1976, federal legislators worked diligently 1 to secure provincial support for international conventions.60 In April
1968, just two weeks before he stepped down as Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson wrote his provincial counteiparts to secure provincial support for International 71
Labour Organization (ILO) rights conventions, explaining “The ILO has asked us, in connection with the observance of International Year for Human Rights, to give particular attention to the possibility of ratifying this convention.”61 Canada signed and ratified a significant number of UN and ILO rights conventions throughout the
1960s and 1970s, an intergovernmental process that accelerated following the creation of intergovernmental rights mechanisms after 1975.
International Movements, Events and Media Coverage
Between 1965 and 1975, invigorated and very public international movements for racial and gender equality paralleled state developments. As counter-cultural chronicler Hunter S. Thompson wrote of the American context, ‘you could strike sparks anywhere.’ Feminist activist and historian Christina Simmons made a similar observation about Halifax in the 1970s, recalling ‘a lot of us were of a similar age and this was just everywhere... so much was in the air.’63 American movements for racial and gender equality played a significant role in raising the expectations of activists in Halifax.
Following the Brown v. Board o f Education o f Topeka (1954), which struck down long-standing ‘separate but equal’ legal provisions, the American civil rights movement gained momentum and attracted international media interest. By late
1966, young American militants had laid the foundations of the Black Power movement when Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton formed the Black Panthers in
Oakland, California and Stokely Carmichael presided over the ousting of Caucasian activists from the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee.64 Through 72 personal connections, media coverage and publications the evolving American civil rights movement had direct and indirect effects on African-Nova Scotian activists in
Halifax.
Meanwhile, a series of developments in the early-1960s, including President
John F. Kennedy’s 1961 Commission on Women in the United States, which itself grew from the American Women’s Bureau, and the publication of Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique in 1963, catalyzed the American women’s liberation movement.65 Throughout America, a new generation of women joined the struggle for gender equality. Again, reverberations were felt in Canada, including Halifax.
Though media coverage provided valuable information, local feminists also established direct connections with their American counterparts.
Strengthening connections with (inter)national movements were an important part of the context in which African-Nova Scotians and feminists in Halifax reached a higher political consciousness.66 One Haligonian leader spent nights — while a student in New York City — discussing the civil rights movement and racial inequality with an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr.67 Another worked with the
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee in the United States and, in the late-
1960s, brought Stokely Carmichael and other Black Panthers to Halifax. Women in Halifax, meanwhile, kept abreast of international developments through federated feminist organizations, newsletters, correspondence and international meetings.69 As young American feminists — such as Linda Christiansen-Rufftnan, Linda Kealey and Christina Simmons — arrived in Halifax, and as resident feminists travelled to other cities, they created links between local and distant feminists.70 Local feminists 73 also brought in international speakers, including Mari Jo Buhle.71 Christina
Simmons credits Buhle as her inspiration to become a historian. The two met when
Simmons attended Brown University and Buhle began teaching women’s history there.72
Connections to international movements provided essential information and theory which local activists used to support their mobilization. Feminists and
African-Nova Scotian activists drew inspiration from their international counterparts while the scholarship and theory supporting international movements for racial and gender equality provided a frame through which Haligonians could contextualize and interpret their experience. Feminism — radical, liberal, Marxist and otherwise
— Black Power and postcolonial thought informed feminists and African-Nova
Scotians. Locals did not merely parrot international arguments. From the outset, they realized that local problems required local solutions — solutions which could nevertheless be informed by (inter)national thought.
Haligonians also connected with their national counterparts. The postwar generation was on the move and, as Halifax expanded, the city attracted workers, transients and students expanding creating a two way flow of activists. Feminists in
Halifax established and maintained links with their contemporaries across Canada through federated organizations and umbrella structures such as the
Provincial/National Council of Women and, after 1972, the National Action
Committee on the Status of Women. Local feminists and African-Nova Scotians travelled throughout Canada, where they met and established relationships with fellow activists. Nor was activist travel a one way street, as the efforts to set up local 74 summer hostels for transient youth — and local police concern about a potential influx of long-haired radicals — attested. Locals also moved away and returned to
Halifax for personal and professional reasons. The late 1960s and early 1970s, a period when Nova Scotian feminist Margaret Conrad made connections with rights activists and fellow feminists throughout Canada, saw the fortuitous arrival in
Halifax of feminists from points west, who likewise created personal connections between local and distant Canadian feminists.7T So too did both movements invite national figures, including Roosevelt Douglas (a leading Black Power activist from the Caribbean and active in Montreal) and Kay Macpherson (founder of Voice of
Women and president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women), to speak in Halifax.
The archival record offers less evidence of African-Canadian activists arriving from elsewhere in Canada. In 1965, however, a group of Student Union for
Peace Action (SUPA) activists, including Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones and Joan Jones, from Ontario arrived in Halifax to work among African-Nova Scotians. While it was operational, the Nova Scotia Project (as the SUPA project was known) formed a link between the Halifax movement for racial equality and the Canadian New Left.74
Both before and after they arrived in Halifax, the Joneses cultivated personal connections with American activists including the Black Panthers. At the same time, long time activist H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum routinely corresponded with rights organizations throughout Canada including the Jewish Labour Committee and
Canadian Labour Congress human rights workers.75 After 1968, African-Canadian social movement organizations across Canada came together to form the National IS
Black Coalition of Canada.76 And within both movements, news of developments across Canada flowed through organizational newsletters, publications, official and personal correspondence as well as national meetings.
International, and even national, developments might have had lesser effects had they not been so well covered by the media, a trend supported by increasing literacy and education among Canadians. Addressing the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1963, Frederick McKinnon — Nova
Scotia’s deputy minister for social services — explained that ‘the mass media.. .have literally placed the great social, economic and political problems of the world in our lap and much as some of us might like to forget our responsibilities in these areas, we will never again be permitted to do so.11 ’ In 1981, reflecting on the media coverage of American events, Wilson Head (president of the National Black
Coalition of Canada) argued: ‘many of us will remember the horror and outrage we felt when the press printed stories of beatings, attacks by police dogs and even murder suffered by American blacks when they attempted to register and vote in the
Southern states during the 1960s.’78 While international developments affected local expectations, one local report reminded readers of the local dimensions and history of inequality, suggesting that ‘had the tragic events of Oxford, Mississippi, not occurred, the topic would have been sufficiently ‘live’ in Nova Scotia.’79
Racial discrimination received considerable media coverage in the 1960s while gender inequality received relatively scant media attention until the Royal
DA Commission on the Status of Women was struck and toured the country. An alternative local weekly newspaper The Fourth Estate (1969-1978) was particularly 76
O 1 dedicated to the issues of racial and gender discrimination. Following the publication of the RCSW Report, Fourtha Estate editorial encouraged readers to write the Prime Minister to demand action. A few weeks later, the paper reported that local feminists planned to study the report and take action on its recommendations. Coverage reached its zenith during and immediately following
International Women’s Year (1975), an international event which the paper declared to be a ‘Pandora’s box.’ As the media brought (inter)national rights developments to doorsteps and living-rooms throughout Halifax, it inspired greater expectations among the victims of discrimination.
The local effects of media coverage were amplified by rising literacy rates and new educational opportunities, both of which also facilitated the mobilization of local African-Nova Scotians and feminists in Halifax. As women and African-
Nova Scotians began to achieve higher levels of formal education, they also began to expect higher levels of prestige, material comfort and, in so far as they carried the same credentials, equality with similarly educated citizens. Through a range of education reforms in the 1960s, Premier Robert Stanfield created the trained workforce necessary to support the ‘new’ economy while also indirectly supporting activist mobilization. Education has long been associated with political engagement, greater tolerance of diversity and support for liberal, secular values.83 More recently,
Neil Nevitte has linked higher education and youth with a decline in deference to political authorities and institutions in Canada. By fostering a greater sense of efficacy, advanced cognitive and communication skills; greater interest in political engagement; and by awarding citizens the same credentials held by political 77 authorities, the ‘massification’ of post-secondary education closed the skill gap (and arguably the prestige gap) between the citizens and elites, which also decreased levels of political deference.84
Youth, Public Discourse and Timing
Central to the developments shaping the future size and character of the movements for racial and gender equality in Halifax was the political consciousness taking root among a younger generation of potential female and Black activists. The awakening of this younger generation would stimulate movement growth and diversification, as activists sensitive to gender and racial discrimination recognized the energy that might be harnessed at the confluence of phenomenal postwar birth rates, rising expectations of equality and the local dimensions of racial and gender inequality. To channel such energy, activist leaders sought first to cultivate a political consciousness among youth, and then to convince them that political action was needed.
The question of timing immediately springs to mind. Faced with pervasive and blatant inequality, why hadn’t African-Nova Scotians and women in Halifax organized earlier? Part of the answer is that they had. Both groups had long been campaigning for greater equality through organizations including the Nova Scotia
Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Local/Provincial
Council of Women. Yet, these groups made little effort to harness the energy of local youth. Feminist groups often met in the afternoon, when young women were at school or (increasingly in the postwar years) work.85 Black leaders, worked to awaken adults to their common plight and shepherd them toward activism but little 78 was done to bind youth to the movements for racial and gender equality. The timing of youth mobilization depended on two factors: a rising level of expectation that contrasted with local realities and leaders endeavouring to awaken youth. In the absence of expectation, oppressive conditions only repress resistance and so the expectation of equality bred in post war youth played a central role in youth awakenings. Equally central were the leaders who understood the potential political power of the postwar generation.
Canada’s postwar generation was reared in an affluent Cold War culture that shaped their personal value systems.R7 Affluence did not arrive as quickly in Halifax as in many parts of Ontario, and, when it did arrive in the late 1950s and early
1960s, the benefits were highly inequitable.88 During those decades Halifax emerged as a military,• • regional • healthcare, education • and finance centre. OQ Some beneficiaries , , of postwar prosperity supported Canadian social movements from a position of material comfort.90 Other citizens mobilized in spite of their material disadvantage.
While scholars continue to divide over whether postwar Canada witnessed a cultural shift from material (distribution) to postmaterial (recognition) values, activists whose inequality was rooted in their physical identity, like African-Nova Scotians and feminists in Halifax, mobilized to secure greater equality or liberation - in all of its deeply inter-related material and nonmaterial forms.91 Canada’s Cold War culture reared a generation of unprecedented size to value, and to personally expect, equality and freedom even as wealth was distributed along inequitable racial and gender lines. During 1960s and 1970s, when local and (inter)national public events cast a light on the issues of gender and racial inequality, an increasing number of young 79
African-Nova Scotians and women in Halifax rose to the public struggle for equality.92
Throughout the 1960s, human rights were synonymous with the issue of racial equality on the local and (inter)national stage. Headlines reporting that ‘aid for negroes’ was the first priority of Nova Scotia’s human rights committee and recasting the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act as a Negro Rights Bill both reflected and reinforced the connections between human rights and racial inequality.94 When attention centred on the plight of African-Nova Scotians, a new political consciousness grew among latent and existing activists — particularly among the younger generation. By 1970, a younger generation of Black activists had emerged to take their place among the activists already working to secure greater equality.
The fact that sex discrimination would not be legally proscribed until 1972 further underscored the limited scope of Nova Scotia’s ‘human rights’ throughout the 1960s. In the closing years of the 1960s, women endeavoured to expand the concept of ‘human rights’ in Halifax (and across Canada) to include protection against sex discrimination. The Royal Commission on the Status of Women, a political concession won following a 1967 campaign of national feminist organizations spearheaded by Laura Sabia, had pushed women’s rights issues into the spotlight. In the fall of 1968, one local women’s organization implicitly acknowledged ‘rights’ as a concept dominated by concerns about racial equality by arguing, in its presentation to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, that women’s socio-economic situation in Halifax was analogous to the discrimination faced by African-Nova Scotians.95 By the time Nova Scotians went to the polls in 80
1970 and the RCSW tabled its report, feminists had placed women’s rights among the election issues.96 Thereafter, and throughout the 1970s, the popular understanding of ‘rights’ in Halifax came to include women’s rights. As women’s rights became a prominent public issue, a political consciousness took root among a new generation of women in Halifax. Thus, although the boundaries are not absolute, if the 1960s can be viewed as a decade of awakening among young
African-Nova Scotians, the 1970s should be viewed as a period of awakening among young feminists.
Leaders and Their Common Characteristics
Leaders played vitally important roles in the spread of a local political consciousness related to gender and racial inequality. In Halifax, between 1960 and 1982, existing and emergent leaders encouraged others to view their hardships as the individual manifestation of a common plight, rooted in gender and/or racial discrimination, — problems which have political as well as social solutions. Leaders stewarded individuals to a new understanding of their inequality by gathering similarly aggrieved but inactive individuals together to discuss their common plight and gave direction to activists disinclined to assume a leadership role.97
A number of individuals clearly emerge as leaders, having played critical roles in several organizations and projects during the 1960s and 1970s. The characteristics defining Haligonian leaders reflected trends prevailing throughout the
North Atlantic world. Urban centres throughout Canada, especially those with universities, were attracting large numbers of non-resident students and faculty.
Additionally, the postwar generation was on the move, as students, workers and 81 transients. Urban social movements reflected the environments in which they took shape. At a time when Canadian cities attracted non-residents, the social movements developing within those urban centres also included non-residents, a trend further supported by the link between higher education and both movement participation and non-resident status. The movements for racial and gender equality in Halifax, a city that was growing and home to many universities, also attracted a number of
‘come from away’ participants and leaders. Outsiders are well positioned to assume leadership roles as their ‘outsider’ perspective allows them to more clearly see local dimensions of inequality.
Canadian cities were growing during this time, though particular sources of urban growth and their relative importance varied. The military, educational institutions, health care professions and government drew individuals to Halifax for tenures of varying length. When the Vietnam War escalated in the mid-1960s, a number of conscientious-objectors from the United States arrived in the city.
Graduate students and young faculty members came to study or teach at one of
Halifax’s four universities. Ambitious professionals from rural communities and smaller urban centres were attracted by the cultural offerings and professional opportunities presented by the provincial capital and the region’s major urban centre.
Such people on the move - largely middle-class, generally highly educated, and often politically conscious - could be found in any Canadian city of the period and many could be numbered among the country’s leading activists.
Halifax attracted activist leaders from throughout the North Atlantic world.
Among those settling in Halifax were: H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum (bom in Jamaica 82 and living in Ghana before the anti-colonial process of ‘indigenization’ encouraged his permanent relocation in Halifax), Muriel Duckworth (a former resident of
Quebec, who came to Halifax when her husband Jack accepted employment with at the local Young Men’s Christian Association) and Nancy Lubka (an American-born journalist who moved back to the United States around 1970). Activists arriving in
Halifax from other parts of the Maritimes include Reverend W.P. Oliver and
Pearleen Oliver (bom and raised in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia) and
Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones (bom and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia and who had lived in
British Columbia and later Toronto before moving to Halifax) and his wife Joan
Jones. Those who were bom and raised in the Halifax area include Jules Oliver,
Arthur Criss and Janet Guildford.
University campuses became important local sites for consciousness-raising
QO and the development of the social networks among Canada’s transient populations.
Urban campuses throughout Canada and the United States brought transients together, often in study and contemplation of the world around them. A subset of these transients, reflecting the connections between higher education and activism, joined social movements. A further subset became leaders the many and varied
Canadian social movements emerging during this period. Activists connected to the university, as students or faculty, proved highly transient, often becoming active in multiple North American cities throughout this period. In Montreal, Caribbean university students, including Roosevelt Douglas, rose to prominence in the local and national movement(s) for racial equality. 83
Transient African-Nova Scotian and feminist activists connected to local universities had often been active in other cities before arriving in Halifax. Linda
Kealey joined activist groups while studying at the University of Toronto and then made connections to the Halifax feminist community through connections to
Dalhousie University. Margaret Conrad, then teaching at Acadia University in Nova
Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, recalls making connections with the feminist movement in Toronto while completing her Ph.D. in the early 1970s. Christina Simmons, a native of Indiana, became active in the feminist movement in Providence, Rhode
Island before moving the Halifax where she became active in the feminist movement through connections to Dalhousie University. Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones joined the
Student Union for Peace Action in Toronto and later found support for his projects at
Dalhousie University.
Among North America’s transient activist population, prior social movement experience readied many for leadership in Halifax and elsewhere. For Muriel
Duckworth, experience with the Home and School Association led her to seek out activist opportunities in Halifax which, eventually, resulted in her activism in the
Voice of Women-Halifax which, in turn, led her to a feminist consciousness." Judy
Wouk, a student/peace activist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, joined VOW-Halifax shortly after her relocation.100 For each woman, VOW-Halifax was the starting point on a path to leadership in the Haligonian feminist movement; their previous activist experience readied and recommended these women for leadership.101 Similarly,
Linda Kealey and Christina Simmons gained experience in women’s liberation organizations in Ontario and the United States. While living in Toronto, Burnley 84
‘Rocky’ Jones became involved in the new left movement organizations through which he forged connections with the Canadian and American Black Power movements.102
Equally important, outsiders had lived in places that they would later claim, by contrast, exposed the injustice of racial or gender inequality in Halifax. African-
Nova Scotians primarily comprised this group. As W.P. Oliver recalled, his early experience in WolfVille, Nova Scotia was such that, so long as he did not attempt to romantically involve himself with Caucasian girls, he was rarely aware that he was different from his white contemporaries. Once in Halifax, though, Oliver was made to feel as though he was a second-class citizen.103 Wedderbum was also keenly aware of the contrast between his native Jamaica and Nova Scotia. He recalled:
Black people in Nova Scotia were always afraid of the white man...You know, the white man is the enemy but my thinking was different. Where I came from, I went to school with guys like you [referring to Caucasian interviewer] and we were neighbours and friends. We heard about discrimination in the States but we didn’t have to deal with stuff like that. I could never understand why a man couldn’t like me because of the colour of my skin when we had common interests.104
Contrasting experiences revealed the mutability of social relations, fostered a belief that change was possible and nurtured a willingness to assume the mantle of leadership.
Urban social movements throughout Canada, built upon the social networks linking potential participants, were strongly middle class in both membership and leadership — a point well-established in Canadian feminist literature. Married to a
YMCA executive, Muriel Duckworth worked in the Nova Scotia Division of Adult
Education for a short time — where W.P. Oliver also worked — but was primarily a 85 homemaker and community activist. Also a homemaker, Pearleen Oliver authored many histories of Black Nova Scotia, and dedicated much time and energy to the
African United Baptist Association. H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum taught school, entered the public school administration and then trained as a lawyer. Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones worked as a computer analyst before attending graduate school in history and eventually earning a law degree. Judy Wouk, Kathy Moggridge, Linda Kealey,
Christina Simmons and Linda Christiansen-Ruffman attended graduate school — training as sociologists, historians and lawyers. Even as these movements diversified after 1960, and local SMOs championed working class issues and sought working class participation, the middle class remained well-represented in both movements.105
Leaders, Communication Networks and Political Consciousness
Individuals followed different routes to political consciousness. For some, media coverage fostered a greater awareness of the extent and nature of discrimination.
Others reached a political consciousness through personal interaction with people confronting similar injustices.106 Through discussion, latent activists rejected personal attributes as a convincing explanation for their inequality. In place of explanations centred on personal failings, socio-political explanations took root.
In the 1960s and 1970s, such discussions began in a variety of public and private spaces. A modest rise in the membership of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NSAACP) in the early 1960s signalled a political consciousness taking root among individuals in the orbit of that organization.107 Kathy Moggridge, who attended the Royal Commission on the 86
Status of Women hearings five years earlier but identified with neither the actors nor the issues discussed, embraced a feminist consciousness in 1975, when, in response to International Women’s Year, locally convened public discussions of women’s
1 08 • • economic inequality better reflected her recent personal experience. Individuals also reached a political consciousness through discussions held in kitchens, classrooms, churches and offices.109 Jules Oliver, son of African-Nova Scotian activists the Reverend Dr. W.P. Oliver and Pearleen Oliver, could not help but reach a political consciousness at home.
Whatever the individual road to political consciousness, the time was ripe for mobilization. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Black and feminist leaders invested considerable time and energy raising the collective political consciousness among local youth. Social movement scholars have repeatedly demonstrated that the networks and sites linking latent activists are essential to the emergence of a political consciousness.110 In Halifax, leaders used established networks as a means to bring individuals together. Where no such network existed, leaders established organizations with a view to fomenting a political awakening.
Members of the Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA) arrived in Halifax during the same year in which Canadian journalist Peter Gzowski described the organization as the heart of Canada’s ‘new left.’111 A generational movement, the new left reflected the radical consciousness then taking root among Canadian youth and, more specifically, students.112 In contrast to an older generation of socialists, the new left framed society as an entity bifurcated by those with access to, and those excluded from, power and postwar prosperity. The new left has been described as an 87 essentially moralistic rather than ideological movement, at least in its early form, interested in the ‘left-outs’ rather than just the ‘have-nots.’113 The new left promoted student syndicalism and suggested that student consciousness could be linked with the problems of marginalized Canadians.114 SUPA members launched community- based projects, believing that ‘through direct contact with the social contradictions and social conditions of Canadian society.. .we would not only develop a revolutionary theory of social change appropriate for Canada, but also the community base for organizing.’115 African-Nova Scotians were among the communities targeted.116
Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones, leader of SUPA’s Nova Scotia Project (also called
SNAP: the Scotia Non-Violent Action Project), was first drawn to new left causes when he came upon an antiwar demonstration at the American Embassy while living in Toronto.117 As a new left activist, Jones learned more about American civil rights and Black Power struggles, eventually reaching the conclusion that similar tactics were relevant to his native province of Nova Scotia.118 In June 1965, Rocky Jones and Joan Jones, determined to aid African-Nova Scotians, arrived in Halifax from
Toronto.119 The Joneses and the five coworkers who joined them in September 1965 found a situation that was far worse than they had imagined. Despite Nova Scotia’s recently codifiedHuman Rights Act (1963) and the existence of an interdepartmental committee on human rights (1962), little improvement in housing, employment, education or public services had yet been realized.120
Nova Scotia Project workers spent their early days meeting with community leaders and fellow activists in search of ways to aid the struggle for racial equality, 88 build support for their efforts and connect with the wider community.191 They soon resolved to focus on the African-Nova Scotian youth in Halifax. Among SUPA’s first projects were a youth-centre (Kwacha House — from the Zambian word
‘freedom’) and a community playground/day care known as a ‘tot lot.’ Jones hinted at SUPA’s motivations — rooted in the notion that in youth consciousness lay the energy necessary for political change — when he reported in 1965 that local
‘radicals, as yet, have not captured the imagination of the youth and so therefore have not been as effective in creating change as they would like to be.’122
Convinced that a movement able to harness the latent energy of an expansive postwar generation would bring enormous political pressure to bear, Project workers
p i endeavoured to ‘energize and awaken Black youth’ in Halifax. They sought to move the youth toward a political consciousness by drawing them together at
Kwacha House offering services including day care, a tutoring service, a coffee shop, dance hall and dramatic productions.124 There, young men and women discovered and discussed their common experience of racial discrimination.125
Through discussion, they negotiated the meaning of racial inequality in Halifax, its roots and potential solutions. Jones soon reported favourable results:
Frequent informal meetings of interested local youth are giving a chance for leadership to develop...There seems to be a sense of movement and expectation where there previously seemed to be apathy and indifference...These meetings are extremely educational because of the many things about current affairs that are discussed.1 9 6
With leaders on the ground, a communication network established, and
Kwacha House attracting the youth, Jones and the Nova Scotia Project shepherded latent activists to a political consciousness. As that consciousness developed, a 89 radical change occurred in the outward appearance of Kwachas. By 1967, visibly nervous and timid young men and women had been transformed into politically conscious and ‘outwardly angry’ Kwachas.127 They sported ‘affos’, beards (long a symbol of radicalism) and African tunics.128 The importance of sign systems to mobilization cannot be overestimated. By adopting dress, markings, styling or language that reflect the movement's driving ideology, members of the mobilized group physically manifest their identity and thereby publicly demonstrate membership solidarity. Further, supporters are immediately identifiable by their use of agreed upon symbols.129 By adopting African symbols and celebrating the
‘natural’ physical qualities of Black citizens, Kwachas set themselves apart not only from the white majority but also from their integrationist contemporaries, while fostering pride in a unique ‘Black’ identity.130 When the Nova Scotia Project collapsed sometime between January and June of 1968, it left a significant legacy.
Politically conscious young Black citizens were ready to take action.131 Energized and awakened to political sensibilities akin to those animating African-American militants, young African-Nova Scotians assumed new public personas. Jules Oliver announced in 1969 that African-Nova Scotians “have to get off this integration kick.
When we spoke of integration five years ago we meant social, economic and political improvement of our race within this society. Whites thought it meant being dance partners with their daughters.”132 In the same year, Jones opened his address to an interracial crowd with the caveat: ‘[for] the last four years, I've been going around addressing myself to predominantly white audiences and for the past four years I've seen very little happen.. .I'm here to speak to the Black people in the 90 audience. That's who I'm addressing myself to and everyone else here is just a spectator.* * >133
Although such attitudes were new to Halifax, neitherBlack a identity nor
Black Power sensibilities were conjured into being by Nova Scotia Project workers.
Rather, African-Nova Scotians forged an identity and consciousness through emulation and improvisation.134 At least three developments proved central to the construction of that identity. First, racial discrimination created a distinct community of citizens victimized by social and economic inequality. Secondly, (international developments presented political ideologies and identities upon which African-Nova
Scotian youth might draw.135 The search for an empowering identity also took place in the context of African anti-colonial movements in which Black citizens seized power. Within that context, African-Nova Scotians explored the legacy of slavery to
‘rediscover’ their African roots. Finally, the Black Power movement then underway in America and the anti-colonial thought then animating Black activists in Montreal offered a blueprint for the creation of a Black identity.
Jones and his followers reached a political consciousness in line with the
Black Power concepts then animating youth in the United States and Montreal. For young radicals in Halifax, self-determination, not integration, was the object of activism. Ideological emulation led contemporary observers to draw a connection between local youth and radical activists in the United States.136 In a 1967 newspaper article identifying Jones as ‘Canada’s Stokely Carmichael,’ the youth leader described Carmichael’s teachings as ‘the most real philosophy I’ve heard.’
Illustrating the relevance of Carmichael’s teachings to Halifax, Jones at once criticized the city’s traditional Black leadership and captured the urgency animating
Black youth when he argued that if ‘somebody hits you, you have to hit him back.
People here have been praying for 200 years and look where it’s got them.
Nowhere.’ 137 Jones was also in contact with activists of Caribbean extraction then active in Montreal, including Rosie Douglas. Inspired by the language of African decolonization movements as well as militants in Montreal and the United States,
110 Jones sought self-determination throughBlack power.
As African-Nova Scotian youth reached the political consciousness from which their future political action sprang, their alternative identity, solutions and critical posture fomented a generational contest among established and emergent elements in the movement for racial equality. Integrationists preferred the term
‘negro’ or ‘coloured,’ and favoured interracial organizations, quiet diplomacy, universalism, democratic-egalitarian rhetoric and integration. As they assumed a public identity, the younger generation of Black activists in Halifax identified with the term ‘Black’, called for racially exclusive organizations, advocated disruptive tactics, engaged in confrontational rhetoric and sought liberation from the dominant
‘colonial’ conceptions of race that anchored their inequality.139 Several differences characterized the two generations of African-Nova Scotian activists but the divide first manifested itself in differences over identity and nomenclature.140 Feeling that
‘Negro’ was a white label forced upon New World Africans, radicals rejected the word as a vestige of slavery.141 Yet, the preferred racial identifier among radicals,
‘Black,’ was not universally appealing. In a 2002 interview, Jones remembered that
African-Nova Scotians would say, ‘don’t call me Black, I’m not Black, you know, 92
I’m coloured.’142 In 1967, generational differences led author, editor, publisher and activist Carrie M. Best to write Premier Stanfield to suggest that integrationist H.A.J.
‘Gus’ Wedderbum was a ‘true Negro leader’ while warning against the ‘young crowd’ and Black Power.143 Two years later, as the term ‘Black’ grew in popularity,
Maurice Ruddick wrote to the Premier requesting that he ‘abolish [the] word, unless necessary...[as most he had spoken] to want to be referred to as colored or negro.’144
The generational divide was not absolute. By 1967, some older Haligonian activists also identified with the term ‘Black.’ Dr. Oliver (co-founder of the interracial NSAACP) believed that the term Negro had become synonymous with violence, poverty, poor housing and illiteracy in Nova Scotia.145 For Oliver, ‘Black’ offered an alternative to the negative imagery conjured by the term Negro. By the late 1960s, the term’s popularity spread, as other African-Nova Scotians, including those who would continue to work through integrationist/interracial organizations, accepted ‘Black’ as a descriptor. For example, in 1968-1969 — perhaps because he hoped to bring as many to the struggle as possible — long-time interracial activist and integrationist Wedderbum helped establish the Black United Front and Black
Educators Association. Yet, other groups (including the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Nova Scotia Human Rights Federation) held fast, rejecting the word Black and, on at least one occasion, referred to the
Black United Front as the Negro United Front.146 In the same year, a group of women established the Black Professional Women’s Group.
Despite the drift to radicalization, young Black activists continued to gamer support from the wider Halifax community. Upon Jones’s arrival, and for years 93 thereafter, pacifist and future feminist Muriel Duckworth, who dates her feminist awakening to 1970, counselled him and acted as fundraiser and public representative for the Nova Scotia Project.147 The Oliver family (comprised of William, Pearleen and Jules) supported racially exclusive organizations and Jones’s efforts to organize the youth even if the patriarch and matriarch did not themselves embrace confrontational rhetoric or tactics. Likewise, Wedderbum supported efforts to energize and awaken the Black youth, hoping that young energies might strengthen the interracial NSAACP.148 The radical political consciousness that came to animate
Affican-Nova Scotian youth in Halifax resulted from the political sensibilities of a leader whose efforts helped young African-Nova Scotians reach that consciousness.
Jones’s success in this regard would have consequential effects on the future size and shape of, as well as the relationships defining, the movement for racial equality.
As a political consciousness took root among young African-Nova Scotians in the 1960s, a new generation of women also reached a higher political consciousness. As the ‘women’s liberation’ movement gathered momentum and the
Royal Commission on the Status of Women was meeting across the country — pulling into Halifax in the fall of 1968 — feminist demands moved women’s rights closer to the centre of the Canadian political stage. Though a range of material and non-material reasons existed for individual activism, women’s rising expectations of equality and communal plight gave rise to the political consciousness necessary for collective action. Like their counterparts in the movement for racial equality, women moved beyond the fundamental attribution error through discussion. Feminist leaders used social, professional and activist networks as a means to gather women 94 together. As with African-Nova Scotian radicals, where no networks existed, feminists established groups and organizations, such as women’s centres, to spread a feminist consciousness.
Proving that once raised, a political consciousness calling citizens to action could evolve to encompass new issues, the Voice of Women-Halifax (VOW-
Halifax) — which previously limited its activism to peace and racial equality — publicly articulated feminist sensibilities during a presentation made before the
Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW). Authored by American-born journalist and activist Nancy Lubka, and presented in early September 1968, VOW-
Halifax’s brief clearly articulated a feminist perspective and reflected the flexibility that would see VOW move beyond its original mandate as the Voice of Women for
Peace to a more broadly based Voice of Women for women. Informed by their experience with the movement for racial equality, as well as by Lubka’s professional and personal interest in the movements for racial and gender equality and American feminist arguments, VOW bridged the gap between the former understanding of human rights as a religious and racial issue and the emergent inclusion of women’s rights when it argued not only are Canadian women oppressed but that women of colour must be considered doubly oppressed.149
Lubka successfully used an established organization, VOW-Halifax, to launch a discussion of gender discrimination. Once introduced, the status of women and the women’s liberation movement became topics of conversation throughout 1968 and
1969.150 As Frances Early argues, VOW-Halifax attracted young women and then helped them reach a feminist consciousness. Some members, such as Elizabeth 95
Mullaly and ‘eight or nine other young women,’ used their VOW contacts to establish discussion groups, referred to as consciousness-raising (CR) groups, more exclusively related to the concerns of young women.151 Activist Muriel Duckworth recalled that her journey to feminism was lit by the Voice of Women. Present as
VOW-Halifax discussed feminism throughout the late-1960s, a frustrated
Duckworth publicly declared her feminist sensibilities in 1970 when a group of all male public planning experts dismissed women’s concerns during a week-long
1 O public planning event known as Encounter on the Urban Environment. Yet,
notwithstanding its importance to the feminist movement in Halifax, the Voice of
Women was hardly the only route to feminist consciousness.
CR groups proved an important route to a feminist consciousness. Muriel
Duckworth recalled a period of extensive feminist awakening in the years around the
Royal Commission on the Status of Women and its report, remembering that young
Haligonian women ‘formed these little groups.. .began sharing their experience...telling their stories.’153 Nor did CR groups quickly disappear. As late as
1978, feminists in Halifax continued to promote consciousness-raising as means for women to move beyond atomized frustration and toward a collective political consciousness, arguing that ‘when a woman breaks down her isolation from other women a closeness or solidarity in oppression becomes more apparent.’154 Judith
Wouk well remembers the influence and success of such groups. An American pacifist, Wouk arrived in Halifax in July 1970 and, like Nancy Lubka, wrote for the
Fourth Estate, established a relationship with Muriel Duckworth and became active 96 in the Voice of Women-Halifax.155 She also became active outside of VOW-Halifax.
As Wouk remembers:
Very shortly after I arrived in Halifax I met two other women who were also working on a PhD thesis...All three of us soon became involved in a Consciousness Raising group...We were faculty wives, graduate students, young professionals, stay-at-home moms. The group spread by word-of-mouth, and more and more women wanted to join.156
Gathered together in a CR group, Wouk and others explored the political and social dimensions of gender inequality. As she reached higher levels of feminist consciousness, Wouk created the means by which she might spread feminist sensibilities beyond the limits of her CR group.
In the early 1970s, Judy Wouk assumed a new leadership role among emergent feminists when she organized the Halifax Women’s Centre/Brenton 1 ^7 Place. Like-minded activist Linda Christiansen-Ruffman would later recall that
Wouk played an instrumental role establishing a centre where women ‘can feel,
1 CO learn from and act to change our oppression as women.’ As Wouk remembers, the
Centre came together as a result of hard work and social contacts: ‘I had done a lot of work, contacting people, setting up meetings, writing funding proposals, etc. It
[came together by] word-of-mouth; many of us already knew one another from the
CR group or other organizations.’159 Notwithstanding the connections binding the initial group, a community centre open to all interested women, such as Brenton
Place, had the potential to attract a much larger number of women than those in the daily orbit of Wouk and her fellow feminists. Not unlike Kwacha House, Brenton
Place offered services designed to interest local women. Once there, women reached 97 a political consciousness through the discussions begun by those already animated by a feminist consciousness.
By offering a secure social space in which women could explore their inequality, Brenton Place encouraged the development of a political consciousness among young Haligonian women. In the autumn of 1973 Halifax Women’s Centre members met in a single room in the Unitarian Church on Inglis Street.160 As the
Centre grew, a core group of members sacrificed their time and energy to ensure the project’s success.161 In 1974, The Women’s Centre relocated from the Unitarian
Church to a three-bedroom house on Brenton Street in downtown Halifax.162 The
Centre offered drop-in nights, sponsored guest speakers, held discussion nights, planned trips, published a newsletter, organized CR groups and hosted social events.
In this gender-exclusive space, Centre activists explored the nature of gender discrimination and negotiated the meaning of feminism through formal and informal discussion on topics including women and human rights, women and the law, rape and women’s liberation.163
On the eve of International Women’s Year, the Halifax Women’s
Centre/Brenton Place reported some success. In December of 1974, the Brenton
Place newsletter declared that ‘the members decided that the Women’s Centre is an organization OF FEMINISTS. We are hereby beginning a dialogue with newsletter subscribers on the topic of feminism, since the concept has many interpretations.’164
The simple statement, that Brenton Place was a centre ‘of feminists,’ was essentially a political statement. Rather than a centre catering to women’s needs, a centre of feminists implied awareness of a problem, a common identity and a collective 98 political consciousness. A feminist consciousness was taking root among Brenton
Centre attendees. Yet Brenton Place did not move its members into a feminist consciousnessen masse. In the same newsletter declaring Brenton place a centre ‘of feminists’ an article written to launch the aforementioned dialogue on feminism revealed divisions within the Centre. The author argued that one of the:
negative aspects of feminism is feminists’ attitude towards child-bearing and child-rearing....Not only do I believe in sexual differences, I also believe that the mother is best suited for the responsibility of child-rearing...Housewives need support not putdowns by liberated women who would reject the opportunity to enjoy what can be a satisfying and rewarding experience.165
That Centre women were divided was regularly confirmed in newsletters. Nor were they divided along a single line. Some women felt unwelcome because they were
‘only housewives’; others remained committed to consciousness-raising; while a third group grew frustrated that Centre women took little action.166 One newsletter editorial admonished Centre activists for a tendency to ‘sit on their asses and complain that there ought to be a Rape Crisis Centre, a hostel for battered wives or ex-offenders but that is all it is - TALK!!!’167
As Brenton Place members continued to divide over the meaning of feminism, a growing number of women abandoned Brenton Place. In February 1975, one frustrated member challenged women to use the facility or ‘stay at home and continue to sit on [their] wishy-washy liberated asses and close down the centre.’168
Brenton Place kept its doors open throughout 1975 until, late in that year, it placed an announcementThe in Fourth Estate reporting that its services would cease ‘until further notice.’169 The end of Brenton Place was not the end of activism for these women. It was merely the end of an organization geared toward consciousness- 99 raising. It was also the beginning of new levels of political action for the politically conscious.
In Halifax, as elsewhere, women’s liberation was the label a young, impatient generation gave to their feminist agenda. Their feminist consciousness was rooted in a collective awareness of the contradictions between postwar cultural values — including equality and individual freedom — and the fact that ‘by every measure most valued in society — money, authority, education, freedom of choice, accomplishment — women are in an inferior position compared to men.’170 At issue was not simply that women were not equally rewarded for their economic, social, cultural and political contributions but that social and economic interests created and perpetuated this inequitable arrangement.171 Fundamentally, young feminists sought liberation from the dominant conception of woman as wife/mother which so strongly shaped their lives and limited their self-determination. To be equal was to be free to determine one’s own fate, which required an unhinging of the direct connection between women and marriage/motherhood.
Notwithstanding the local dimensions of gender inequality, young women in
Halifax conjured neither the identity nor the title they embraced. Emergent feminists drew inspiration from their American and Canadian counterparts and embraced the
‘women’s liberation’ moniker to denote solidarity with those feminists struggling elsewhere in Canada, Britain and the United States.172 Nancy Lubka, for example, wrote articles contrasting local and American feminist movements Thefor Fourth
Estate}11 Judy Wouk’s consciousness-raising group pooled their money to purchase
American feminist materials with a view to sharpening their feminist sensibilities.174 100
Wouk also served as the Nova Scotia representative for the National Action
Committee on the Status of Women. Local and daily injustices in their personal lives created the collective sense that action must be taken. Yet, in the construction of their feminist identity and generational movement, local feminists drew inspiration from their (inter)national counterparts.
In Halifax, young feminists considered their movement distinct from that of their feminist predecessors. Young women did not seek integration within the system, as did their generational forebears, but rather liberation from the structures perpetuating their inequality. Indeed, the use of the term liberation among young feminists (and African-Nova Scotians) suggests that they sought freedom not access.175 Even though, when viewed as a whole, both movements in Halifax included highly statist elements, young activists held their movements apart from older generations, emphasizing a break rather than continuity with the past.176 In a
1975 article on contemporary feminism, Margaret Conrad made this clear, stating
‘many women, including myself, prefer the term “women’s liberation” to describe the movement.’177 And when the Women’s Institute of Nova Scotia (WINS) declined an invitation to participate in a public demonstration, one young feminist
th 178 scrawled ‘Conservative 19 Century Organization’ across the reply letter.
Similarly, when the Local Council of Women did not send a representative to a meeting of local feminist organizations in Halifax, hand-written minutes note the
Council’s absence and dismiss the organization, explaining that the ‘Local Council are rather outdated and meet afternoons whereas most women are employed.’179 For 101 their part, well-established feminist organizations could be equally dismissive of young feminists.180
Beyond the confines of the movement, the term ‘women’s liberation’ (and its associated ideology) caused divisions similar to the word ‘black’ among African-
Nova Scotians. In the 1972 federal election, the two female candidates running in
Nova Scotia felt compelled to distance themselves from the emergent younger generation of feminists. Mary Casey, a Liberal running in Halifax-East Hants, deflected questions on the subject of women’s rights by suggesting that ‘the problems of women are part of a larger problem.’181 Virginia Pickett, a New
Democrat running in the Annapolis Valley, declared that she was ‘no women’s 187 libber’ but that she believed in equal pay for equal work and better daycare.
Pickett’s comments echo the sentiments of Nova Scotian women, as reported to the
Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women which, meeting through 1975, found that, while many men and women agree with gender equality, a pervasive myth of women’s liberationists as ‘shrill, hostile, man-hating, militant women’ limited the appeal of feminist organizations.183
As was the case with African-Nova Scotians, the feminist divide was undeniably generational. In part, divisions reflected the tactical differences between integrationists working through the system and a younger generation of impatient feminists that some gradualists viewed as ‘wildly bizarre in their behaviour.’1 8 1 Yet, in statements to the Taskforce, young women declared their hesitancy to involve themselves with the women’s movement for fear of being labelled a ‘women’s libber.’ They further reported that friends, family and neighbours used ‘women’s lib’ 102 to deride any outward sign of women’s political consciousness.185 The hesitation of young women, sympathetic to feminist claims but fearful of social opprobrium and the derogatory use of ‘women’s libber’, also suggests that the local political culture could treat assertive women harshly. Yet, if the backlashes that emerged in the wake of young African-Nova Scotian and feminist mobilization are any indication,
Haligonians (and their Canadian counterparts) were equally leery of assertive Black activists.186 Broad public support, it seems, was limited to the gradualism and integrationist goals of an earlier time - demands that were nevertheless denied when first forwarded over 30 years previously.
Distinct political consciousnesses did not create two solitudes among feminists in Halifax. As Judith Fingard has argued of Halifax, ‘women’s liberation’ did not so
• 187 much supplant but grew and diversified the existing feminist movement. Though they could be dismissive of each other, emergent and well-established feminists were part of a wider movement for gender equality. Moreover, organizations forged a variety of relationships with one another even as they continued to disagree over tactical approach and rhetoric. Additionally, various organizations (such as VOW-
Halifax) and individuals (including Muriel Duckworth) acted as bridges within the feminist movement. The sensibilities guiding such organizations and individuals evolved over time and came to connect well-established organizations with those bodies more recently established. The emergence of young feminists and young
African-Nova Scotians as activists proceeded along similar lines. Distinct political consciousnesses created tensions within the movements for gender and racial equality but were not so great as to create generational solitudes. 103
Conclusion
The number of African-Nova Scotian and feminist activists seeking rights reform grew between 1965 and 1976, as residents of Halifax awoke to their collective plight and the need for political, in addition to social, action. As young citizens reached a political consciousness distinct from their generational forebears, they expanded and diversified local movements for racial and gender equality. Political consciousness was the first step toward joining national dialogues on the nature of Canadian citizenship and rights. In this way, and in the process of consciousness raising outlined, this research supports themes that have emerged in the history of Canadian feminism during the same period. That a similar process lay beneath youth activism in the movement for racial equality is less commonly observed. Before newly awakened activists could advocate on behalf of African-Nova Scotians and women, however, several challenges remained. They had yet to establish formal organizations, design resource mobilization strategies and adopt effective tactics in line with their political consciousness and local environs. If local activists had not learned the postwar state’s role from the public funding then supporting consciousness-raising projects in Halifax, they soon learned that Canada’s governments, far from neutral arbiter of competing interests, would be an active participant in the ‘rights revolution.’
From the earliest stage of growth and diversification, historical context played a vital role in the course of the local movements for racial and gender equality. Youth reached a political consciousness in the context of local economic 104 and social inequality which, after more than three decades of local activism, continued to shape the lives of African-Canadians and feminists. International movements for gender and racial equality provided inspiration, as well as scholarship and theory to support their awakening. Foreign ideas were not shoehomed into the local context. International scholarship and theory provided a frame through which African-Nova Scotians and feminists understood their local reality in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Rising literacy and educational rates also supported local mobilization by supporting communication, the flow of information from around the world and decreased deference to political authorities. A rise in the public support for human rights, noted since the end of World War II, also supported local mobilization. Greater community support channelled valuable resources to local activists whose consciousness-raising activities often occurred in community centres and protected spaces, the maintenance of which required considerable resources.
The Canadian state shaped the course of African-Nova Scotian and feminist activism by creating expectations for equality. Later chapters will explore how the provision of resources and responses to political action determined the size, shape, course and influence of these movements. In the process of developing a political consciousness among local youth, the Canadian state played a no less vital, though perhaps more indirect, role. Canada’s Cold War culture reared children to believe that capitalist democracies as free and equal, which bred greater expectations for racial and gender equality within local and resident youth. Meanwhile, by championing rights — in legislation, the creation of state agencies, design of public policy, during constitutional negotiations, in international fora and by funding public 105 celebrations — Canada’s governments created or endorsed standards of equality, bred expectations of such among its citizenry and signalled an openness to rights reform. So long as reality mirrored rhetoric, there would have been no need to take political action — and no means by which to engender a higher political consciousness among local youth, or workers or homosexuals.
When legislation outlawed racial and gender discrimination and public policy made higher education more widely available, the last barriers to socio
economic equality should have fallen. Yet, female and Black workers and students
continued to confront racial and gender inequality in Halifax. The widening gap between individual expectations of equality and a collective reality shaped by
discrimination, a process driven by state action, was the foundation of a political
consciousness among local activists. Clearly, the Canadian state was interested in
issues of rights and citizenship. To what extent and what ends state officials intended
to awaken the postwar generation to rights issues will be further explored in the
following chapters.
1 Political action is used here in both its broad and narrow senses. Political consciousness is the root o f all social movement activity and, therefore, ‘political action’ could be applied in its broadest sense. Moreover, in their efforts to achieve greater equality, the movements under study held objectives related to public policy (big ‘P’ politics) as well as social and cultural goals, including social treatment that held their constituents as equal members of Canadian society (small ‘p’ politics). 2 It should be noted that this dissertation does not deal with the small group o f Moaists or Trots living in Halifax, though the author is aware o f the presence. 3 On efforts to raise the political consciousness o f potential activists, see: Bryan D. Palmer, Canada's 1960s: The Ironies o f Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 204; Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010); Judy Rebick Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Movement (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005); Maijorie Griffin Cohen, “The Canadian Women’s Movement” in Ruth Roach Pierson and Maijorie Griffin Cohen, eds. Canadian Women’s Issues, Volume I: Strong Voices (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, Publishers, 1995), 7-10; “Reorganizing for Change” in Alison Prentice et al. eds. Canadian Women: A History, Second Edition (Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1996): 419-422; Janice L. Ristock, “Feminist Collectives: The Struggles and Contradictions in Our Quest for a ‘Uniquely Feminist Structure’” in Jeri Dawn Wine and Janice L. Ristock, eds. Women and Social Change: Feminist Activism in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, Publishers, 1991), 41-55. 106
4 Janet Miron, “Introduction,” in Janet Miron, ed.A History of Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc, 2009), 5. 5 On the development of the postwar interventionist state, see: Raymond B. Blake and Jeff Keshen, eds. Social Welfare Policy in Canada: Historical Readings (Toronto: Copp-Clark Ltd., 1995), 1. On particular provincial programs, see: Gerald William Boychuck, Patchworks of Purpose: The Development of Provincial Social Assistance Regimes in Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1998). On the national debate surrounding government intervention between 1930 and 1945, see: Alvin Finkel, “Origins o f the Welfare State in Canada,” in Blake and Keshen, Social Welfare Policy in Canada, 221-243. For a more recent series of essays, see: Raymond B. Blake and Jeffrey A. Keshen, Social Fabric or Patchwork Quilt: The Development of Social Policy in Canada (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2006). On the development of Halifax in particular, see: Margaret Conrad, “The 1950s: The Decade of Development,” in E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993); Della Stanley, “The 1960s: The Illusions and Realities o f Progress,” in Forbes and . Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation', Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford and David Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years (Halifax: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 1999). 6 Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis W. Magill, Nova Scotia Blacks: A Historical and Structural Overview, Institute o f Public Affairs Report No. 83 (Halifax: Dalhousie University, 1970), 5; Adrienne L. Shadd, “The Regional Dynamics o f Racial Inequality: A Comparative Study o f Blacks in Ontario and Nova Scotia,” M. A. Thesis, Department o f Sociology, McGill University (Montreal: McGill University, 1983); and Bridglal Pachai, Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land: The Survival of Nova Scotia’s Blacks, volume II (Halifax: The Black Educators Association, 1990), 152. 7 Jennifer J. Nelson,Razing AJricville: A Geography o f Racism (Toronto, ON: University o f Toronto Press, 2008), 7. 8 Institute of Public Affairs Dalhousie University, The Condition o f the Negroes o f Halifax City, Nova Scotia (Halifax, NS: Dalhousie University, 1962), 15. As the authors report, ‘two-thirds o f the Negro families interviewed either had white neighbours living in an adjacent house or resided in a building that contained whites as well as Negroes.’ On the edge o f Halifax, Afficville housed some 400 residents. 9 Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management [NSARM], Manuscript Group 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, Survey of the Negro Population of Halifax County, 1. 10 NSARM, Record Group 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Volume 16- 1(a), Study of Negroes, Newsletter o f the Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, 15 October, 1965. '1 The Black middle-class even formed a social club known as the Criterion Club. See: Bridglal Pachai and Henry Bishop, Historic Black Nova Scotia, Images of Our Past Series (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2006), 74-6. 12 Institute of Public Affairs, The Condition o f the Negroes ofHalifax City, Nova Scotia, 11. See also: Clairmont and Magill, Structural Overview, 54-55. 13 Dominion Bureau o f Statistics, 1961 Census o f Canada, Series 3.3 Labour Force, Employment Status by Sex (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau o f Statistics, 1961), 13-3 and 13-4, line 26. 14 Wanda Thomas Bernard and Judith Fingard, “Black Women at Work: Race, Family, and Community in Greater Halifax,” in Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 2005), 190. 15 Institute of Public Affairs The Condition of the Negroes of Halifax City, 11-2. 16 Ibid. 17 Staff Writer, “American Artists Score Racial Discrimination,” Halifax Chronicle, 15 September 1947, 1. 18 Institute o f Public Affairs, The Condition o f the Negroes o f Halifax City, 13-5. 19 Bernice Moreau, “Black Nova Scotian Women’s Schooling and Citizenship: An Education in Violence,” in Robert Adamoski, Dorothy E. Chunn and Robert Menzies, eds. Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2002), 293. 20 Institute of Public Affairs, The Condition of the Negroes o f Halifax City, 17. 107
21 NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Mackinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, Survey o f the Negro Population of Nova Scotia; NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Communities Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 33, Province of Nova Scotia Inter-Departmental Committee on Human Rights, Financial Aid to Further the Education o f Negroes. 22 Institute o f Public Affairs, The Condition of the Negroes of Halifax City, 19. 23 Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Video Collection, Close-Up News Show - “Figure Your Colour Against Mine.” 24 McMaster University Archives, Combined University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament/Student Union for Peace Action Collection, Box 9, Folder: Nova Scotia Project, Document titled Nova Scotia Project. 25 NSARM, RG 85, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission (NSHRC) Fonds, Box 1, Folder 1. Evelyn Jackson et al. “Visible Minorities in Nova Scotia: A Call for Equality” (Halifax: NSHRC, 1973), 12. 26 Department o f Labour, Working Women in Nova Scotia (Halifax: Province of Nova Scotia, Department o f Labour, 1976), 2. 27 Department o f Labour, Working Women in Nova Scotia, 5. Between 1951 and 1961 the participation rate for the provincial population o f women, aged 20-24 increased from 40.2 to 43 percent; for those women aged 25-34 it increased from 19.5 to 23.7 percent; and those aged 35 to 44 increased their participation rate from 17.7 to 24.8 percent. See also: Linda McLevin and Susan Gray Marmaroff, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area (Halifax: City o f Halifax, 1975); and Women’s Bureau, Women in the Labour Force, Section III (Ottawa: Department of Labour, Women’s Bureau, 1983). 28 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Maijorie Grace Wombolt Fonds, Volume 82, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club, Memorandum on Behalf of Business and Professional Women of Nova Scotia in regard to Bill 76. 29 McLevin and Marmaroff, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area, 4. 30 McLevin and Marmaroff, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area, 4; and Women in the Labour Force, x-xiii. Nationally, Canadian women’s choice to work during marriage destabilized the practice o f leaving the paid workforce upon marriage. 31 Joya Sen, Women, Unions and the Labour Market: New Perspectives (Acton, MA: Coply Publishing Group, 1994), x. 32 McLevin and Marmaroff, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area; and Department o f Labour, Working Women in Nova Scotia. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 McLevin and Marmaroff, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area, 6. Domestic employment was especially prevalent among Black women. 36 Dominion Bureau o f Statistics, 1961 Census of Canada, 13-3 and 13-4, line 26. 37 Ibid, 2. In March o f 1975 a feminist research organization, Pro-Feminae, revealed that the average woman’s income in Nova Scotia, as a percentage that earned by men, had decreased by ‘a whopping 62 percent between 1967 and 1973.’ Pro-Feminae representative Judy Wouk further highlighted the fact that, at a time when more women were entering and staying in the workforce, approximately 75 percent o f all women workers occupied three occupational fields: clerical, sales, and service. 8 Department o f Labour, Working Women in Nova Scotia, 5. 39 Ibid, 6. In 1961, Nova Scotia’s women also enjoyed higher levels o f education than their male counterparts. 40 Ibid, 175. 41 Department o f Labour, Working Women in Nova Scotia, 8. The 1970 Royal Commission on the Status o f Women report also uncovered limited and unequal access to higher education among Canadian women. See also: Ruth Roach Pierson, “Education and Training” in Ruth Roach Pierson and Marjorie Griffin Cohen, eds. Bold Visions, 162-202. 42 Ibid. The Women’s Bureau also found that, as late as 1981, the majority o f women sought out ‘traditionally female areas of study.’ See: Women’s Bureau, Women in the Labour Force, Section III, iii. 108
43 Ross Lambertson argues that, ‘since 1867 Canada has been a predominantly liberal society, with two key leverage points: the principles o f liberty and equality.’ Though he notes that both terms are contested, have been debated and have evolved over time. See: Ross Lambertson, “Domination and Dissent: Equality Rights Before World War II,” in Janet Miron, ed. A History of Human Rights in Canada, 13. 44 Samuel D. Clark, J. Paul Grayson and Linda M. Grayson, eds. Prophecy and Protest: Social Movements in Twentieth-Century Canada (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1975); Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 1982); A. Paul Pross, Group Politics and Public Policy, 2nd Edition (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992); Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 85. 45 Cyril Levitt, Children o f Privilege: Student Revolt in the Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 8 46 Alan Cairns and Cynthia Williams, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada (Toronto: UTP, 1985). 47 LAC, VI 8203-0176, Sound and Moving Image Database, Close-Up News Show, “Figure Your Colour Against Mine,” broadcast 24 June, 1962. 48 Nancy Lubka, “1895 Revival Group: Women’s Liberation Grows in Strength,”The Fourth Estate, 26 February 1970, 13. 49 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 24, NSW AC Press Releases, 1974-1980, Item 24.6, Margaret Conrad, “What Is This Thing Called Feminism?” 3. Speaking to American women’s experience in the New Left, Jonah R. Churgin echoed Conrad’s explanation for the emergence of second-wave feminism, noting that feminist currents “emanated from ‘activist’ women students who were originally concerned with the issues of war and race. As these students left the sheltered confines o f academe they began to realize that the rights they were seeking for others were denied to themselves — both in society and on campus.” See: Jonah R. Churgin,The New Woman and the Old Academe: Sexism and Higher Education (NY: Libra Publishers Inc., 1978), 13. 50 Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Adam Chapnick, The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005); Clyde Sanger, ed., Canadians and the United Nations (Ottawa: Communications and Culture Branch, Department of External Affairs, 1988); John P. Humphrey, Human Rights & the United Nations: A Great Adventure (Dobbs Ferry, NY: Transnational Publishers Inc., 1984); A.J. Hobbins, ed. On the Edge o f Greatness: The Diaries o f John Humphrey, First Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights. Volumes I and II (Montreal, PQ: McGill University Libraries, 1994): Department o f Canadian Heritage, Background Document on the Origin and History of the Continuing Committee of Officials on Human Rights (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, 2005); and William A. Schabas, International Human Rights Law and the Canadian Charter (Scarborough, ON: Carswell Publishing, 1996). 51 Cairns and Williams, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, 8. 52 See: Humphrey, Human Rights & The United Nations; William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Sanger, ed., Canadians and the United Nations; Senate of Canada, Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 2005); Chapnick, The Middle Power Project; Christopher O’Sullivan, The United Nations: A Concise History (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 2005); and Paul M. Kennedy, The Parliament of Man: the Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations (New York: Random House, 2006). For a unique first-hand account, see: Hobbins, ed. On the Edge of Greatness. Canada’s early decision to abstain in an important vote on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a result o f the constitutional division o f powers and a convention — affirmed in the 1935 Labour Conventions case— demanding provincial assent to any international agreement impinging on provincial authority. Once the Canadian delegation realized that the only other nations to similarly abstain were communist, Canada quickly changed its stance. Notwithstanding jurisdictional complications, within twenty-four hours, Canada planned to vote for the Declaration in plenary. 53 Mark R. MacGuigan, “The Development of Civil Liberties in Canada,”Queen's Quarterly 72.2 (summer 1965): 270. So too have subsequent scholars argued that international rights developments 109
had important effects in Canada. See, for example: Noel Kinsella Personal Papers, Nodi Kinsella, “Impact o f the Universal Declaration o f Human Rights on Canada and New Brunswick”; Sanger, ed. Canadians and the United Nations, Schabas, International Human Rights Law and the Canadian Charter, Ingatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, and Beverley McLachlin, “Canada’s Coming of Age,” in Joseph Eliot Magnet, et al. eds. The Canadian Charter o f Rights and Freedoms, 353-77. 54 Cairns and Williams, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada ; Alan Cairns and Cynthia Williams, eds. The Politics of Gender, Ethnicity and Language in Canada (Toronto: UTP, 1985); MacLennan, Toward the Charter, 3. See also: Lambertson, Repression and Resistance, 373- 376. For an interesting biographical account of similar shifts, see: Philip Girard, Bora Laskin: Bringing Law to Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). 55 Cairns and Williams, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada', Cairns and Williams, eds. The Politics o f Gender, Ethnicity and Language in Canada', Patrias and Frager, “This is Our Country, These are Our Rights,”; MacLennan, Toward the Charter; Lambertson, Repression and Resistance; and Miron, ed. A History of Human Rights in Canada. 56 On domestic movements for equality in Canada, see: Shirley Tillotson, “Human Rights Law as Prism: Women’s Organizations, Unions, and Ontario’s Female Employees Fair Remuneration Act, 1951,” Canadian Historical Review 72.4 (December 1991): 532-557; Irving Abella, “Jews, Human Rights and the Making of a New Canada,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 11(2000): 3-15; Carmela Partrias and Ruth A. Frager, ‘“This is Our Country, These are Our Rights’: Minorities and the Origins o f Ontario’s Human Rights Campaigns,” Canadian Historical Review, 82.1 (March 2001): 1-35; Ross Lambertson, “The Dresden Story: Racism, Human Rights, and the Jewish Labour Committee o f Canada,” Labour/Le Travaille 47 (Spring 2001): 43-82; James W. St. G. Walker, “The ‘Jewish Phase’ in the Movement for Racial Equality in Canada,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 34.1 (2002): 1-29; Christopher MacLennan, Toward the Charter: Canadians and the Demand for a National Bill of Rights, 1929-1960 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2003); George Eagerton, “Entering the Age of Human Rights: Religion, Politics, and Canadian Liberalism, 1945-1950,” Canadian Historical Review 85.3 (September 2004): 451-479; Ross Lambertson, “The Black, Brown, White, and Red Blues: The Beating o f Clarence Clemons,” Canadian Historical Review 85.4 (December 2004): 755-776; Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality; Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 2005); Carmela Patrias, “Socialists, Jews, and the 1947 Saskatchewan Bill of Rights,” The Canadian Historical Review 87.2 (June 2006): 266-292; and Dominique Clement, Canada’s Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937-1982 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008). On Canada’s response to UN human rights initiatives, see: Secretary o f State, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Report of Canada on Implementation o f the Provisions of the Covenant (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1979); Secretary o f State, International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: Report of Canada on Articles 6 to 9 (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, 1980); Secretary of State, Convention on the Elimination ofAll Forms o f Discrimination Against Women: Report o f Canada (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, 1983); .Schabas, International Human Rights Law and the Canadian Charter; Joseph Eliot Magnet et al. eds. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Reflections on the Charter After Twenty Years (Markham, ON: Lexis Nexus Butterworths, 2003); Senate of Canada, Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights (Ottawa: Government of Canada, c2003), and Chapnick, The Middle Power Project. 57 Pross, Group Politics and Public Policy, 3. 58 On Human Rights Day, see: LAC, RG 6, Accession 1986-87/319, Box 147, File CB-17-3-2, Human Rights Day in Canada, letter from Gerard Pelletier dated 6 November, 1968; NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 53, "Black People Spoke Like Never Before - Wedderbum,"The Mail Star, 9 December 1968,11. See also: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 53, "Time For Freedom Is Now," The Mail Star, 9 December 1968, 1; LAC, Record Group 6, Accession 1986-87/319, Box 147, File CB-17-3-2, Human Rights Day in Canada, letter from Duncan Trafford dated 1 December, 1970. On International Women’s Day, see: Secretary o f State, Convention on the Elimination o f All Forms o f Discrimination Against Women: Report o f Canada (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, 1983), 110
introduction; NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 2, Folder 4, Press Releases 1981-1982; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder Misc. Minutes and Misc. Correspondence, Item 7.13, Poster: International Women’s Day; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2916, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 23, International Women’s Day; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee Fonds, Folder 8, International Women’s Day, 1979 & 1980. Photos o f a public demonstration on International Women’s Day (given to the author by activist Christina Simmons) further confirm the importance o f this event as a moment of reflection and opportunity for action. On the celebration of International Year for Human Rights, see: Canadian Commission, International Year for Human Rights, International Year for Human Rights 1968 In Canada (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1969). On International Women’s Year celebrations, see: Secretary of State, International Women’s Year, 1975 (Ottawa: Government o f Canada, cl 975); LAC, RG 106, Volume 21, IWY Fonds, No File Number, Interdepartmental Committee - Departmental Activities, various; LAC, RG 106, Volume 21, IWY Fonds, No File Number, Equal Opportunity for Women, various; LAC, RG 106-A-4, Volume 22, No File Number, Submission — Secretary o f State, Women’s Programme, various letters from Mary Gusella c.1975; Norma Walmsley, “A Decade for Women — At Last,” in Sanger, ed. Canadians and the United Nations, 147-152; Interview: Muriel Duckworth conducted 20 May 2005; and Interview: Kathy Moggridge conducted 8 January 2007. 59 Interview: Moggridge. 60 Provincial Archives o f New Brunswick (PANB), Record Series 416, Louis J. Robichaud Fonds, File 232, Human Rights Commission 1968, letter from Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson dated 13 March 1968. 61 PANB, RS416, Louis J. Robichaud Fonds, File 237, HRC, 1968, letter from Lester B. Pearson, dated 5 April 1968. 62 Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to Heart o f the American Dream (New York, NY: Random House USA, 1998). 63 Interview: Christina Simmons conducted 22 September 2006. 64 On American Black power see: Floyd B. Barbour, ed. The Black Power Revolt: A Collection O f Essays (Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 1968); Edward Greer, ed. Black Liberation Politics: A Reader (Boston: Allyn and Beacon, Inc., 1971); and William L. Van Deburg, Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (New York: New York University Press, 1997). 65 Joan Sangster makes reference to the Kennedy Commission in: Sangster, Transforming Labour, 238. 66 Pachai and Bishop, Historic Black Nova Scotia. On the effect of America’s civil rights movement in more general terms, especially as it related to the postwar/baby-boom generation in Canada, see: Myma Kostash, Long Way Home: The Story o f the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer Press and Company, 1980); and Douglas Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History o f the Baby-Boom Generation (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1996). For a first-hand account of New Left discussions regarding the problem of discrimination/inequality and its evolution over time, see: Our Generation Against Nuclear War, a New Left journal that later shortened its name to Our Generation', and McMaster University Archives (MUA), Combined University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-Student Union for Peace Action Fonds. The author thanks Margaret Conrad for recounting her personal experience as further evidence o f the connections forged among local and distant activists. 67 Interview: H.A.J. Wedderbum conducted 21 April 2005. 68 MU A, CUCND-SUPA Fonds; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 23, BUF in Perspective, 1970-1980, Joseph A. Mensah, “The Black United Front in Perspective”, 1970-1980; Lubka, “Ferment in Nova Scotia”; Staff Writer, “Rocky the Revolutionary”; J.A. Manette, “Making Something Happen: Nova Scotia’s Black Renaissance, 1968- 1986,”, PhD dissertation, Carleton University (Ottawa: Carleton, 1987); and Daniel McNeil, “Afro(Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotian,” Canadian Review of American Studies 35.1 (2005): 57-85. 69 Most of the organizations under study produced a newsletter and many subscribed to those produced by other organizations. Because o f limited funds the Nova Scotia Association for the Ill
Advancement of Colored People produced literature on an infrequent basis but used the church bulletins to advertise its activities. The Nova Scotia Project (a SUPA project in Halifax) produced a newsletter and received the SUPA newsletter. The Black United Front produced a newsletter titled Grasp from 1970 to 1978 which changed its name to Black Horizon after 1978 and routinely reported its activities inEbony Express (January 1979-June 1981) and Black Express (July 1981-31 December 1982): a series of newspapers targeting African-Nova Scotians. Other black organizations, including the Black Educators Association and Black Professional Women’s Group also used Black newspapers to reach an audience. Among the women’s organizations producing a newsletter (notwithstanding periodic cessation) were the Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club, Canadian Federation of University Women-Halifax Chapter, Zonta, Voice of Women-Halifax, Halifax Women’s Centre, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. Umbrella organizations, whether local (such as A Woman’s Place-Forrest House), provincial (such as the Provincial Council of Women) or national (such as the National Council o f Women, the National Action Committee on the Status o f Women or the National Black Congress of Canada) as well as the (inter)national bodies governing federated organizations also facilitated activist communication. 70 Among the women’s liberationists arriving from America were: Christina Simmons, Judy Wouk and Linda Kealey (by way of Toronto). This information was gleaned through activist interviews. Interview: Simmons; Questionnaire: Judy Wouk conducted 13 June 2007; Interview: Linda Kealey conducted 23 May 2006. 71 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 21, NAC, Item 21-23, NSW AC Update and Membership Drive, 27 February 1981. 72 Simmons, “Interview with the Author;” Christina Simmons and Anne Fausto, “Women’s Liberation Union o f Rhode Island: A History” (Providence, RI: Women’s Liberation Union of Rhode Island, c l976); and Christina Simmons, Responses to the Veteran Feminist Project Questionnaire (provided to the author by Simmons). 7 Although surely important to earlier feminist organizations, the connections forged through relocation are particularly evident among the archival records relating to women’s liberation organizations. Among the feminists arriving from elsewhere in Canada were: Linda Kealey, Kathy Moggridge and Lynn MacDonald. 74 In turn, Canada’s New Left organizations and activists connected to American movements for racial equality. A number of SUPA activists, for example, spent time in the United States working as community workers, volunteers and political organizers. 75 See: LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee. 76 On the NBCC, see: Wilson Head, A Life on the Edge: Experiences in Black and White North America, The Memoirs o f Wilson Head (NP: NP, 2005). For primary sources, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 20002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 15, National Black Coalition o f Canada, 1973- 82; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Box 022, Folders 5 and 6, Task Force on Viable Black National Organizations, 1975-8; Ebony Express, November 1979, 3-7; 77 NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, Address given by F.R. MacKinnon to the NSAACP dated 19 January 1963,4. 78 Wilson Head, “Black Should Seek Political Power,” Ebony Express, 3. 79 NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, “A Timely Deed,” 23 October 1962. The article refers to a series of riots that erupted in response to the desegregation of the University of Mississippi leaving two dead and some 75 injured. 80 For media coverage of racial inequality dating to the early postwar years see: NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), various. J. A. Manette reports that among the newspapers covering the socio-economic progress of African-Nova Scotians were The Winnipeg Free Press, The Globe Magazine, The Montreal Star and The United Church Observer. The issue of gender equality was less front-and-centre in the early postwar years as public discussion of human rights and equality were framed as matters o f religious and racial intolerance. On this observation, see: Caims and Williams, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada-, and Bridglal Pachai, ed. Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, 25,h Anniversary, 1967- 1992, This observation is confirmed by a reading of: NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, MacKinnon 112
Fonds; and NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds. Nevertheless, some evidence o f media coverage of feminist issues exists in the Wombolt Fonds at NSARM. 81 For example, see: Staff Writer, “Civil Service Opportunities Neglected by Women,”The Fourth Estate, 2 October 1969, 13; Nancy Lubka, “Freedom Coming Slow for Canadian Women,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969,9; Nancy Lubka, “1895 Revival Group: Women’s Liberation Grows in Strength,” The Fourth Estate 26 February 1970, 13; Brenda Large “Outdated Law Denies Rights,” The Fourth Estate, 2 November, 1970; “Abortion Devastating,”The Fourth Estate, 26 November 1970; “Abortion: Take It Out of the Code,” The Fourth Estate (Editorial), 3 December 1970,4; “Write Your Prime Minister Today,” The Fourth Estate (Editorial), 10 December 1970, 4; “Group Will Study Report,” The Fourth Estate, 21 January 1971, 2; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 62, Correspondence, Item 62.35, Mount Saint Vincent University Programme: Women in a Changing World. The Fourth Estate was an alternative and activist-favoured weekly newspaper published in Halifax from 1969 to 1978. It was originally published as The People but a controversy over editorial control led to most o f the editorial staff leaving to form The Fourth Estate. One family, the Fillmores (father, mother, son, and daughter- in-law), all sat on the editorial board, contributed articles, and owned a stake in the paper until 1970/1 when the parents sold their shares to son Nick Fillmore and daughter-in-law Brenda Large Fillmore. 82 On media coverage, see: J.A. Manette, “Making Something Happen”. For perhaps the most regular and extensive coverage of both issues, see:The Fourth Estate, 1969-1975 passim. Between 1979 and 1982, Ebony Express and then Black Express covered the issue o f racial inequality. So too did the local and national mainstream media carry stories of racial and gender inequality in Halifax as well as the movements emerging in response to that injustice. See, for example: LAC, VI 8203-0176, Sound and Moving Image Database, Close-Up News Show, “Figure Your Colour Against Mine,” broadcast 24 June, 1962; MacLean's 80.11 (November 1967); Staff Writer, "Rocky the Revolutionary," The Globe Magazine, February 15, 1969, 24. For local media coverage of racial inequality, see clippings collections at the Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management, including: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, various articles; NSARM, MG 1992- 718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volumes I-III, various articles. On local and national media coverage of women’s issues and gender inequality, see: Dalhousie University Archives, Manuscript Series 11-4, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee Fonds, various folders (particularly Box 1 Folder 8: Unemployment and Box 3, Folder 3: Election Issues); NSARM, RG 85, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Volume 2, Folder 4, New Releases; NSARM, RG 89, Women’s Directorate Fonds, Volume 9, Folder 1, Newsclippings; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1817, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club Fonds, Folder 13, Newsclippings, 1977-1982. 83 W. B. Devall, “Support for Civil Liberties among English-Speaking Canadian University Students,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 3.3 (September 1970): 433-449; Jessie Bernard, “Age, Sex and Feminism,”Annals of the American Academy o f Political and Social Science 415 (September 1974): 120-137; Kenneth Westhues, “Intergenerational Conflict in the Sixties,” in Clark, Grayson and Grayson, eds. Prophecy and Protest-, and Churgin, The New Woman and the Old Academe-, Owram, Born at the Right Time, 233; and Young and Everitt, Advocacy Groups, 32.Full citation needed for Young and Everitt 84 Neil Nevitte, The Decline o f Deference (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1996), 289-90; and Neil Nevitte, “Introduction,” in Neil Nevitte, ed.Value Change and Governance in Canada (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 25. 85 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2914, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 48, Coalition of Support for Women, Minutes, 11 October 1977, 2; and Judith Fingard, “Women’s Organizations: The Heart and Soul of Women’s Activism,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds.Mothers o f the Municipality, 37. 86 On the cooperation among the NSAACP and Provincial Department o f Education, Adult Education Division (where local activist leader Rev. Dr. W.P. Oliver worked) see: MUA, CUCND Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Project Newsletter, Nova Scotia Scene, 1, n.d. On speeches and activities designed to educate the public and attract members to existing feminist organizations, see: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Maijorie Grace Wombolt Fonds, Volume 55, Letters, Papers, Legal Status o f Women etc. 1938-54, various; Volume 64, Lectures and Papers; Volume 65, Letters and Papers, 1949-52; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 711, Halifax Business and 113
Professional Women’s Club Fonds, Volume 65, Women Jurors: Data 1951 and 1978 Item 65.7, Club History, 24 March 1958, Information for 20 Question Challenge Program on CHNS. 87 On the rise o f postmaterial concerns, see: Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift In Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 88 Conrad, “The 1950s: The Decade of Development,” and Stanley, “The 1960s: The Illusions and Realities o f Progress”. 89 Fingard, Guildford, and Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years. On educational policy, see also: Smith, “Provincial Social Policy During the Stanfield Era.” 90 Levitt,Children of Privilege, 4. 91 James Tully, “Struggles Over Recognition and Distribution,”Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory 7.4 (2000): 369-482. See also: Matt James, Misrecognized Materialists: Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2006). 92 Myma Kostash, Long Way Home, xxvi; and Owram, Bom at the Right Time, 161-6. 93 Cynthia Williams makes a similar observation regarding the evolving concept of human rights in a national context. See: Williams, “The Changing Nature of Citizen Rights,” in Cairns and Williams, eds. Constitutionalism, Citizenship and Society in Canada, 107-117. 94 Even before the late 1960s, Nova Scotia’s Human Rights Act (and indeed those o f other provinces) included equal pay provisions. As well, Canada’s federal statutory Bill of Rights prohibited sex discrimination. 95 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2932, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 6, Speeches, Briefs and Reports, 1968, Brief Presented by Voice o f Women of Halifax to the Royal Commission on the Status o f Women in Canada; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, various. For a secondary treatment o f the early life o f VOW-Halifax including its early peace, social justice and feminist concerns, see: Frances Early, “‘A Grandly Subversive Time’: The Halifax Chapter o f the Voice of Women in the 1960s,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality. 96 NSARM, RG 100, Volume 72, Premier’s Office Fonds, no file number, G.A. Regan - Speeches, Keynote and Policy Address by Gerald Regan dated 24 September 1970; and NSARM, RG 100, Volume 72, Premier’s Office Fonds, no file number, G.A. Regan - Speeches, Excerpts of Remarks made 7 October, 1970. 97 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970,48. 98 Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan and the RCMP,” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 466. 99 Interview: Duckworth. See also: Marion Douglas Kerans, Muriel Duckworth: A Very Active Pacifist (Halifax: Femwood Press, 1996). 100 Questionnaire: Wouk. 101 Scholars studying the Voice o f Women have noted the presence o f a large number of Quaker and Baha’i women. On the religious faith o f Voices, see: Early, ‘“A Grandly Subversive Time’”, 253- 280. On the role of religious figures and institutions in civil rights movements more generally, see: George Egerton, “Entering the Age of Human Rights: Religion, Politics, and Canadian Liberalism, 1945-1950,” Canadian Historical Review 85.3 (September 2004): 451-479. 102 McMaster University Archives (MUA), Company of Young Canadians Collection, Box 5: Project Files, Folder 5.3, Summary o f Projects, A Report on Community Organizing Projects, Summer 1965. 103 Colin A. Thompson, Bom With A Call: A Biography o f Dr. William Pearly Oliver, C.M. (Halifax: Black Cultural Centre o f Nova Scotia, 1986), 53. A similar point is made by an African-Canadian in Sylvia Hamilton’s documentary film “The Little Black Schoolhouse.” 104 Interview: Wedderbum. 105 For example, the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee actively supported working women’s issues and partnered with Nova Scotian labour organizations on projects with mutual appeal. So too did the NSAACP work with provincial labour groups. Older organizations, meanwhile, such as the Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club discussed whether they should open their membership to female labourers. 106 The NSAACP, for example, began as a discussion group called the Colored Education Centre: a group of concerned African-Nova Scotians meeting once a week to discuss issues related to racial 114
discrimination. See: Jules Ramon Oliver, “Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” MSW Thesis, 10. 107 Oliver, “Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” 16. 108 Interview: Moggridge. 109 Both Christina Simmons and Linda Kealey, for example, remember being involved in influential political conversations at university and at work. Interview: Simmons; and Interview: Kealey. 110 Diani and Me Adam, eds. Social Movement and Networks, 1. Diani and Me Adam argue that ‘the notion that prior social ties operate as a basis for movement’ recruitment and that established social settings are the locus of movement emergence are among the most established findings in social movement research. Typically, social movement activists are linked through both ‘public’ and ‘private’ ties well before collective action develops.’ 111 Owram, Bom at the Right Time, 221. On SUPA, see also: Kostash, Long Way from Home', Our Generation', and the MUA, CUCND-SUPA Collection. 112 James Harding, “An Ethical Movement in Search of an Analysis: The Student Union for Peace Action in Canada,” Our Generation 3.4/4.1 (1965): 20. 113 See: Levitt,Children o f Privilege, 8; and Owram, Born at the Right Time, 228. Harding’s title, immediately above, implies the essentially moral nature o f the movement as well. 114 Owram, Bom at the Right Time, 227. 115 Harding, “An Ethical Movement in Search o f an Analysis,” 23. 116 In fact, the new left was not new to Halifax. The Combined University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was active in the city as early as 1961. A series of internal difficulties and controversial leadership seem to have resulted in periods of sporadic activity between 1961 and 1963. See: MUA, CUCND/SUPA collection, Box 4, Folder, Dalhousie 1964-1965, various including letters from D. Maxwell, a gentleman identified simply as Kevin and Jane Calder; and Woody MacLean, “C.U.C.N.D. Now You See It...Now You Don’t,”Dalhousie Gazette, c. October 1963. 117 MUA, CYC Collection, Box 5, Project Files, File 11: Nova Scotia Project, Folder 5.2, Summary o f Community Organizing Project, Summer 1965. 118 Jones was bom and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia. MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 20, File 12, Nova Scotia Project, Dan Proudfoot, “Canada’s Own Stokely Carmichael,” Toronto Daily Star, 2 March 1967, 7. 119 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, letter from Dianne Burrows, summer 1965. 120 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, The Nova Scotia Project. 121 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene. 122 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, The Nova Scotia Project. 123 J.A. Manette, “Making Something Happen,” 153. 124 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Halifax and Maritime Region, SUPA, 1966 Folder, letter from Mark Gordon dated 19 March 1966; and MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Club Kwacha Report, 21 March 1966. 125 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970, 51. On group and personal discussion, see: MUA, CUCND-SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project, Nova Scotia Scene, various. 126 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene: Newsletter o f the Nova Scotia Project 2 (December 1965). 127 Manette, “Making Something Happen,” 156. 128 Ibid, 157. See also: Clairmont and Magill, Nova Scotia Blacks. 129 See: Clark, Grayson and Grayson, eds. Prophecy and Protest, introduction. On other social groups identified by their physiological sign systems, see The Fourth Estate coverage of the ‘hippy’ or ‘long hair’ (male) conflicts with local police in Halifax between 1969 and 1970. In late 1969 and early 1970 one can hardly read two consecutive issues of The Fourth Estate without coming across the issue. 130 Bom o f post-modem insights, the construction o f ‘self from multiple identity cleavages emerges in Pamela Sugiman, "Privilege and Oppression : The Configuration of Race, Gender and Class in 115
Southern Ontario Auto Plants, 1939 to 1949," Labour/Le Travail 47 (spring 2001): 83-115, Agnes Calliste, "The Struggle for Employment Equity by Blacks on American and Canadian Railroads" Journal o f Black Studies 25.3 (January 1995): 297-317; Agnes Calliste, "Antiracism Organizing and Resistance in Nursing: African Canadian Women," Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 33.3 (August/aout 1996): 361-390; and Gayle MacDonald, Rachel L. Osborne, and Charles C. Smith, eds. Feminism, Law, Inclusion: Jntersectionality in Action (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2005). 131 Ian Hamilton, The Children’s Crusade: The Story o f the Company o f Canadians (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Ltd., 1970), 69. On the CYC, see also: Margaret Daly, The Revolution Game: The Short, Unhappy Life of the Company of Young Canadians (Toronto: New Press, 1970). 132 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Brenda Large Fonds, Folder 6, "Panther's Wake," 24-5. 133 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57, G.I. Smith, Folder 16-1 (a), Study of Negroes, Burnley 'Rocky' Jones, "Prospects and Proposals for Improvement of the Black Man's Condition," in 'The Black Man in Nova Scotia': Teach-In Report held at St. Francis Xavier University, January 1969 (Antigonish, Nova Scotia: St. Francis Xavier, 1969), 14. 134 Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth (New York: New Press, 1997), 225 and 291. 135 On American Black power see: Floyd B. Barbour, ed. The Black Power Revolt: A Collection O f Essays (Boston; Extending Horizons Books, 1968); Edward Greer, ed. Black Liberation Politics: A Reader (Boston: Allyn and Beacon, Inc., 1971); William L. Van Deburg, Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (New York: New York University Press, 1997). 136 Clairmont and Magill, Structural Overview. See also: Kenneth Westhues, "Inter-Generational Conflict in the Sixties." Prophecy and Protest, 387-408. According to Clairmont and Magill, ‘Nova Scotia Blacks have been influenced considerably by developments in the Black community in the United States. The Civil Rights movement and the Black Power movement in the United States constitute important preconditions for changes that are taking place in the cultural adaptation of Nova Scotian Blacks.’ H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum also spent time in New York City in the early 1960s, where he remembered summer evenings spent discussing, with a neighbour who worked as a Kennedy administration advisor, ‘MLK and Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad and Bull Connors.’ 137 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 20, Folder 10, The Nova Scotia Project, Dan Proudfoot, “Canada’s Own Stokely Carmichael,” Toronto Daily Star, 2 March 1967, 7. 138 Manette, "Making Something Happen," 160. 139 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57, G.I. Smith, Folder 16-1 (a), Study of Negroes, Jones, "Prospects and Proposals for Improvement of the Black Man's Condition," in 'The Black Man in Nova Scotia’, 14-15. In that speech, Jones explained that ”[if] I am a Negro, my history began with slavery...Where do Negro Canadians trace their history back to? There is no Negro land to start o f with.” 140 NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia’s Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 39, MacLean’s 80.11 (November 1967). The article notes an emergent rift between the leaders o f the NSAACP and the Black youth in the arguments and tactics utilized. 141 NSARM, Record Group 100, Premier’s Office, Volume 57, Smith, Folder 16-l(a), Study of Negroes, Jones, "Prospects and Proposals for Improvement o f the Black Man's Condition," 'The Black Man in Nova Scotia'. 142 qt. R. Jones in Daniel McNeil, “Afro(Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotia,” Canadian Review of American Studies 35.1(2005): 73 at fn 6. 143 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 31, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1 (a), Study of Negroes, letter from Carrie M. Best to Premier Richard Stanfield, dated 11 April 1967. I44NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57, Smith, Folder 16-1 (a), Study o f Negroes, letter from Maurice Ruddick to Premier G.I. Smith, 15 July 1969. l45Thompson, Born With A Call, 97. 146 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Communities Fonds - Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 52, Resolutions from 1968 Human Rights Conference, December 6-7, 1968, Halifax Nova Scotia - Nova Scotia Human Rights Federation. Following the founding o f BUF, the Federation passed a resolution that "Black people should not be called black...They should be called colored or Negro." 147 Marion Douglas Kerans, Muriel Duckworth: A Very Active Pacifist (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996), 72. 116
148 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene: Newsletter of the Nova Scotia Project 2 (December 1965). 149 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2932, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 6, Speeches, Briefs and Reports, 1968, Brief Presented by Voice o f Women o f Halifax to the Royal Commission on the Status o f Women in Canada. On VOW’s RCSW brief as an early expression o f women’s liberation thinking in Halifax and Lubka’s professional interest in issues of gender equality, see: Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time.” For evidence o f Lubka’s professional interest in the movement for racial equality, see: Lubka, “Ferment in Nova Scotia,”Queen’s Quarterly 76.2 (summer 1969); Nancy Lubka, “Black Front Raises Questions: Action or a $470,000 bureaucracy?” The Fourth Estate 13 November 1969, 3; and Nancy Lubka, “Black Struggle to Find Themselves,”The Fourth Estate 24 July 1969, 11. On the struggle to accommodate diversity in the women’s movement and inetersectionalities o f identity and oppression, see: MacDonald, Osborne, and Smith, eds. Feminism, Law, Inclusion; Intersectionality in Action. Carrie M. Best also presented to the RCSW on the subject o f poverty and women o f colour, chastising Commissioners for not reaching out to more women representing either group. Brief mention is made of Best’s appearance in: Sangster, Transforming Labour, 239-240. 150 See: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, various. m Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 271. 152 Fingard, Guildford and Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years, 175-7. 153Interview: Duckworth. On CR groups in a Canadian context, see: Rebick, Ten Thousand Roses', Cohen, “The Canadian Women’s Movement” inStrong Voices, 7-10; “Reorganizing for Change” in Canadian Women, Second Edition, 419-422; Janice L. Ristock, “Feminist Collectives” in Wine and . Ristock, eds. Women and Social Change, 41-55. 154 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1552, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, No Folder Number, Newsletters, February 1978,12. 155 For example, see: Judith Wouk, “The Do-Nothing A-G,”The Fourth Estate, 1 October 1970, 3; and Judith Wouk, “Duckworth Again elected National President: War is Most Serious Polluter, Says Voice of Women,” The Fourth Estate, 12 November 1970, 3. 156 Wouk, “Activist Questionnaire.” 157 Wouk remembers the centre emerging in 1971 or 1972. The earliest archival records date to 1973. Those records, including organizational meeting minutes, suggest that the Centre formed in July or August o f 1973. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, Minutes 23 October 1973. Also: Interview: Wouk. 158 Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, “Making A Difference: Halifax Women Remember the 50s, 60s, and 70s,” filmed 7 May 1999; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1263, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, letter from Dawna Gallagher and Ava Greenspan, n.d.; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, Newsletter, 3 May 1974. 159 Wouk, “Activist Questionnaire.” 160 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, Minutes 23 October 1973. 161 Ibid. 162 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, letter from Dawna Gallagher and Ava Greenspan, n.d.; Newsletter, 3 May 1974; and Minutes o f 13 February, 1974. The rise o f public funding for activist organizations will be dealt with in Chapter Four: Resource Mobilization Strategies. 163 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, Newsletter January 1974; May 1974; January 1975. Activist Elizabeth Mullaly remembers that Voice o f Women also proved to be the common link among women of one CR group. See: Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 271. On the importance of feminist newsletters and other communication media, see: Philinda Masters, “Women, Culture, and Communications,” in Ruth Roach Pierson et al., Strong Voices, 394-417; and Margie Wolf, “Working in Words: Feminist Publishing in Canada,” in Wine and Ristock, eds. Women and Social Change, 265-75. 164 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, Women’s Centre Newsletter, December 1974, 1. 117
165 Ibid. 166 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre, Newsletters and Other, Women’s Centre Newsletter, February 1975, 1. 167 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Women’s Centre Newsletters and Other, Women’s Centre Newsletter, February 1975. 168 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre, Newsletters and Other, Women’s Centre Newsletter, February 1975, 1. 169 “City Life,”The Fourth Estate, November-17 December 1975, passim. 170 “Report of the Royal Commission on the Status o f Women in Canada,” Our Generation 8.2 (Winter/April 1972): 108. 171 Nancy Lubka, “1895 Revival Group: Women’s Liberation Grows in Strength,”The Fourth Estate, 26 February 1970, 13. For statistical evidence of women’s socio-economic inequality in Halifax and Nova Scotia over a 25 year period, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 20, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Working Women in Nova Scotia, Fall 1976; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Folder 28, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area, 24 October 1975. On average annual income, rates of participation, occupational classification, and educational achievement the Canadian census is also valuable. 172 On a number of these organizations, see: Fingard, “Women’s Organizations,” 25-48. On women’s liberation organizing elsewhere in Canada, see: Rebick, Ten Thousand Roses-, “Reorganizing for Change” , 419-42; and Cohen, “The Canadian Women’s Movement.” 173 Nancy Lubka, “Freedom Coming Slow for Canadian Women,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969, 9; and Lubka, “1895 Revival Group: Women’s Liberation Grows in Strength,” 13. 174 Wouk, “Activist Questionnaire.” 175 Among African-Nova Scotians, the Affo-Canadian Liberation Movement (led by Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones) is perhaps the clearest example o f the term. The more widely used ‘self-determination’ implies a similar sensibility. 176 Jill Vickers makes a similar argument concerning feminism on the national stage. Vickers argues that ‘the dominant mode o f political discourse involves a commitment to the ordinary political process, a belief in the efficacy o f state action, and positive view of the state as a utility o f value for women.’ See: Jill Vickers, “The intellectual origins o f the women’s movements in Canada,” in Constance Backhouse and David H. Flaherty, eds. Challenging Times: The women’s movement in Canada and the United States (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 59- 60. 177 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 24, NSW AC Press Releases, 1974-1980, Item 24.6, “What Is This Thing Called Feminism?” 3. 178 Similarly, Linda Kealey remembers little contact between new feminist organizations and those well established in Halifax with the possible exception o f the Voice o f Women. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1, letter from Norma J. Mosher dated 18 February 1980; and Interview: Kealey. 179 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2914, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 48, Coalition of Support for Women, Minutes, 11 October 1977, 2. 180 See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 717, Halifax Club o f Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 97, Addresses, Speeches, 1946-1970, Item 97.23, President’s Address, 1970. 181 Pat Verge, “Tough Road for Women in Politics,” The Fourth Estate, 5 October 1972,1. 182 Ibid. 183 Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women, Herself/Elle-Meme (Halifax: Government of Nova Scotia, 1976), 7. 184 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 717, Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 97, Addresses, Speeches, 1946-1970, Item 97.23, President’s Address, 1970, 3. 185 Ibid, 6. 186 Canadian Human Rights Commission, Discrimination in Canada: A Survey o f Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Concerned with Discrimination (Ottawa: Canadian Human Rights Commission, 1979). See also: Reginald Bibby, The Precarious Mosaic: Intergroup Relations in the Canadian 80s (Lethbridge, AB: University o f Lethbridge, 1982). Also, see Chapter Five. 118
187 Fingard, “Women’s Organizations,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality. 119
Chapter Three
Formal Organization: A Vehicle for Political Action
A collective political consciousness is a necessary, but not necessarily sufficient condition for the emergence of formal organizations. Underlying formal organization is the will to act and the conviction that such action can make a difference. In the decade after 1965, as a political consciousness spread among
African Nova-Scotians and women in Halifax, a significant number of those sensitive to the political dimensions of racial and gender discrimination resolved to take action. This process was not limited to the postwar generation. Citizens who had long been politically active also committed themselves to renewed efforts. To gather support in preparation for asserting demands for equality, activists who had begun their involvement in less formally political groups — community centres or consciousness-raising groups, for example — established formal and highly political organizations. And previously active citizens formed new organizations either to address new issues or to continue the struggle for equality in new ways.
Formal organization and broadly-based support were necessary to exert political influence. While issues — no matter what their merit — supported by small groups are easily dismissed by the public and by legislators, issues supported by large numbers of voters are more likely to be addressed. Democracies are necessarily sensitive to issues supported by large cross-sections of the electorate. In the two decades after 1960, Halifax activists established formal organizations with a view to demonstrating such broad-based support. Those organizations publicly identified an issue and kept it before the public. By reminding legislators of their 120
voting strength, members, backed by a supportive public, asserted the consequential presence of activist organizations. Faced with activist demands and public support,
intransigent elected officials risked defeat at the polls. The most successful
organizations, then, created a democratically attuned interface as a middle-ground
between formal politics and aggrieved individuals.1 Formal organizations also
channelled resources to causes, ensured that campaigns continued after the loss of
any single individual and made collective action possible. As Jeffrey Cormier has
argued, ‘strong, long-lasting social movements need more than just the ability to
mobilize large numbers of people... [they also require] organizational structures to
maintain their activities over the long term.’2
As a community-centred process, formal organization drew upon and
extended developments emerging during the process of consciousness-raising. In the
process of stewarding individuals to a political consciousness, local leaders were
identified, communication networks established and organizations created. Taken
together, leaders, communication networks and organizations/institutions defined a
community’s indigenous organizational potential - what might also be cast as the
‘infrastructure’ supporting a movement.3 Specific events presented moments for
collective reflection and, among the politically conscious, created a sense of
urgency. Activists drew upon the community infrastructure surrounding them,
including long-existing community organizations and institutions but, determined to
move beyond discussion, limited action and irrelevant organizations, established
new organizations better suited to their political objectives and more reflective of the political consciousness binding members. To this end, leaders used communication 121 networks to recruit members from among existing organizations as well as from the growing cadre of politically-conscious citizens.
Moving individuals from a broad consensus regarding the injustice of discrimination to an agreement on the proper leadership, aims and structure of an organization posed significant challenges. Reflecting on her career as an activist,
Muriel Duckworth recalled: ‘I’ve gone through a lot of “foundings” in my long life.
They are never easy.... Although we may agree on the objectives, there are all the messy details.’4 Notwithstanding the ‘messy details,’ Affican-Nova Scotians and feminists proved most loyal to organizations bom of their personal political consciousness. Yet, when organizational leadership, membership, structure, or aims and objectives failed to reflect their members’ political consciousness, activists rejected those organizations.
Between 1960 and 1982, a growing number of politically-conscious
Haligonians interpreted public events as further evidence of the pervasive socioeconomic discrimination attached to race and gender. Public events highlighting salient issues for a broad cross-section of the politically conscious — such as international years of commemoration — inspired large-scale responses, whereas discrete events — such as the forced relocation of a single community — initiated more limited responses. In terms of scope, few events compared to the
International Year for Human Rights (1968) and International Women’s Year
(1975). During these year-long celebrations, the events commemorating western progress in the field of human rights presented ideals against which the politically conscious measured progress to date. Confronted by events convened to celebrate an 122 equality that did not match their reality, politically conscious African-Nova Scotians and women responded by formally organizing and demanding racial and gender equality. Meanwhile, a number of previously inactive Haligonians reached a political consciousness. Contradictions in the postwar Canadian rhetoric and practice
of equality, on display so clearly during IYHR and IWY, allowed African-Nova
Scotian and feminist leaders to channel the surge of energy surrounding these
moments of public reflection into formal organizations. Successful leaders
established organizations whose structure, leadership and aims mirrored the political
sensibilities of their potential membership.
Leaders played vitally important roles during the process of formal
organization. In Halifax, between 1960 and 1982, existing and emergent leaders —
who played an essential role in the spread of a political consciousness — encouraged
formal organization. To some degree the importance of leaders is self-evident: they
give direction to activists who, having achieved a level of political consciousness,
were disinclined to assume a leadership role.5 Haligonian leaders took an active role
in the creation of formal organizations and, through reason or charisma, bound
members to organizations. At a time when novel organizational structures (such as
the non-hierarchical models developed by European and North American feminists)
complicated traditional notions of movement leadership, most organizations in
Halifax continued to work within hierarchies. From extant records and interviews, a
number of individuals clearly emerge as leaders, having played critical roles in
several organizations and projects during the 1960s and 1970s.
Discerning Patterns of Formal Organization, 1960-1968 123
Political consciousness was the wellspring of political action. Forged in communion with similarly situated citizens, the consciousness animating aggrieved Haligonians played a vitally important role during periods of formal organization. Leaders encouraged the creation of formal structures by recruiting members from among their communication networks and extant community organizations. The
organizations and institutions that formed a part of those communication networks bred common understandings and presented a site for activist recruitment. Those
Haligonians already active in community organizations were relatively easy recruits.
Clearly, those citizens had achieved a political consciousness, possessed a sense of
efficacy and were comfortable with political activity. Citizens whose consciousness
was recently raised in community centres or discussion groups also proved relatively
easy to recruit, often following leaders into formal, more explicitly political,
structures. Local community infrastructure also proved important to recruitment.
Institutions, such as faith communities or local universities, proved fertile ground for
recruitment, likely because of the communication networks surrounding them.
Indeed, contemporary observers and, later, scholars have documented the correlation
between university education and support for rights.6 Scholars have also
demonstrated a connection between Nova Scotia’s Black churches and the struggle
for racial equality. Political parties and broadly mandated social movement
organizations linked activists from different movements. Haligonians expanded their
communication networks when they joined political parties (particularly the
provincial New Democratic Party (NDP) and participated in broadly-conceived 124
SMOs (including the Movement for Citizens Voice and Action, an organization dedicated to fostering participatory public policy).
Even as leaders used their communication networks, community organizations and institutions to recruit activists, the latter did not offer their support unconditionally. Members demanded that any political organization claiming to promote their interests properly reflect their political consciousness. No matter how compelling the leader, extensive the communication network or great the potential for mass recruitment, when an organization’s methods, actions or stated goals conflicted with members’ political sensibilities, activists withheld or withdrew their support. Successful leaders — those able to build the membership necessary to support an organization [and] essential to political influence — attended to activists’ political sensibilities.
In the 1960s, organizations initiated by experienced activists and built upon the solid foundations of established communication networks and institutions, emerged with relative ease. On 23 November 1960, five months after pacifist women responded to the failure of the Summit Peace Talks by forming the Voice of
Women in Toronto, Muriel Duckworth — then active in the Home and School
Association and the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NSAACP) — hosted a group of fifteen women at her home.8 Although a number of attendees were unknown to each other, their paths intersected that day through their friendship with Duckworth and/or Peggy Hope-Simpson who had used their personal communication networks to bring the women together.9 These politically-conscious women discussed the threat of nuclear annihilation and, that 125 very afternoon, resolved to establish a local chapter of the Voice of Women/La Voix des Femmes (VOW).10 The subsequent founding of this new organization was made much easier by common pacifist sensibilities, willing and able leadership, established communication networks and membership in common organizations such as the NSAACP and the Quaker and Baha’i churches.
Created by women animated by diverse but compatible political sensibilities and linked through the communication network of its leaders, VOW-Halifax reflected both the event precipitating its formation — itself reflective of Haligonian activists’ wider historical context — and the unique political consciousness of its founding members. In response to the threat of nuclear annihilation generally, and failed peace talks specifically, the meeting predictably resulted in a pacifist organization. The fifteen women also decided to form a women’s organization because they agreed with their Torontonian counterparts that women’s perspective was needed in a field dominated by men. From the outset, these pacifists — a number of whom were also active in the movement for racial equality — stamped
Voice of Women-Halifax with their imprimatur by adopting a dual peace and social justice mandate.11 Voices in Halifax, a number of whom were active in the
NSAACP (including Duckworth and Pearleen Oliver) and thereby reflected the blurring of lines between the movements for racial and gender equality, reasoned that ‘it is unrealistic to expect cooperation of peoples in other parts of the globe, when, in the microcosm of our towns and cities, we do not tolerate superficial differences such as skin color.’1 7 Finally, Voices disregarded partisan loyalties — ensuring that each member could see herself reflected in VOW-Halifax. 126
Conversely, the Halifax Human Rights Advisory Committee, an organization established in response to the forced relocation of Africville, failed to realize its potential when transplanted leaders, removed from the communication networks connecting potential members, established an organization unrepresentative of its
constituents’ political ambitions. City planners had slated Africville, a predominantly Black settlement located on the edge of Halifax, for industrial
development during a period of ‘urban renewal.’ Decisive action was necessary but
‘without a community infrastructure to provide a political power base,’ Donald
Clairmont and Dennis Magill argue, Africville residents ‘were forced to look to the
outside world for assistance and guidance.’13 At a time when human rights issues
were synonymous with religious, ethnic and racial discrimination, Africville
residents turned to the National Committee on Human Rights (Canadian Labour
Congress) which led to a series of meetings in Halifax attended by Alan Borovoy,
Ontario Human Rights Director of the Jewish Labour Committee. On 21 September
1962, encouraged by Borovoy, four Africville residents and five other Haligonians
— some of whom were members of a small group known as the Halifax Interracial
Council — organized the Halifax Human Rights Advisory Committee (HRAC).
Once established, the ‘core membership’ of the HRAC consisted of three Africville
residents and seven other Haligonians identified as ‘caretakers.’14
From the outset, differing senses of political efficacy separated ‘caretakers’
from residents. Although approximately thirty residents attended a meeting to establish an NSAACP chapter in Africville, W.P. Oliver reported that the reception he received suggested that ‘their attitude was one of pessimism and resignation.’15 127
This history of hopelessness may explain why only five Africville residents attended more than two of the forty meetings held by the HRAC; only the three Africville
residents identified as ‘core members’ attended even as many as twenty of the forty.
In 1963, a discouraged HRAC chair, H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum, juxtaposed the
Halifax situation with that of the southern United States: ‘[our] people are lethargic,
maybe even afraid. I don't see the possibility of a march on Ottawa, or sit-ins, or
even white violence.’16 Discouraged may have been a better adjective than lethargic
to describe Africville residents. In 1970, one relocatee concluded that residents
couldn’t win. Without money to hire lawyers, the relocatee suggested ‘you can’t do
nothing.’17
Africville responses reflected the presumption of leaders who failed to
establish a meaningful dialogue with community residents. Rather than engaging the
local community and promoting the solutions favoured by Africville residents,
HRAC’s leadership promoted integrationist solutions which did not reflect residents’
desires.18 HRAC’s integrationist ambitions stood in stark contrast to the desire of
residents who, upon learning of municipal plans, clearly preferred to remain in
Africville. A 1962 Mail-Star article had reported that, among the 100 Africville
residents present at a meeting following the city’s development report, ‘men and
women rose one after the other to speak against any move.’19 Africville residents
rejected relocation as a solution, suggesting instead that the community required
better infrastructure, including proper water and sewage facilities. In 1970,
Wedderbum reflected on residents’ preferred solution but suggested that ‘it seemed
inevitable to us that the City had every intention of taking over Africville.’ HRAC 128 chose to focus their energies on securing residents ‘a fair deal’: the best possible price for residents’ property.20
Leaders ignored local opinion, rarely engaged residents and promoted solutions at odds with the desires of potential supporters, those most affected by city relocation plans. These decisions divided the leadership from the potential membership, effectively robbing residents of a sense of place and efficacy within an organization established to represent their interests. According to Oliver, only three months after the August 1962 meeting in which they expressed their desire to remain in Africville, ‘the residents [had] resigned themselves to the fact that they must relocate.’21 HRAC leaders undercut an essential element of formal organization: a .... ')’) communal sense that the organization reflected supporters’ political sensibilities.
HRAC may have been an organization ostensiblyfo r Africville residents but it was not an organization created by or comprised of those residents. By 1966, at the conclusion of a Halifax conference on human rights, some HRAC activists joined with other well-established activists to form the Nova Scotia Human Rights
Federation: a broadly based integrationist human rights organization.23 One year
later, in 1967 and three years before the last resident left Africville, HRAC collapsed. While discrete events such as failed peace talks or forced relocation highlighted the need for action among pacifists and relocatees respectively, broader
issues affecting a greater cross-section of the population spurred greater numbers of
Haligonians to formally organize.
The International Year for Human Rights (1968) 129
In 1968, during the International Year for Human Rights (IYHR), the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of equality in Canada reached an unbearable pitch for African-Nova Scotians. Canadians marked the IYHR with public celebrations rather than action to address obvious and ongoing injustices. In response to the clash between their political consciousness and their socio-political surroundings, African-
Nova Scotians established new formal political organizations. Dramatic reactions were all but guaranteed by the political consciousness that had long been well entrenched among seasoned activists and had been spreading among African-Nova
Scotian youth since the mid-1960s. African-Nova Scotians’ political consciousness was their lens on the world. The juxtaposition of IYHR celebrations and daily discrimination served to reaffirm their political sensibilities, convincing many that action was necessary if meaningful change was to occur.
In Halifax, as conferences, pamphlets, news stories and political pronouncements celebrated the United Nations’ International Year for Human
Rights, the consciousness-raising efforts begun at Kwacha House had achieved their desired result.24 By the time the Nova Scotia Project collapsed in the first half of
1968, politically-conscious young African-Nova Scotians had assumed a new public persona, grounded in a political consciousness that challenged the interracial and integrationist sensibilities then animating the Nova Scotia Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.25 Nor was discontent limited to young African-
Nova Scotians. For seasoned African-Nova Scotian activists, already frustrated by a seemingly impotent rights program, the public celebration of human rights during
IYHR amplified the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of equality.26 130
Several events that year underscored the limited effect of Nova Scotia’s human rights initiatives. Cemetery officials in St. Croix, Nova Scotia refused to bury an African-Nova Scotian child. Further inflaming the situation was a municipal official who, citing a 1907 colour bar by-law, publicly announced that the municipality ‘saw no reason for changing the by-law’ as they had ‘enough white people to cope with.’27 In the same year, Black Power advocate Roosevelt Douglas, invited by Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones to deliver a speech in Halifax, was arrested for
‘loitering.’28 But the greatest disappointment would come in December 1968. When
Premier G.I. Smith announced a director for the Human Rights Commission,
African-Nova Scotians expressed their deeply felt displeasure that, after more than a year of searching, the Provincial Government had selected a Jewish Torontonian rather than an African-Nova Scotian.29 The timing could not have been worse. Only one month before the announcement, African-Nova Scotians convened a ‘Black
Family Meeting’ to discuss their common grievances and explore the possibility of forming a new, racially-exclusive provincial organization. The decision to appoint a
Jewish ‘come-from-away’ was contrary to local understandings of a human rights commission as a remedy for racial discrimination.30 Further, Premier Smith made the announcement at a conference, convened to cap International Human Rights
Year, focusing on the plight of African-Nova Scotians and affirming the link between human rights and racial inequality.
For African-Nova Scotians, IYHR merely highlighted the contradictions and injustices in Canadian society. As one Black Haligonian observed, ‘the absence of police suppression, legal discrimination, and organized terrorism which characterize 131
American cities does not alter the fundamentally racist nature of this society.’31 Nor did a series of reforms to Nova Scotia’s human rights act — introduced in response to the demands presented by a delegation of African-Nova Scotians — appease activists. In the face of pervasive inequality and plodding political developments, young activist Jules Oliver dismissed Nova Scotia’sHuman Rights Act as ‘so long coming it served merely to remind.. .Blacks of their continued rejection and second class status.’32 Contrasting rights rhetoric and the reality of their daily lives, African-
Nova Scotian participants at the December 1968 conference voiced their political sensibilities. The conference, according to H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum, saw ‘Black people [speak] like they've never spoken before to white people’ giving rise to ‘.. .an emotion-choked dialogue between Negroes and Whites [that] provided a forum for soul-searching to many members of both races.’33 For politically conscious African-
Nova Scotians, the time was ripe for organization.
As IYHR drove the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of equality to a fevered pitch, community developments further encouraged formal organization among African-Nova Scotians. In November 1968, at the invitation of Bumley
‘Rocky’ Jones, three Black Panthers arrived in Halifax.34 Jones and Stokely
Carmichael had just attended the Congress of Black Writers, a conference to support a ‘second liberation’ of Black citizens throughout the western world, convened in
Montreal.35 Carmichael, who had accepted Jones’ invitation to visit Halifax, brought two Panthers with him. When, during his visit a month later, Montreal activist Rosie
Douglas was arrested for loitering, residents organized a ‘Black Power oriented meeting,’ at the Dalhousie University student union building, during which a 132
defence fund was started for citizens arrested for being Black men and women.36 By drawing media attention to the plight of African-Nova Scotians, and by the fear they
inspired among authorities and citizens alike, the arrival of Black Power advocates
accelerated local developments underway since at least 1965.37 W.P. Oliver has
suggested that, for some time before the Panthers' arrival in Halifax, a feeling grew
among community leaders that measures should be adopted to bind alienated youth
■30 to the movement for racial equality. If Oliver and like-minded activists were to
succeed, they would have to build an organization truly reflective of youth
sensibilities and one that their leaders, including Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones, would
endorse. This was not an easy task. Since his arrival in Halifax, Jones (and his
followers) remained sceptical of possible alliances with the integrationist old-
guard.39
W P. Oliver, who sympathized with a number of the political convictions
animating local youth, was uniquely positioned to act as a broker among African-
Nova Scotians. Oliver had earlier founded the interracial NSAACP. By 1968,
however, his thinking had changed. Reflecting on his earlier integrationist
approaches, Oliver argued that he was like a good fisher who returned time and
again with infinite patience. He had relinquished his executive position in the
NSAACP in 1962, when he accepted a full-time position with the Department of
Education.40 During the intervening six year period, a shift in his thinking was
attributable, in part, to his experience as an adult education worker in African-Nova
Scotian communities 41 His son, local activist Jules Oliver, also influenced his
thinking by exposing his father to the ideas embraced by local youth. In 1967, Oliver 133 spoke to the African United Baptist Association about the need to foster racial pride, develop greater independence from the white majority, engage in greater political activity and embrace the term ‘Black.’42 By the late 1960s, W. P. Oliver’s sense of urgency matched that of his younger counterparts. He once explained: ‘time is running out; I am getting older, less patient and more tired.’43 By that time, as well, he rejected the place of white activists in the movement for racial equality.44 As
Wedderbum later recalled, ‘Oliver would not really approve of my association and
acceptance of white people in the organization.’45 Nor was Oliver alone. In 1969,
local boxing champion, activist and youth worker Buddy Daye told reporters that
‘when 1 think of Black people working together, one of the greatest problems is the
liberal whites who go into the Black communities and divide them.’46
Another challenge facing the NSAACP was a perceived class-bias. In the late
1960s, Jules Oliver produced a master’s thesis arguing that, despite an expanding
membership in the 1960s, the NSAACP failed to grow into a truly provincial
organization as had once been its ambition. According to Oliver, even within the
provincial capital, the NSAACP failed in its efforts to represent the community at
large. As one of his interview subjects noted, ‘I don’t think the Negro identifies with
the organization.. .he feels that the NSAACP is for a very select group of
individuals, acting on behalf of their own interests.’47 Other NSAACP members
corroborated observations related to the organization’s limited appeal.48 Oliver
concluded that the NSAACP represented neither the ‘common man’ nor the
‘impatient and educated’ Black youth.49 134
The NSAACP would not have easily maintained its membership while courting African-Nova Scotian youth in Halifax. Changes to the nature of an organization founded upon a particular political consciousness risks betraying those sensibilities and threatens the organization itself. The NSAACP failed to attract young activists as it was unwilling to expel its Caucasian members or radically shift its aims to better reflect the political sensibilities of young African-Nova Scotians.
Had Wedderbum and the NSAACP made the changes necessary to bind young and disengaged activists to the organization, it would have lost not only Caucasians through expulsion but also those African-Nova Scotians whose political consciousness was reflected in the existing organizational membership, structure and mandate. Though the NSAACP failed to attract local youth, it continued to attract activists throughout the mid-1960s. Its membership grew from 70 in 1963 to 251 in
1968.50 With two irreconcilable political consciousnesses animating African-Nova
Scotians, the community divided imperfectly along generational lines.
One month before the IYHR conference, a group of young radicals, including the visiting Black Panthers, attended an NSAACP meeting. At that gathering, one of the Panthers proposed that African-Nova Scotians, obviously inhibited by the presence of white activists, convene a ‘Black Family Meeting.’51
Convinced that racial pride and self-determination could never result from a
‘transfusion from the majority white’ community, radicals hoped that such a meeting might unify a movement fractured by political sensibilities and usher in an age of self-determination.52 In advance of the meeting activist leaders — including the
Olivers, Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones and H.A.J. Wedderbum — used their 135 communication networks and existing organizations to encourage participation.
More than 400 African-Nova Scotians attended the meeting convened at a community library in the north end of Halifax on 19 November 1968. Reflecting on the ‘Black Family Meeting,’ W.P. Oliver argued that the event confirmed his suspicion that the desire for a racially exclusive body had grown well beyond the 35 militants Jones could call on if ever he built a house.53
Oliver and Jones hoped that, by using the communication networks
surrounding various camps and organizations, leaders might unite African-Nova
Scotians. At the Black Family Meeting, however, numerous divisions surfaced,
revealing an African-Nova Scotian community fractured by age, the rural/urban
divide, ‘indigenous’ vs. ‘immigrant’ populations and political orientation. According
to one source, ‘the conference...highlighted the disunity among Blacks and the fact
that there was no substantial agreement on problems and solutions, needs, goals,
strategies etc.’54 Notwithstanding division, a number of attendees remained
confident that differences could be accommodated within a single organization. An
interim committee struck from among meeting attendees designed the first racially-
exclusive Black organization in Halifax.55
Although the indigenous organizational potential among African-Nova
Scotians was strong — with leaders, a communication network, and existing organizations in place — Black activists were divided by seemingly irreconcilable political sensibilities.56 As chairman of the interim committee, W.P. Oliver helped draft a broad mandate which, he hoped, would accommodate the largest possible number of Black Haligonians and minimize internecine tensions. As interim 136 committee members worked to establish a new organization, however, it became clear that competing views were not easily reconciled; neither camp would surrender its presumed dominance or compromise its political sensibilities. Radicals had emerged from their consciousness-raising phase with one set of leaders, a communication network and organizations while integrationists identified with other leaders and organizations. Despite the integrative efforts of pragmatists, who hoped to establish an organization that would unite the community, the proposed solutions seemed to satisfy no one. The result was that leaders — representing integrationists, pragmatists and radicals — could find no mutually agreeable organizational structure, membership or mandate. Over time, both the integrationists and radicals would abandon efforts to create a single organization but in 1968 they remained hopeful.
The Black United Front (BUF) was ‘made of, by, and for Black Nova
Scotians.’57 Mandated to forge a ‘Black consensus,’ BUF was established in 1968-9 as a step toward self-determination. Admittedly broad, BUF's mandate was the result of what Oliver described as ‘probably the most diversified group you could possibly draw from the Black community.’ Yet the diversity was not as immediately obvious as Reverend Oliver might have hoped, and some resented the strong representation of the Black community’s traditional religious leadership on BUF’s
Board of Directors.59 By the time it took action, only pragmatists supported BUF.60
The compromise embodied by the Black United Front had proved too great for both radicals and integrationists. The continued centrality of religious and ‘traditional’ leaders led Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones to abandon BUF. Meanwhile, integrationists, led 137 by H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum, viewed Jules Oliver, appointed BUF’s first executive director, as too radical to represent them.61 Believing that BUF did not reflect their political consciousness or that of like-minded African-Nova Scotians, Jones and
Wedderbum established organizations more representative of their personal and constituents’ political sensibilities.62
Still animated by the contradictions made stark during IYHR, Bumley
‘Rocky’ Jones abandoned BUF early in 1969 to establish the Affo-Canadian
Liberation Movement (ACLM), an organization aspiring to be more representative of young radicals’ political sensibilities.63 In the immediate wake of International
Human Rights Year (IYHR), Jones announced that the ACLM was committed to realizing ‘the full opportunities guaranteed by the CanadianBill o f Rights and the
Bill of Rights of the United Nations and achieving the complete educational, economic, as well as social status as guaranteed by these [documents].’64 With membership estimates between 25 and 70, the ACLM drew heavily upon young
African-Nova Scotians embedded in Jones’ communication network — many of whom were attendees of Kwacha House and loyal to his leadership. According to its newsletter, the ACLM was built upon a base of ‘dedicated men and women who have decided to sacrifice [their] lives’ to ‘carry on the struggle.. .against all the oppressive and suppressive forces of the power structure.’65 Even as they became engaged in political action, ACLM members continued to work to create ‘a Black consciousness and identity through awareness of [African-Nova Scotian] history and the revival of [African-Nova Scotian] culture.’66 138
As a radical organization coalesced around Jones, Wedderbum used his communication network and the organizations in which he was active to establish a more moderate, but nevertheless racially-exclusive, professional organization. In
1969, under Wedderbum’s leadership, local teachers organized the Black Educators’
Association (BEA). For at least a decade, Wedderbum and local African-Nova
Scotian educators had supported a discussion group, the Diogenes Club, which was (\ 1 primarily concerned with the problem of racial discrimination. In 1969, using the informal structure and communication network surrounding him, Wedderbum
suggested that the time was right to formally organize, harness the energy and
interest behind IYHR and push for greater equality within the public education
system. BEA members pledged to monitor and encourage ‘the development of an
equitable education system throughout the province.. .and to ensure that Black
residents of this province have equitable access to roles as students, teachers,
administrators, and decision makers.’68
The BEA was not the only organization coalescing around leaders, networks
and organizations rooted in professional and personal identities. In the same year that Black teachers formally organized, a group of professional African-Nova
Scotian women — initially ‘all teachers’ willing to contribute time and energy to a
number of organizations concerned with issues of racial equality — established the
Black Professional Women’s Group (BPWG).69 At a time when the Royal
Commission on the Status of Women placed gender discrimination within the
Canadian rights discourse, and the Voice of Women-Halifax raised the issue of
‘doubly oppressed’ local African-Nova Scotian women before the Commission, both 139
Jones and Wedderbum were concerned exclusively with racial inequality and ignored gender discrimination. In their insensitivity to multiple sites of oppression,
70 Jones and Wedderbum were not unlike Black activists throughout North America.
Those women drawn together in the BPWG responded to both racial and gender
inequality as well as to their professional identities, demonstrating a complex web of
intersecting political sensibilities.71 Like their BEA counterparts, BPWG activists
established an organization better representative of the political consciousness
calling them to address the particular challenges facing professional African-Nova
Scotian women, whose interests were largely ignored by existing and emergent
organizations in Halifax.72
National organizations also resulted from the clash between African-
Canadians’ political-consciousness and the International Year for Human Rights.
Following the Canadian centenary in 1967, a process of constitutional renewal
gathered momentum in Ottawa, and black activists united to raise a common voice
in the federal arena. In 1969, a host of organizations, individuals, and institutions
interested in racial equality gathered in Toronto with the intention of founding
Canada’s first national Black organization.73 Attendees reflected elements of the
infrastructure supporting the growth and diversification of the movement for racial equality in Halifax: community organizations; racially exclusive and interracial rights organizations; church, media and labour representatives. Divisions quickly emerged when ‘the initial meeting was disrupted by the efforts of several black
students to force the group to address their demands.’74 By Sunday, attendees had overcome or dismissed internal divisions to establish the National Black Coalition of 140
Canada. Although Canadian celebrations of human rights and a federal interest in
rights legislation suggested that a national Black organization was necessary, like
BUF, the NBCC drew together a broad range of organizations whose differences
proved too great to be accommodated within a single organization — an unfortunate
situation further complicated by a client-patron relationship between the NBCC and
• je federal authorities. Haligonian activists spearheaded efforts to revive the NBCC
but could not surmount the challenges triggering its initial collapse.76
By 1970, formal organization had resulted in a larger and more diverse
movement for racial equality in Halifax. African-Nova Scotians primarily formed
local organizations but they also aided in the creation of a national organization. The
leaders, communication networks and organizations and institutions linking potential
activists were stronger at the local or provincial than at the national level. Moreover,
because African-Canadians were geographically distributed in pockets and the
constitutional division of powers granted the Canadian federal government jurisdiction over civil liberties only within carefully prescribed areas, African-Nova
Scotians focused their efforts on the provincial government.
Early (Unstable) Formal Organization among Feminists, 1969-1974
As African-Nova Scotians established new activist organizations in the wake of the
International Year for Human Rights, a feminist consciousness spread among
women in Halifax. Through discussions held in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
groups of women surmounted the ‘fundamental attribution error’, explored the
socio-economic dimensions of gender discrimination and reached a political 141 consciousness. Consciousness-raising groups in Halifax engaged more women in the discourse surrounding the status of women, though how many such groups emerged and who was involved is impossible to determine. As with their African-Nova
Scotian counterparts, feminist organizations resulted when public events offended women’s political consciousness and thus strongly encouraged political action. Also, like African-Nova Scotians, feminist leaders drew upon existing groups and organizations as well as the communication networks surrounding them to formally organize women for political action. Women’s interest in participation directly related to their political consciousness.
With few archival records on the subject, comparatively little is known about the feminist organizations emerging in Halifax during the late 1960s and early
1970s. Historians know something of the feminist awakening among Voice of
Women-Halifax activists and archival records offer a relatively clear picture of the
Halifax Women’s Centre/Brenton Place. Far less is known about the 1895 Feminist
Revival Group aka Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Caucus (1895 Revival), by some
accounts organized in late 1969, and certainly active by early 1970.77 Though there
is no written documentation to explain the group’s name, it almost certainly
references the date when the colony of South Australia became the first to grant
women the rights to vote and run for Parliament. Similarly few archival records relate to Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Liberation — a group active in 1971.
Nevertheless, some insight is provided by the few sources that do exist. Perhaps more importantly, their emergence suggests that, as early as 1969, feminist leaders had begun to organize women formally for political change. Though the 142 organizations proved unstable, their emergence confirms the spread of a feminist consciousness in Halifax and a determination to take political action around the time that the Royal Commission on the Status of Women and its Report shone a very public light on the issue of gender discrimination in Canada.
Similar to Judy Wouk’s consciousness-raising group in Halifax, which was meeting around the same time, the Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Caucus (1895
Revival) consisted of approximately two-dozen ‘students, working women, married women with and without children and concerned with the problems of all women,
regardless of their sphere of activity.’78 Local objectives, including equal pay for equal work, single-parent families, reproductive control, education and socialization
of women, reflected many of the same concerns animating young feminists throughout Canada in the late 1960s.7Q At issue for 1895 Revivalists was ‘a society
that propagates unequal opportunities for self-fulfilment on the basis of sex.’80 As a
result, feminist leaders began ‘organizing women to improve the conditions of their
lives.’81 Unfortunately, neither the genesis of the Women’s Caucus nor its membership is known. Less is known about Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s
Liberation, except that it publicly championed reproductive rights and greater political representation of women through open-air events. On 2 February and again
on 7 April 1971, Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Liberation wrote to Premier Gerald
Regan requesting his presence at such events. The Premier declined both
invitations. In March of the following year,The Fourth Estate reported that ‘a branch of the Women’s Liberation Movement is starting in the Fairview-Clayton
Park area [of Halifax].’83 143
Activists recall the early-1970s as a period of feminist organizing throughout the province. Muriel Duckworth recalled:
Just after the Royal Commission....there were all these little women’s organizations all over the province, and they began holding conferences...I remember being at the one where they were settling their terms of reference, its constitution, what is going to exist. That was hard. And they had no money. They simply couldn’t carry on...So that didn’t last but it was a good experience at the time.84
These young feminists formally organized in the context of public events clashing with their political consciousness, including the Royal Commission on the Status of
Women hearings and report (tabled in the fall of 1970), which younger feminists felt was too conservative in its recommendations. Limited provincial and federal government responses (including the inclusion of sex Novain the Scotia Human
Rights Act in June 1972) and media coverage of those developments also affected the timing of women’s formal organization• in Halifax. • 85
International Women’s Year and Formal Organization among Feminists, 1975- 1977
In the seven years following the tabling of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women, politically-conscious women formally established a number of more stable political organizations. Many did so in response to the broad range of issues raised and the momentum gathering during the lead up to International
Women’s Year (IWY). Provincial, national and international events, including conferences, lectures, public pronouncements and legislative action marked IWY.
Some women viewed these initiatives as a beginning. Other women considered them empty rhetoric. In both cases, IWY sparked formal organization.86 In Nova Scotia, a 144 provincial Taskforce on the Status of Women met across the province, tabling its
07 report in 1976. In Halifax, public workshops, lectures and conferences convened during IWY highlighted the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of gender equality. Like their African-Nova Scotian counterparts, feminists formally organized when public events offended their political sensibilities.
Notwithstanding its catalytic effects, many feminists suggested that Canada’s
IWY program was a waste of money, smokescreen or dismal failure. Young feminists were particularly vocal about their displeasure regarding IWY. In 1975,
Nova Scotian, historian, feminist activist and co-founderAtlantis: of A Women’s
Studies Journal, Margaret Conrad commented on IWY in a student newspaper:
Women in Canada are not at all satisfied with the way our male- dominated government is handling [IWY], It is true that Ottawa has provided a budget to promote International Women’s Year in Canada but most of the money is being spent on seminars and conferences which in a large measure speak to the converted and will reach only a few people. There is little effort to use the money to satisfy the demands already articulated by Canadian women.
Though Canada’s male-dominated governments likely had imagined something quite different when they decided to recognize International Women’s Year, public commemoration was not without effect.88 A cri-de-coeur circulating in Halifax in
1976 reported that, prior to IWY, ‘possibly.. .5 percent of [Canadian women] have been actively working in the drive to equality.. .many women had no sense of
Oft ‘women’s rights’ being an issue that touched them. This is not...the case today.’
The Fourth Estate — itself responsible for publicizing many women’s issues throughout the year —similarly reported that IWY opened a ‘Pandora’s box of concerns facing the women of the province.’90 145
Responding to feminist discontent, Canadian politicians maintained a focus on women’s issues. Nova Scotia established an Inter-departmental Committee on the
Status of Women in 1976. Keenly aware of the interest piqued by IWY, Premier
Regan first tasked the committee to develop easily implemented and uncontroversial policy recommendations designed to appeal to local feminists.91 Regan also established the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women in 1977.
Federally, a Secretary of State report acknowledged:
the importance of maintaining a high priority on women’s issues while public interest has been heightened and women’s expectations for equality have been increased. Cabinet recommended that the Field Program of the IWY Secretariat be extended for 1976-7 and that increased funding for women’s groups be made available.92
Between 1975 and 1977, many politically-conscious young women responded to their deepening discontent and the contradictions on display during
IWY by formally organizing to demand gender equality. Of the three advocacy- oriented feminist organizations coalescing in Halifax during 1975-1976 and whose records have since been deposited at an archive, each acknowledged IWY as a spur to formal organization.93 Although Muriel Duckworth and the Voice of Women-
Halifax proved the exception, a generational divide among feminists echoed that
among African-Nova Scotians. Young feminists did not join or build upon existing
feminist organizations. Rather, organizations emerged from social networks forged
in earlier years and upon which consciousness-raising efforts depended. Women’s
liberationists built their movement upon a social network that only indirectly connected with older feminist organizations and a political-consciousness that held
itself apart from its forebears. 146
The feminist divide, however, did not play out as publicly as had the rift among African-Nova Scotians. Judith Fingard suggests that feminists in Halifax did not view each other as a threat. So, while they largely worked through generationally defined organizations, the divide resulted not in public conflict but rather in imperfect solitudes. Local chapters of those organizations credited with the establishment of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) —
including Canadian Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Canadian Federation
of University Women and the National Council of Women — remained the chosen
organizations of an older generation of liberal feminists. Feminist organizations
closely associated with the RCSW were guided by a strong sense of propriety. Not
unlike the African-Nova Scotian case, the generational divide included differences
over nomenclature and public approaches to advocacy. Members of the older
generation identified with the term ‘women’s rights’ and viewed young feminists as
something between radical and ‘wildly bizarre’ even as they recognized the truth behind feminist arguments. Young feminists identified with ‘women’s liberation’
and dismissed their generational forebears as conservative incremental
integrationists whose approach and demands were out-of-touch with women’s needs.94 Yet an undeniably significant generational divide did not prevent
individuals, like Muriel Duckworth whose thinking about feminism evolved over
time, from straddling that divide.
Drawn together by Judy Wouk — who emerged as a feminist leader while
active in VOW-Halifax, a CR group, the Halifax Women’s Centre/Brenton Place
and Pro-Feminae — the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee (NSWAC) 147 organized in the fall of 1975 so that the ‘spirit of Women’s Year [would] not fall flat on its face in 1976.’95 Wouk used her social and activist connections to bring feminists together.96 She remembers that many of the women whose political consciousness formed in her consciousness-raising group (CR group) or the Halifax
07 Women’s Centre/Brenton Place came together to form NSWAC. Local universities also connected many NSWAC activists. Wouk, whose CR group began with a number of fellow graduate students, studied at Dalhousie University in the early
1970s. When feminist activist Linda Kealey arrived in Halifax from Toronto in the summer of 1975, she connected with future NSWAC members through personal
QO contacts at Dalhousie. Similarly, Kathy Moggridge — whose feminist awakening occurred during IWY — remembers falling into NSW AC’s orbit through personal and professional connections at Dalhousie University.99 In turn, Christina Simmons
— whose arrival in Halifax dated from a somewhat later period — was drawn into
NSWAC through Linda Kealey whom she met through Dalhousie University.
Suggesting that many feminists were well-educated young women travelling in similar social circles, Simmons remembers that social connections in Halifax played an important role in recruiting activists: ‘a lot of us were of a similar age and this was just everywhere.’100 Wouk was more explicit, recalling: ‘we were primarily white, middle class and well educated.’101 Inspired by young feminists, NSWAC also attracted women who bridged the generational divide: women like Muriel
Duckworth.102
NSWAC members shared more than a common communication network: they shared a common experience with the Halifax Women’s Centre, which 148
influenced decisions related to NSWAC’s structure. Committed to political action, rather than further study, NSWAC members worked ‘towards the full and equal participation of women in all aspects of Nova Scotian society - political, economic,
educational, cultural and social.’103 Though broad in its objectives, by narrowing
activity to political action, NSWAC members hoped to avoid a mistake made at the
Women’s Centre: burning activists out by trying to be all things to all women.104
Apparently unconcerned with the ‘uniquely feminist structures’ then animating
women’s liberation organizations throughout North America and Europe (a ‘flat’
organizational structure adopted as part of a critique of hierarchical, male-dominated
structures), NSWAC adopted a hierarchical committee structure and executive in an
effort to ensure that the organization would ‘function smoothly without working
against each other or in a constant state of disagreement.’105 Likely grown from the
Women’s Centre experience, the women supporting NSWAC rejected ‘flat’
structures that had resulted in feminist groups, which ‘talk, talk, talk and take no
action.’106
The National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC)
undoubtedly informed, if it did not inspire, the decision to form a provincial action
committee. Wouk sat as Nova Scotia’s representative to NAC starting in 1973, while
the NAC newsletter likely influenced feminists without a seat on NAC’s executive.
Like their national counterparts NSWAC feminists demanded legislative action and better administration of existing laws.107 As they would later argue, ‘waiting for
attitudes to change is not a sufficient solution., .there is a role for public education, but it can never be a substitute for badly needed legislation.’108 Initially mobilized to 149 address Bill C-72 (a federal human rights bill introduced in 1975), when the Nova
Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women tabledHerself, NSWAC redirected its gaze toward the provincial arena without abandoning federal lobby efforts.109
Ranking its priorities, NSWAC noted that it intended to focus on the provincial arena but reserved the right to take action on the national stage as well.110
The issues animating NSWAC reflected those addressed by young feminists throughout North America, including occupational and educational streaming and equal pay for work of equal value. Also prominent among NSWAC objectives was the repeal of Canada’s restrictive abortion laws and NSWAC members joined organizations such as the Nova Scotia Coalition for Abortion Law Repeal, which advocated for the repeal of those laws.111 Through public demonstrations, consultation, and political pressure, NSWAC worked to free women of Canada’s 112 restrictive abortion laws and their socially assigned roles as the primary caregiver.
In later years, NSWAC launched joint campaigns with other feminist organizations including Pro-Choice and the Nova Scotia chapter of Canadian Association for the
Repeal of Abortion Laws.113
As NSWAC got off the ground in Halifax in 1976, a group of feminists in
Ottawa declared their intention to ‘provide continuing and concrete evidence that the concern for women expressed during International Women’s Year was only the beginning.’114 While NSWAC argued that enough information existed to warrant political action, the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
(CRLAW) conducted and distributed research on gender inequality in Canada.
CRLAW reflected the feminist conviction that to discover women’s experience is a 150
means to ground feminist struggles.115 Founders built the organization from nationally-known, politically-active women linked to one-another through a feminist
communication network based on personal and professional connections, activists
carrying multiple memberships, federated structures, umbrella organizations
(including the National Action Committee on the Status of Women) and newsletters.
Encouraged by her friend Judy Wouk, Muriel Duckworth — whose national
reputation was solidified following two terms as the national president of Voice of
Women in the late 1960s and early 1970s — attended CRLAW’s founding
convention in April 1976 and was elected to the Board of Directors.116
CRIAW was a federated and hierarchical structure built around traditional
organizational structures including a national chapter superior to its provincial
counterparts and a traditional executive structure. Geared toward researchers but
with an eye to benefitting all Canadian women, CRIAW concerned itself with ‘full
equality between the sexes.’117 To that end, CRIAW first dedicated itself to
correcting a scholarly imbalance through its newsletter, conferences, conference
proceedings, publication series{Feminist Perspectives andCR1A W Papers) and
occasional meetings. CRIAW also awarded grants in an effort to further encourage
feminist scholarship. Asserting that research would inform activist lobby efforts and
could be drawn upon by policy makers, CRIAW adopted a mandate centred on
fostering a greater knowledge of gender relations as a means of promoting women’s
‘foil participation in Canadian society.’118 Although primarily concerned with
scholarship, CRIAW was not adverse to political action.119 Duckworth brought CRIAW home to Halifax where the organization thrived.
The organizational potential of Haligonian feminists was high and committed local academics supplied the human resources necessary to support the study of Canada’s marginalized communities.120 The communication network linking feminists had expanded over recent years to include connections established on university campuses; new and existing feminist, peace and civil rights organizations; and the workplace. Feminist organizations were also numerous and growing, providing loci for recruitment. Finally, Halifax was the training ground for a willing, able and growing leadership. Perhaps no other woman was so well positioned to harness the local organizational potential of feminists as was Duckworth. Variously connected to local and national peace, feminist, home and school, civil rights, Black Power and broad coalitional organizations (such as the Citizens’ Movement for Voice and
Action (MOVE) in which she played a strong leadership role), Duckworth was directly and indirectly connected to a great number of women and occupied an unrivalled position at the centre of a broad activist communications network.
In Halifax, by 1976, the ground had been tilled for CRIAW. The organizational potential among feminists was strong, especially as it related to research organizations. Two feminist research projects — the Women’s Bureau and the Committee on Women’s Research and Publications— had collapsed for want of 191 funding, leaving a gap in the needs identified by some feminists. At the same time, the feminist communication network spread through academic institutions
including Dalhousie University: a process that attracted well-educated and academically inclined women to the movement. Finally, local leaders proved willing 152 to embrace a research organization whose activities would complement rather than compete with other feminist organizations. Judy Wouk, who co-founded NSWAC arguing that women needed political action rather than further study, would later accept CRIAW funding to support her paper on women and the law in Nova Scotia and recently described herself as ‘peripherally involved’ in CRIAW-Nova Scotia.1 O')
In 1981, Wouk (then living in Ottawa) represented CRIAW at NAC’s annual
p i conference in the national capital.
In the spring of 1976, as CRIAW established itself on the national and provincial stages, the social action committee of the local Young Women’s Christian
Association (YWCA) — acknowledging the energizing effects of IWY— met to discuss programs responsive to women’s ‘current needs, interests and aspirations.’124
Reviewing their history and progress to date in a 1978 newsletter, YWCA feminists wrote:
At the close of International Women’s Year (1975) the YWCA organized a meeting of individuals and groups of women to plan for future collective action. The women present listed the most important problem areas for women and set up a committee to take constructive action.195
After six months of study, the committee recommended that the YWCA establish a women’s resource centre to support and strengthen the feminist community in
Halifax.126
From the earliest stages, local feminists spearheaded YWCA efforts in
Halifax. Among them was Alexa McDonough who, in addition to her work with the
YWCA, attended NSWAC meetings and worked for the New Democratic Party.
Like fellow local feminists, local representatives used organizational, personal, 153 political and professional communication networks to reach out to the wider feminist community. In an effort to establish an organization with broad appeal, YWCA representatives consulted local women and feminist leaders.
Despite their desire to build a broadly representative and diverse centre, early discussions revealed divisions among women in Halifax. In a meeting with Sylvia
Hamilton (Black Women’s Congress) and Mary Samuels (Black United Front), the former warned against appealing to a narrow group and further suggested that
African-Nova Scotians needed a Transition House not a women’s centre. Although
Samuels viewed the centre more favourably, she warned that a centre appealing primarily to young educated feminists would have limited appeal for local Black women. Both women agreed, however, that plans for a Women’s Information
Reference and Referral Service (which provided information and referrals on a range of topics including reproductive issues) were valuable. In this way, the YWCA feminists organizing the centre were not unlike those who frequented the Halifax
Women’s Centre/Brenton place or their national counterparts who similarly could be blind to issues of women’s diversity.127 Consultation with a cross-section of local women limited the worst oversights, however, and A Woman’s Place-Forrest House
(AWP) emerged as a women’s centre animated by a dual service delivery and social action mandate.128 Initiated by an existing organization, AWP and the feminists behind it benefitted from YWCA leadership, membership, communication network and resources.
By 1977, locally and distantly inspired formal organization had resulted in a larger and more diverse feminist movement in Halifax. The new crop of women’s 154 organizations championed liberation from restrictive gender norms and their many related economic, social and political outgrowths as did their national counterparts.
In practical terms, women’s liberation activists pursued objectives including free and accessible abortion and contraception; equal pay for work of equal value; self- determination in educational and vocational paths; and an equal place within political, economic and social structures. Feminists established local organizations and participated in national efforts. The links between the local and national organizations were strong among feminists who, representing a uniformly distributed national constituency that targeted the federal government at least as much as provincial governments, built a national movement on the strength of local and provincial organizations. Although Duckworth was credited with establishing an organization in which women of diverse educational backgrounds were welcomed,
CRIAW was a national initiative supported by middle class, well-educated women.
Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee feminists, many of whom were ‘from- away,’ shared CRIAW’s demographic characteristics and, though a locally- conceived and geared initiative, NSWAC quickly joined Canada’s feminist umbrella organization: the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Likewise, A
Woman’s Place-Forrest House was a locally-conceived project that affiliated itself with NAC and grew from the Young Women’s Christian Association, but its local genesis by native Haligonians makes it the closest to a grass-roots organization. The
links among local feminist organizations and the national movement reflected the
scope of gender inequality in Canada as well as the importance of the federal arena: 155 a site bearing upon women’s equality and through which uniform legislation and standards might take shape.
Growth, Diversification and Tension
Over the course of a decade between 1968 and 1977, movement growth and diversification was a desirable but not unproblematic outgrowth of formal organization. In Halifax, SMO coalescence forced new and existing organizations to negotiate relationships with one another. While the process of negotiating relationships could proceed smoothly, in each movement, SMO coalescence also resulted in acrimony. Although most periods of tension were short-lived, neither movement was free of conflict. When one group of activists offended the political sensibilities of another, neither African-Nova Scotians nor feminists pulled punches.
In the late-1960s and early 1970s, the public clashes among African-Nova
Scotians regularly fomented by competing political sensibilities and a desire to control the movement for racial equality, paralleled tensions among Black Panthers and the NAACP in the United States. If radicals (led by Jones and the Afro-
Canadian Liberation Movement) and pragmatists (led by Jules Oliver and the Black
United Front) publicly criticized one another, each reserved a particular level of vitriol for integrationists.129 In the summer of 1969,The Fourth Estate reported that
‘turmoil within the Black community of Nova Scotia has reached the point where there could have been violence between opposing groups of Blacks at the last meeting of the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People.’130 156
Wedderbum endeavoured to minimize tensions among African-Nova
Scotians only to be rebuked by radicals and pragmatists, both of whom viewed
interracial organizations as a betrayal of the movement. In August 1970,
Wedderbum wrote to BUF requesting that their executive attend an NSAACP retreat
at which they might address the ‘growing disunity among Black people in Nova
Scotia, find areas for collaboration, and clear up the misconceptions among activists
and the Black community that conflict exists between the two organizations.’131 In a
series of meetings and letters, BUF executives cautioned Wedderbum that the
NSAACP could continue to administer bursaries and scholarships but that BUF
planned to dominate the movement for racial equality.1X") Wedderbum retorted that
the NSAACP was an ‘ongoing organization and shall remain so.’133 Following the
resignation of BUF’s first executive director, Jules Oliver, tensions among African-
Nova Scotians waned. By 1975, under its second director, BUF nurtured more
productive relationships and African-Nova Scotian SMOs found their place within
the movement.
The movement for gender equality also experienced public growing pains
when feminists’ political sensibilities clashed. In 1977, for example, A Woman’s
Place-Forrest House (AWP) invoked the wrath of Reel Life — a local women’s film
collective closely associated with the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and
identified as radical by the comparatively moderate Young Women’s Christian
Association representatives — when the latter learned that the former hired a local woman on social assistance as a domestic as well as other social assistance recipients during the restoration of Forrest House’s interior. To be sure, this might 157 have been a positive experience for both parties. According to Reel Life, however,
AWP paid neither the domestic nor the renovation workers a regular wage but offered them instead only an undefined ‘token payment’ in addition to their social assistance benefits. In response, Reel Life publicly accused AWP of exploiting women.134 Calling it a ‘hard learned lesson,’ AWP Executive Committee members
admitted that they exploited women’s labour in order to open the centre. AWP lost
four of five staff members over the ‘domestic’ incident. Some of AWP’s most
committed women activists also distanced themselves from the centre. Following
consultation with local feminists and YWCA officials, AWP restructured and 1 ^ adopted a ‘clearer [feminist] vision.’
Conclusion
New SMOs emerged in Halifax throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. New
organizations diversified, grew and strengthened the movements for racial and
gender equality and neither local movement was the same afterward. Youthful
awakenings, occurring in community centres, consciousness-raising groups,
kitchens, classrooms and pubs/beverage rooms throughout the city, spawned
politically conscious and determined new local activists and re-energized activists
interested in new directions. International, national and local events catalyzed formal
organization among the politically conscious, convincing local activists that equality
required further action. Local activists shaped emergent organizations by drawing on
and integrating local and distant developments. 158
In Halifax, formal organization was a process inscribed with (international realities. Activists drew inspiration from (inter)national figures, organizations and
sources. Black Power and women’s liberation were both clearly inscribed in the
organizations established and the mandates adopted in Halifax. Local activists also
shared many of their (inter)national counterparts’ objectives. Feminists in Halifax
tackled staple women’s liberation issues including abortion and contraception; equal
pay for work of equal value and daycare. African-Nova Scotians addressed key
Black Power issues including racism in policing, community planning, education
and popular culture. Further, Halifax activists - and feminists in particular - joined
or established local chapters of (inter)national organizations, thereby becoming part
of a larger constituent community. Nor were Halifax activists unique in this pattern.
Emulation and adaptation proved seemingly universal trends in these movements
because racial and gender inequality displayed remarkably similar contours
throughout Canada (and, to a lesser degree, the United States). Yet (inter)national
issues and approaches were not shoehomed into an inhospitable local environment.
Both Black Power and women’s liberation resonated with, and framed the views of,
local activists because they gave meaning to local issues and events.
If residents owed a debt to (international movements, they also inscribed
their movement and organizations with local realities. African-Nova Scotians and
feminists joined and established local chapters of national organizations and
determined their activities, course and success. In the process, they coloured
chapters of national organizations with a local patina. Residents also created uniquely local organizations such as the Black Educators Association and A 159
Woman’s Place-Forrest House. More importantly, the process of organization itself was a local affair as activists within each movement drew upon the local community
infrastructure, including leadership, communication networks and institutions or organizations to build their own organizations. A unique mix of local leaders, networks and organizations supported formal organization in Halifax. Local
movements for racial and gender equality, active in the decades before 1960, played
an important role. The particular socio-economic realities of Halifax, and
particularly pervasive and persistent racial and gender inequality, were inscribed on
the very existence of these organizations. Local economic and political realities were
also inscribed on organizations led by outsiders drawn to Halifax for a variety of
personal and professional reasons, many of which reflected of the city’s status as a
regional centre. Activist objectives and mandates also mirrored the local political
environs of organizations centred in a regional metropole, seat of provincial
government and site of significant federal presence. Nova Scotians living outside of
the city would criticize many of these organizations, and national organizations as
well, for their city-centric activism.
Viewed as a group, emergent organizations had few common characteristics.
Some were local initiatives while others were provincial chapters of national bodies.
A few were large organizations with complex governance structures. Some
depended entirely on volunteer energy while others employed staff when funding
allowed. Though all were geared toward political advocacy, some prioritized research, others emphasized political action and still others balanced political action
and public education. Taken as a whole, however, the collection of existing and 160 emergent organizations reflected a desire, among African-Nova Scotians and feminists, to promote their agenda in the dialogues then shaping Canada’s rights revolution. A number, but not all, would enjoy public financing, a fact that underscored the federal interest in rights reform. Regardless of structure or mandate, however, every SMO required resources to sustain the organization and its campaign for equality.
With a political consciousness forged and formal organizations coalescing, the life of an organization increasingly depended on activists’ ability to gather the resources to sustain their organizations and pursue their tactics. If emergent organizations shared one characteristic beyond their common need for sufficient resources, it was their ambition and the sense of urgency animating them. Beyond
1968, activists sought the greatest possible degree of equality in the shortest possible time. In both movements, they created elaborate organizational structures, sought the financing necessary to carry on the struggle full-time, as staff rather than as volunteers, and embraced those tactics thought most effective. Activists sought resources equal to their ambition. Beginning in the late-1960s, owing to a dovetail between activist ambition and the political agenda of Canada’s federal Liberal Party, public funding became a viable and important resource mobilization strategy for anxious African-Nova Scotians and feminists. But volunteer energy and community contributions proved equally vital to SMO longevity and success — especially when the caprice of public policy threatened organizational collapse.
1 On the creation of such spaces, see: Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1989). 2 Jeffrey Cormier, The Canadianization Movement: Emergence, Survival and Success (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 2004), 57. 161
3 Douglas McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago: University o f Chicago Press, 1982), 48. 4 Qt. Muriel Duckworth in Linda Clippingdale, ed. Memories and Visions: Celebrating 20 Years o f Feminist Research with CRIAW/ICREF, 1976-1996 (Ottawa: CRIAW/ICREF, 1996), 15. 5 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970,48. 6 Jonah R. Churgin, The New Woman and the Old Academe: Sexism and Higher Education (NY: Libra Publishers Inc., 1978). 7 On the Black church, see, for example: James Walker, Identity: The Black Experience in Canada (The Ontario Communications Authority in association with Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1979); Colin A. Thomson, Bom With A Call: A Biography o f Dr. William Pearly Oliver, C.M(Halifax: Black Cultural Centre of Nova Scotia, 1986); Bridglal Pachai, Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land: The Survival o f Nova Scotia’s Blacks, volumes I and II (Halifax: The Black Educators Association, 1990). 8 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSARM), Manuscript Group 1, Volume 2900, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes-Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, Minutes o f Meetings Dealing with Racial Prejudice in Halifax; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes-Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, Advance Notice o f Two Important Meetings and a Conference; and MU A, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Nova Scotia Scene #2 (December 1965); NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Folder 1, VOW History, “Voice of Women/La Voix Des Femmes In Outline - 1960-1967,” 1; Interview: Muriel Duckworth conducted 20 May 2005. See also: Brenda Roberts, “Women’s Peace Activism in Canada,” in Linda Kealey and Joan Sangster, eds. Beyond the Vote: Canadian Women and Politics (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1989). 9 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 1, VOW History, handwritten notes. See also: Marion Douglas Kerans, Muriel Duckworth: A Very Active Pacifist (Halifax: Femwood Press, 1996); and Early, ‘“A Grandly Subversive Time’” in Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). 10 For more on the Voice of Women-Halifax, see: Early, “‘A Grandly Subversive Time’.” For more on VOW’s founding and early life in Toronto, see: Christine Maijorie Marquis Ball, “The History of Voice o f Women/La Voix des Femmes: The Early Years,” Ph.D. dissertation, University o f Toronto, 1994. On the importance of social networks and social movements, see: Florence Passy, “Social Networks Matter. But How?” in Mario Diani and Doug McAdam, eds., Social Movements and Networks: Relational Approaches to Collective Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 21 - 48. 11 Interview: Duckworth. 12 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, VOW Constitution, Statement of Purpose/General Information, “Memorandum on the aims and activities o f Voice of Women - Presented by the International Affairs Committee,” 1; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Volume 9, VOW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, “1962 - Advance Notice o f Two Important Meetings and a Conference;” In the former document, VOW-Halifax argued that ‘it is clear that disarmament is useless if quarrels, injustice, misunderstanding, oppression and poverty continue as major causes o f war.’ 13 Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis William Magill, Africville: The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1999), 141. 14 Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis Magill, The Africville Relocation Report (Halifax, NS: Dalhousie University, 1971), 125-7. The ‘core members’ were those attending 10 or more o f the 40 HRAC meetings and involved in the organization’s activities. For more on the Advisory Committee and Africville generally, see: George Elliot Clarke, “The Death and Rebirth of Africadian Nationalism,” New Maritimes XI.5 (May/June 1993): 20-8. 15 Clairmont and Magill, Africville: The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community, 143. 16 Qt. Wedderbum in The United Church Observer, 1 December, 1963, 14-15. 17 Clairmont and Magill, Africville Relocation Report, 178. 18 Clarimont and Magill, Africville: The Life and Death of a Canadian Black Community, 144-8. 19 Staff Writer, “Residents Want to Keep Homes in Africville,”The Mail-Star, 9 August 1962. Also reported in Clairmont and Magill, Africville Relocation Report, 126. 162
20 Clairmont and Magill, Africville Relocation Report, 134. 21 Staff Writer, “Africville Ruling: Area Residents Anxious to Have Rights Honored,”The Mail Star, 16 October 1962. Also reported in Clairmont and Magill, Africville Relocation Report, 144. 22 Clairmont and Magill, Africville Relocation Report, 126. O f the seven ‘caretakers,’ six reported a personal opposition to segregation and belief in integration. For most HRAC members, the struggle was to secure the best deal for relocatees. 23 Clairmont and Magill, Africville Relocation Report, 127. Among the HRAC activists to subsequently involve themselves in the Federation were: H.A.J. Wedderbum and Donald F. MacLean. Others Federation members included: Carrie Best, Pearleen Oliver, Reverend Oliver, various judges, ministers, and a rabbi. On the founding of the Federation, see: NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 49, Report o f the Nova Scotia Human Rights Federation; NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 50, Report of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Federation to the Canadian Conference on Human Rights, 1-3 December 1968, 1. Years later, once elected Premier, Liberal Gerald Regan resigned his membership. See: NSARM, Record Group 100, Volume 91, Premier’s Office Fonds, Folder 16-1(a), Study o f Negroes, letter from Gerald A. Regan, 21 December 1970. 24 On the national and provincial celebrations of International Year for Human Rights, see: Canadian Commission, International Year for Human Rights, International Year for Human Rights 1968 in Canada (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1969). 25 Ian Hamilton, The Children’s Crusade: The Story of the Company of Canadians (Toronto: Peter Martin Associates Ltd., 1970), 69. On the CYC, see also: Margaret Daly, The Revolution Game: The Short, Unhappy Life o f the Company o f Young Canadians (Toronto: New Press, 1970). 26 Canadian Commission, International Year for Human Rights, International Year for Human Rights 1968 in Canada. 21 Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Manuscript Group 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee o f Canada Fonds, Folder 40-5, Correspondence: The Institute for Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, “Hants County Color Bar Lasts into Graveyard.” 28 NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 50, “Negro Defence Fund Started,” Chronicle-Herald, 5 December 1968. 29 NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 53, “History o f Black Man: May Reach Nova Scotia Text Books.” See also: NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume III, 1966-7, letter from Marvin Schiff dated 25 February, 1969. 30 Ibid. 31 Cited in: Nancy Lubka, “Ferment in Nova Scotia,” Queen’s Quarterly 76.2 (summer 1969): 222. 32 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 20002-066/003, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 3, Provincial Council Correspondence, “Conflict, Confrontation - Leading to Social Reform,” 4. 33 NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 52, “Black People Spoke Like Never Before - Wedderbum,”The Mail Star, 9 December 1968, 11. See also: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 51, "Time For Freedom Is Now," The Mail Star, 9 December 1968, 11. 34 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Brenda Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, "Growing Black Unity in Canada: Black United Front (BUF)," Contrast, April 4,1970, 13. 35 Brief mention is made o f this event in: Sean Mills, The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montreal, PQ: McGill-Queens University Press, 2010). Reference can also be found in the archival records, specifically: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, “In the Panther's Wake,” The Globe Magazine, 15 February, 1969, 23. 36 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 50, ‘Negro Defence Fund Started,” Chronicle-Herald, 5 December 1968. 37 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Brenda Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, "Growing Black Unity in Canada: Black United Front (BUF)," Contrast, April 4, 1970, 13. The Panthers had an effect in Halifax only so long as they spoke to the local circumstance. When a number o f Panthers returned in 1970, their effect was much more limited. One reporter explained that ‘the Panthers failed 163
to relate to local conditions as they did a year ago.’ See: Steve Kimber, “Panthers Return to Halifax: But Times Have Changed Since 1968,” The Fourth Estate 26 February 1970, 3. 38 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, “Growing Black Unity in Canada: Black United Front (BUF),” Contrast, April 4, 1970, 13. 39 MU A, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Folder: Nova Scotia Project, Document titled Nova Scotia Project. 40 Thompson, Bom With A Call, 92. 41 Oliver would later cite his work with the Adult Education Division as the blueprint for BUF. See: NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66 (G.I. Smith/Gerald Regan), Folder 16-1 (a), Study o f Negroes, W.P. Oliver, “Adult Education and Community Development: The Beechville Experience,” c.1970. 42 Qt. Reverend W.P. Oliver in Thompson,Born With A Call, 97. See also: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 15, W.P. Oliver, “The Negro in Nova Scotia 1686-1967.” 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid, 98. 45 Interview: H.A.J. Wedderbum conducted 21 April 2005. 46 Qt. Buddy Daye in Thompson, Born With A Call, 98. See also: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 58, Donald Oliver, ‘The New Self-Image,” The Atlantic Baptist, 3 January 1969. 47 Jules Ramon Oliver, “Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement o f Colored People: An Historical Evaluation of the NSAACP and the Role it has Played in the Area o f Employment,” Master of Social Work Thesis, Maritime School of Social Work and Acadia University, 1969, 19-20. 48 Ibid, 38. At the time of the comments, approximately 30 percent of NSAACP members were white. 49 Ibid, 21. 50 Ibid, 17. 51 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, “Panther's Wake,” 23. 52 Qt. Reverend W.P. Oliver in Thompson,Born With A Call, 97. 53 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, “Rocky the Revolutionary,”The Globe Magazine, 15 February, 1969, 24. 54 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 23, BUF in Perspective, 1970-80, Joseph A. Mensah, “The Black United Front in Perspective: 1970-1980,” (n.d.): 70. See also: Nancy Lubka, “Ferment in Nova Scotia,” 223. 55 Staff Writer, “Black Front to Get Funds,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969, 12. In this article BUF was identified as the first ‘all-Black civil rights organization in Canada.’ 56 McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970,43-8. 57 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1053, Folder 9, Black United Front Information Booklet, 3. 58 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1431, Brenda Large Fonds, Folder 6, The Black United Front, "Black Unity," 13. 59 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/004, The Black United Front Fonds, Folder 11, Correspondence, 1972, List o f Black United Front o f Nova Scotia, Board o f Directors. O f the 18 names listed, 5 were religious leaders and two o f the five held Executive positions on the board. Ages were not listed for the directors but, given Jones’ resignation from the BUF interim committee, one suspects that young radicals had few representatives in BUF until Jules Oliver was hired as director. Gus Wedderbum and Oliver sat on BUF’s interim committee. A year after its formation, one report observed that the ‘traditional form of executive decision making has taken over.’ See: Nancy Lubka, “Black Front Raises Questions: Action or a $470,000 bureaucracy?” The Fourth Estate, 13 November 1969,3. 60 On the alignment o f radical pragmatists and moderate elements within social movements, see: James DeNardo, Power in Numbers: The Political Strategy of Protest and Rebellion (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 142. On BUF’s early history and the activities of its first director, Jules Oliver, see: NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 2, Folder 20, Minutes of Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, 23 March 1968; NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 1, J.R. Oliver, Final Report on the Problem of Unemployment for the Negro, 10; and NSARM, MG 15, 164
Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 44, “Wanted: Summer Jobs For Negroes,”Mail Star, 12 June 1968. On the anticipated announcement of Jules Oliver’s appointment, see: Nick Fillmore, “Only BUF Making Progress: Halifax Waiting for a Knight in Armour?” The Fourth Estate, 9 April, 1970,3. On Oliver’s resignation from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee to assume the post of BUF executive director in May 1970, see: Nick Fillmore, “What Do Black People Want? Only to Help Themselves, Says Oliver,”The Fourth Estate, 2 July 1970, 7; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report, 1975, 28-35; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 23, BUF in Perspective, 1970- 80, Mensah, “The Black United Front in Perspective: 1970-1980,”; and Interview: Wedderbum. 61 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report, 1975,30-1. 62 Lubka, “Black Front Raises Questions: Action or a $470,000 Bureaucracy?” 3. 63 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum, dated 7 March, 1969. 64 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, The ACLM, Volume 1, No. 1, March 1969,3. 65 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, The ACLM, Volume 1, No. 1, March 1969; and LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum, dated 7 March, 1969. See also: Staff Writer, “Black United Front to Get Funds,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969, 1. 66 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, The ACLM, volume 1, number 1, March 1969,2. 67 Interview: Wedderbum. 68 NSARM, MG 20, 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 24, Black Educator’s Association, 1969- 1994, Aims of the Black Educators Association, 1-2; and Interview: Wedderbum. In the same year that the BEA organized, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commissioner Marvin Schiff wrote a local school board on the matter of Black representation in the classroom suggesting ‘Black people in the teaching profession are extremely scarce.’ See: Nancy Lubka, “Schiff Letter to School Board: Racism Hidden in the Forms?”The Fourth Estate, 1 May 1969, 9. 69 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-3, Secretary of State Grant Application; also: Gertrude Tynes, in “Making a Difference: Halifax Women Remember the 50s, 60s, and 70s,” filmed 7 May 1999. The latter is a video-log of a day-long conference organized by Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford in connection with their recent study, Mothers of the Municipality. A special thanks to Dr. Guildford who kindly allowed me to view a copy of the video. 70 McNeil, “Afro(Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotia.” For a historical perspective on the issue, see: Mary Anne Weathers, “An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force,”No More Fun and Games: A Journal of Female Liberation 1.2 (February 1969). Available at the Duke University online collection “Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement,” available at: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/wlm/fun-games2/argument.html. 71 Qt. Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones and H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum, in McNeil, “Afro(Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotia,” 66. Of the limited representation of women’s interests among Black organizations, Jones remembered that gender issues ‘weren’t as important as they are now,’ while Wedderbum recalled activists ‘had enough to do with Black rights.’ 72 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2932, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 6, Speeches, Briefs and Reports, 1968, Brief Presented by Voice o f Women of Halifax to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada; and Early, “‘A Grandly Subversive Time’,” 270. 73 H.A.J. Wedderbum and spoke for a range of organizations including the NSAACP, BEA and NBCC. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/022, BUF Fonds, Folder 6, Task Force on Viable Black National Organizations, 1975-78, Submission: Task Force on Viable National Black Organizations. 74 Wilson Head, A Life on the Edge: Experiences in“Black and White" in North America, Memoirs o f Wilson Head (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1995), 286-7. 165
75 Among the links connecting black activists were those forged at conferences on matters o f racial equality. A number of those pushing for a national black organization had presented at the 1968 human rights conference in Halifax. See: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 53, “History o f Black Man: May Reach Nova Scotia Text Books.” 76 On the resuscitation o f the NBCC, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 20002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 15, National Black Coalition o f Canada, 1973-82, Plan of Action of the National Black Coalition of Canada, 1. The story of resurrecting the NBCC is a long and fairly complicated one. In addition to the folder list above, for more on the process see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Box 022, Folders 5 and 6, Task Force on Viable Black National Organizations, 1975-8. 77 Judith Fingard suggests the group was active in the 1970s while Judy Rebick vaguely dates women’s liberation emergence to 1969 for Halifax. Fingard offers no date for the 1895 Feminist Revival emergence. See: Rebick,Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of A Feminist Revolution (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2005), 8; Fingard, “Women’s Organizations,” in Fingard and Guildford eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 42; and on contemporary accounts: Nancy Lubka, “1895 Revival Group: Women’s Liberation Grows in Strength,” The Fourth Estate 26 February 1970, 13; and J.E. Sutherland (letter to the editor), “Gives Limited Picture of Women’s Group”The Fourth Estate, 26 March 1970, 8. In May of 1969, Lubka announced that “Canadian women will be a good deal slower (than their American counterparts] in taking the bull by the homs because they suffer from a self- obliterating acceptance of male superiority.” See: Nancy Lubka, “Freedom Coming Slow for Canadian Women,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969,9. 78 Sutherland (letter to the editor), “Gives Limited Picture o f Women’s Group,” 8. 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid. See also: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 20, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Working Women in Nova Scotia, Fall 1976; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Folder 28, The Status o f Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area, 24 October 1975. 81 Ibid. 82 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 80, Gerald A. Regan, Appointments Completed 1971 (7 files), letter from Jane Hussett dated 2 February 1971; and letter from Mrs. Michal A. Ducharme, 7 April, 1971. 83 Calendar, The Fourth Estate, 16 March 1972, 20. 84 Interview: Duckworth. 85 On government responses to the RCSW report, see: Sue Findlay, “Facing the State: The Politics of the Women’s Movement Reconsidered,” in Heather Jon Maroney and Meg Luxton, eds.Feminism and Political Economy: Women’s Work, Women’s Struggles (Toronto: Methuen, 1987). In Nova Scotia, the provincial government response was also slow. In fact, by 1972, one of the few tangible outcomes o f a renewed focus on women’s rights was the inclusion of sex as prohibited grounds for discrimination under the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act. In the realm of formal politics, this development was driven forward by the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission and its staff. In 1971, for example, when Premier Gerald Regan increased the provincial minimum wage he continued the practice of sex-based minimum wages. On these developments see: Editorial, “Minimum Wage Increase only Tokenism,” The Fourth Estate, 24 June 1971,4; Elizabeth Zimmer, “Women’s Bureau Needed in Province,”The Fourth Estate, 30 September 1971, 17; Staff Writer, “Five Years in Power: The Regan Record,” The Fourth Estate, 12 November 1975,4-5; NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds; and NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 91. 86 Canadian Activist Norma Walmsley remembers that the declaration o f IWY was no small feat in an environment dominated by men — many o f whom believed that women’s concerns about development issues were addressed through UNICEF. On Walmsley’s recollections, involvement at the United Nations and the international events convened to celebrate IWY, see: Norma Walmsley, “A Decade for Women — At Last,” in Clyde Sanger, ed. Canadians and the United Nations (Ottawa: Communications and Culture Branch, Department o f External Affairs, 1988), 147-152. Among the most important events was an international conference in Mexico City and the parallel Tribune Conference convened by activist organizations and attended by former VOW national president Muriel Duckworth. Interview: Duckworth. On national commemoration, see: Secretary o f State, 166
International Women’s Year, 1975 (Ottawa: Secretary o f State, 1975); LAC, RG 106-A-4, Volume 22, No File Number, Submission — Secretary of State, Women’s Programme, various; LAC, RG 106, Volume 13, No File Number, IWY Programme, Nova Scotia, various; Deborah Kaetz, “’75 a ‘Good Beginning’: Women Push AG for Special Ministry,” The Fourth Estate, 7 January 1976,9; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2916, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 24, International Women’s Year, 1975, “International Women’s Year - A Beginning”; Catriona Talbot, “Women and the Law - The Murdoch Case: Could it Happen in Nova Scotia?” The Fourth Estate, 24 December 1975,4-5; and “New Women’s Journal bom in Wolfville,”The Fourth Estate, 29 October 1975; Dalhousie University Archives, Manuscript Series 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 1.1, Abortion, Upstream August 1978, “Abortion Major Issue,” 3. 87 See: The Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status o f Women, Herself/Elle-Meme (Halifax: Government of Nova Scotia, 1976). 88 DU A, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 1.1, Abortion, “Abortion Major Issue,” Upstream August 1978, 3; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 24, NSWAC Press Releases, 1974-1980, Item 24.6, Margaret Conrad, “What Is This Thing Called Feminism?”; and Deborah Kaetz, “’75 a ‘Good Beginning’: Women Push AG for Special Ministry,” The Fourth Estate, 1 January 1976,9. Feminist criticism varied from those who thought it a failure, to those who worried nothing would come o f the concerns articulated to those women who felt that money was wasted on further discussion and study rather than taking action on the demands already articulated by women. Feminist displeasure was also a result o f federal IWY director Mary Gusella’s decision to avoid committed feminists, targeting instead the ‘silent majority’ (as she put it). See: LAC, Record Group 106-A-4, International Women’s Year Fonds, Volume 22, No File Number, Submission — Secretary o f State, Women’s Programme, various; LAC, RG 106, IWY Fonds, Volume 13, No File Number, IWY Programme, Nova Scotia, various. 89 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2916, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 24, International Women’s Year, 1975, “International Women’s Year - A Beginning,” 2. 90 Deborah Kaetz, “’75 a ‘Good Beginning,”' 9. On the issues publicized, see for example: Catriona Talbot, “Women and the Law - The Murdoch Case: Could it Happen in Nova Scotia?” 4-5; and “New Women’s Journal bom in WolfVille,”E2. 91 Ibid, 4. 92 LAC, RG 106-A-4, IWY Fonds, Volume 22, No File Number, Submission — Secretary o f State, Women’s Programme, Secretary of State Draft Submission: Women’s Prgramme, 3. 93 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 3, The Women’s Committee Minutes - 1977, Item 3.1, Submission to the Extension Grant Committee, YWCA o f Canada; Deborah Kaetz, “’75 a ‘Good Beginning,”’ 9; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 10, Women’s Groups, Item 10-3, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement o f Women. 94 See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1, letter from Norma J. Mosher dated 18 February 1980; and Interview: Linda Kealey conducted 23 May 2006; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 717, Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 97, Addresses, Speeches, 1946-1970, Item 97.23, President’s Address, 1970, 3. 95 Deborah Kaetz, “’75 a ‘Good Beginning,”’ 9. 96 Among early NSWAC activists identifying personal relationships as central motivator were: Judy Wouk, Christina Simmons, Kathy Moggridge, and Linda Kealey. On the importance o f social connections, see: McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970; Mario Diani, “Introduction: Social Movements, Contentious Actions, and Social Networks: ‘From Metaphor to Substance,’ in Diani and McAdam, eds. Social Movements and Networks, 1-20; and Florence Passy, “Social Networks Matter. But How?” 21-48. 97 Questionnaire: Judy Wouk completed 13 June 2007. 98 Interview: Kealey. 99 Interview: Kathy Moggridge conducted 8 January 2007. 100 Interview: Christina Simmons conducted 22 September 2006. 101 Questionnaire: Wouk. 102 See, for example: MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 23, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, 1975-77, Nova Scotia Women Action Committee Members and Friends, March 1976. 103 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, Draft Constitution. 167
104 MG 20, Volume 1261, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 9, Agencies, Individuals Etc. Contacted Re: Programming, Information Exchange, Item 9.12, Consultation with Judy Wouk. 105 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 24, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Item 24.27, Operation of the N.S. Women’s Action Committee, 1. 106 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre, Newsletters and Other, Item 11.3, Women’s Centre Newsletter, February 1975, 1. m Ibid. 108 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, Press release dated 17 February 1977. 109 Ibid. 110 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, Draft Constitution. 111 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 8, International Women’s Day, 1979 and 1980, Information Sheet: International Women’s Day. 112 Interview: Simmons; DU A, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Box 1, Activities, Folder 1.1, Abortion; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC. 113 DUA, MS 11-4, Box 1, NSWAC Fonds, File 1.1, Abortion; DU A, MS 11-4, Box 2, Folder 2.4, Public Meetings, Public Service Announcement, 12 November 1979; and NSARM, Mg 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, Information Pamphlet. CARAL earlier stood for Canadian Abortion Rights Action League. 114 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 10, Women’s Groups, Item 10-3, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement o f Women. 115 Christina Simmons, “Responses-Veteran Feminist Project.” Christina Simmons kindly provided this document to the author. It is a form that Simmons completed in connection with a survey of American feminists. She was asked to participate because o f her feminist activism while living in Rhode Island. 1,6 Muriel Duckworth remembers attending at the behest of Judith Wouk, friend and fellow VOW- Halifax activist. See: Kerans, Muriel Duckworth, 191. Also: Interview: Duckworth. 117 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2905, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 20, CRIAW Constitution, Concept Paper on the Canadian Research Institute for Advancement o f Women. 118 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2905, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 20, CRIAW Constitution, Consumer and Corporate Affairs - Canada - Letters Patent, 3. 119 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 14, CRIAW (Nova Scotia Branch) - Minutes and Agenda, various; and NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 15, CRIAW (Nova Scotia Branch) - Minutes and Agenda o f Executive Meetings, various. 120 Several Scholars have identified Halifax as a national educational centre. On that development and the importance of the educational sector to the local economy, see: Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, and David Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years (Halifax: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 1999), 165; Margaret Conrad, “The 1950s: The Decade of Development,” in E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1993), 382-420; and Della Stanley, “The 1960s: The Illusions and Realities o f Progress,” in Forbes and Muise, eds. The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation, 421-460. On the emergence of women’s studies and Black/African studies see Chapter Five. 121 On the Committee on Women’s Research and Publications, see: Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, “Bridging the Gap Between Feminist Activism and Academe,” in Jeri Dawn Wine and Janice L. Ristock, eds. Women and Social Change: Feminist Activism in Canada (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company Publishers, 1991), 258-282. 122 Questionnaire: Wouk. 123 MG 20, Volume 1262, Folder 21, National Action Committee, Item 21-25, Annual Meeting and Conference - National Action Committee on the Status o f Women - Ottawa, March 13-15, 1981. 124 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 3, The Women’s Committee Minutes - 1977, Item 3.1, Submission to the Extension Grant Committee, YWCA o f Canada, 1-4. 125 NSARM, MG 20, 1263, AWP Fonds, Folder 12, Newsletter Material, Newsletter, April-May 1978,9. 126 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 1, House History, Item 1.9, Proposal to be voted on at the General Meeting, May 2. 168
127 On the straggle to address diversity in the women’s movement, see: Gayle MacDonald, Rachel L. Osbome, and Charles C. Smith, eds. Feminism, Law, Inclusion: Intersectionality in Action (Toronto: Sumach Press, 2005). 128 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 9, Black Women’s Congress, Items 9.8 and 9.9, Notes from Meetings with Sylvia Hamilton o f the Black Women’s Congress and Mary Samuels o f the Black United Front. 129 On tensions between radicals and pragmatists, see: Staff Writer, “Black United Front to Get Funds,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969,1; and Nick Fillmore, “Funding May Cease: Government Wants Changes at BUF,” The Fourth Estate, 31 August 1972, 1. Eighteen years later, Jones continued to dismiss BUF as an organization for moderates. See: Qt. Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones in J.A. Manette, “‘Making Something Happen’: Nova Scotia’s Black Renaissance, 1968-1986,” Ph.D. dissertation, Carleton University, Sociology and Anthropology (Ottawa: Carleton University, 1987), 109. Also: Interview: Wedderbum; and LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41 -1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Afro-Canadian Liberation Movement, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum, 28 May 1969. 130 Editor, “Divided We Fall”The Fourth Estate, 10 July 1969,4. See also: Nancy Lubka, “Black Straggle to Find Themselves,”The Fourth Estate 24 July 1969, 11. 131 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/021, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, NSAACP, 1970-1973, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum, dated 7 August 1970. 132 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/021, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, NSAACP, 1970-1973, letter from Carlyle Warner dated March 25, 1971. Between 1960 and 1974, the NSAACP awarded over $50,000 in bursaries to Black students. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/21, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, NSAACP, 1970-73. 133 See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/021, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, NSAACP, 1970-1973, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum dated 22 March 1971. 134 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1551, AWP Fonds, Folder 1, Centre Philosophy and History, Item 1, Centre Philosophy and History; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1551, AWP Fonds, Folder 2, AWP: History and Analysis, Item 1, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House: History and Analysis, 1-17. 135 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1551, AWP Fonds, Folder 1, Centre Philosophy and History, Item 1, Centre Philosophy and History; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1551, AWP Fonds, Folder 2, AWP: History and Analysis, Item 1, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House: History and Analysis, 1-17. 169
Chapter Four
Resource Mobilization: The Means to Political Action
Organizations lived by, and collapsed for want of, sufficient resources. In Halifax, a political consciousness, leadership and communication networks remained essential to the organizations established by African-Nova Scotians and feminists. With structures established, organizational survival and activity (and thereby the potential for policy influence) depended on the mobilization of human, financial, material and informational resources. As a Black United Front document explained, organizations floundered when leaders failed to design ‘an administrative mechanism [able to] generate the necessary human and material resources for a viable organization.’1
Understanding local resource mobilization strategies is important for three reasons. First, such strategies allowed citizens without political standing (in contrast to governments or state agencies) or a relatively steady stream of resources (like a recognized labour union), to gather the resources necessary to promote their reform agenda. Local activists sustained a 22-year struggle for gender and racial equality, despite unstable human, financial and material resources. Secondly, taking a case study approach to the examination of local resource mobilization strategies provides insight into the ways local movements, especially those representing nationally selected target groups, responded to the availability of increased levels of public funding for rights organizations. Feminists and Affican-Canadians — along with official language minority organizations and religious and racial/ethnic minority groups — used public financing to fuel an increase in activity as well as the growth
(and to a lesser extent diversification) of their respective movements. Finally, state 170 support for activist organizations partly reveals the extent to which the Canadian state actively influenced the course of two rights movements and the key players in
Canada’s rights revolution.
Before the mid-1960s, activists in Halifax adopted community-centred resource mobilization strategies, meeting their organizational needs through the energies, talents, financial contributions and material resources of activists. The postwar rise of rights discourse generated further support for rights claimants within their communities. Although community-centred strategies delivered relatively modest resources, they maximized organizational stability by vesting the greatest possible degree of control within the organization. Meanwhile, the parallel growth and diversification of (international movements for racial and gender equality
increased the pool of resources available to local activists. Between 1968 and 1976,
feminists and African-Nova Scotians established social movement organizations
(SMOs) reflective of their growing impatience. In pursuit of increasingly ambitious mandates, activists cobbled together resources, seeking to take advantage of new
opportunities.
At the same time as activists began casting about for new sources of funding,
Canada’s governments introduced new funding programs based on their own rights
agenda. As Canadian historians have demonstrated, public financing played an
important role in activist mobilization throughout Canada during in this period.
From the outset, Canadian activists embraced public funding for their organizations and projects. In the early days of federal efforts to cultivate ‘participatory democracy’ local activists in Halifax forged a relationship with state agencies, 171 though they discussed and fretted about state motives and the potential loss of local autonomy. Such concerns did not prevent Halifax activists from seeking a fair share in public funded programs. Perched at the edge of the continent, Haligonians expressed frustration with the money earmarked for Atlantic Canada and demanded increased and more stable funding for the region. Local activists proved creative and tenacious in their pursuit of public money, approaching a range of state agencies in
search of financial resources.
Organizations throughout Canada accepted greater instability in exchange for
financial resources not easily mobilized through community-centred strategies.
Rarely sufficient, federal and provincial government financing carried the spectre of destabilization for organizations which became dependent on such funding. And
there was no shortage of local examples demonstrating the potential perils of a
dependency. The situation was exacerbated in the mid-to-late-1970s, when federal
authorities responded to growing economic troubles with austerity in social
spending, wage and price controls and expanded employment programs. Reluctantly,
and not without protest, activist projects and organizations closed their doors when
granting authorities cut their financing or revised the terms and conditions of the programs sustaining their activities. As a result, by 1976, the most successful and well-established organizations in Halifax were those that continued to employ
community-centred resource mobilization strategies (occasionally winning public
finances for a project) while emergent groups, wary of dependence on public
financing, adopted hybridized resource mobilization strategies in an attempt to strike
a sustainable balance between reliance on public monies and use of community- 172 centred resource mobilization strategies. Local activists also communalized resources through cooperative strategies. Reflecting a broader Canadian pattern, in their dogged search for resources, activists’ creativity was matched only by their energy.
Community-Centred Resource Mobilization Strategies
Between 1960 and 1967, activists in Halifax depended almost exclusively on
•y community-centred resource mobilization strategies. Though located in an economically disadvantaged region, by comparison to national averages, local activists sustained their organizations and campaigns with the support of their (often middle class) membership and the communities that surrounded them in a city whose economy was relatively strong by comparison to regional averages.
Community infrastructure and activist creativity helped sustain local SMOs, which sought resources directly or indirectly related to their desire for political influence.
To sustain both their organizations and campaigns, generate public support and press their claims, African-Nova Scotians and feminists required human, financial, informational and material resources.3 Though each of these four categories was essential, and largely encompass the entire resource universe, human resources were by far the most important.
No organization would survive, let alone realize political change, without members’ energy and professional skills. African-Nova Scotians and feminists employing community-centred resource mobilization strategies depended on the volunteer labour and personal expertise of their members. Members researched and 173 authored briefs, organized events and attended to administrative matters. It is little wonder, then, that many of these organizations depended on highly educated members. The dedication and loyalty of the membership was also demonstrated by their willingness to finance the cause. Before the late-1960s, African-Nova Scotians and feminists heavily depended on the financial resources mobilized through membership dues and donations. In 1960, the Voice of Women-Halifax opened regular membership to ‘sympathetic individuals’ for a fee o f‘no less than $2 annually.’4 Similarly, when Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA) activists
arrived in Halifax, they gathered financial resources through dues.5 Activists’ reliance on dues and donations mimicked the long-standing resource mobilization
strategies of earlier activist organizations.6 Additionally, some organizations asked members to cover the cost of optional activities, such as attending conferences.7
Dues and donations generated steady if not plentiful financial resources. Yet, linking
human and material resources in this way reinforced the importance of human
resources. Fluctuations in one naturally affected the other as members represented
not only volunteer energy and expertise but also the financial resources needed to
stage events, secure material or informational resources and pay for related services.
When dues and donations proved insufficient, activists turned their gaze
outward, targeting individuals through a range of fund-raising activities. VOW-
Halifax minutes refer to fundraising projects initiated to gather the monies necessary to finance resource intensive tactics including ‘newsletters, paper, printing and
o stamps.’ The Halifax Women’s Centre held fundraising events including a dinner and auction as well as public events including a garage sale. The ambitious activist 174 mandate guiding the Nova Scotia Project, a project launched by the Student Union for Peace Activity, also demanded resources well beyond the $1 membership fee
charged.9 The Nova Scotia Project drew upon the (inter)national network of
sympathisers surrounding SUPA when it issued calls for financial support through its newsletter and form letters. One 1965 fund-raising letter read: “Not everyone can
share in this democratic endeavour by going to Nova Scotia in person. But people
such as you and I can help by giving money for necessary expenses of the project -
including subsistence salaries for the workers.” 10
An organization able to mobilize only limited financial resources from
among its membership and fundraising campaigns might turn to potentially
sympathetic groups and institutions within wider community for resource support.11
In a 1969 letter, Wedderbum described the NSAACP’s resource mobilization
strategies:
We have been operating since 1945 from various homes, churches and temporary quarters all of which are very inadequate...space is a must, a necessity, but we are not a wealthy organization 12
For twenty-four years previously, the NSAACP relied on its members and the local
community. One of its primary benefactors was the provincial network of black
churches linked by an administrative arm: the African United Baptist Association
(AUBA). From the pulpit and in newsletters, clergy and community members
publicized the work of the NSAACP. Where possible, the church and the AUBA provided space, guidance and limited financial support.13 For African-Nova Scotians
— a community that historically had depended on religious institutions as a source
of community strength — the support of their churches was particularly important. 175
Other socially-minded protestant churches and religious organizations — including the United, Baptist and Methodist churches as well as the Council of Christians and
Jews — also supported Nova Scotia’s rights movements by hosting conferences and organizing public lectures.
Although no single institution linked Haligonian women to the same degree that ‘the black church’ linked African-Nova Scotians, institutions did link women.
Among the most common were universities.14 That universities linked local feminists and supplied resources to their organizations is not surprising given the professional and academic credentials defining feminist organizations like the
Canadian Federation of University Women or Business and Professional Women’s
Clubs.15 Linked though common experiences, and possessing the rights of alumni, women looked to universities as an important source of support. The Canadian
Federation of University Women-Halifax, for example, met at Saint Mary’s and
Dalhousie universities.16 And Mount St. Vincent University — a women’s university until 1967 when it opened its doors to men — and its successive presidents, Catherine Wallace and Margaret Fulton, provided important resource
support to local feminist organizations. African-Nova Scotians also occasionally drew informational resources from the academy. Between 1960 and 1967, for example, the Dalhousie Institute for Public Affairs aggregated information about, and important to, Nova Scotia’s black communities.17
Municipal infrastructure also played an important role in the resource mobilization strategies of African-Nova Scotians and feminists in Halifax. Among the resources drawn from the wider municipal community were the speakers and 176 space necessary for public meetings. The Nova Scotia Human Rights Federation and its predecessor convened conferences at Dalhousie University and local public schools.18 The Voice of Women, Human Relations Committee, held public meetings at the YMCA.19 Mount St. Vincent University hosted conferences for Nova Scotia’s feminists including a number in partnership with the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. Activists likewise depended on local libraries to provide space for meetings as well as to collect, loan and display important informational resources. In 1972, for example, the Halifax public library produced the
Bibliography o f African Heritage for Children and Parents and a temporary Black
Cultural Learner Resource Centre opened at the North End Library.20 At a time when Halifax was emerging as a national education and regional healthcare centre, the movements for racial and gender equality also drew on the expertise of resident scientists, lawyers, doctors and public affairs experts.21
Most organizations depended on a mix of support from the communities surrounding them. The Nova Scotia Project is a fine case-in-point. In addition to the hospitality of local African-Nova Scotians, dues charged and fundraising campaigns conducted through the Student Union for Peace Action, Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones and his fellow activists enlisted the help of Muriel Duckworth. Together they approached city officials to request space for Kwacha House (the Nova Scotia Project’s community centre). Duckworth and NSAACP president H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum also established a group known as the Friends of the Nova Scotia Project which mobilized financial resources and support for the project in Halifax. Nova Scotia
Project officials also worked with the local community to turn an abandoned lot in Ill the urban core into a playground and daycare centre known as a ‘tot lot.’ In addition to the many forms of support enjoyed, Nova Scotia Project workers sacrificed their time, energy and material comfort for the project.23
When activist interests dovetailed, SMOs shared resources.24 In a 1962 letter
VOW-Halifax’s social justice wing (aka the Human Relations Committee) encouraged members to attend an NSAACP meeting.25 The NSAACP welcomed the concern of VOW-Halifax. Writing to Duckworth that same year, NSAACP representative H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum pleaded: ‘your executive has taken a pledge to work with and for our people to the best of your abilities... Will you therefore lend this organization your support, will you come to meetings, share with us your thoughts, and give us your . advice?’ ?ft Wedderbum and his group had also been working with the Nova Scotia Department of Education, Adult Education Division
(then employing NSAACP founder and former president, Rev. Dr. W.P. Oliver) to deliver programs for African-Nova Scotians.27 In 1965, Wedderbum encouraged cooperation between the Nova Scotia Project and the NSAACP, arguing that, with additional support, the NSAACP could ‘accomplish twice as much as it already has for the Negro people of Nova Scotia.’28 Umbrella organizations, such as the Local and Provincial Council of Women, structured themselves so as to communalize resources and seek issues of mutual concern.
Haligonian activists also mobilized resources through the national activist community. Feminists, in particular, had established networks, flowing from membership in a variety of federated national organizations including the Canadian
Federation of Business and Professional Women, Canadian Federation of University 178
Women, National Council of Women, National Action Committee on the Status of
Women, the Canadian Alliance to Repeal the Abortion Law, Planned Parenthood and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. Federated feminist organizations drew on national pools of money to mount annual conferences. Additionally, valuable informational resources flowed through feminist newsletters. Meanwhile, African-Nova Scotians — who were comparatively isolated in their activism — aired their grievances through organizations and institutions including the Canadian Labour Congress, United Church of Canada, Kiwanis Club and Canadian Council of Christians and Jews.29 Similarly, the Jewish Labour
Committee and Canadian Labour Congress advised black Haligonians — primarily through Gus Wedderbum — between 1957 and 1972.30 Though not without value, the unpredictability of informal or ad hoc relationships demanded greater effort, flexibility and creativity on the part of African-Nova Scotian activists.
Resources were always a concern for Canadian activists, which, in turn, made organizational survival tenuous. Community based strategies largely met activist needs until the late 1960s, when a new generation of ambitious African-
Nova Scotian and women’s liberation organizations created complex organizations to meet increasingly ambitious agendas. In 1965, when Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones and fellow SUPA activists launched the Nova Scotia Project, for example, their ambition strained the capacity of community-centred resource mobilization strategies. Despite aid from the black community, municipal community, national New Left community and Friends of the Nova Scotia Project, Kwacha house constantly teetered on the edge of collapse.31 The space, staff, and materials required to maintain Kwacha 179
House, the ‘tot lot’ and consciousness-raising activities demanded resources far greater than the lobbying and self-education mandates guiding many activist organizations in Halifax. Nor were the Kwachas willing to build their resource mobilization capacity slowly over the course of years, as had existing activist organizations. When community support and activist dedication proved incapable of meeting resource needs, the Project accepted indirect resource support from
Canada’s federal government.
State Support for Social Movement Organizations
State support led to the creation of ambitious and complex organizations and an increase in local activism. Public financing enabled activist projects and organizations to employ staff on a scale never before imaginable. Locally, activists employed volunteers and salaried individuals who, combined, carried out more research, authored more documents, held more meetings, lobbied more officials, organized more events and administered a greater number of more complex programs and projects than was possible when volunteerism alone supported the organizations. State support began modestly, channelling resources indirectly to local activists, and few, in Halifax or elsewhere, could have predicted either the future extent or the future importance of state support in sustaining social movements.
In the spring of 1965, Ottawa established the Company of Young Canadians
(CYC): a youth program constituted as an activist organization. The CYC launched its program in 1966 with relatively generous government funding at its disposal. It 180 channelled resources to community-centred programs in the form of personnel
(trained and salaried by the CYC) and occasional financial support. Based on national debates (reflected in SUPA’s journalOur Generation), secondary historical treatments have focused on tensions between the CYC and SUPA.32 But, in Halifax, where the Nova Scotia Project teetered on the brink of collapse, SUPA activists embraced the opportunity to cooperate.33 Among the earliest CYC volunteers and trainers were Joan and Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones.34 For their part, CYC activists looked to the Nova Scotia Project as a source of activist experience and legitimacy.35
The decision on the part of the leaders of the Nova Scotia Project to join forces with the CYC was not taken lightly. Activists debated the merits of public support and threat of cooption. In a 1966 article on the relationship between the
CYC and the Nova Scotia Project, SUPA activist Bill Curry explained:
When the Company of Young Canadians was first announced by the Prime Minister last spring, it sounded more like a political gimmick than a serious challenge for young people to participate in real social change...Though I knew that CYC had changed for the better in its year of research and planning, I really didn’t expect it to be as progressive as it is. Those involved with the Company of Young Canadians are totally committed to the principle of making this an independent organization, run and controlled by young people.36
The provision of salaried CYC personnel alone could not solve the Project’s resource difficulties. On the Project’s first anniversary, despite four recently arrived
CYC trained and funded activists, SUPA staff appealed to newsletter subscribers, reporting that the Club could not operate for even one month longer without a cash infusion.37 In an effort to keep the organization afloat, the CYC began to pay half of
Kwacha House’s rent in 1967.38 Though not in time to save the Nova Scotia Project, 181 within three years, direct public funding programs emerged and eclipsed the resources provided by the CYC.
Among the first beneficiaries of the federal decision to fund Canadian rights activists was the Black United Front (BUF).Between 1965 and 1970, African-Nova
Scotian ambition and urgency rendered community centred resource mobilization
strategies insufficient. No organizational structure or mandate was more ambitious than that guiding the Black United Front. Its tri-partite structure, comprised of a
Provincial Council (community representatives), Board of Directors (appointed by the Council and responsible for financing and policy), and staff (responsible for the
daily operation and activity of BUF), fused volunteerism and salaried staff. Staff
included a full-time director, administrative support and several field officers. In
addition to staff costs, BUF required funds for an office, equipment, utilities and
supplies. Such a large organization and ambitious agenda demanded considerable
resources: money, time and energy well beyond the capacity of the communities
supporting most activist organizations in Halifax.40
In January 1969, a delegation of BUF representatives (including Reverend
W.P. Oliver and H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum) travelled to Ottawa. Citing the well-
known inequality of African-Nova Scotians, dissatisfaction with the progress made
to date in Nova Scotia, the weak economic position of their constituent communities
as well as the lack of financial support from the provincial government, and
suggesting that a peaceful organization might channel the energies of young
militants in more constructive directions, BUF submitted a request for federal
funding.41 Although seemingly without precedent, race riots in the United States, 182
escalating racial tensions at Sir George Williams University and public statements by Haligonian militants undoubtedly made the threat of local violence all the more
real, and the request received a sympathetic hearing.
Upon the delegation’s return, Wedderbum reported that federal
representatives ‘indicated their understanding of our problem and pledged their
support.’42 Federal authorities agreed to provide BUF with up to $470,000 over the
course of five years. Identifying an opportunity to serve political interests, Trudeau’s
cabinet resolved that ‘steps should be taken with a view to ensuring that the federal
government receives credit for its role in respect to the Black United Front.’43
Provincial authorities — who likewise sought credit — contributed a further
$50,000 44 In the same year, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission awarded
BUF a $3,000 dollar grant, with director Marvin Schiff acknowledging that the
money ‘would be good for public relations and would show that we are willing to
co-operate with the Black community.’45 BUF’s grants heralded the age of public
funding for activist organizations: a new reality that represented not a panacea but a
series of different challenges for activists in Halifax.
Unstable short-term funding created uncertainty for many local social
movement organizations while long-term funding was rare and could create a client-
patron relationship between granting agency and recipient. But no matter whether
the funding was short-term or long-term, those SMOs which grew dependent on
public funding rendered themselves vulnerable to collapse should funding cease.
Nonetheless, activist organizations in Halifax made the most of short-term project
grants between 1960 and 1982. Only one SMO, the Black United Front, enjoyed a 183 relatively long-term and generous funding relationship with Canada’s governments.46 But that relationship came with a price. In exchange for comparatively generous financial resources, BUF executives made decisions designed to please its benefactors, such as hiring Jules Oliver — a pragmatist who had worked with the municipal government and Nova Scotia Human Rights
Commission and was, initially, a popular choice among its benefactors — as director and later firing him when he proved too controversial and those same benefactors threatened to cut BUF’s funding 47 BUF had entered a client-patron relationship with federal authorities, and contemporary observers did not allow these developments to pass without comment.48 A Woman’s Place-Forrest House, which enjoyed a long term funding relationship with its parent organization (the YWCA) and made administrative decisions based on its benefactors’ priorities, might also be seen as having openly entered a client-patron relationship. The complexities of public
funding continued throughout the 1970s as activists struggled to balance the benefits and potential hazards of public funding.
Public funding threatened to weaken the link between social movement
organizations and the communities they served in other ways as well. Public funding programs meant that local SMOs might survive with less resource support from their
constituents and, with comparably generous financial resources at their disposal, a number of activists took the opportunity to design complex, staff — rather than
volunteer — driven organizations. Yet notwithstanding the links scholars of social movements have drawn between public funding, bureaucratization and a tendency
for bureaucratic SMOs to have weak ties with the communities they serve, neither of 184
Halifax’s most complex, staff-driven and publicly-funded SMOs ceased efforts to build strong ties with their constituents. The Black United Front and A Woman’s
Place-Forrest House both suffered when their decisions clashed with constituents’ political sensibilities. As noted, AWP suffered a crisis of legitimacy after another
feminist organization publicly accused it of exploiting women’s labour. AWP could
not meet its education/social action objectives without community support, so it
examined its structure and mandate and emerged with a renewed commitment to
feminist ideals - a change that brought the organization more in line with the local
women it hoped to serve. BUF administrators likewise implemented changes in
response to waning community support for the organization. Between 1974 and
1982, BUF discussed and studied waning community support, eventually instituting
changes designed to attract greater community support and ensure a stronger voice
for African-Nova Scotians.49 Neither public funding nor bureaucratic structures
necessarily distanced Halifax SMOs from the communities they represented.
Community support provided local SMOs with more than just financial, human or
material resources, offering an intangible but equally vital resource: legitimacy.
Formalizing State Support for Political Challengers
In the early 1970s, the federal Liberal government expanded the number and value
of grants being awarded to Canadian activist organizations. The funding programs
introduced throughout the 1970s at once responded to activist demands and served
various political objectives. For their part, the Liberals hoped that public funding programs would foster electoral support for the government and partisan support for 185 the Liberal Party, which party insiders argued had ossified, requiring an infusion of
‘new blood.’50 Public funding also reflected Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s
Just Society policies, stemming from his ‘belief that the creation of a just society required that disadvantaged groups were given the political space and financial resources to developtheir claims.’51 More specifically, the public funds flowing from the Secretary of State reflected the Prime Minister’s desire to cultivate greater public support for rights at a time when the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and
Bi-Culturalism, constitutional negotiations and the Royal Commission on the Status of Women (RCSW) placed the issue of rights front-and-centre. Finally, Trudeau sought to bind the citizenry to the federal government at the cost of provincial loyalties.
Canada’s federal government was no mere neutral arbiter of public interests.
Under Trudeau, the federal government supported SMO mobilization when activist projects and agendas aligned with Liberal interests. By funding rights groups, federal officials hoped to increase the public demands for human rights and thereby legitimize its policy directions. During the same period, the Liberals pursued a
similar policy with official language minority groups, providing groups with core
funding in the belief that public money would stimulate a greater demand for
language rights and services in Canada.53 To stimulate rights activism, they targeted key groups (including women and ethno-cultural minorities) and drafted eligibility criteria to support activism aligned with the state’s conception of rights. In Halifax,
Trudeau’s plans supported an increase in activism within the movements for racial and gender equality. 186
In the two decades following 1960, the Secretary of State (SOS), which had granted modest funds to activist groups in the early 1950s, expanded its grant program. In 1968 the SOS granted $95,000 for the promotion of human rights.
Though funding for human rights groups dipped in the early 1970s, it remained
above $140,000 in the mid-1970s and peaked at $995,000 in 1977 and 1978 (when the Canada Human Rights Act was proclaimed and implemented). By the mid-
1970s, the Department’s mandate had also expanded to include funding for women’s groups, official language groups and racial minority organizations. Expanded activity has led one scholar to describe the SOS as a ‘flamboyant, free-spending
animateur sociale.’54 The Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored
People secured a SOS grant worth $3,500 in fiscal year 1969-1970 (just shortly after
the Black United Front delegation — which included NSAACP President H.A.J.
‘Gus’ Wedderbum — secured its sizable federal grant).55 Yet at a time when SOS
officials awarded more and larger grants under a greater range of programs, rarely did authorities deviate from a policy of short-term project funding.
Although Haligonians undoubtedly would have preferred long-term
operational funding, federal programs allowed activists to adopt mandates, pursue
objectives and increase activism to levels not possible without public monies.56 In
the early 1970s, responding to the RCSW Report and feminist demands, federal
authorities targeted women’s groups, providing funding which, in Halifax and
throughout Canada, supported a growing feminist movement. Beginning in 1972-3,
federal authorities recognized women as a disadvantaged group by granting them
priority in Secretary of State funding programs and, the following year, created the 187
Women’s Program, which they mandated to encourage the establishment of women’s centres, provision of women’s services, investigation of gender discrimination, formation of new women’s groups, creation of projects addressing the status of women and coordination of activities through conferences, workshops and newsletters.
In addition to SOS grants, a number of competitive annual funding programs targeted specific groups. Among the targeted populations were students, women and ethnic/racial minorities - groups well-represented in the movements for racial and gender equality in Halifax. The governing Liberals thought these groups might be won over to political partisanship and could aid the campaign for an entrenched bill of rights. Though not so true of students, these groups also fit within the dominant conception, among western capitalist democracies, of legitimate rights claimants.58
Students, on the other hand, were targeted because of their political activity throughout the 1960s, a Liberal interest in ‘new blood’ and a growing trend of youth unemployment resulting from federal attempts to reverse inflationary pressures, which authorities worried would have ‘destabilizing effects.’59 Notwithstanding ebbs
and flows in the amounts allotted to public funding programs, by the early 1970s
activists in Halifax were gathering financial resources through programs designed to
support rights activism.60
In the early 1970s, public funding programs made grant-writing a viable resource mobilization strategy for activists including Judy Wouk, Muriel
Duckworth, Rocky Jones and the Black United Front.61 As Wouk recently recalled,
‘those were still the days of...LIP [Local Initiatives Projects] and other short-term 188 government grants. We wrote lots of grant proposals.’62 Yet grant-writing demanded advanced literacy skills not found among just any group. In this regard, the link between higher education, activism and the importance of post-secondary education to the local economy dovetailed nicely in Halifax. At a time when post-secondary education was more accessible than ever before, African-Nova Scotian leaders tended to be well-educated and university campuses constituted an important site in the feminist communication network, Haligonian activists possessed the skills necessary to craft successful grant proposals.63 That some grant programs, such as
Opportunities for Youth (OFY), specifically targeted post-secondary students strengthened the link between post-secondary education, activism and public funding for activist projects. The money flowing into Nova Scotia from the OFY program was considerable. In its first year of operation, Haligonian reporters sarcastically noted that, in Nova Scotia, drama groups and roving bands of urban clowns ‘operated on — what else? — an Opportunities for Youth grant.’64 By 1972, after only one year in operation, activists in Halifax noted the importance of these programs when they suggested that several organizations lived on a cycle of OFY-
LIP-OFY funding.65 While OFY grants funded youth projects during the summer months, LIP grants carried organizations through the remainder of the year.66
In 1971, the first year for OFY grants, The Women’s Bureau — a local feminist research organization that, although bearing the same name, was not associated with the Secretary of State organ established two years later — received a grant. Noting that a permanent body could ‘help run programs which women feel are important in their fight for equality,’ the Bureau extended its existence for two-years 189 through a cycle of OFY-LIP grants.67 Other OFY and LIP projects in Halifax included the Historical Education Research Organization (HERO) led by Burnley
‘Rocky’ Jones, the Winter Warmth Program launched by the Black United Front and an umbrella organization called the Movement for Citizens Voice and Action led by
Muriel Duckworth. When funding ceased so too did many of these SMOs. The
OFY-LIP cycle, and similar cycles bom of short-term funding, required more or less constant grantsmanship. The time absorbed by constant grant writing led not only
local feminists but activists generally to advocate long-term, stable operational
funding for activist organizations.68 Intransigent authorities responded that activist
organizations would be wise to lessen their dependence on public funds.69
Public funding continued to be a source of debate among activists in Halifax.
As some activists lined up to receive their share of government dollars, others worried about cooption and the strings attached to public funding. Headlines such as
“Opportunities for Youth: Postponing the Revolution Once Again,” and “Citizen
Participation: Real Involvement or Just Playing the Game?” only hinted at the debate
among activists.70 One author suggested that government funding achieves
‘precisely what it’s intended for — (1) keeping the strongest leadership in all of these groups both running around searching for more funding to keep them from organizing and (2) separating the leadership from ordinary people anxious to act and
leam within the groups.’71 Federal authorities cast their funding programs in a different light. In 1972, for example, Bill Grandy — Nova Scotia’s OFY Project
Officer — penned a letter to the editor, arguing that the program was ‘the best thing that has ever happened to this country.’72 Federal programs did not place undue 190 restrictions on recipients and they certainly added to the expansion of activism in
Halifax. While grant writing demanded time and effort, especially when gathering 7^ short-term grants, so too did all resource mobilization. While community-centred resource mobilization undoubtedly served multiple objectives by bringing activists in contact with their communities, public funds allowed for more activity — including community engagement.
If some of Halifax’s youth saw federal programs as an effort to quiet youth during a time of economic hardship, others were willing to use government funding to launch their projects and organizations. A number of activists did not see government funding as a one-way street but as an opportunity to achieve movement goals - even if the project was short-lived. In explaining his use of OFY funding for the Historical Education Research Organization (HERO), Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones did not see himself as a pawn, arguing that he ‘exploited...the federal government to get where I wanted to go.’74 In its second year, HERO secured Secretary of State funding while its third year was funded by the Black Educators Association, whose funding was also provided by public agencies.75 For Jones and other like-minded activists, public funding was a means to an end, one they were willing to exploit and equally sorry to lose when authorities cut their funding. Indeed, Native and African-
Nova Scotians were behind demands for more federal money in 1972.76 Federal authorities replied that, according to population figures, the Atlantic region received its due: fourteen percent.
In the 1970s, neither African-Nova Scotians nor feminists limited their requests for financial resources to established public funding programs or a single 191 department. Recalling the importance of specific programs such as LIP, feminist
Judy Wouk also recalls the importance of various government departments:
‘Secretary of State (now Canadian Heritage) provided much of our funding. There was also funding from Manpower and Immigration (now divided among a number of different departments).’77 In 1973-1974, the Halifax Women’s Centre/Brenton
Place secured a Secretary of State grant which allowed it to move from a single room in a Unitarian Church to a three-bedroom house in downtown Halifax.78
Established in 1974, Pro-Feminae — a feminist organization to which Judy Wouk
contributed her time — gathered financial resources from, among others, the
Department of Employment and Immigration.79 Pro-Feminae also partnered with
various departments, such as Canada Manpower and Immigration, on specific
projects.80 Canada’s Secretary of State Department provided funding to the Black
Professional Women’s Group in Halifax.81 In 1977, the Black Educators Association
acquired an office and staff through grants from the provincial Department of
Education, Secretary of State and Nova Scotia Human Rights Association.82
The women supporting A Woman’s Place-Forrest House (AWP) were prodigious grant-writers. During the physical rehabilitation of Forrest House, the
Secretary of State, Canada Manpower and Immigration, provincial Department of
Education, Halifax Social Planning and Manpower and the YWCA all offered financial assistance.83 During the following fiscal year, AWP received more Canada
Works money, funds from the Secretary of State, a Health and Welfare Grant of
$2,799, $500 from the Department of Continuing Education and $10,620.29 from the Association for Family Life.84 The grant writing skills of AWP activists 192 extended across all levels of Canadian government. The municipal Social Planning
Department was a regular recipient of grant applications from AWP.85 Obviously amenable to AWP’s requests, on 18 June 1981, Harold D. Cromwell, director of the municipal Social Planning Department, wrote to suggest organizational representatives apply for funding to cover the 1981-1982 fiscal year.86
Even when political authorities cancelled particular funding programs, such as the OFY or LIP, activists won funding from other programs. African-Nova
Scotians and feminists in Halifax benefitted from the fact that racial minorities and women were consistently among the groups targeted by funding programs. In the summer of 1980, for example, Employment and Immigration Minister Lloyd
Axworthy announced a $105 million Canadian Community Development Projects
Program (CCDPP). As the latest in a series of community-centred regional development schemes, authorities mandated the CCDPP to support projects that had long-term • impact on national and regional priorities. 87 Governmental priorities, • developed in consultation with provincial officials and regional federal government offices, included a host of specific measures and ‘other activities which have long term benefit to communities (e.g., native people, blacks, physically disabled, women and youth).’88 Representatives from the Young Women’s Christian Association
(YWCA), A Woman’s Place-Forrest House (AWP), the Department of Social
Services and Halifax Social Planning Department met throughout August to develop a proposal which would be awarded one year of funding.89
Resident activists also sought to capitalize on local circumstance, such as the government programs designed to address regional economic under-performance. For example, in an effort to provide low-interest loans to African-Nova Scotian business enterprises and entrepreneurs, BUF established BUF Enterprises.
Representatives initially approached the province to finance the proposals. Instead, provincial officials agreed to coordinate a meeting with Department of Regional
Economic Expansion (DREE) officials. Acknowledging the role federal policy played in the region, BUF looked forward to a partnership which could bring
“additional Federal funds into the Nova Scotian economy and at the same time provide our constituency with long needed opportunities to establish viable Black
entrepreneurship.”90 DREE looked upon the proposal kindly but suggested that they
could only provide financing on a provincial-federal cost sharing basis. Ultimately, the province declined and BUF Enterprises died on the drawing board.91 Unfazed,
BUF continued to seek and cobble together funding through various federal
initiatives, including economic development programs.O')
Groups unable to tap the well of public funds approached other public
bodies. Among the long-standing resource mobilization strategies in Halifax was
registry with the United Appeal Campaign. As a centralized fund-raising
organization, the United Appeal collected and then distributed donations to a variety
of local charities, voluntary groups and SMOs. For years, public appeals for charity
in Halifax sustained a network of citizens’ groups and service delivery organizations. And yet, just as they divided over the wisdom of government
funding programs, young activists remained sceptical that the United Appeal would
support the growing number of activist organizations in Halifax. In 1970, local activists questioned the United Appeal’s grip on fund-raising and its priorities by 194
labelling the organization dictatorial.94 One year later, the debate again surfaced in
an article titled “There’s Still a Role for the United Appeal,” reporting that the
organization might still serve a role despite being the ‘centre of much controversy in many cities across Canada in recent years because of serious questions about
whether the money collected is actually reaching the people who need assistance.’95
Regardless of the organizations involved, and despite concerted efforts to
maintain funding relationships, decisions to withdraw funding did, in some cases,
trigger organizational collapse. From the inception of the Nova Scotia Project in
1965, activists sought to balance the need for substantial resource support against the
threat of collapse following resource withdrawal. By the mid-1970s African Nova
Scotians could recall a number of activist projects and organizations that had
collapsed due to resource withdrawal. Rocky Jones’s Historical Education Research
Organization ended when no more public or private funding could be found.96 The
Black United Front (BUF), which owed its ongoing activism to public funding, was
threatened with resource withdrawal by federal authorities who felt that the
organization was too divisive.97 In the early 1970s, African-Nova Scotians joined
their national counterparts to save the National Black Coalition of Canada when
‘financial irregularities’ led federal authorities to ‘blacklist’ the organization —
refusing to grant it any more funds ‘under the leadership of Peter Paul, Chairman
and Dudley Campbell, Treasurer.’ Between twenty-five and thirty activists met to
consider how to save the organization.98 The first order of business was to fire both
Paul and Campbell. 195
Feminists in Halifax had also faced the challenges of public financing since at least the early 1970s. Of those years, Muriel Duckworth recalled that in the early
1970s, a series of feminist organizations collapsed because they ‘hadn’t any money.
And they couldn’t get money from the government to enable them to meet.’99 Later in the decade, other feminist projects including the Women’s Bureau and Pro-
Feminae, both of which were entirely dependent on public financing, collapsed when federal granting agencies denied them funding. Pro-Feminae’s collapse, which followed the 1978 federal Department of Employment and Immigration declaration that “women were no longer to be viewed as a legitimate target group for outreach programmes,” became the basis of at least one written demand for long-term, stable public funding for activist organizations in Halifax.100
Organizations only partly dependent on public funding also collapsed for want of resources. The Nova Scotia Project required considerable resources and had long struggled through a hybridized resource mobilization strategy. Dependent on dues, donations, local and national fundraising efforts, community support as well as support from the Company of Young Canadians, the Nova Scotia Project kept its doors open into 1968 but succumbed to unrelenting resource hardships.101 The
Project collapsed when its resource difficulties demanded too much of the communities and public programs supporting the organization as well as those
involved. Exhausted activists could no longer sustain the organization. Judith Wouk
similarly recalls the frustrations associated with resource mobilization at the Halifax
Women’s Centre. Secretary of State funding failed to cover the Centre’s resource requirements. Consequently, feminists used dues, donations and creative fundraising 196
events (including auctions and garage sales) to cover the shortfall.102 Although the
Women’s Centre sought security in a hybridized resource mobilization strategy,
resource requirements exceeded mobilization capacity and the most dedicated
activists wore themselves out trying to make ends meet. Compounding the
difficulties for the Women’s Centre was the fact that successful consciousness-
raising led to greater resource strain. As members reached a political-consciousness
and resolved to take political action a number left the organization and thereby
decreased the human resources available. The Centre closed in late 1975.103
The resource hardships of, and solutions proposed by, organizations such as
the Nova Scotia Project and the Halifax Women’s Centre presented a blueprint for
future resource mobilization strategies among Affican-Nova Scotians and feminists
in Halifax. While many long-standing organizations continued on much as they
always had, supported by community-centred resource mobilization strategies and
attending to a comparatively modest mandate, throughout the 1970s a breed of
ambitious organizations adopted hybrid resource strategies out of necessity. If public
funding was generally unequal to resource demands, it was more so in the mid-to-
late 1970s when provincial and federal legislators tackled ‘stagflation’ by cutting
and channelling government spending into priority areas leaving less money for
activist organizations. In an environment of economic difficulty, public funding for
activist organizations could be cut suddenly and, without recourse, organizations
might collapse. Faced with a growing number of defunct activist projects such as the
Nova Scotia Project, Women’s Bureau, HERO, Halifax Women’s Centre and Pro-
Feminae, activists endeavoured to wean themselves from dependence on public 197 funding programs. One means to do so was to supplement elite resource mobilization strategies with community-centred strategies (another was to communalize resources).
Hybrid Resource Mobilization Strategies
Between 1961 and 1973 Canada enjoyed its longest sustained economic boom in modem times.104 By the end of that period, however, the consumer price index was rising at an alarming 7.7 percent per annum. Inflation was identified as a problem as early as 1966 — and the focus of federal budgets during 1968 and 1969 — but the federal battle against large increases in the consumer price index triggered a rise in unemployment which, by the early 1970s, had also reached record highs. The solution to one problem seemed only to exacerbate the other. Wary of unfocused government spending which might fuel inflation, the federal government identified job creation as its most urgent priority and selectively spent public money to alleviate unemployment. The result, as Kenneth Norrie and Douglas Owram argue, was that ‘one of the distinguishing features of the period after 1973 was a retrenchment on the social-policy front.’105 In 1978, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott
Tmdeau wrote his provincial counterparts outlining the economic direction negotiated over the previous two-years and endorsed at a spring meeting on the economy. Among the priorities agreed upon were a program for expenditure reduction and redirection away from social spending — with the exception of discretionary, short-term, program-specific increases in funding, such as funding allotted to coincide with the passage of the CanadaHuman Rights Act in 1977-78 — 198 and transfer payments toward deficit wrestling, unemployment reduction, productivity increases and inflation control.106
Although public funding rarely met organizational budgets, during the mid- to-late 1970s public resource mobilization strategies became still more challenging.
Responding to deepening economic woes and failed constitutional negotiations,
Canadian legislators retooled or cut the budgets of grant programs. Legislators cut the frivolity out of the funding programs to focus more exclusively on key groups
including Canada’s racially marginalized communities, women and official language groups.107 But, in Halifax, even African-Nova Scotians and feminists, two of the
groups targeted by legislators, noted a decrease in funding during the period. To
make matters worse, sky-rocketing inflation rates eroded the value of the grants they
did receive. As the grants decreased in value and became increasingly difficult to
secure, local activists sought and won short-term funding even as they struggled to
lessen their dependence on insufficient and often unstable public monies.
In Halifax, activist organizations — realizing that public funding was no panacea for resource mobilization challenges — diversified their resource
mobilization strategies. Notwithstanding its phenomenal success in securing grants,
A Woman’s Place-Forrest House (AWP) regularly turned to its parent organization, the Young Women’s Christian Association, for financial assistance during its early
life. The organization also rented space to other local women’s groups in an attempt to meet its operational expenses. So too did AWP fundraise and enlist the help of other feminists in their fundraising efforts. The Halifax Women’s Centre secured
Secretary of State funding, collected dues from its members and held various 199 fundraising events including yard sales and auctions. The Nova Scotia Women’s
Action Committee (NSWAC) collected dues and occasionally secured public funding.108 So too did the Black Educators Association and the Black Professional
Women’s Group collect dues, accept donations, rely on the communities surrounding them and secure public funding. By the mid-1970s, both the BEA and
BPWG had acquired offices and a small staff and were employing the same hybridized resource mobilization strategy as their contemporaries.
In the wider Haligonian community, certain institutions proved particularly helpful in the struggle to gather resources. Mount Saint Vincent University regularly offered space and occasionally funding to NSWAC and other local feminist organizations. In 1980, for example, Kathy Moggridge, on behalf of NSWAC, wrote a letter thanking the Dean of Social Sciences for material resources — including
space and printed materials — the university provided for an Occupational Health
Conference.109 In search of resources from the wider community in 1980, AWP also turned to Mount St. Vincent, enlisting the help of university president Margaret
Fulton. In the letter of support she penned, Fulton described a number of feminist
resource mobilization strategies including volunteerism and the coalitions designed
to minimize resource expenditure. To potential donors Fulton wrote:
It is apparent to me that Forrest House serves as a coordinating centre for a number of projects involving women in this area. The Halifax Branch of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women uses Forrest House as its headquarters...It is imperative that this kind of coordination effort be maintained.
The contribution made by the women who volunteer their services is very considerable but these volunteers cannot support all of the activities associated with A Woman’s Place. It is therefore necessary 200
to launch an annual fund-drive to finance the many activities. I hope you will be able to support generously this request for funding.110
The Black United Front’s capacity for resource mobilization rivalled its most skilled contemporaries. Following BUF’s first five years of operation, it received
$161,493 from the federal government to cover the fiscal year ending 31 March
1975. But federal authorities also inserted a new restrictive clause into the agreement declaring that the organization, which seemed always to seek greater funding, would be ineligible for any more public funding during that fiscal cycle. Although director
Art Criss (aka Hamid Rasheed) worried that BUF might require more money to cover its expenses during the year, with few other options, he conceded that ‘it may be, in the final analysis, [BUF] will have no choice but to accept point 8.’111 In subsequent years, federal and provincial authorities continued to fund BUF through a cost-sharing program.112 Notwithstanding its already generous funding package,
BUF gathered still more funding from pubic sources. In September of 1975, BUF secured financial resources from the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission to organize a Black Leadership Conference.113 Noting the dearth of home improvement loans available to those in the Tower strata of the economic scale,’ BUF launched the Winter Warmth Program after it negotiated a co-financing agreement with the
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the Local Initiatives
Program.114 BUF also worked with the CMHC to identify candidates for the Home
Ownership Program.115
Even BUF, though one of the best funded organizations in Halifax, struggled to gather sufficient resources. As a result, it adopted measures to wean itself from public funding. Within its first year of operations, BUF’s ambition made short work 201 of $110,000 annual budget, forcing the organization to cut the salaries attached to several positions, even as it sought still more funds from other public sources and strove to fulfil its ambitious agenda.116 Following its first five-year operational grant,
BUF was subject to a mandatory external audit and programmatic evaluation.
Auditors calculated that, to equal its ambition, the organization required more than
$300,000 per year.117 Despite the auditors’ warning to reel in spending, BUF knocked on more public doors.118 Yet, they continually fell short. In 1980, when
BUF requested $275,913 they received $178,000. One year later, the organization budgeted for 11 staff members but could afford only 6.119 In response, BUF sought to supplement its public funding with community-based fundraising strategies.
Between 1979 and 1982, BUF budgeted for a full-time fundraiser, suggesting that such a fundraiser might target “foundations, United Way, individuals, service clubs, etc” in an effort to raise $60,000.120 In a seemingly cruel twist, it did not receive enough public funding to hire the fundraiser.
The local Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women
(CRIAW) chapter also employed a hybridized approach to resource mobilization.
Through its national chapter CRIAW gathered relatively generous financial support from a variety of public institutions and government agencies including the National
Film Board of Canada, Secretary of State, Nova Scotia Department of Culture,
Recreation and Fitness and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada.121 Private associations, including the Levesque Foundation, also awarded
CRIAW funding. Finally, dues and donations drew financial resources from the membership. So effective was its resource mobilization strategy that, in its early 202 years, the national CRIAW office actually generated an annual surplus. At the end of
1978, for example, CRIAW’s national coffers held a cash excess of $28,023 — a surplus more than $6,000 larger than the previous year.122
In Halifax, CRIAW depended on a similar hybridized resource mobilization strategy. The communities surrounding the Halifax chapter provided space for conferences, speakers and small financial contributions. For example, sponsors for the 1981 annual CRIAW conference in Halifax included: Dalhousie University,
Acadia University, Mount Saint Vincent University, Saint Mary’s University,
Imperial Oil, Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company and Rothman’s of Pall
Mall, Canada. More generally, CRIAW-Nova Scotia’s hybrid resource mobilization strategy relied on local feminist organizations and public institutions, including A
Woman’s Place-Forrest House and Mount St. Vincent University.124 In addition to resources gathered within the local community, CRIAW-NS also sought a share of the national surplus. In 1979, provincial CRIAW representatives, led by Nova
Scotia, argued that ‘part of the $10 CRIAW membership fee should be given to, or remain in, the provinces.’125 Though their pleas for a greater share of the organizational wealth might have come from a position of weakness, CRIAW-NS emerged as a model of local chapter success.126 President Beth Percival highlighted the remarkable levels of activism in Nova Scotia during an address to the 1979 annual convention.127 Other chapters may have tried to emulate CRIAW-NS but the organization was a product of its local and provincial environments: a city that, in the postwar years, consolidated its status as a national education centre and housed 203 both a vigorous feminist movement and a women’s university (until 1967 when it opened its doors to men) whose successive presidents were committed feminists.
Though CRIAW mobilized relatively generous resources through dues, donation, public funding, fund raising and community support, organizational representatives feared collapse due to insufficient resources. At the 1979 annual convention, Percival focused on the difficult financial situation in which the
organization found itself. Notwithstanding past surpluses, she reported that ‘as
always the financial situation is precarious and it is necessary to increase our
membership and donations.’128 Percival’s opinion reflected the fact that, should public funding dry-up, CRIAW would find itself cash strapped within a year. As a
solution, Percival suggested that greater local activity would attract more women
whose energies, time and membership fees would increase available resources.
Likewise, in 1980, at a time when Muriel Duckworth sat as national president of
CRIAW, Margrit Eichler (a feminist educator teaching at the Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education) authored a position paper arguing ‘I think we are ready to take
off. In order to do so, we need substantially increased funds. In recognition of this
fact, we have started preparing for a major fund raising drive.’1 OQ
One year later, in 1981, when Canadian feminists descended on Ottawa to
ensure their interests were included during constitutional negotiations, the federal
government responded by substantially increasing funding for the Women’s
Program, Secretary of State.130 Although CRIAW garnered generous public funding,
it still sought to wean itself from federal dependence which, at that time, accounted
for well over fifty percent of its operational funding. An article in a 1981 CRIAW 204 newsletter read that “several months ago, it became evident that the funding to the
Women’s Programme, Secretary of State, was going to increase substantially.
Therefore, we submitted a detailed ‘Plan of Action and Budget Proposal’...showing why we need a grant of over $250,000.”131
For the 1981-82 budgetary cycle, CRIAW also sought funds from ‘other federal government sources’ and reported some success. National executive representatives were quick to remind members, however, that ‘we cannot and should not be dependent on government funding. It will not last and there are always those annoying restrictions we have to live with’ (original emphasis). Accordingly, they planned to create an endowment fund as a source of secure funding that might free
i in CRIAW from ‘the vicissitudes of government.’ Nor was CRIAW’s experience unique to Halifax. Activists used creativity in hybrid resource mobilization strategies to guard against resource withdrawal. Uncertain and insufficient resource supplies led local activists to pool resources through cooperative arrangements.
Activist Cooperation as a Communal Resource Mobilization Strategy
Locally, activists faced with limited and uncertain resources further strained by fiscal frugality, an inflationary economy and political caprice pooled resources through cooperation and coalitions. To be sure, activists had long pooled resources.
In the early 1960s, for example, the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the social justice wing of Voice of Women-Halifax joined forces to launch an ambitious study and report on racial discrimination among employers in Halifax.133 Ten years later, the Halifax Women’s Centre/Brenton Place 205 teamed with a host of feminist organizations and the Nova Scotia Human Rights
Commission (est. 1967) to launch a public education project.134 Still later, the Nova
Scotia Women’s Action Committee partnered with unions and feminist
I - j c organizations and local universities to mount educational workshops. In Halifax, regardless of an organization’s resource mobilization strategy, activists attenuated resource strain through co-operative and coalitional strategies.
Notwithstanding temporary spikes in public funding during the early 1980s
—during renewed discussions on constitutional reform — African-Nova Scotians and feminists faced new challenges in their efforts to mobilize resources in the mid- to-late 1970s. Inflation was half of the stagflation beast that stalked the global
economy in the 1970s. By 1980, the consumer price index (CPI) was rising by more than 12 percent annually.136 Grants not indexed to inflation were steadily eroded. As
a result of increasing costs, the Black United Front (BUF) fired staff. Those who kept their jobs enjoyed only one ‘adjustment to staff salaries’ between the fiscal years 1976 and 1981 (which fell well short of the increase in CPI over the same period).137 Nor were publicly-funded organizations the only activists troubled by
inflation. At the 1977-8 Canadian Federation of University Women’s conference, national president Jean Steer cited inflationary pressures as the source of rising
membership fees.138 The federal government’s growing fiscal restraint compounded
activist difficulties. Though most SMOs were affected, BUF was the most publicly
explicit about the effects of fiscal restraint. Following the 1980 annual general meeting, BUF issued a press release announcing that ‘the financial report was of major concern to council as the impact of government financial restraint is having a 206 devastating effect on the organization’s ability to deliver services to the Black community.’139
Unstable public funding brought African-Nova Scotian activists together. At a time when its grants regularly fell well short of its budgets, the Black United Front endeavoured to forge activist coalitions. In 1981, at a meeting in Tatamagouche,
Nova Scotia, BUF and the Bilalian Development Association of Nova Scotia signed a pledge to ‘improve communication and co-operation among Black organizations in
Nova Scotia.’140 At the same time, BUF sought stronger connections with the administrative arm of the black church, the African United Baptist Association
(AUBA), a traditional source of support for African-Nova Scotian activists and an organization with comparatively plentiful resources. In 1982, BUF extended the
Tatamagouche agreement when they contacted the Black Professional Women’s
Group (BPWG) to propose a Nova Scotia Alliance of Provincial Black
Organizations.141 After some negotiation, mostly related to years of poor relations between BUF and most other African-Nova Scotian organizations, the BPWG signed on.142 In its 1982-3 budget, BUF reported that the Black Educators
Association and the AUBA had joined the alliance.143
Feminists in Halifax also banded together, though their coalitions were often more ad hoc, temporary and issue-driven than the Nova Scotia Alliance of
Provincial Black Organizations. Each year, for example, an International Women’s
Day Ad Hoc Committee staged public education campaigns and protests.144
Similarly, a Reclaim the Night Ad Hoc Committee met at AWP-Forrest House to plan annual events. Less routinely convened feminist coalitions included the 207
Elections Issues Coalition, Roberta Ryan Committee or the Halifax Coalition for
Full Employment. One feminist poster in Halifax was simply credited to ‘A Group of Women.’145 Following the 1978 “A Contemporary Human Rights Role for
Labour” conference in Halifax, A Woman’s Place mobilized a group of activists, academics, teachers and union members around a Women and Work Project that produced an information resource kit and workshops on related subject matters.146
Short-term coalitions addressed pervasive local resource difficulties by temporarily
communalizing resources, allowing activists to take action on a broader range of
issues than perhaps would otherwise have been possible.
In 1976, when Roberta Ryan filed a human rights complaint against the
Sydney police force, the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee (NSWAC) saw
an opportunity to challenge discriminatory occupational qualifications. Upon
graduation, police cadet Ryan applied to the North Sydney police force only to be
denied employment based on specified height and weight requirements. NSWAC
activists decided to support Ryan in her legal challenge.147 The cost associated with
legal action and the expertise needed to ‘coach’ Ryan was beyond the reach of any
single feminist organization. As a result, NSWAC activists joined with other local
feminists and sympathetic individuals to form the Roberta Ryan Committee and
Trust. The Roberta Ryan Committee, grown from NSWAC to include Muriel
Duckworth and a host of local academics and activists, supported Ryan by raising
funds and advising the plaintiff. Financial contributions arrived from activists
throughout Canada but when the court dismissed Ryan’s case without costs the Trust
did not contain enough money to cover outstanding legal bills.148 The Committee 208 continued to solicit funds in an effort to cover a $4,000 shortfall. Although unsuccessful in its ultimate aim, the Roberta Ryan Committee and Trust typified a strategy among feminists whose ambition would not be cooled by their government’s growing fiscal restraint. Rather than limit their activity, activists cooperated and established coalitions to communalize the resources mobilized by many organizations and projects. In so doing, feminists and African-Nova Scotians in Halifax hoped to accomplish more than they might had they worked in isolation.
Beyond Financial Resources
Though essential, financial resources were not a panacea. Organizations also required other resources only some of which could be acquired with money.
Tangible resources, such as supplies or information, were required if rights activists expected to wield any policy influence. So too were intangible resources, including legitimacy and credibility, vital to activist success.
Human resources were chief among the resources required by local organizations. Both before and after political developments made grant-writing a viable resource mobilization strategy, activist organizations engaged in more or less constant membership appeals. As was the case elsewhere, a postwar generation of unprecedented size, and the economic lure of life in a regional urban centre, supported local movements and their human resource requirements. Meanwhile, though Nova Scotia had lower immigration rates than other Canadian provinces,
Halifax was a national educational centre, attracting a large number of students and academics to its universities. Moreover, given the link between education and activism, the students and academics arriving in the city were the ‘right kind’ of 209 migrants to sustain local activist organizations. Local organizations dependent upon dues and donation resource mobilization strategies, which inextricably linked human and financial resources, engaged in a seemingly interminable membership campaign.
Well-funded, bureaucratic and staff-driven organizations, such as the Black United
Front, were less dependent on membership appeals. Occasionally, when core
activists exhausted themselves and others could not be found to take on the work of
continuing to sustain an organization through such campaigns, organizations
collapsed.
Human resources delivered more than just labour, expertise and financial
resources to activist organizations. Human resources also delivered intangible
resources such as legitimacy, contacts and/or credibility. For the few well-funded
local organizations able to hire most of the people required to carry out the actual
work of the organization, volunteers — the visible demonstration of community
support — delivered essential though less tangible benefit. Without the community
support which gave an organization its legitimacy, benefactors might withdraw their
financial support, so even state-supported local organizations struggled to maintain a
balance between human and financial resources. Feminists and African-Nova
Scotians occasionally debated radical measures including changes in policy,
membership or organizational structure to attract members but most often turned to
the communication networks supporting their mobilization.
Volunteer organizations sustained themselves as best they could through
membership appeals, weathering fluctuations in enthusiasm and membership
numbers as they pressed their demands for equality. In 1963, for example, the 210 number of activists supporting the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of
Colored People had diminished to numbers comparable to the year in which it was founded (1945). In the mid-1960s, NSAACP President H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum appealed to the youth of Kwacha House.149 By 1968, at a time when public concern turned to the plight of African-Nova Scotians, membership in the NSAACP had tripled but still remained below 250 members.150 Yet most social movement organizations in Halifax were much smaller. When the Afro-Canadian Liberation
Movement emerged it was estimated to have a membership of between 25 and 70 members. The Voice of Women-Halifax maintained a relatively steady membership of between 40 and 60.151 In VOW-Halifax’s case, however, membership did not reflect active support and, at the end of the 1960s, members discussed how to mobilize greater membership support for public events.1 In 1981, the Voice of
Women-Halifax solicited members through its communication network including an advertisement placed in the A Woman’s Place-Forrest House newsletter.153 In 1976, the first year of activity, The Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee was estimated to have a membership of 10 though official NSWAC records list 54 women as members.154 The smaller estimate likely reflected only those local
Haligonian feminists actively supporting the daily activity of NSWAC.
Even the widely-envied CRIAW-Nova Scotia routinely addressed the issue of human resources, requesting that existing members hand out literature and membership forms to women because the organization felt it had to ‘increase [its] membership base so as to be able to support the work of CRIAW.’155 Nor were membership concerns limited to relatively new organizations. Well-established 211 feminist organizations, such as the Halifax Business and Professional Women’s
Club, also worried about a dwindling membership and its correlated financial strain.
In a national position paper, HBPWC argued that they ‘must have more members and more money’ in order to become ‘a big voice for women in this country’ as they could not ‘do any more on the money they had.’156 HBPWC debated opening membership to non-professionals but ultimately opted for a membership drive based
on the organization’s extensive communication network.
Human resources, and their link to financial largesse, were an inescapable
concern in Halifax. The Black United Front (BUF) faced human resource challenges
when it failed to properly reflect various groups’ political consciousness. Though it
could better afford to hire human resources were it simply a matter of labour or
expertise, BUF worried about less tangible resources. Without the legitimacy
conferred by community support, BUF might wield less political power and, even
worse, see its funding cut. From the outset, BUF found it difficult to attract and
sustain wide-spread community support. Before BUF could convene its first
meeting, both H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum and Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones had abandoned
the organization on the grounds that its bureaucratic structure, ties to traditional
religious leadership and mandate would not allow for community input.157 Nor was
this the end of BUF’s problems. In 1972, 50 youth occupied BUF’s offices, claiming
that the organization had no interest in representing them. According to disgruntled
youth, BUF and its director Jules Oliver were more preoccupied with publicly
confronting local authorities than with addressing youth issues.158 212
In the same month as the youth sit-in, one of BUF’s ‘most effective workers’, Paul Winn, cited disappointment with the progress realized to date and the seemingly divisive effects of BUF’s approach in his public resignation. At the time of his departure activists and constituents alike reported that serious questions remained as to whether BUF had ‘gained the support of many Black communities.’159 Not surprisingly, the majority of seats on BUF’s Provincial
Council (which provided for representation for African-Nova Scotian communities) remained empty and the source of organizational debate.160 Though community support mattered little in terms of the day-to-day operation of BUF, when community leaders and the youth publicly challenged the organization they weakened its consensus mandate and claim to speak for African-Nova Scotians. In response to its very public lack of community support, BUF’s patrons threatened to cut its funding.
Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee (NSWAC) feminists worried, not unlike BUF, that their organizational structure did not appeal to feminist sensibilities. In January 1976, some four months after its establishment, local media reports identified NSWAC as a vocal but small organization with a membership of no more than ten.161 Former NSWAC activists also remember a small organization whose meeting attracted only 10 or 20 members.162 Yet, in 1976 NSWAC listed 54 women as members and ‘friends.’ Two years later, NSWAC’s mailing list was 122 names long but only 52 had paid membership dues for the year. Presumably — given the common activist recollection regarding NSWAC’s size — the majority were either cheque-book supporters or ‘friends’ of NSWAC.163 Recently, feminist 213 recollections have suggested a number of reasons for NSWAC difficulties. Kathy
Moggridge — active member from 1976-7 until the early 1980s — remembers that
NSWAC ‘generated a lot of energy and issues but neither were lasting.’164
Reflecting on the same phenomenon but attributing it to other, perhaps related dynamics, Muriel Duckworth remembers that a lack of funding led committed
women to wear ‘themselves out trying to keep the organization alive.’165 With a
limited number of feminists supporting the organization, and no money to hire staff,
NSWAC depended on an insufficiently large membership whose collective energy
waned over time.
NSWAC depended on its active membership for survival. For NSWAC,
membership largely determined the energy, expertise and financial resources at its
disposal. With more paid membership fees than active members, NSW AC’s human
resource concerns were more a matter of labour than money and similar to VOW-
Halifax’s concerns in the late 1960s. Faced with limited support, NSWAC
questioned its hierarchical structure.166 Notwithstanding the benefits of a clearly-
defined governance structure, steering committee members, empowered to take any
necessary action between bi-monthly membership meetings, reasoned that ‘any
member... who has paid dues, expects in return the right to have a say in that
organization’s policies and structures.’167 The problem, NSWAC reasoned was that
the organization offered new members ‘nothing but dictatorial committees’ at odds
with feminists who expected a voice within their own organization.168 NSWAC does not appear to have restructured but appealed for new members through mail-outs targeting members and their contacts. In 1981, as it had in years before, the Nova 214
Scotia Women’s Action Committee mailed membership appeals highlighting its activities over the past year.169 Drawing on the communication network surrounding the organization, NSWAC feminists encouraged members to renew their membership and to appeal to their friends and family to join as well. If financial resources did not ease the struggle to attract community support and human resources, relative organizational wealth did give organizations an advantage in the
mobilization of vital information.
Activists’ political action and educational efforts relied on mustering
evidence in support of their claims. Though moral reasoning could be persuasive —
especially if a large constituency backed those convictions — activists in Halifax
valued, produced and gathered ‘evidence’ to support their claims. A number of
national and local developments facilitated activist efforts to muster evidence in
support of their claims. First, the local dimensions of racial and gender inequality
provided (plentiful) content for reports and studies. Second, as a regional education
and government centre, Halifax was home to a number of academic institutes and
state agencies that produced valuable studies and reports. The same rise in local and
(inter)national literacy and education rates that supported activist grant writing gave
activists the skills they needed to design, execute and author studies on gender and
racial inequality. Generously state-funded and/or staffed organizations and projects
— such as the Black United Front, Historical Education Research Organization,
National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Women’s Bureau, Pro-
Feminae and the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women — produced, commissioned or funded much of the information they used in their 215 activism. An iterative national human rights program also introduced a number of state agencies, including the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women and Canadian Human Rights Commission, which helped activists throughout
Canada gather evidence of their inequality.
In Halifax, activists in search of informational resources found new and valuable partners in the public commissions, taskforces and institutions emerging in the decade after 1967. The councils and commissions designed to address racial and gender inequality — namely the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission (est.
1967), Royal Commission on the Status of Women (1967-1970), Canadian Advisory
Council on the Status of Women (est. 1973), Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of
Women (1975-6), Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women (est.
1977) and the Canadian Human Rights Commission (est. 1977) — provided valuable information to African-Nova Scotians and feminists in Halifax. The acts establishing these public bodies mandated some to administer legislation while all were empowered to play an advisory role and, important in this regard, conduct research related to their mandate. With comparably large and stable budgets, public rights bodies channelled valuable information to determined, though cash-strapped
local activists.
In Halifax, numerous public bodies delivered informational resources to
activist organizations. Nova Scotia’s Human Rights Commission produced reports
on racial and gender discrimination.170 On behalf of the Nova Scotia Women’s
Action Committee, Judy Wouk wrote Premier Gerald Regan to commend the
Commission for two 1976 reports, one on women and credit and another on sex 216 stereotyping in the public education system.171 Speaking to the value of these reports, she also requested that the government print more than the initial 100 copies of each report. Both the Royal Commission and Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women produced reports widely-studied and drawn upon by Haligonian feminists.172 Until they enjoyed a provincial advisory council on the status of women
— and afterward as well — feminists in Halifax drew upon ‘the important research on women in Canada’ funded and published by the Advisory Council on the Status of Women.173 Once appointed, and notwithstanding a troubled history, the Nova
Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women also offered information to feminists in Halifax.174 In addition to the information gathered through public bodies national organizations, including the National Action Committee on the Status of
Women and CRIAW, channelled information to feminists in Halifax.175 As will be seen in the next chapter, organizational newsletters also played a vital role in distributing important informational resources within each movement.
Conclusion
An individual, organization or movement without resources is unable to take action.
Indeed, it is doubtful that an organization or movement without resources can be said to exist. Resource mobilization was essential to the transition from atomized and aggrieved individuals to politically conscious citizens and then formally organized groups and movement. An examination of resource mobilization in this period yields three important insights. First, it reveals how two local movements gathered the resources necessary to engage better equipped groups in the dialogues 217 through which Canada’s rights revolution took shape. Secondly, an examination of resource mobilization reveals the extent to which the history of local movements fits within the historical narrative and themes now emerging from scholarship related to
Canada’s rights revolution. Finally, the extent to which historical context bore upon the size, complexion and activity of these two social movements is revealed.
Before 1960, almost without exception, rights SMOs in Halifax employed community-centred resource mobilization strategies. Community strategies provided reliable, though hardly generous, resources and depended heavily on volunteer labour. They sustained a number of local organizations for decades prior to 1960. In turn, well-established activists and organizations supported the emergence of a post war generation of activists during the two subsequent decades. Throughout the
1960s and 1970s, when local movements for racial and gender equality were growing and diversifying, activists continued to look to the communities surrounding them for resource support. Both local institutions and organizations
(e.g., YMCA, Mount St. Vincent University, the North End Library) and distant bodies (e.g., the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, the Jewish Labour
Committee, National Council of Women, Student Union for Peace Action, National
Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canadian Advisory Council on the
Status of Women), remained important throughout the period under study.
In the late 1960s, enterprising and anxious feminists and African-Nova
Scotians in Halifax seized the opportunity to gather unprecedented levels of financial support through public funding programs. By 1968, following more than
30 years of local activism, resident activists had grown critical of the progress 218 realized and the organizations comprising the movements to that time. As a result, activists - especially young activists - were in a hurry to influence change. Local feminists and African-Nova Scotians established organizations with considerable resource demands. Community-based strategies alone would no longer suffice in
Halifax.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the introduction of public funding encouraged the growing ambition and increased activity of Haligonian activists.
Local activists embraced public funding — though not without debate. Funding supported a significant increase in local activity including the opening of community centres, public demonstrations, research projects, programs for constituent communities and lobby efforts. To be sure, grant- and proposal-writing demanded the time and energy of local activists but so did any resource mobilization strategy.
Rather than a debilitating increase in the time required, the introduction of public funding programs involved a shift in the skills required to gather resources.
Increasingly available post-secondary education and the prevalence of post secondary institutions in Halifax supported the shift from community-based to public resource mobilization strategies, which required advanced literacy and cognitive skills.
Nor did the shift toward elite resource mobilization strategies create a distance between activists and their constituent communities — as social movement theory has postulated. Though exceptions exist, such as the Black United Front and
A Woman’s Place-Forrest House, African-Nova Scotians and feminists remained in close contact with the communities surrounding them. Rarely sufficient and always 219 instable, public financing was not a reliable resource mobilization strategy.
Numerous local examples demonstrated the dangers of activist dependence on state support. In order to hedge against organizational collapse, and to gather resources equal to their ambition, local activists designed hybrid resource mobilization strategies. African-Nova Scotians and feminists looked continued to build relationships with their communities and mobilized community resources even as they accepted public funding. Often, activists communalized resources with other social movement organizations, whether within the same or another movement.
The local history of African-Nova Scotian and feminist activists in Halifax affirms themes identified in the national histories of Canada’s rights revolution.
Activists throughout Canada used public financing to establish organizations and carry out activities ranging from consciousness-raising to service delivery to public education and political action. The flow of public dollars, in fact, increased activism throughout Canada and has been closely linked to the explosion of activism throughout the 1960s and 1970s as well as the significant changes in Canada’s rights revolution. Similar development occurred in Halifax. National histories of Canadian
feminism and rights activism have clearly identified activist concerns related to public funding. The historical narrative written to date most often casts activist objections in ideological terms or related to the ‘strings’ attached to state support.
Local activists were pragmatic in their concerns related to public financing.
African-Nova Scotians were worried about their ability to raise their voice. Their primary concern was the unstable, insufficient and short-term nature of public funding. When they sought resources, they did not turn away from state sources. 220
Ultimately, local activists proved remarkably creative in the state agencies they approached. African-Nova Scotians, for example, sought to turn regional economic under-development to their advantage when they approached regional development agencies in search of resources. Likewise, feminists in Halifax approached a range of government departments, including those responsible for culture and heritage, labour, social policy and immigration. Yet, notwithstanding their search for adequate and stable public funding, local advocates remained connected to their communities, upon which they continued to depend for the mobilization of essential resources. In this way, national histories do not capture the daily resource difficulties faced by
local activists nor the continued importance of community-based resource mobilization strategies in the era of public funding.
By funding local activism throughout Canada, the state enlisted the help of moderate and pragmatic activists to foster support for its integrationist rights agenda while containing a feared radicalization of rights movements. After 1968 state
officials provided relatively generous financial resources even as short-term grants,
often a single year of funding, maximized state control of the funding programs.
Funding criteria and target groups (both of which could shift with little notice, as the women at Pro-Feminae would attest) were designed to support the ‘right’ kind of
activism: that which aligned with the state’s liberal vision of rights and a process of
contained public policy reform. Public financing shaped the course of local social movements from the outset. The organizations raising the political consciousness of
local youth depended on both indirect and direct state support. The longevity of the
Nova Scotia Project and Halifax Women’s Centre, for example, was closely tied to 221 levels of state support, the loss of which activists could not overcome and which eventually led to activist burn-out and organizational collapse. State support continued to play an important role in the organizations established, projects completed and action initiated.
Local organizations and projects receiving funding enjoyed a comparative advantage over other groups within the same movement unable to hire staff, conduct
(as much) research or engage in as much public education or political action. Funded organizations raised a louder public policy voice in the dialogues then shaping
Canada’s rights revolution, and did so more often. From inception to action, the local movements for racial and gender equality were shaped by government policy.
State support influenced which organizations had the resources necessary to take and sustain action and what levels of activism were possible. Viewed in this light, the pluralist vision of state as neutral arbiter of societal interests cannot be sustained.
Neither can the pluralist vision of societal interests spontaneously manifesting based on perceived common goals and meeting on an equal footing be maintained. The history of African-Nova Scotian and feminist activism in Halifax suggests that, at least, the neopluralist or historical institutionalist view of states as actors capable of pursuing their own interests must be adopted to adequately explain local mobilization.
1 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (NSARM), Manuscript Group 20, Volume 2002- 066, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 15, National Black Coalition of Canada, 1973-82, Plan of Action of the National Black Coalition of Canada, 1. The story o f the NBCC is a long and complicated one. In addition to the folder listed above, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Box 022, Folders 5 and 6, Task Force on Viable Black National Organizations, 1975-8. 2 This view accords with the political process school’s criticism o f resource mobilization theory, which suggests that that an infusion of previously unavailable resources does not always precede, nor is it a sufficient explanation of, the development of a social movement. 222
3 See: A. Paul Pross, Group Politics and Public Policy, Second Edition (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1992); Joanna Everitt, “Public Opinion and Social Movements: The Women’s Movement and the Gender Gap in Canada,” Canadian Journal o f Political Science XXXI :4 (December/decembre 1998): 743-65; Neil Stammers, “Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 21.4 (1999): 980-1008; Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Lisa Young and Joanna Everitt,Advocacy Groups (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004). 4 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 1, VOW History, Betty Iredale, Voice of Women/La Voix de Les Femmes Outline, 1960-8, 1; and NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, VOW Constitution, Statement of Purpose/General Information, “Fourth Draft - Constitution and By-Laws of Voice of Women/ La Voix des Femmes,” 2. Sustaining membership — for which one received no vote in the organization but was similarly not expected to contribute energies to the organization— could be acquired for no less than 10 dollars a year. 5 Eugene E. Williams, “The Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement o f Colored People: An Historical Review of the Organization and Its Role in the Area of Education,” Master of Social Work Thesis, Maritime School o f Social Work, 1969, 10; and McMaster University Archives (MU A), Combined University Campaign for University Disarmament/Student Union for Peace Action Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Club Kwacha Report, 21 March 1966. 6 Among the organizations depending on dues and donation were the Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club, Canadian Federation o f University Women, Zonta, the Local Council o f Women and the Nova Scotia Association o f the Advancement of Colored People. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1268, Canadian Federation o f University Women Halifax Branch Fonds; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club; and NSARM, MG 1999- 0230027-17, Volume 38, Constance L. MacFarlane Fonds, Zonta. 7 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1268, Canadian Federation of University Women Halifax Branch Fonds. 8 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 1, VOW History, Betty Iredale, “Voice of Women/La Voix to Les Femmes Outline, 1960-1968,” 1. 9 MU A, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Club Kwacha Report, 21 March 1966. 10 MU A, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Folder: The Nova Scotia Project, letter from Harvey Shepherd dated September 1965. 11 See, Bridglal Pachai, Beneath The Clouds of the Promised Land: The Survival of Nova Scotia's Blacks, Volume II: 1800-1989 (Halifax: The Black Educators Association, 1990), 143; and Bridglal Pachai, Historic Black Nova Scotia, Images of Our Past (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2006). 12 NSARM, Record Group (RG) 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57, G.l. Smith, Folder 16-l(a), Study of Negroes, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum dated 29 April 1969. 13 Colin A. Thomson, Bom With A Call: A Biography o f Dr. William Pearly Oliver, C.M. (Halifax: Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, 1986); Pachai, Beneath the Clouds o f the Promised Land; and NSARM, RG 100, Volume 57, Premier’s Office Fonds, Folder 16-l(a), letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum dated 29 April 1969. The significance o f the black church as a source o f leadership and activism is well established in the Canadian and American literature. On Canada, see, for example: James Walker, Identity: The Black Experience in Canada (The Ontario Communications Authority in association with Gage Educational Publishing Ltd., 1979); Thomson, Bom With A Call; Pachai, Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land. On America, see: Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970; Floyd B. Barbour, ed. The Black Power Revolt: A Collection o f Essays (Boston: Extending Horizons Books, 1968); Edward Greer, ed. Black Liberation Politics: A Reader (Boston, Allyn and Beacon Inc., 1971); William L. Van Deburg, Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (New York: New York University Press, 1997). 14 Others have observed that universities were important to the process of mobilization among young Canadians, including: Cyril Levitt, Children of Privilege: Student Revolt in the Sixties (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984); Douglas Owram, Bom at the Right Time: A History o f the Baby- Boom Generation (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 1996); and Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan and the RCMP,” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 466. 223
15 More generally, a correlation between educational achievement and support for feminist ideals is well-established in the literature and was reaffirmed in activist interviews. Interview: Kathy Moggridge conducted 8 January 2007; Interview: Christina Simmons conducted 22 September 2006; Questionnaire: Judith Wouk completed 13 June 2007. 16 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1658, Canadian Federation of University Women, Halifax Branch, Folder 1, Minutes, 1970-1977, Executive Meeting September 1970. 17 See: NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 40, "Human Rights Board Named: Aid For Negroes First Goal," Newspaper Article, n.d.; NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-l(a), Study of Negroes, Minutes o f Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 2 April 1965,2; C.R. Brookbank, “Afro- Canadian Communities in Halifax County, Nova Scotia: A Preliminary Sociological Survey,” Master o f Arts Thesis, University of Toronto, 1949; Robert Stanfield in Bridglal Pachai, ed. Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, 25lh Anniversary, 1967-1992 (Halifax: Government o f Nova Scotia, 1992), 32. The dearth of academic information on Nova Scotia’s black community was so great the that in his 1949 Master of Arts thesis, C.R. Brookbank — who would later author a study on the structure o f human rights commissions for the government o f Nova Scotia— prefaced his study with the caveat that “In the light of inadequate information on the community to be investigated, it was predetermined that the study should be allowed to develop more or less organically...No initial hypothesis was entertained.” Thirteen years later, in 1962, Premier Robert Stanfield established his Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights in response to the glaring inequality evidenced in an Institute of Public Affairs study. 18 NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 50, Report of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Federation; and Donald H. Clairmont and Dennis Magill, The Africville Relocation Report (Halifax, Nova Scotia: Dalhousie University, 1971), 199. 19 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes-Halifax Branch, 1960- 1985, Minutes of Meetings Dealing with Racial Prejudice in Halifax. 20 NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 88, Bibliography - African Heritage; NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 90, Bibliography - African Heritage for Children and Parents ; and NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Communities Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 91, Information Pamphlet on the Temporary Black Cultural Learner Resource Centre. 21 Following a pattern established by earlier women’s organizations, Voice o f Women-Halifax regularly invited experts to speak at their meetings. One such local expert was Marjorie Grace Wombolt (K.C.), a local lawyer and women’s rights champion in the interwave period. Wombolt often implored women to organize, suggesting that the legislative changes won by women elsewhere in Canada, and beyond, reflected their high degrees of organization. See: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 1, VOW History, various; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Marjorie Grace Wombolt Fonds, Volume 55, Letters, Papers, Legal Status of Women etc. 1938-54, various; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Wombolt Fonds, Volume 82, HBPWC Fonds, 1949-52, various. See also: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 716, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club Fonds, Volume 73, Coastwise, Item 73.38 “A Round Up o f Women: Business and Professional Women's Club o f Dartmouth, Nova Scotia”; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 65, Women Jurors: Data 1951 and 1978, Item 65.7, Club History, 24 March, 1958, for 20 Question Challenge Program on CHNS. See also: Marion Douglas Kerans, Muriel Duckworth: A Very Active Pacifist (Halifax: Femwood Press, 1996); Judith Fingard, “Women’s Organizations: The Heart and Soul of Women’s Activism,” in Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, eds.Mothers o f the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy (Toronto, ON: University o f Toronto Press, 2005), 25- 48; and Frances Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time: The Halifax Chapter o f the Voice o f Women in the 1960s,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 253-280. 22 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, letter from Harvey Shepherd, dated September 1965; MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene, 4 (June 1966), 1; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 10, Minutes, VOW Halifax Branch Executive 1960-1968, Executive Meeting, dated 2 March 1966. See also: Kerans, Muriel Duckworth, 72; and qt. R. Jones in Daniel McNeil, 224
“Afro( Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotia,” Canadian Review o f American Studies 35.1(2005): 62. 23 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 4, Folder: Halifax and Maritime Region, SUPA, 1966, letter from Mark Gordon dated 19 March 1966. 24 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes-Halifax Branch, 1960- 1985, Minutes of Meetings Dealing with Racial Prejudice in Halifax; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes-Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, Advance Notice of Two Important Meetings and a Conference; and MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Nova Scotia Scene #2, December 1965. 25 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Volume 9, VOW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, “1962 - Advance Notice o f Two Important Meetings and a Conference.” 26 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2910, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 30, letter from NSAACP dated 6 February 1962. 27 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Newsletter o f the Nova Scotia Project, Nova Scotia Scene 1st Edition, n.d. 28 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene # 2, December 1965. 29 Among the organizations and institutions delivering resources to black activists were: the Canadian Labour Congress, Jewish Labour Committee, Dalhousie Institute o f Public Affairs, Anglican Church, United Church of Canada, and the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews. See: Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Manuscript Group 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 40-5, Correspondence: The Institute for Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., letter from Sid Blum dated 25 September, 1959; NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, “Panel Will Air ‘Human Rights,’” dated 25 January 1962; and NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 40, ‘Negroes Still Fight Job Bar,’ The Mail Star, 20 November 1967. On the role o f religious institutions and figures in Canadian human rights developments, see: Carmela Patrias and Ruth A. Frager, “‘This is Our Country, These are Our Rights’: Minorities and the Origins of Ontario’s Human Rights Campaigns,” Canadian Historical Review 82.1 (March 2001): 1-35; Irving Abella, “Jews, Human Rights and the Making of a New Canada,” Journal o f the Canadian Historical Association 11 (2001): 3-15; James W. St.G.-Walker, “The ‘Jewish Phase’ in the Movement for Racial Equality in Canada,” Canadian Ethnic Studies XXXIV.I (2002): 1 -29; and George Egerton, “Entering the Age o f Human Rights: Religion, Politics and Canadian liberalism, 1945-50,” Canadian Historical Review 85.3 (September 2004): 451-479. On Halifax see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Box 004, Folder 12, Correspondence, 1973, letter from Tom O’Leary, dated 11 May, 1973; NSARM, RG 85, Box 1, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Folder 10, Speeches by Commission Staff, Sermon: Human Rights dated 9 December, 1973; Sermon: The Human Rights Commission, Status o f Women and the Gospel dated 21 April, 1974; and Sermon: Untitled dated 27 October 27, 1974. Of particular importance to the Black struggle was their own African United Baptist Association, the administrative arm of Black Nova Scotian churches. On the continued role of the black church and religious figures in the movement for racial equality, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Box 004, Folder 12, Correspondence, 1973, letter from Tom O’Leary, Executive Director, The Canadian Council o f Christians and Jews dated 11 May, 1973. On the role of the AUBA, see: Pachai, Beneath the Clouds of the Promised Land; and Pachai, Historic Black Nova Scotia. 30 LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 40-5, Correspondence: The Institute for Public Affairs, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, various; and LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 40-19, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, H.A.J. Wedderbum, 1969, various, and LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969. In 2002, Wedderbum remembered the help he received from Canadian Jewish activists, see: McNeil, “Affo(Americo)centricity in Black (American) Nova Scotia,” 62. As well, Ross Lambertson notes a Jewish-Black connection in Halifax in Ross Lambertson, Repression and Resistance: Canadian Human Rights Activists, 1930-1960 (Toronto, ON: University o f Toronto Press, 2005). Finally, the connection between the Canadian Labour Congress and the Halifax Human Rights 225
Advisory Committee is well established in the literature addressing Africville. For more on the connection see Chapter Three at FN 8. 31 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene, 2 (December 1965). 32 “The CYC: The Bird that Cannot Even Fly,”Our Generation 6.1/2 (1967): 13-4. The author bitterly notes: “In a society o f repressive tolerance and one-dimensionality, to use the terminology of Herbert Marcuse, institutions are created which absorb dissent and opposition, making these qualities harmless. Because it is also a society o f abundant goodies, social activists are co-opted and socialized into believing that an employed libratory rhetoric implies opportunities for radical change. The CYC tried hard not to rock the boat in its 20 month history and largely succeeded. Thus the first episode in this soap-opera concludes with the successful cooptation o f some former activists, corruption, no significant social action... and the temporary obstruction o f the growth o f a radical youth movement in Canada.” Douglas Owram describes the CYC as SUPA’s main rival. See: Owram, Bom at the Right Time, 221. More recent scholarly work on the CYC includes: Kevin Brushett, “Making Shit Disturbers: The Selection and Training of Young Canadian Volunteers, 1965-1970,” in M. Athena Palaeologu, ed. The Sixties in Canada: A Turbulent and Creative Decade (Montreal, QC: Black Rose Books, 2009); and Carrie Dickenson and William J. Campbell, “Strange Bedfellows: Youth Activists, Government Sponsorship and the Company of Young Canadians, 1965-1970,” European Journal of American Studies, Special Issue on May 68 (2008), Document 2. 33 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, Bill Curry, “The CYC and the Nova Scotia Project,”Nova Scotia Scene 4 (June 1966). See also: MUA, Company of Young Canadians Collection, File 11, Nova Scotia Project, Report to the Council Committee on Programmes, Evaluation, and Research, 10 July 1967. Nova Scotia Project Workers reported that: ‘The Company o f Young Canadians, when it was created, was considered by the Nova Scotia Project as a potential ally, both financially and morally. Project workers spent some time in discussion with organizers and the early staff of the Company. They wished both to offer suggestions from their experience and to investigate methods of active co-operation.’ 34 MUA, Company of Young Canadians Collection, File 11, Nova Scotia Project, Report to the Council Committee on Programmes, Evaluation, and Research, 10 July 1967; MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, letter from Lynn Burrows, dated 22 July 1966. 35 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, letter from Lynn Burrows, dated 22 July 1966; and MUA, Company o f Young Canadians Collection, Box 5, Project Files, Folder 11, The Nova Scotia Project, Report to the Council Committee on Programmes, Evaluation and Research, dated July 10 1967. Joan Jones became a CYC employee and attended the first training session — held in Antigonish, Nova Scotia— and, following the training session she and another volunteer were assigned to the Nova Scotia Project. The Nova Scotia Project subsequently requested more CYC workers. Rocky Jones worked for the CYC training volunteers who were later assigned to a variety o f projects. 36 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, Curry, “The CYC and the Nova Scotia Project.” 37 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene, 5. 38 MUA, Company o f Young Canadians Collection, File 11, Nova Scotia Project, Report to the Council Committee on Programmes, Evaluation, and Research, 10 July 1967. 39 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, G.I. Smith/Gerald Regan, Folder 16-1 (a), Study o f Negroes, Exodus Newsletter dated December 1970, 4. 40 BUF’s needs, for example, far exceeded the size of the small municipal grant annually paid to the Local Council of Women. Fingard, “Women’s Organizations,” 29. And even this modest annual municipal grant to the organization ceased in 1970. 41 Staff Writer, “Black Front to Get Funds,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969, 12. BUF was the only ‘Black organization’ to date to receive government funding. 42 LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 40-19, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, H.A.J. Wedderbum, 1968, letter from H.A.J. Wedderbum dated 31 Janauary 1969. 43 Cabinet documents available on line, at: http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e034/e000834661 .gif: and http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/e/e034/e000834789.gif. 226
44 See: Staff Reporter, “Black United Front to Receive Federal Grant o f $470,000 Over Next Five Years,” The Mail Star, August 18, 1969. 45 NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume IV, 1968-9, Minutes o f Meeting 27 January 1969. 46 A possible exception is the Movement for Citizens Voice in Action (MOVE) whose early grantsmanship generated funds rivalling BUF. MOVE’S success proved short-lived, however, and the organization spent much time trying to gather the necessary resources before collapsing in the absence o f funds. On MOVE, see: “Making a Difference: Halifax Women Remember the 1950s, 60s, and 70s,” Filmed 7 May 1999; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, Halifax Club o f Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 62, CFBPWC - Miscellaneous Notes Re: Conventions, Reports, Memos etc. 1937-1972, Item 62.34, MOVE: Movement for Citizen’s Voice and Action Newsletter 1.1, September 1971,3; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2907, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 1, MOVE: Histories and General Information, Movement for Citizens Voice and Action, Brief History of MOVE, 2; Brenda Large, “MOVE Frustrated by Failure to Get Funding,” The Fourth Estate, 11 May 1972, 1; Community Listings, The Fourth Estate, 13 April 1972,28; Farmer Brown, “MOVE Looking for Funds,” The Fourth Estate, 27 April, 1972, 6; Farmer Brown, “MOVE Compiles Big Document,” The Fourth Estate, 4 May 1972, 6; Staff Writer, “MOVE Criticized Both for Its Strengths and its Weaknesses,” The Fourth Estate, 15 February 1973, 5. 47 In times of opportunity, it is often the case that radical pragmatists will break with purist radicals to align themselves with a greater potential for influence. On this dynamic, see: James DeNardo, Power in Numbers: The Political Strategy o f Protest and Rebellion (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 142. 48 Nancy Lubka, “Black Front Raises Questions: Action or a $470,000 Bureaucracy?” The Fourth Estate 13 November 1969, 3. H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum later suggested that Jules Oliver’s familial connections also ensured his appointment as BUF’s director. 49 In 1974, for example, only 15 o f 35 communities with seats on Council were represented. Further, of the 75 Council positions only 18 positions were filled. Of those, only 13 councillors were active. In total, only 11 Black communities enjoyed regular representation on the Council. Apathy persisted despite BUF’s efforts. On apathy among councillors and the decision to restructure, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/003, BUF Fonds, Folder 3, Provincial Council Correspondence, letter from Wayne L. Talbot dated 2 November, 1973; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, letter from A.E. Criss dated 8 July, 1974; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, Preliminary Recommendations and Proposed Goals for the BUF Provincial Council, 5 October, 1978; NSARM, MG 20, NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, Minutes of the BUF Council, 9 February, 1980. 50 Leslie A. Pal, Interests o f State: The Politics ofLangue, Multiculturalism, and Feminism in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993), 3. Scholars have made similar national unity and participatory democracy arguments regarding Trudeau’s funding for feminist organizations following the Royal Commission on the Status o f Women Report. For example, see: Jacequetta Newman and Linda A. White, Women, Politics, and Public Policy: The Political Struggles o f Canadian Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Annis May Timpson, “Trudeau, Women, and the Mystic North,” London Journal o f Canadian Studies 18 (2002/2003): 41-61. 51 Timpson, “Trudeau, Women and the Mystic North,” 43. 52 Pal, Interests of State, 107-109. In line with Trudeau’s policy of grants as a means to foster participatory democracy, the Secretary o f State defined eight grounds upon which a grant might be awarded including: that the project would increase participation by people in the affairs of Canadian society and decrease alienation, that it might provide a voice for people who have not had a voice in their affairs, that it might increase self-help efforts, that it has a research component, or that it might increase the emergence o f community leaders. 53 Matthew Hayday, “From Repression to Renaissance: French-Language Rights in Canada Before the Charter,” in Janet Miron, ed. A History of Human Rights in Canada: Essential Issues (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc, 2009), 192. 227
54 Pal, Interests o f State, 107-109. 55 Dominique Clement, Canada’s Rights Revolution: Social Movements and Social Change, 1937- 1982 (Vancouver, BC: University o f British Columbia Press, 2008), 196. 56 See: Staff Writer, “Citizen Participation: Real Involvement or Just Playing the Game?”The Fourth Estate, volume 3, number 2, 22 April, 1971, 17; Nick Filmore, “Blind Rights Group gets $35,000 to Tackle Some Old Problems,” The Fourth Estate, 13 May 1971,14; and Pauline Janitch, “7 Projects at HQ: Transient Youth Flock to Halifax Despite Cool Reception from Residents,” The Fourth Estate, 24 June 1971, 10-1; 57 Leslie Pal, Interests of State, 140-141. 58 Another o f the groups targeted were official language minority groups. 59 Pal, Interests of State, 106; Editorial, “Youth Deserve a Better Break,”The Fourth Estate, 22 December 1970,4; Brenda Large, “Rising Unemployment: Seeds For Social Unrest,” The Fourth Estate, 22 April 1971, 19; Janitch, “Seven Projects at HQ,”The Fourth E state,, 24 June, 1971,10-1; Nancy White, “Opportunities for Youth,” The Fourth Estate, Volume 3, No. 13,8 July, 1971, 7; Susan Perly, “Bureau Has 4 Major Projects: Helping Women Achieve Equal Rights in Nova Scotia,” The Fourth Estate, 22 July 1971, 3; Staff Writer, “Women and the Law in Nova Scotia,” The Fourth Estate, 14 September 1972, 11; Staff writer, “Project Officer Defends OFY: “The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened to This Country,” The Fourth Estate, Volume 4, Number 7, 1 June, 1972,12-3; and Staff Writer, “Atlantic Region to Receive $17 million in LIP funds,” The Fourth Estate, volume 6, number 26, 3 October, 1974, 13 60 Pal, Interests of State, 119-120. 61 Wouk’s projects are discussed here while Jones used the OFY to fund his Historical Education Research Organization and BUF used LIP and OFY to deliver a number or programs. See: NSARM, Sound and Moving Image Database, FSG 30, AC 2128, Pamela B. Collins Collection, Rocky Jones, 27 November 1977. Muriel Duckworth was involved with the Movement for Citizens Voice and Action which initially operated under a LIP grant. See: Brenda Large, “MOVE Frustrated by Failure to Get Funding,” The Fourth Estate, 11 May, 1972, 1. 62 Wouk, Activist Questionnaire. 63 On educational reform in Nova Scotia, see: Jennifer Smith, “Provincial Social Policy During the Stanfield Era,” Journal o f the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 6 (2003): 1-16. 64 White, “Opportunities for Youth,”The Fourth Estate, Volume 3, No. 13, 8 July, 1971, 7; and Janitch, “Seven Projects at HQ,”The Fourth Estate, Volume 3, Number 11, 24 June, 1971, 10-1. 65 Staff writer, “Project Officer Defends OFY: ‘The Best Thing That Has Ever Happened to This Country’,” The Fourth Estate, Volume 4, Number 7, 1 June, 1972, 12-3. 66 Staff Writer, “Atlantic Region to Receive $17 million in LIP funds,” The Fourth Estate, volume 6, number 26, 3 October, 1974,13. 67 Perly, “Bureau Has 4 Major Projects,” The Fourth Estate, Volume 3, No. 15, 22 July, 1971, 3; Community Calendar, The Fourth Estate, 16 March, 1972, 20. The Women’s Bureau is briefly discussed in: Jeanne Fay, “The ‘Right Kind’ of Single Mothers,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 156. 68 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 9, BUF Submission to Premier and Executive Council, 1975. 69 See for example: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/20, BUF Fonds, Folder 13, Multicultural Council of Halifax-Dartmouth, 1973-8, letter from Harold Huskillson, Department of Social Services dated 26 June 1975. 70 Nick Fillmore, “Funding May Cease: Government Wants Changes at the Black United Front,” The Fourth Estate, Volume 4, Number 20, 31 August, 1972; and Robert Chodos, “Opportunities for Youth: Postponing the Revolution Once Again,”The Fourth Estate, Volume 3, Number 43, 10 February, 1972, 15. 71 Jackie Barkley, “Radical Chic in Halifax: When Community Organizing Becomes an End, Instead o f a Means, It’s Time to Re-evaluate,” The Fourth Estate, 13 April, 1972, 16. Jackie Barkley is a long-time community activist in Halifax’s historic ‘North End.’ Among the issues she has championed are social justice and anti-racism and initiatives. During this period, Barkley was involved in organizing tenants’ organizations, anti-poverty programs and the administration o f an alternative school. 228
72 “Project Officer Defends OFY,” The Fourth Estate, 11 June 1972, 12-3. 73 Pal, Interests of State, 262-264. 74 NSARM, Sound and Moving Image Database, FSG 20 AC 2128, Pamela B. Collins Collection, Rocky Jones on HERO taped 27 November 1977. 15 Ibid. 76 Neil Harrison, “Protests Over OFY Program Fail to Impress Feds,”The Fourth Estate, 18 May 1972, 1. 77 Questionnaire: Wouk, completed 13 June 2007 78 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletter, letter from Dawna Gallagher and Ava Greenspan, n.d.; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletter, Newsletter , 3 May 1974; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1263, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletter, Minutes of 13 February, 1974. 79 Wouk, “Activist Questionnaire;” and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 39, Item 39.3, Secretary of State Grant Application Form dated 3 December, 1979. 80 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSW AC Fonds, no folder number, Women’s Issues, Pro- Feminae. 81 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-1983, Letter from Secretary, Black Professional Women’s Group dated 23 January 1980; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-1983, Secretary o f State Grant Application, 4. 82 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066-014, BUF Fonds, Folder 24, Black Educators Association, 1986-1994, letter from Dolly Williams, Fundraising Committee dated 31 March 1994. 83 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 1, House History, Item 1.8, Resource Committee Development Project Report; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 3, The Women’s Committee Minutes, 1977, Item 3.1, Submission to the Extension Grant Committee, YWCA of Canada. 84 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1347, NSW AC Fonds, Folder 33, Financial, 1977-9, Items 33.1-5, Various Financial Reports. On funding from charitable organizations, see also: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 14, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-3, Secretary of State Grant Application, 4. BPWG activists secured SI,550 dollars of funding from the Children’s Aid Society in the early 1980s. 85 See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 40, Social Services and Funding. 86 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1347, NSW AC Fonds, Folder 38.10, A Woman’s Place, letter from Harold D. Cromwell dated 18 June, 1981. 87 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 26, CR1AW Correspondence, July- August 1980, letter from Lloyd Axworthy, Minister Responsible for the Status o f Women dated 1 August 1980. 88 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 35, Funding, Item 35.2, News Release dated 7 August, 1980. 89 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 35, Funding, Items 35.2-35.9. 90 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Box 04, Folder 10, Correspondence, 1971, Letter from Carlyle Warner dated 25 November, 1971,2. 91 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 8, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report, 1975,36. 92 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 3, Folder 3, Provincial Council Correspondence, 1972-3, Letter from Jules P. Oliver dated 8 March, 1973. In 1973, through the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, in conjunction with Local Initiative Program, BUF secured financing for its winter warmth program. On other projects, including black employment strategies funded through Canada Manpower and a Multiculturalism grant for a Black Cultural Exposition, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 8, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report, 1975; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 14, Folder 16, Black Cultural Expo, 1974. 229
93 The role of the United Appeal/United Way is touched upon in Shirley Tillotson, “Democracy, Dollars, and the Children’s Aid Society: The Eclipse o f Gwendolen Lantz,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 76-109. 94 Nick Fillmore, “United Appeal Criticized: ‘Metro Agency Dictatorial,’” The Fourth Estate, 21 May, 1. 95 Staff Writer, “There’s Still a Role for the United Appeal,” The Fourth Estate, 11 November 1971, 4. 96 NSARM, Sound and Moving Image Collection, FSG 20 AC 2128, Pamela B. Collins Collection, Rocky Jones on HERO, 27 November 1977. 97 Fillmore, “Funding May Cease,” The Fourth Estate, 31 August, 1972, 1. 98 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 15, National Black Coalition o f Canada, 1973-82, NBCC on Gov’t, black list; and Caretaker body set up: Paul kicked out ofNBCC. 99 Interview: Muriel Duckworth conducted 20 May 2005. 100 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSW AC Fonds, no folder number, Women’s Issues, Pro- Feminae; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 39, Item 39.3, Secretary o f State Grant Application Form dated 3 December, 1979. 101 MUA, Company o f Young Canadians Collection, File 11, Nova Scotia Project, Report to the Council Committee on Programmes, Evaluation, and Research, 10 July 1967. Nova Scotia Project workers reported tensions over future directions and the ‘interpersonal relationships’ animating the project. 02 Wouk, “Activist Questionnaire. i°3 “Q ty Life ”77 je Fourth Estate, November-17 December 1975, passim. 104 Kenneth Norrie and Douglas Owram, A History of the Canadian Economy (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Canada, 1996), 417. 105 Ibid, 439. 106 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 1992-515/067, Regan/Buchanan, letter from Pierre Elliott Trudeau dated 2 October 1978. 107 Pal, Interests o f State, 216. 108 Questionnaire: Wouk; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSARM, no file number, Women’s Issues; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSW AC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1. 109 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence 1980-litem 5.18, letter from Kathy A. Moggridge Kuuisisto dated 18 October 1980. 110 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 17, MSVU Continuing Education, open letter from E. Margaret Fulton 5 December 1978. 111 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 3, Folder 4, Provincial Council Correspondence, 1974, letter from A.E. Criss dated 14 May, 1974. 112 NSARM, MG 1992, Volume 515/083, BUF Fonds, Folder 59-2. Minutes of Policy Board meeting with BUF, November 25, 1980, 1. 113 NSARM, Record Group 85, Volume 2, Folder 16. The Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Newsletter, 4th Quarter, 1975. 114 NSARM, Manuscript Group 1, Volume 1431, Folder 6. BUF News Release, March 26, 1971,3. 115 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1053, Brenda Large Fonds, Folder 9, Black United Front, BUF Information Booklet, 18. 116 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002/066-008, BUF Fonds, Folder 2, BUF Evaluation c.1970, 14. 117 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 8, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report, 1975, Summary o f the Heinemann Evaluation o f BUF (1975), 5. 118 For a breakdown of BUF’s public funding see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 11, Folder 1, Council Meeting, 1974-9, Memorandum #261, 1. In 1976-7, BUF requested $168,000 and received that amount; in 1977-8, BUF requested $181,797 but received only $168,000. During the following three fiscal years, BUF received $178,000 despite requesting $188,160 in 1978- 9; $258,812 in 1979-80; and $275,913 in 1980-1. 119 Ibid. 120 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 14, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-3, Fiscal Budget 1981-2, 21. 230
121 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2905, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 26, 1981 AGM, Halifax — November 1981. 122 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, CRIAW, Minutes and Agenda of Board o f Directors, Chateau Bonne Entente, 9 November, 1978. 123 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, CRIAW, Minutes and Agenda of Board of Directors, Chateau Bonne Entente, 9 November, 1978. 124 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1552, AWP Fonds, Folder 7, Calendars, Programs, Notices 1981-2, A Woman’s Calendar, March 1981; and April 1981. See also: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, CRIAW (NS Branch) Minutes and Agenda of General Meetings. 125 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 37, Position Papers, National Versus Regional Rights and Responsibilities: Position Paper, 1979,2. 126 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 15, CRIAW (Nova Scotia Branch) - Minutes and Agenda of Executive Meetings, various. The Women and Work project, for example, was a collaborative effort among CRIAW, Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, A Woman’s Place- Forrest House, and Dalhousie’s Institute for Public Affairs. 127 Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management, Manuscript Group 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 10, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement o f Women, Item 10-5, CRIAW Annual Report 1979, 3. 128 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, CRIAW, Minutes o f Board of Directors of CRIAW, 11-12 February, 1977; Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management, Manuscript Group 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 10, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement o f Women, Item 10-5, CRIAW Annual Report 1979, 3. 129 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 37, Position Papers, “Position Paper on Future Activities by CRIAW,” 1. 130 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 27, CRIAW Correspondence, 1981- 1982, President’s Notes March-April 1981. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 NSARM, MG 15, Ethnic Community Fonds, Volume 16, Nova Scotia Blacks, Item 40, "Human Rights Board Named: Aid For Negroes First Goal," Newspaper Article, n.d.; NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth, Folder 2, VOW Constitution, Voice of Women: Education through Involvement; and Folder 9, VOW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960 - 1985, Minutes, dated 10 May 1963. Interview: Muriel Duckworth. See also: Wanda Thomas Bernard and Judith Fingard, “Black Women at Work: Race, Family, and Community in Greater Halifax,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 205; and Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 265-6. 134 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1631, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletter, Letter from Dawna Gallagher, n.d. The campaign was known as the ‘women’s information project.’ 135 Dalhousie’s Women and the Law joined with NSW AC and several unions under the banner the Women and Work Committee to organize and fund a Women and Occupational health and Safety Workshop. Perhaps not surprisingly considering Judy Wouk’s work with Pro-Feminae, NSW AC teamed with that organization and Canada Manpower to develop and present an educational series and bibliography on women and work. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSARM, no file number, Women’s Issues. On NSWAC workshops, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1. 136 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 11, Folder 1, Council Meetings, 1974-9, Fiscal Report, December 1981. Prices soared even in the face of the federal government’s wage and price controls between 1975 and 1978. The average rate o f inflation for Canada between the years 1977 and 1980 was 9 percent. In response, organized labour negotiated an average wage increase of 8 percent between 1977 and 1980. The average Canadian family income rose 6 percent between 1977 and 1978. In 1979-80, total labour income in Canada increased 12.5 percent. Canadian Members of Parliament, despite guaranteed annual raises of 7.5 percent, also voted themselves an additional salary increase in the face of inflation. 137 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 11, Folder 1, Council Meeting, 1974-9, Memorandum #261, 1-2. 231
138 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1658, Canadian Federation of University Women - Halifax Branch Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, 1970-1977, President’s Report, 1977-8. 139 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings, 1974-1979, Press Release, June 1980. 140 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 14, Folder 16, Black Business Consortium, 1990,2. 141 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/020, BUF Fonds, Folder 21 Nova Scotia Alliance of Provincial Black Organizations, 1982-1988, letters from Hamid Rasheed, dated 9 June 1982 and 6 October 1982. 142 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/020, BUF Fonds, Folder 21 Nova Scotia Alliance of Provincial Black Organizations, 1982-1988, letter from Doris E. Evans dated 4 June 1982. 143 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-3, Fiscal Budget 1982-3, 76. 144 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1347, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 22, Pamphlets, Brochures, Notices, and Newsletters, Item 22.5, “A Women’s Calendar.” 145 On the Elections Issues Coalition, see: DU A, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Box 3, Folder 3.3, Election Issues, “NDP Strongest Supporters of Women’s Issues - Survey,” cl978. On the Roberta Ryan Committee, see: NSWAC, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 15, Roberta Ryan Committee; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 2, Canadian Human Rights Commission; and NSARM, RG 85, Volume 1, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Folder 9, Proposed Amendments to the Human Rights Act. On the Halifax Coalition for Full Employment, see: DU A, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Box 1, Folder 1.8, Unemployment, Pamphlet: Women and Unemployment. On ‘A Group o f Women,’ see: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 3468, Betty Peterson Fonds, Folder 5, Peace Activities: Short-Term, Poster. 146 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 39, Secretary of State Funding, Item 39.3, Secretary of State, Grant Application, 3 December, 1979; and NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 15, CRIAW (NS Branch), Minutes and Agenda of Executive Meetings, Women and Work Project Report. 147 On the Roberta Ryan Committee and legal case, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 6, Court Cases, Item 4.3, letter from Judy Wouk, 15 April 1976; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 15, Roberta Ryan Committee, various; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 23, NSWAC, 23.15, Minutes dated 22 March 1976. 148 NSWAC, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 15, Roberta Ryan Committee, Press Release. Among the contributors to the Ryan Trust were: Muriel Duckworth, Alexa McDonough, academics Judith Fingard, Michael Cross, and Greg Kealey, the Nova Scotia Government Employees Association, as well as the president o f the National Action Committee on the Status of Women and the Vancouver Status o f Women Committee. 149 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project Folder, Nova Scotia Scene # 2 (December 1965). 150 Jules Ramon Oliver, “Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement o f Colored People: An Historical Evaluation o f the NSAACP and the Role it has Played in the Area o f Employment,” Master o f Social Work Thesis (Halifax: Maritime School of Social Work and Acadia University, 1969), 13- 16. 151 Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 262. On the tactical choices that cost VOW-Halifax in terms of members, see Chapter Five. 152 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes-Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, Minutes: 20 November 1969; Minutes: 4 December 1969; Minutes: 5 January 1970. 153 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1552, AWP Fonds, Folder 7, Calendars, Programs, Notices 1981-2, A Woman’s Calendar, March 1981. 154 See, for example: MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 23, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, 1975-77, Nova Scotia Women Action Committee Members and Friends, March 1976. 155 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 7, Minutes Misc. and Misc. Correspondence Minutes CRIAW Meeting, 18 October 1978. 156 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1817, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Club Fonds, With Enthusiasm and Faith: A History of the Canadian Federation of the Business and Professional 232
Women's Clubs, 1930-1972 (Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, 1994), 96. 157 Nancy Lubka, “Black Front Raises Questions: Action or a $470,000 Bureaucracy?” The Fourth Estate, 13 November 1969, 3. 158 Fillmore, “Funding May Cease,” The Fourth Estate, 31 August 1972, 1. 159 Fillmore, “Funding May Cease,” The Fourth Estate, 31 August, 1972, 1. 160 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/003, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 3, Provincial Council Correspondence, letter from Wayne L. Talbot dated 2 November, 1973; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, letter from A.E. Criss dated 8 July, 1974; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, Preliminary Recommendations and Proposed Goals for the BUF Provincial Council, 5 October, 1978; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, Minutes of the BUF Council, 9 February, 1980; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 1, Council Meetings 1974-9, Fiscal Budget 1982-1983. Nor was this lack o f interest only to be found outside o f the provincial capital, BUF’s primary site o f activity. Councilors from Halifax and its surrounding area were among those identified as inactive and in each election seats from around the capital remained empty. 161 Deborah Kaetz, “’75 a ‘Good Beginning’: Women Push AG for Special Ministry,” The Fourth Estate, volume 7, number 39, 7 January, 1976,9. 162 Interview: Linda Kealey conducted 23 May 2006; Interview: Moggridge; Interview: Simmons. 163 For example, Duckworth attended early NSWAC meetings. Although she has not subsequently identified herself as a NSWAC activist she was clearly familiar with both the activists and organization. On Duckworth’s attendance, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, Minutes, 22 March 1976. On chequebook activism, see: Lisa Young and Joana Everrit,Advocacy Groups (Vancouver, University o f British Columbia Press, 2004). 164 Interview: Moggridge. 165 Muriel Duckworth, “Making A Difference: Halifax Women Remember the 50s, 60s, and 70s,” filmed 7 May 1999. 166 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 24, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Item 24.27, Operation o f the N.S. Women’s Action Committee, 1. 167 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman Place Fonds, Folder 23, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Constitution: Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, 1. 168NSARM, Manuscript Group (MG) 20, Volume 1262, A Woman Place Fonds, Folder 23, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Item 23.32, NSWAC: Summary of Activities, 1975-76. 169 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP, Folder 21, National Action Committee, Item 21-23, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee Update and Membership Drive dated 27 February 1981. 170 NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 19, Miscellaneous, Elizabeth Shilton Lennon, “Sex Discrimination in Employment: The Nova Scotia Human Rights Act;” and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, No Folder Number, Women’s Issues, Judy Wouk, “Equal Pay Legislation; ”NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 1, Evelyn Jackson et al. Visible Minorities in Nova Scotia: A Call for Equality (Halifax: NSHRC, 1973); NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 13, Commission Press Releases, Press Release n.d. (circa 1975). 171 NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 13, Commission Press Releases, Press Release n.d. (circa 1975); NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 24, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, letter from Judy Wouk dated 18 October 1976. 172 Appointed in 1975 the Task Force committed itself to tabling its report within the fiscal year. In order to keep communication lines open, draw on the experience o f Nova Scotian women, and encourage dialogue, the Task Force mailed 2,000 letters asking for the opinions of, among others, individual women, mayors, municipal councils, women’s groups, religious organizations and universities. Travelling throughout the province, 29 public and 20 private meetings were held with Nova Scotians. The Taskforce report, Herself/Elle-Meme, made 95 recommendations which, although acknowledging that task was carried out in the context o f deepening economic woes, reflected the most ‘creative and futuristic thinking o f all participants’ not financial viability. Recalling a long- history of slowly implemented Royal Commissions, Task Force members argued that writing ‘for the 233
future’ was necessary. Finally, the widely-circulated Herself/Elle-Meme, encouraged feminist activism by arguing that the pace and extent o f reform will depend on ‘the women o f the province, and the strength and speed with which they are able to become a viable political force.’ See: Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women, Herself/Elle-Meme (Halifax, NS: Government o f Nova Scotia, 1976). For an example of the response to the Report, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 24, NSWAC Press Releases, 1974-1980, Item 24.28, Letter from Mary Ann Huslak, 2 February 1976. On the importance o f the Royal Commission on the Status o f Women, see: “Write Your Prime Minister Today,” The Fourth Estate (Editorial), 10 December 1970, 4. On daycare, see: Staff Writer, “Nova Scotia Day Care Centres Lack Adequate Funding,” The Fourth Estate, 4 May 1972, 3; Cheryl Gamberg, “The Need to Provide Good Day Care: Not a Question of Who Will Pay, but When We’ll Pay,” The Fourth Estate, 18 May, 1972, 1. 173 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1, letter to Lucie Pepin dated 15 May, 1981; and LAC, RG 106-A-4, Box 22, International Women’s Year Fonds, no file number, ACSW Correspondence, Research Etc., Selected Study Papers Available from ACSW. 174 Janet Guildford, “A Fragile Independence: The Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 282-304. See also: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Coalition o f Women’s Groups, 11-21, Meeting with Resigned Members o f Advisory Council; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 29, Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, various. 175 NAC provided NSWAC with informational resources as the latter prepared a submission to the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunication Commission’s Task Force on Sex-Role Stereotyping. In the fall of 1976, Kathryn Logan, director of Status o f Women - Nova Scotia, coordinated with NSWAC and the Department o f Labour to produce a report titled “Working Women in Nova Scotia.” See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, no file number, Women’s Issues. 234
Chapter Five
Tactics: Taking Political Action
The tactics designed by African-Nova Scotians and feminists in Halifax placed their demands for equality before legislators and the public. Having forged a political consciousness, established formal organizations and developed resource mobilization strategies, activists adopted tactics to press their social, political and economic demands in Canada’s political arenas. Yet, activists were not free to pursue their objectives by any and all means. A range of considerations influenced their choice of tactics, including members’ political sensibilities, preferred organizational structure and resource availability. While a sense of urgency inspired many activists to employ confrontational rhetoric and disruptive tactics between
1960 and 1982, the perceived and actual limits of political and public tolerance
informed tactical decisions. Like activists, state officials sought to avoid direct
intervention. Instead, provincial and federal officials sought to contain and restrain
dissent by granting access to funding, conceding to demands, absorbing activists into the state apparatus, and monitoring and/or harassing activists considered to be a potential threat.
The success of former and contemporary local activists also shaped local tactics. Even as young activists criticized the gradualist and integrationist
approaches of their forebears, they employed traditional lobby and educational tactics. At the same time, the emergence of a liberation paradigm among both movements and the sense of urgency animating many young activists brought a turn toward greater confrontation among a subset of local activists. Confrontational 235 rhetoric and disruptive tactics changed the tone of activism in Halifax, but it never became the dominant approach to change. While a shift toward more confrontational and disruptive tactics created a ‘radical flank’ within each movement, tactical constraints and emulation meant that, ultimately little was new under the sun — tactically speaking between 1960 and 1982.
Human rights scholar Neil Stammers has identified two broad sets of activist objectives. In essence, Stammers suggests that activists seek politico-legal reforms
as well as socio-cultural change.1 That is, activists seek to change not only laws and public policy (big ‘P’ politics) but also minds and practices (small ‘p’ politics).2 This distinction parallels a similar academic debate about material and postmaterial values and objectives. Although either set of activist aims are usefully separated for heuristic purposes, in reality they were deeply intertwined. Politico-legal aims were
deployed as political, legal and economic demands, seeking expansion of
democracy, citizenship or equality and the diffusion of concentrated public power.
Legislation and government programs were typical of the politico-legal aims sought by Haligonians. Socio-cultural goals addressed identity, discourse and social practice. In Halifax, activists challenged the socio-cultural manifestations of power
with the intention of creating the conditions for gender and racial equality, in part by
legitimizing alternative values and validating particular identities. To those ends,
African-Nova Scotians and feminists engaged the media and convened public events to change hearts, minds, words and practice and to challenge the socio-cultural underpinnings of contemporary gender and race relations. 236
Activists’ politico-legal and socio-cultural aims were mutually reinforcing.
Democracies link political and social power through the citizen as elector. Public opinion (influenced through socio-cultural aims) therefore could affect political outcomes (politico-legal aims). By addressing one set of goals, African-Nova
Scotians and feminists sought not only more tolerable socio-cultural conditions for the groups they represented but also public support for their legislative and public policy goals. Though the state is not simply handmaiden to the most powerful actor, but a player capable of independent and self-interested action, public support for
one’s claims is rarely a deterrent to action. Indeed, throughout the late 1960s and
1970s, the Canadian state (most particularly the federal government) acted
independently and in its own interests when it funded local activists to foster public
support for a range of rights. Regardless of the federal government’s goals, changes
to laws and minds held the potential to move the victims of systemic discrimination
from Nova Scotia’s socioeconomic periphery to its mainstream.
In seeking to realize their goal of greater racial and gender equality, African-
Nova Scotians and feminists adopted a similar range of tactics. Throughout the
1960s and 1970s, public funding supported an increase in the level of local activism.
Although particular organizations might favour a particular activity, taken together
African-Nova Scotian and feminist activists engaged in advocacy, education and
service delivery. This study concentrates on the former two sets of activities, as they
are primarily geared toward public policy influence. Halifax was the seat of
provincial government and local activists seeking policy influence benefited from
their proximity to political power. Resident activists conducted considerable 237 research and enjoyed the support of their activist counterparts across the province and the country as well as the support of local organizations, institutions and government bodies. Inequitably distributed postwar prosperity and, particularly, the local dimensions of inequality formed the raison d’etre for local organizations. The rise of Halifax as a regional government and education centre in addition to rising education and literacy rates supported activists in their efforts to gather, conduct or deploy ‘evidence.’
After 1965, a strong sense of urgency — generated by a clash between the
Cold War rhetoric and reality of inequality as well as the failure of local movements and state initiatives to foster greater equality — and growing radicalism among
(inter)national movements for racial and gender equality encouraged younger local activists to adopt more confrontational approaches. In the two decades after 1960, a time when Canadian activists began to employ more disruptive tactics, contenders straying too far from respectable tactics — such as the Front de Liberation du
Quebec — quickly learned the limits of state tolerance. In Halifax, the Afro-
Canadian Liberation Movement — which announced that members were prepared to
sacrifice their lives for liberation — became the subject of state surveillance (as, perhaps, did others).3 Young feminists took to public spaces to demand liberation
from restrictive gender roles and publicly confronted political authorities on women’s issues. In the process, young radicals broke with the older generation within their movements, though their disruptive tactics emulated earlier social movements. Confrontation was not without its price, however, as young activists
strained relationships and tested the limits of public tolerance. Within the 238 movements themselves, the most significant impact of the decision by some activists to employ confrontational tactics may have been the creation of a ‘radical flank.’ Yet this result, though divisive, was not entirely negative, for in response to the increased use of disruptive and confrontational tactics, public officials made concessions to moderates in an effort to forestall further radicalization.
Activist Emulation in Halifax, 1960-1982
Haligonians emulated their activist forebears and contemporaries. As Charles Tilly has argued, social movements draw upon past success. In the absence of radical political change, activist tactics are ‘learned, limited in number and scope, slowly changing, and particularly adapted to their setting.’4 Tilly suggests that, since their emergence in the mid-18th century, social movements have employed a standard range of tactics including: the creation of special purpose associations and coalitions; staging public meetings, solemn processions, vigils, rallies, demonstrations; organizing petitions; offering statements to public media; pamphleteering; and, more generally, organizing public displays of worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. This comprehensive list captures the range of tactics employed by a large cross-section of Canadian activists. To be sure, local activists — and their Canadian counterparts, like the Vancouver Women’s Caucus
— creatively employed unique combinations of activities, revived dormant tactics, expanded the scope of activity, issued unique demands and changed the tenor of activism.5 Some activist tactics may have even been local ‘firsts’ but little was new 239 in the field of activist manoeuvre. Rather, the tactics employed were well-attuned to democratic political systems and built upon former success.
Beyond 1960 and 1982, local activists of every stripe continued to employ time-honoured lobbying techniques that more exclusively defined the tactical repertoire of earlier feminist and African-Nova Scotian activism.6 That Halifax was the seat of provincial government facilitated local activists’ lobbying efforts. The
Provincial Council of Women presented a yearly brief to Nova Scotia’s government and authored briefs and letters when particular opportunities arose, such as the Royal
Commission on the Status of Women or constitutional negotiations.7 Few other groups enjoyed routine access to government, but all engaged in political advocacy.
The Voice of Women-Halifax presented briefs to the Royal Commission on the
Status of Women and, seven years later, to the Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women.8 Many other women’s organizations, and some individual local feminists, also submitted briefs to the Taskforce.9 The Nova Scotia Women’s Action
Committee met with legislators and wrote to public officials on a range of issues.10
For example, NSWAC authored and presented a brief to the Nova Scotia Human
Rights Commission based on their experience supporting a female police cadet in her human rights complaint.11 During constitutional negotiations, the Canadian
Research Institute for the Advancement of Women wrote to Premier John Buchanan and other provincial ministers.12 African-Nova Scotians were no less active in their lobbying efforts. Even the most radical organization in Halifax, the Afro-Canadian
Liberation Movement, presented briefs before public commissions.13 H.A.J. ‘Gus’
Wedderbum led or participated as a member of delegations to meetings with 240
municipal, provincial and federal officials, wrote letters and presented briefs to Nova
Scotia’s politicians.14
Activists worked together in their lobbying efforts. Local feminist coalitions,
including the Coalition of Women’s Groups and an ad hoc group of 77 women
representing 55 women’s groups called together for a workshop on constitutional
issues at Mount St. Vincent University in 1981, presented a united front on matters
of mutual political concern.15 Further, local feminists joined national counterparts to
present a united voice in the federal arena.16 African-Nova Scotians also
endeavoured to present a united front. Wedderbum, involved in several
organizations, brought together various delegations including a 1970 group
comprised of representatives from the Nova Scotia Civil Liberties and Human
Rights Association, Neighbourhood Centre, Tenants’ Association, Beth Israel
Jewish Committee and Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NSAACP) which cooperated to author a brief on housing in Nova Scotia.17
Two years earlier Wedderbum led a delegation of Nova Scotia Human Rights
Federation and NSAACP activists to the Premier’s office. Delegates presented a list
of demands that became the basis of reforms announced at a conference convened to
mark the International Year for Human Rights in December, 1968.18 In the federal
arena, members of the Black United Front, African United Baptist Association,
Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People and New
Brunswick Association for the Advancement of Colored People co-authored a position paper in response to multiculturalism titled ‘The Black Paper.’19 Though 241 written submissions pressed activist demands, activists rarely refused an opportunity to speak directly to legislators.
Some Haligonians enjoyed routine, though informal, access to political authorities and were fortunate to be resident in a city that was also the seat of government. Owing to the traditional male domination of politics, the political
‘backroom’ was a time-honoured and highly gendered space for conducting political business. Political and public officials granted Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones or H.A.J.
‘Gus’ Wedderbum informal audiences.20 Speaking to the reach of his informal political network, Wedderbum recalled:
[The] Minister of Welfare, Craig McKinnon...He became my friend and we used to talk. I became friends with the Chief of Police. It was valuable having such contacts...we used to talk, and they were all concerned...They were all accessible, the Premier, the Mayor, the Chief of Police...21
Although aided by a (inter)national, provincial and local concern for racial
inequality, Wedderbum explained his privileged position by way of personal
attributes. As he remembered, ‘I had much better connections than anybody else because I was from away and I was an educated man. I was no threat to anybody. I had a certain polish and touch and a sense of humour.’22 Notwithstanding his personal charm, Wedderbum was not alone in his personal relationships with Nova
Scotia’s authorities. Once Dr. W.P. Oliver accepted a position with the provincial
Department of Education, politicians routinely called upon him to offer his opinion
on racial inequality in Nova Scotia.23
Less entrenched activists dragged political discussions from the backrooms.
With less routine access to the old boys network, feminists invited politicians to 242 meetings and public events to address issues of public policy. In March 1976, the
Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee reported that the provincial leaders of the
NDP and Conservative Party would attend meetings during the following month.24
In the early 1970s, the Nova Scotia Civil Liberties Association, the Local Council of
Women and Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Liberation invited Premier Gerald Regan
‘ye to public events. The Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee convened public discussion panels on which various public officials sat. African-Nova Scotians also convened public panels, including Black United Front ‘encounter sessions’ during which African-Nova Scotians presented demands for reform between expressions of frustration. In the early 1970s various officials, including Premier Gerald Regan submitted to encounter sessions and the rough treatment associated with them.
Beyond the formal political arena, activists from each movement spent much time and expended considerable energy in educating both themselves and the public.
Looking inward first, activists engaged in self-education as a means to strengthen their political consciousness and ensure that advocacy was well-informed. For activist organizations in Halifax, self-education was deeply intertwined with political objectives and, by the 1960s, was a well-established activist tactic. For example, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Colored Education Centre drew together 20 members to read and discuss current events.28 For decades before 1960, the Canadian Federation of University Women, Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women and
Provincial Council of Women read about, discussed and heard speakers address current events. Throughout the 1950s, local lawyer and ‘inter-wave’ women’s rights advocate Marjorie Grace Wombolt (K.C.) was a particular favourite among local 243 women’s groups.29 Wombolt gave talks on subjects including women and the law and Canadian feminism at once highlighting aspects of women’s legal inequality and presenting examples of how women in other jurisdictions had overcome various aspects of their inequality. A regular theme in her talks was the connection between a united front and women’s political efficacy.
In the decades after 1960, Haligonian activists extended what historian
Frances Early has identified as a tradition of self-education among women’s groups.30 The Voice of Women-Halifax established study groups which drew up and digested ambitious reading lists on contemporary subjects.31 Likewise, the Canadian
Federation of University Women-Halifax formed yearly study groups.32 Meanwhile, organizations such as the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, the Nova Scotia Project, Black Educators Association and Black
Professional Women’s Group regularly discussed racial discrimination at their meetings. The Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee and Canadian Research
Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW) also discussed contemporary events at their meetings. The latter supplemented routine discussion with a speaker series and annual conferences at which feminists presented research papers, some of which CRIAW funded.
Activists conceived of self-education not as an end in-and-of-itself but as a means towards the realization of their socio-cultural and politico-legal aims. Interim committee members of the Black United Front, for example, implied that self- education would form an integral part of the struggle for racial equality when they declared that ‘the Black People, young and old, now realize for the first time that 244 their problem really grows out of the fact that they have lost their history. They have, therefore, lost their self-respect.’33 Affo-Canadian Liberation Movement activists, in turn, sought to unify and liberate back Haligonians ‘through awareness of history and the revival of culture.’34 In a policy statement signed by BUF, the
African-United Baptist Association and the Nova Scotia Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, Black activists identified ‘cultural suppression’ as 1C an integral part of the system that kept ‘Black people politically ignorant.’
So too did feminists view self-education as a political act. In 1978, one
feminist described consciousness-raising as an educational path toward political
action, noting that ‘the ultimate destination of C.R. is to clarify the political, social
and economic nature of our oppression.’36 At A Woman’s Place-Forrest House,
members resolved to connect with social action groups with the intention of sharing
information designed to strengthen feminist convictions and campaigns.37 In 1977,
the first project adopted by the Coalition of Support for Women was to ‘educate women on becoming involved in the political arena’ specifically so that women
might ‘learn lobbying tactics for presenting issues.’38 When particular public policy
matters arose, such as constitutional reform, activists held meetings to educate
themselves on the issue at hand.39
Conferences also provided important opportunities for self-education and the pursuit of politico-legal and socio-cultural aims. A number of organizations,
including the Canadian Federation of University Women, Councils of Women,
Voice of Women, CRIAW and the Black United Front convened annual
conferences. Others organized thematic public conferences and workshops. Typical 245 of these events was the 1968 conference organized by members of the Halifax
Human Rights Federation and Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, or the workplace health and safety workshop organized by the Nova
Scotia Women’s Action Committee.40 In January 1981, the Canadian Federation of
University Women-Halifax encouraged members to attend a conference on ‘How to take political action’ organized by the Junior League in conjunction with Mount St.
Vincent University.41 To similar ends, activists participated in events sponsored by other organizations including the Canadian Council of Christians and Jews, United
Church of Canada and Jewish Labour Committee.42
Activists further extended self-education through the publication and distribution of newsletters: a well-established activist tactic and important medium for self-education. Feminists in Halifax, whose movement had long consisted of
federated local chapters of (inter)national organizations, enjoyed a longer history with activist newsletters than did African-Nova Scotian organizations. Feminist organizations including the Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Councils of
Women and Canadian Federation of University Women had published and distributed newsletters since at least the early postwar years. After 1960 the Voice of
Women-Halifax, The Halifax Women’s Centre, Nova Scotia Women’s Action
Committee, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women and A
Woman’s Place-Forrest House produced their own and contributed to each other’s newsletters. So too did these organizations subscribe and contribute to the national
newsletter of second-wave feminism, produced by the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. There is no extant evidence to suggest that any African- 246
Nova Scotian organizations published their own newsletters during the period before
they established formal links with their national counterparts, beginning with the
Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA) in 1965. Separated over large geographic
spaces, the communities involved in SUPA and the National Black Coalition of
Canada (est. 1969) strengthened their ties and educated themselves through regularly
published newsletters. The Afro-Canadian Liberation Movement and Black United
Front also produced a newsletter that reached contemporary activists in Nova Scotia
and beyond. Activist newsletters created awareness of issues throughout Halifax,
Nova Scotia and Canada, shared the lessons learned by contemporary activists,
formed an element of activists’ self-education and strengthened the connections
uniting movements spread over geographic space.
Looking beyond their respective movements, Haligonians pursued their
socio-cultural and politico-legal aims through public education. Like self-education,
public education was a traditional activist tactic that served social and political ends.
Public events such as lectures, speeches, conferences, workshops and adult-
education courses created awareness, won converts and bred the support necessary
to strengthen the movements and wrest political concessions from public officials.43
In the late 1960s, for example, Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones and H.AJ. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum
frequently gave public speeches at local universities, public libraries, fraternal orders
and public agencies. A Woman’s Place-Forrest House (AWP) activists believed that
education moved women toward social action.44 Indeed, an extensive public
educational program for women occupied a significant portion of AWP’s day-to-day
activity.45 Less routine but no less important were panel discussions held by feminist 247 organizations, including the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, which used public space to convene public meetings on a variety of subjects, including reproductive health.46 Feminists also sought to educate the public through the schools, such as when members of Pro-Feminae-Nova Scotia joined with Canada
Manpower to produce a series of classroom activities related to women and work.47
Similarly, AWP joined with the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission in offering speakers to public schools and community groups.
Seeking an even wider audience, activists regularly engaged the local
media.48 In 1968, Jules Oliver, director of a municipal initiative to address
unemployment among Black youth, reported that ‘the news media was used
constantly to awaken the society as to the dynamics of the problem.’49 Similarly,
feminist activist and member of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of
Women, Myma Slater recently argued that ‘if you have a message and no one can
hear it, it’s really kind of useless.’50 In their efforts to engage the public, activists did
not limit themselves to mainstream outlets. African-Nova Scotians and feminists
alike published their views in church bulletins, religious newspapers, student
publications, professional and activist newsletters,The Fourth Estate,
Multiculturalism Program publications and activist generated media.51
Alternative media offered activists the space to articulate alternative
perspectives and build their movements.52 A number of activists (including Judy
Wouk and Nancy Lubka) worked with the local alternative media publicationThe
Fourth Estate, where they wrote about the African-Nova Scotian and feminist
struggles for equality. Local activists, connected to university campuses 248 throughout Nova Scotia, also used student publications to publicize their issues and movements. Innovative activists created new media forums.Black Journal, a radio talk-show hosted by Wayne Adams and H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum, debuted in
1971.54 A local cable access show, Black Horizon, debuted in the mid-1970s, based
upon the success of BUF’s newsletter, GRASP (1970-1978). Though African-Nova
Scotian organizations did not produce newsletters as did their feminist
contemporaries, the creation of Black media drew on a proud tradition of Black journalism in Nova Scotia — as the life of publisher, journalist, author and activist
Carrie M. Best attests. Feminists also explored alternative media such as when local
members of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women and the
Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee filmed a twelve-part video series on
women’s issues to be shown on local television and in schools and made available
through local libraries.55 Alternative media could only carry the message so far;
consequently, few activists ignored the mainstream media.
Though activists engaged the local mainstream media, they could not control
the volume, breadth or tone of coverage. Sociologist J.A. Manette — and local journalist Steve Kimber before her — have suggested that media coverage of racial
issues in Halifax focused on ‘sanitized’ moments of Black activism and thus
presented a distorted picture.56 Activists also worried about media distortions at the other end of the spectrum. In 1971, for example, H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum and
Wayne Adams reported that the mainstream media covered only ‘the bad
cn guys.. .You never hear about the ones who are doing well.’ Yet, writer Maijorie
Wolfe suggests that media coverage, even if it was minimal or misdirected, 249
sensitized the wider public to the issues of gender and racial discrimination.58
Acknowledging as much, activists engaged the media as a means for ‘clarifying and forming public opinion.’59 One group of Haligonian feminists created an
interorganizational ‘publicity network.’60 But the struggle for media attention could be frustrating. Occasionally, activist organizations were called upon to offer their opinion — as was NSW AC in a Canadian Broadcast Corporation piece on equal - pay-for-work-of-equal-value broadcast in December 1977.61 However, the seams of
archival folders groan with press releases while the newspaper coverage was
comparatively limited.62 Numerous feminists remember only limited media
coverage, and then only of the most public of protests.63 Gus Wedderbum
remembered even-handed if not enthusiastic local media.
Activists engaged in considerable research to support their educational and
advocacy work. Volunteer-based organizations could not maintain research agendas
equal to those of publicly financed activist projects and organizations but did
occasionally produce original research. The Canadian Federation of University
Women identified research and information dissemination as the primary means by
which they would redress ‘those inequalities existing for women in both the public
and private spheres.’64 The Voice of Women-Halifax (VOW-Halifax) and NSAACP produced a study of discriminatory hiring practices among local businesses.65 In the
early 1960s, the Halifax chapter of Zonta aggregated rosters of qualified women willing to serve in public policy positions and noted the fine research done by a
committee struck to study the status of women.66 The Halifax Business and
Professional Women’s Club annually compiled a “List of Women in Public Life” 250
and in 1960 Maijorie Grace Wombolt chaired an Ad Hoc Committee on the Right of
a Married Woman to an Independent Domicile.67 Individual activists also authored
£ 0 and presented research papers that received relatively wide circulation. In 1968,
H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum presented “From Slavery to Ghetto: The story of the
Negro in the Maritimes” to the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission.69 One
year previously, Reverend Oliver prepared a paper to be presented to the
Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights.70
Research activities accelerated in an age of public funding which allowed
activists to staff organizations and commission research projects. When the Black
United Front mobilized in 1969 it included research in its mandate, commissioned
various studies, produced studies in conjunction with public bodies such as
Dalhousie University’s Institute of Public Affairs and would, by 1980, adopt a
research programme centred on an ‘unofficial’ research division.71 At the outset of
its activity, the Women’s Bureau eloquently suggested that ‘learning about our
concrete position in society is the first step in changing it’ and set about producing a
series of studies related to women and work.79 One study, entitled ‘Myths About
Working Women or How to Keep a Good Woman Down,’ presented considerable
demographic and economic information related to women and work in Nova
Scotia.73 Pro-Feminae worked from a similar sensibility as did the Canadian
Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. As late as the 1980s Pearleen
Oliver used public funding to produce various historical studies.74 Together, feminist
organizations produced studies on women and the law, daycare, women’s work and 251 economic position, women’s historical experience, gender stereotyping, the image of
ne women in the media and many others.
Staffed Organizations and Projects
Within the bounds of the social movement repertoire, a new generation of publicly- funded organizations and activists expanded the scale if not necessarily the scope of activism. Young feminists and African-Nova Scotians continued their advocacy through traditional political channels, continued to engage in self- and public education and conducted research. Ambitious young activists, driven by a strong sense of urgency, broadened the scale of activism in Halifax by employing public or hybrid resource mobilization strategies. Expansion was not a panacea; it introduced new challenges. Expanded rights activism brought greater pressure to bear on elected officials and kept issues before the public. However, expanding activism depended on a patron-client relationship which introduced greater instability to the movements for racial and gender equality in Halifax. Sudden resource withdrawal threatened organizational collapse and the need for more-or-less constant grantsmanship diverted time and energy from more explicitly political activities.
Public funding introduced a new relationship between activist independence, the scale of activism, organizational longevity and — though voluntarily embraced — new levels of state influence in activist affairs.
Endowed with financial resources beyond the mobilization capacity of those activist organizations employing community-centred resource mobilization strategies, emergent feminist and African-Nova Scotian organizations possessed the means to increase the scale of activism by hiring staff. Although the Nova Scotia 252
Project may have been the first activist organization in Halifax to employ a significant staff, the Black United Front (BUF) was the most notable in this regard.
BUF employed an executive director, administrative support and, at various times, field officers and contract workers.76 So too did A Woman’s Place-Forrest House, the Black Educators Association and the Black Women’s Professional Group hire staff.77 With employees to direct and coordinate activism, as well as the human and financial resources to support a full-time office, publicly funded organizations enjoyed a greater capacity for full-time activism than did volunteer-based organizations. Consequently, publicly-funded and staffed organizations conducted more research, authored more briefs, organized more events and delivered more
services than did their community-based organizations. Volunteer-based
organizations trying to keep pace with staffed organizations risked burnout.
In Halifax, rights activists supplemented staff-based organizations with
short-term projects. Whereas organizations, whoseraison d ’etre transcended any particular short-term goal, were established with the expectation that such bodies would exist for so long as required, activist projects (though closely connected to
activist organizations) were short-term entities animated by limited but resource
intensive goals. As a result, projects depended on public financing and the success or
failure of grant writers was all important in terms of the project’s existence and
longevity. In Halifax, resource-intensive publicly funded projects were vulnerable to resource withdrawal unless they authored another successful grant or successfully
lobbied for more funds. Notwithstanding their potentially short life spans, projects reflected and supported the movements from which they arose by supplementing 253 more permanent structures. In part due to the influence of activists working within and beyond the state, the range of public funding programs, the breadth of judging criteria, program objectives that aligned with movement goals and the fact that federal authorities targeted women, visible minorities and official language groups allowed feminists and African-Nova Scotians to gather relatively plentiful resources for their projects. 78
Among Halifax’s successful grant writers and project staff were Burnley
‘Rocky’ Jones and Judy Wouk. Jones won Opportunities for Youth (OFY) funding for HERO (Historical Education Research Organization), an oral history project launched in 1971 to document the personal histories of African-Nova Scotians.
7Q Jones trained fifteen students to collect oral histories. The project dovetailed nicely with his latest activist organization, the Affo-Canadian Liberation Movement, then endeavouring to foster racial pride among African-Nova Scotians through a rediscovery of African and New World-African history and culture.80 Young feminists in Halifax also established activist projects with public funding. The
Women’s Bureau —a research and advocacy group— also began operations with funding from the Opportunity for Youth program. Employing 13 women, the Bureau extended its existence for two years through a cycle of Opportunity for Youth and
Local Initiatives Program (LIP) grants.81 Bureau staff produced a series of widely- circulated booklets addressing topics including women in the workplace, women as
single parents, daycare and women and the law.82 And, for four years starting in
1974, Judy Wouk and other feminists in Atlantic Canada staffed Pro-Feminae: a 254 research, education and advocacy project focusing on employment opportunities for women in Atlantic Canada.83
Such ambitious projects were difficult to sustain for long periods. Resource
intensive, they could not be sustained by means other than public-funding.
Consequently, activists sacrificed a portion of their autonomy to the client-patron relationship, the benefits and costs of which they hotly debated. A preference among political officials for short-term funding and the problem of seemingly capricious
granting bodies meant that many projects were short-lived. Yet if activist projects
were subject to the whims of political budgets and the caprice of granting
authorities, neither staff-based organizations nor publicly funded projects were the
sole means by which activists professionalized their activism and thereby supported
the movements through which they struggled for equality.
Activists, Day Jobs and the Pursuit of Equality
Organizations and projects were but two vehicles through which activists pursued
gender and racial equality and expanded the scale of activism in Halifax. Activists’
political consciousness would not be restricted to their free time. Activists who
volunteered their time, energy and personal resources to the movements for racial
and gender equality also pursued racial and gender equality through their professional lives as journalists, lawyers, academics, educators and civil servants.
The professional expression given to activist goals depended upon the place of new
issues within existing public institutions (such as the concern for racial equality which found expression in the provincial Department of Education), the emergence 255 of new public bodies established to address gender and racial inequality directly
(such as the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women and the Canadian Human Rights Commission) and the expansion and diversification of public institutions (such as universities and ‘alternative’ media).
Activists pursued equality through many professional fields. Medical Doctor
Pam Brown, who began work in a family planning clinic in 1972-3 and joined the
Metro Area Family Planning Association, specifically recalled that her work and volunteer lives overlapped.84 Feminists Nancy Lubka and Judy Wouk and African-
Nova Scotians H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum and Wayne Adams worked as journalists and pressed their claims for greater equality on local airwaves and in the pages of local newspapers.85 Lawyer Judith Giffin, who practised matrimonial and property law, used her professional skills to incorporate a number of feminist organizations
(including the Halifax Women’s Centre and One Parent Association), which she remembered were a ‘growth industry’ in the early 1970s.86 Educators Bumley
‘Rocky’ Jones and H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum later trained as lawyers and carried on the straggle for equality in Nova Scotia’s legal corridors. Early childhood educator, feminist and daycare activist Sue Wolstenholme remembers that her concern for proper childcare inspired her activist and professional choices.87 The same was true for the considerable number of activists whose political sensibilities found expression in the academy and public service.
At a time when Canada’s post-secondary institutions were expanding, a growing number of feminist and Black activists found positions within the academy 256
OD as graduate students, instructors, researchers and administrators. These academics carried their activist concerns into their professional lives, launching new lines of academic inquiry which directly and indirectly supported the movement to which
Scotia Women’s Action Committee activist Christina Simmons argues that the discovery of women’s historical and contemporary experiences was (and still is) a means ‘to strengthen women’s sense of themselves as citizens and equal makers of history with men and give a grounding for ongoing feminist struggles.’90 Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones enrolled in graduate studies at Dalhousie University. Jones also helped create and then worked as an instructor at Dalhousie’s Transition Year Program, which helped African-Nova Scotian and aboriginal students make the transition to university study.91 Christina Simmons, Kathy Moggridge and Linda Christiansen-Ruffman (active in The Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women-Nova Scotia and its forerunner in Halifax) worked as local researchers and university instmctors. New lines of academic inquiry required research support and dissemination. When presses proved more interested in traditional academic fare than in feminist scholarship, Nova Scotian feminists stepped in to fill the void.92 In 1975, following a year of fund-raising and grant writing, the first issueAtlantis: of A Women’s Studies Journal appeared.93 Co-founders, including Margaret Conrad, Donna Smyth, and Lois Vallely-Fischer, launched the journal in response to the dearth of feminist information and limited publishing support for feminist studies.94 Notably, founders remember the academic journal as a vehicle for the feminist movement in (Atlantic) 257 Canada. At the time of its founding, Donna Smyth suggested that they were ‘trying to reach thinking women everywhere.. .to help women reach new levels in their awareness.’95 Recalling a surge in feminist studies and a national feminist communication network,Atlantis founders recently argued that the journal published ‘all the exciting new ideas that were being generated by the women’s movement in Canada.’96 In 1981Atlantis moved from Acadia to Mount Saint Vincent University which, under the guidance of President Margaret Fulton and Dean Susan Clark, was prepared to provide more institutional support than Acadia was providing. As noted in Chapter Four, by that time MSVU had emerged as a strong supporter of local feminist organizations and had hosted a number of conferences and symposia that helped to advance feminist thinking in Halifax and beyond. Other feminists, such as Judy Wouk and Elizabeth Shilton Lennon, used existing print-media such as Dalhousie’sLaw Journal to publish research on issues including “Equal Pay Legislation” and “Sex Discrimination in Employment: The Nova Scotia Human Rights Act.”97 Beyond the university, a significant number of pragmatic feminists and African-Nova Scotians joined the public service. Such pragmatists were able to continue the struggle for racial and gender equality from within the state. Meanwhile, equally self-interested officials created direct links between the state and its critics, in their attempts to channel dissent in favourable directions and legitimize their own integrationist, liberal rights program by bringing their critics into the fold. Among the first to join the provincial civil service was Dr. W.P. Oliver who, after years of part-time work with the province, left his ministry in 1962 to 258 assume a full-time position with the Nova Scotia Department of Education, Adult Education Division as Representative to the Negro Communities.98 In the same year, and years before her embrace of feminist activism, Muriel Duckworth accepted a position with the same Division. Beginning in the late-1960s, an increasing number of activists accepted public service positions with the commissions and councils established to address the problems of racial and gender inequality. At a 9 August 1967 meeting, Nova Scotia’s Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights voted to establish the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission (NSHRC).99 Legislators — further illustrating the early correlation between concerns about racial inequality and human rights — agreed that an African-Nova Scotian should sit on the commission. When a committee member suggested that a woman might also be found to sit on the commission, the minutes record that ‘a Negress from Truro was mentioned’ and committee members resolved that ‘an attempt should be made to ascertain her name.’100 Apparently unable to attract their candidate from Truro, political officials appointed Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People president and integrationist leader H.A.J. Gus Wedderbum to the commission.101 Following a not uncommon practice in Canada, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission subsequently hired many activists including Jules Oliver.102 When, in 1972, Nova Scotia amended itsHuman Rights Act to proscribe gender discrimination, the Commission became more active in the field of gender inequality. In the fall of 1971, human rights officer Gail Mason publicly called for ‘factual information from women in the province about situations in which they feel 259 they have been disadvantaged because of sex or marital status.’103 Mason recommended a permanent women’s bureau be established in Nova Scotia and that sex be ‘included as one of the bases, like race and age, on which discrimination is prohibited under the Human Rights Act.’104 On 1 September 1972, the provincial Liberals proclaimed an amendment to theHRA, section 11 A, which outlawed discrimination based on sex.105 With sex now covered by the Act, the NSHRC and its employees, a number of whom were active in local feminist social movement organizations (SMOs), addressed the issue of gender discrimination.106 In 1975, when Nova Scotia appointed its Task Force on the Status of Women, local feminists — including lawyer Judith Giffin — accepted appointments.107 A number of feminists — including Myma Slater —sat on the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women.108 In 1979, one year after the Canadian Human Rights Commission became operational, Wouk (who had graduated from Dalhousie Law School) found work with the Commission in Halifax.109 Finally, activists sought to translate political sensibilities into professional activities by running for political office. On at least two occasions, local publications carried stories encouraging activists to turn their attention to formal politics. In 1970, local activist, journalist and scion of the family behindThe Fourth Estate, Nick Fillmore suggested that winning municipal office might prove more effective than public demonstrations.110 Over a decade later, Wilson Head (President of the National Black Coalition of Canada) suggested that, although a few Affican- Canadians had been elected to office, including NDP member Rosemary Brown (Gus Wedderbum’s sister) in British Columbia and Wayne Adams in Halifax, more 260 African-Canadians must seek office.111 Although few were elected in the period, activists ran for municipal, provincial and federal office. Notwithstanding some tension in the relationship with the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, both African-Nova Scotian and feminist activists supported the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the party clearly welcomed activists as candidates.112 In 1968, Wedderbum ran as an NDP candidate in a federal race but lost to Robert Stanfield.113 Wayne Adams, with whom Wedderbum hosted a radio show, was successfully elected to municipal council. In 1980, Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones, running under the NDP banner, championed ‘the little guy’ in a provincial by-election but lost.114 Muriel Duckworth ran for a provincial seat as an NDP candidate but also lost.115 Alexa McDonough, whose family was closely connected with the left in Nova Scotia, not only won a seat in the provincial legislature in 1981 but was later elected the leader of the federal NDP. Confrontational Rhetoric and Tactics Among the characteristics distinguishing the activism of feminists and African-Nova Scotians after 1965 was their confrontational approach — an approach defined by social movement scholars as ‘disruptive tactics.’116 The value of disruptive tactics was that, by threat, they promised accelerated reform and influence disproportionate to the number of activists involved — important considerations for anxious activists working within movements perpetually concerned with human resources. Like their American and Canadian contemporaries, with whom they were familiar through personal connections and media reports, Haligonian activists rejected the view that 261 respectable tactics were the only means by which to pursue greater equality. Yet, radicalism was not mere mimicry. Instead, confrontation reflected the political sensibilities of those local Haligonian activists embracing such tactics. Eager to win greater degrees of equality, young activists’ sensibilities were well summarized by Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones when he asserted that if ‘somebody hits you, you have to hit him back. People here have been praying for 200 years and look where it’s got them. Nowhere.’117 Similarly, feminist sensibilities were captured by local feminist Christina Simmons who argued: ‘we must fight for our rights from the government, the schools, employers, and sexist men in general. Women today must fight on several fronts at once.’118 Though not the first peace organization to take to the streets in the early 1960s, VOW-Halifax emerged as early advocates of disruptive public tactics and became the first women’s organization in Halifax to include public demonstrations in their action repertoire.119 Members of the Voice of Women politely occupied public spaces as a means to raise public awareness about the issues animating them and to exert political pressure on legislators to address those issues. While occupying public spaces, members publicized the issues at hand by disrupting the normal operation of these spaces and, as a corollary, challenged the mores dictating women’s place in society and middle-class respectability. Muriel Duckworth explained: “We tried a lot of ways to get attention. We often., .had demonstrations on the street to get attention... And for most of us, that was a brand new experience, we hadn’t done it before and it wasn’t easy to do...Nowadays everybody is doing it but nobody was doing it in those days.”120 262 By the end of the decade, disruptive tactics had become widespread in Halifax. Contemporary media reports noted the changing political sensibilities of young African-Nova Scotians involved with Kwacha House. The statements issued by Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones and his colleagues reflected their radical political sensibilities and sought to capitalize on the fear inspired by violence in the United States.121 Jones, for example, reported that the only way to know what role Caucasians will play in ‘the ensuing revolution’ was to ‘watch which way their guns are pointed when the shooting starts.’122 Offering a more graphic image, Denny Grant told reporters that the most Haligonians would only listen to activist demands once ‘somebody shoots a white woman’s kid on the way to school. Although Wedderbum continued to advocate moderation, he also noted the growth of radical sensibilities, reporting in 1968 that ‘the ranks of malcontents are swelling...and it is only a matter of time before the violence in the United States spills into Canada and the Maritimes.’124 Contextualizing the turn to radicalism among African-Nova Scotians, Jules Oliver reasoned that ‘no real protest can be convenient for the privileged; no real protest can be contained within comfortable bounds or be made respectable.’125 African-Nova Scotians divided on the issue of adherence to ‘respectable’ tactics. Demonstrative of the mix of disruptive and ‘respectable’ tactics employed by African-Nova Scotians, and of activists transcending differences to address issues of mutual concern, was the 1970 Oldland affair. Prior to his appointment as Halifax’s City Manager, allegations of racism and anti-unionism swirled around Robert Oldland, an American city planner. An alliance, including H.A.J. ‘Gus’ 263 Wedderbum, Bumley ‘Rocky’ Jones, Jules Oliver, and J.K. Bell of the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, formally opposed the American candidate’s appointment. Moderate alliance members Wedderbum and Bell suggested that, in light of fragile 196 race relations, Oldland was not the best candidate for the job. Oliver, speaking for more confrontational elements, baldly labelled Oldland a racist.127 On the night that Council considered Oldland’s appointment angry African-Nova Scotians and union members descended upon City Hall. Wedderbum remembered that he maintained a moderate position in the face of more confrontational threats and demands: City Council was packed...and outside was jam-packed [with protesting Black citizens, labourers, and union representatives]...! left the room and the press asked me for a statement and I told them...the man they are hiring is the wrong person and that there are people who are urging that we should do like the United States and bum down the city. I said...“I cannot tell you to bum down the city.”128 Under its first Executive Director, Jules Oliver, the Black United Front was among the most confrontational organizations in Halifax. In the same year as the Oldland controversy, BUF chairman Carlyle Warner filed a human rights complaint against the City of Halifax alleging discrimination in the field of employment. As BUF’s executive director, [Jules] Oliver intervened on behalf of Warner and BUF. By 1972, Oliver had publicly accused the City of Halifax of racism and reported that ‘we have been escalating this matter every month and just recently have gone into a public battle with the City over this issue.’129 At the same time, Oliver channelled information to a local reporter ‘under confidential banner’ so that the radio journalist might ‘frame his commentary in such a way that pressure would.. .be brought to bear on the city.’130 At annual conferences, BUF officials and attendees confronted the 264 public officials participating in encounter sessions.131 On 24 June 1972, Black activists convened an 'encounter session' — attended by over 100 delegates ‘representing most Black communities in Nova Scotia’ — during which three government cabinet ministers were ‘verbally attacked for over three hours of heated discussion.’132 In the political arena impatient young Haligonian feminists neither wasted time nor spared feelings. Like their African-Nova Scotian counterparts, local feminists willingly embraced confrontation. Former NSW AC activist Kathy Moggridge remembers that NSW AC was much more concerned with confronting authority than in working with elected officials.133 Writing to the provincial Attorney-General on behalf of NSWAC in February of 1976, Mary Ann Hustak requested a meeting to discuss ministerial responses to the Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women report,Herself, arguing that Ministers could, no doubt, ‘appreciate that women are becoming increasingly impatient with government inaction.’134 One year later, on 17 February, 1977, NSWAC issued a public statement deploring ‘the position taken by Premier Regan on equal pay for work of equal value in a [recent] speech.’ Faced with a seemingly intransigent government, Haligonian feminists also regularly took to the streets both to educate the public and to press their demands. For example, Halifax-Dartmouth Women’s Liberation invited the premier to a public rally on feminist issues including reproductive rights.136 In 1973, feminists at the Women’s Centre united with Reel Life (a feminist organization based at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) and Pro-Feminae to launch the Women’s Information Project: an initiative through 265 which feminists distributed information to women on the streets of downtown Halifax.137 Local feminists also marked yearly events including International Women’s Day and ‘Take Back the Night’ with public marches and demonstrations.138 Feminist disruptive tactics relied on confrontation, as did African-Nova Scotian tactics. Following the model established by the broader continental feminist movement, in Nova Scotia feminist disruptive tactics, while confrontational, focused on occupying public spaces to raise awareness and exert political pressure. One incident, in particular, demonstrates feminists’ varied approaches to activism as well as the means by which two generations transcended differences to work together on matters of mutual concern. In 1978, provincial officials appointed an interventionist Minister to the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, which had been operational for scarcely more than a year. As Janet Guildford argues, the Honourable Terrence Donahoe placed an ambitious agenda before the Council, cut their budget and vacillated between interference and indifference.139 In late 1979, following Donahoe’s decision not to attend the Council’s annual meeting, four already-frustrated councillors resigned. The Coalition of Women’s Groups (a local group of feminists including representatives from NSWAC, AWP, VOW-Halifax, CRIAW, the YWCA and the Provincial Council of Women among others) called a meeting to discuss recent events with the councillors who had resigned.140 Coalition members then met with the Council on 1 February 1980, calling for a public meeting to discuss the issues. The Council agreed to set aside a portion of its annual meeting, to be held in April 1980, for public discussion.141 The Coalition made the issue public through press releases and debated, among themselves, other tactics which could be used to exert political pressure.142 At a Coalition meeting in April 1980, NSWAC proposed a demonstration in front of the provincial legislature. But in the end, respecting the sensibilities of those feminist organizations animated by a strong sense of propriety, including the Provincial Council of Women, the Coalition officially endorsed a letter writing campaign instead.143 Notwithstanding a mutual desire for change, a diverse feminist movement in Halifax responded to public issues with a mix of confrontational and traditional lobbying tactics. In the months immediately after the initial meeting with the Councillors who had resigned and before the Coalition endorsed a letter-writing campaign in April, NSWAC had already begun planning the public demonstration at the Legislature. NSWAC invited a wide-range of women’s groups to participate. The Women’s Institutes of Nova Scotia declined NSW AC’s invitation, explaining that the organization preferred to correspond with the Minister Responsible for the Status of Women in Nova Scotia on the subject.144 The National Secretaries Association (City of Lakes Chapter) also declined NSW AC’s invitation, explaining that the organization preferred to monitor government activity and would not engage in ‘partisan politics.’145 Thus, some women’s groups, most notably those established after 1960, supported both confrontational and traditional lobbying approaches, while others adhered to more ‘respectable’ forms of activism. The Benefits and Costs of Disruption 267 The potential advantage of disruption is that it may deliver benefits disproportionate to the number of activists involved. J.A. Manette argues that the threats issued by African-Nova Scotians were both real and manufactured so that activists’ preferred solutions might be achieved.146 It is difficult to determine to what degree threats were manufactured and equally difficult to measure the exact effect of disruptive tactics. While threats of bloodshed distinguished African-Nova Scotian from feminist radicals, the latter’s use of confrontational rhetoric and tactics threatened public embarrassment and potential electoral consequences. Politicians feared the consequences of inaction — especially during periods of heightened political consciousness. In the wake of the International Year for Human Rights, when the Black United Front (BUF) secured an unprecedented level of funding from federal Liberals, African-Nova Scotian leaders highlighted the trend of radicalism among young African-Nova Scotians stating: ‘clearly, the mood of our young people in particular is a product of Black Power andat this stage is still free from violence.’147 One can read a similar concern about the consequences of inaction when, in 1976, federal authorities recognized ‘the importance of maintaining a high priority on women’s issues while public interest has been heightened and women’s expectations for equality have been increased.’148 Closer to home, Premier Robert Stanfield could not help but be aware of the impatience spreading among young African-Nova Scotians as young leaders and older moderate activists warned him of growing radicalism among Black youth.149 In 1967, the growing militancy of young Black activists convinced Stanfield that he should ‘establish [his] Commission on Human Rights as rapidly as possible.’150 268 Stanfield’s successor as premier, G.I. Smith, also worried about radicalism among local Black activists. In 1968, as young radicals emerged from Kwacha House to take a more public stance against the local dimensions of racial inequality and began demanding measures including an Affican-Nova Scotian police force and remedial programs for Black public school dropouts, Smith conceded most of the reform- minded demands presented by a delegation led by moderate H.A.J. Wedderbum. The Premier then applied pressure to his lieutenants for fear that inaction would have serious consequences.151 Notwithstanding legislative reform, African-Nova Scotian radicals remained critical of the measures introduced and continued to demand greater degrees of equality. In 1969, for example, the Afro-Canadian Liberation Movement argued that young radicals remained ‘completely disillusioned 1 o by the total ineffectiveness of human rights legislation in [Nova Scotia].’ If Nova Scotia’s legislators had intended to target radical demands with their reforms, they had missed the mark. In the early-to-mid-1970s, Nova Scotia’s political leaders made concessions to, and worked with, moderate feminists when more confrontational feminists began demanding greater reform. In the early-1970s Nova Scotia included ‘sex’ in the proscribed grounds of discrimination underHuman the Rights Act and pledged to eliminate gendered minimum wages at a time when local feminists demanded greater representation of women in provincial politics, abortion reform, more daycare and protection against discrimination based on marital status (to counter a strong local tradition of firing young women upon marriage). In 1976, when Premier Gerald Regan convened an Interdepartmental Committee on the Status of Women he 269 first prioritized quick action, tasking the committee to ‘recommend those legislative changes which lend themselves to easy implementation, have definite policy appeal, and do not stir up undue controversy at this time.’153 Through the Committee, Regan sought to settle local feminist disquiet in the wake of International Women’s Year. In response, Committee members drafted Bill 102 —An Act to Amend the Statute Law Respecting Women — which repealed or amended 19 laws found to discriminate against women.154 In 1977, Premier Gerald Regan established a provincial advisory council when several feminist groups demanded a ministry for women. The consistently critical stance adopted by some local feminists when legislators introduced reforms suggests that political authorities pleased only moderate feminists.155 Notwithstanding their critical view of integrationists and the reforms introduced in Nova Scotia, radicals contributed to the success of moderate activists in Nova Scotia. Disruptive tactics acted as a negative inducement to action and the activists employing such tactics constituted a ‘radical flank’ within the movement to which they belonged.156 The Canadian state responded with two related strategies. First, public officials ignored demands they considered ‘radical’ as well as the activists issuing them. Premier Gerald Regan refused to attend the events or accept meetings with local women’s liberation organizations. The administrators in charge of Nova Scotia’s program for International Women’s Year launched events designed to exclude young, urban feminists.157 Premier Robert Stanfield and his successor G.I. Smith both ignored both requests for meetings demands from young African- Nova Scotian activists. 270 Ignoring young activists alone would neither contain radicalism nor deflect their demands. Confrontational rhetoric and tactics threatened violence in the face of intransigence. Elected officials, treating the threat seriously, negotiated with moderate elements in an effort to forestall any further development of radical sensibilities among aggrieved populations. In Halifax, the compromises encouraged by the emergence of confrontational activists directed dissent and reform in directions favoured by at least two parties. For their part, moderates received concessions sought while the state deflected dissent into a rights program closely aligned with its liberal proclivities. The emergence of a ‘radical flank’ was neither a calculated strategy nor based on artifice. Radicals were genuinely radical and would remain so regardless of any potential benefit to moderates. No agreements, formal or otherwise, led to the emergence of a radical flank. Yet, H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum recalled capitalizing on the turn to radicalism, with the blessing of radical leaders: Rocky Jones was perceived as the Stokely Carmichael and I was perceived as the Martin Luther King, the moderate. So when I would go in [to a political meeting and] asked for five things. They said “Gussy, man, we can’t give you those five things, we’ll give you one.” I said, “Well, I guess I can go back and report to my people and to Rocky.” And I ended up getting three. Rocky and I had that arrangement. There was great worry [about the potential for violence].158 Though disruptive tactics may have been a negative inducement to action, confrontation had a price: most notably in strained relationships. Notwithstanding a considerable show of strength against Robert Oldland’s appointment as City Manager, Halifax City Council approved his appointment. In the end, formerly amicable relations between African-Nova Scotian activists and Mayor O’Brien were severely strained.159 Journalist Nick Fillmore drew a wider circle, arguing that, 271 owing to the Oldland affair and an unrelated human rights complaint against the city of Halifax during which BUF director Jules Oliver publicly accused city administrators of racism, ‘racial problems at Halifax City Hall recently may have set back race relations considerably. There is evidence of a white backlash.’160 Radical feminists also strained valued political relationships. The Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee’s confrontational public approach forced Alexa McDonough (A Woman’s Place-Forrest House worker, friend of NSWAC and feminist) to warn the organization, on behalf of provincial New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate Muriel Duckworth, that they should ‘strip away the rhetoric and the opportunism and assess the solid record over time of our candidate and our Party!’161 So strained were relations that upon resigning as NDP leader, Jeremy Akerman, who had been publicly upbraided by NSWAC on more than one occasion, wrote a letter informing NSWAC that, after 15 years in public office, he had learned that “special interest lobby groups... [were] rarely receptive to the truth.. .but [NSWAC] has been one of the most narrow minded, unfair, self-righteous, and ultra sensitive of all of them.”162 As both sides understood the value of the relationship between urban social movement activists (as electoral support for the NDP) and the NDP (as in-legislature champion of marginalized citizens), both sides moved quickly to repair the breach. If all relationships were susceptible to strain, not all strained relationships threatened similar consequences. Activist organizations either entirely or primarily dependent on public financing faced graver threats than hurt feelings and closed political doors. In response to the disruptive and divisive tactics promoted by the 272 Black United Front under its first Executive Director, Jules Oliver, federal officials — concerned about the optics of investing in a divisive organization and the utility of drawing policy input from a selectively representative organization — threatened, as early as 1972, to rescind its funding unless BUF better realized its ‘consensus’ mandate.163 The changes instituted at BUF very shortly after the government’s warning — including Jules Oliver’s resignation — illustrate both the power of the patron in any client-patron relationship and the tactical limits dependence on such a relationship could impose. Activist Ambition and the Limits of Viability Activists were not free to pursue any means to their desired ends. The range of viable tactics was partly defined by earlier activist decisions. In Halifax, African- Nova Scotians and feminists discovered that the political consciousness forged, organizations established and resources gathered limited the range of tactics they could realistically employ. Regardless of the resource mobilization strategy employed, local organizations struggled against the limits of tactical viability. Whether for reasons of financial viability or members’ political sensibilities, activists temporarily or permanently abandoned tactics. In addition, the parameters of public and political tolerance limited the range of employable tactics as well as activists’ political influence. Rarely did tactical choices end in organizational dissolution, but they did complicate mobilization by occasioning the loss of members, resources or community support. 273 Organizational structure and mandate constituted a constant brake on activist ambition. Structure and mandate defined the range of tactical choice by influencing the resources available to a particular organization. By structuring an organization around a particular group, such as educators, professionals or university graduates, activists at once created a vehicle to address particular concerns and also limited the human resources available to an organization. As noted in Chapter 4, when the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (HHBPWCC) met in Halifax in 1970, that organization, which linked human and financial resources through dues and donations, had been worried about human resources for the better part of a decade, feeling that they ‘couldn’tdo any more on the money’ they had.164 Other organizations faced similar structural challenges. Open to all provincial women, the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee (NSWAC) nevertheless worried about human resources, and considered restructuring, when members suggested that a centralized decision-making structure limited NSWAC’s appeal as it offered members little say in organizational affairs between meetings.165 For HBPWC and NSWAC (and many other organizations) the loss of human resources was particularly worrisome as the organizational structure linked financial to human resources through a resource mobilization strategy dependent on dues and donations. Without sufficient human and financial resources organizations’ tactical choices were limited. Resource availability constituted an undeniable limit on the range of viable tactics. All organizations confronted the constraints posed by limited resources. The Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women, for example, periodically 274 suspended publication of its newsletter,Coastwise, for want of human and financial resources.166 Similarly, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women suspended production ofStatus the o f Women News in the spring of 1980, owing to ‘an acute and perennial funding crisis.’167 In the face of limited resources, the Voice of Women also abandoned certain tactics. Initially Voices planned to present their political positions in both official languages. As translation costs mounted, they turned to their members to fill translation roles. In time, however, ‘the French women got sick of doing all the translating’ and VOW-Halifax abandoned its policy of bilingual communications.168 Even well-funded organizations faced similar challenges. For lack of financial resources, the Black United Front was forced to abandon a host of initiatives, including its use of community workers, a proposed Black census and a program to provide low-interest loans to African-Nova Scotian entrepreneurs.169 No organization was free of resource constraints. Given greater human, material or financial resources, organizational activity would likely have expanded. In some cases, the very breadth of an organization’s appeal limited the tactics employed. Where an organization betrayed the political sensibilities of its members, or its constituent community, it lost support and therefore essential resources. Many organizations inherently understood this and intentionally avoided divisive tactics. But activist organizations could not always avoid divisions over the issue of tactics: the Voice of Women-Halifax faced such a situation in the early 1960s. By taking to the streets in protest (c. 1962) and taking a stand against the nuclear policies of Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (c. 1963), Muriel Duckworth 275 and like-minded Voices clashed with other members whose sense of propriety and understanding of ‘non-partisan’ political action could not tolerate such170 action. Duckworth remembered that, in those circumstances, VOW-Halifax faced difficult choices. She recalled that ‘one woman said, ‘if you do, I’m finished, I’m leaving you.’ Another one said, ‘if you don’t, I’m leaving you.” 171 Other organizations faced similar challenges. Almost a decade later, the Black United Front (BUF) lost human resources when its first Executive Director seemed more interested in opportunities for confronting authority than in addressing community needs.172 In August 1972, citing disappointment with the progress realized to date and the seemingly divisive effects of BUF’s confrontational approach, Paul Winn (one of BUF’s ‘most effective workers’) publicly announced his resignation. At the time of his departure African-Nova Scotians reported that serious questions remained as to whether BUF had ‘gained the support of many Black communities.’173 Similarly, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House (AWP) lost four of its workers and incurred the public wrath of other feminist organizations following the conflict that saw AWP accused of exploiting the labour of local women to renovate the house and open its doors. Activist organizations either aligned tactics with members’ political sensibilities or faced the consequences. While none of the organizations in question collapsed following the loss of community and/or member support, divisive tactics complicated activist efforts. Public and political tolerance also constituted a limit on the range of viable tactics. Savvy organizations did their best to strike a proper balance between applying sufficient political pressure and retaining legitimacy through respectable 276 tactics.174 Occasionally, however, activists misjudged the limits of political and public tolerance. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the disruptive tactics employed by radical local activists had already attracted the wrong sort of political attention. Nova Scotia’s political establishment took threats of bloodshed very seriously. In 1969, the Attorney-General’s office reported on the activities of African-Nova Scotian radicals to Premier Smith noting ‘the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are constantly in touch with the situation in the Halifax-Dartmouth area...[and] the 17<; situation is very quiet at the present time.’ Social tolerance also limited the range of viable tactics. As African-Nova Scotian activists grew more radical in their rhetoric, evidence of a ‘white backlash’ surfaced.176 The Premier’s Office received letters from disgruntled white Nova Scotians andThe Fourth Estate published evidence of a growing backlash.177 In 1970, observing that public protest had become commonplace, an otherwise sympathetic journalist suggested that ‘demonstrating.. .isn’t the answer in Halifax. The demonstrations.. .usually win more opposition for their cause than support.’178 When the Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status of Women toured Nova Scotia five years later, members similarly reported that a backlash was growing in response to the ‘women’s liberation’ movement. The most extreme and distasteful social response to Haligonian activism occurred among white supremacists. As early as 1976 both the Canadian National Socialist White People’s Party and the Western Guard Party circulated racist newspapers, posters, and pamphlets in Nova Scotia.179 Then, in the early 1980s, the Ku Klux Klan re-emerged in Nova Scotia - a development partly attributed to the economic strain of the era — which precipitated a resistance campaign among 277 African-Nova Scotians that blurred movement lines when feminists and labour groups lent their support. Although few Canadians went so far as to support the Klan, public opinion polls conducted at the end of the 1970s revealed significant social resistance to rights claimants’ demands. In a national survey conducted in 1979,39 percent of respondents reported becoming more tolerant of rights initiatives in the past 10 years. Another 35 percent reported that they hadn’t become more tolerant of any disadvantaged groups. Moreover, 29 percent of survey respondents reported becoming less tolerant.181 Additionally, fully 38 percent of survey respondents reported growing less tolerant of preferential treatment for those who | O'} had been discriminated against in the past. Social resistance to activism compromised activist efforts to win public support and thereby threatened to limit political influence. Activists attracting the wrong kind of attention, whether social or political, further complicated their struggle. Activist Coalitions in Halifax Partly in response to the tactical limitations presented by resource difficulties, and partly to present a united front in political and social arenas, activists endeavoured to build inter-organizational relationships. Though each movement suffered its share of internecine conflict, differences were not so great that they could not be surmounted. By the late-1970s and early 1980s, feminists had established coalitions which transcended generational lines. During the same period, African-Nova Scotians established formal coalitions. As noted above and in previous chapters, African- Nova Scotians and feminists worked together to address specific issues on more than one occasion. Activists’ membership in more than one organization, the multi- 278 dimensionality of personal identity, and the intersection of social networks all blurred movement borders and facilitated cooperation among SMOs belonging to different movements. Both ad hoc and permanent coalitions filled an important communication role, communalized resources and presented a united front in Halifax. Feminists had long come together through organizations including the Local Council of Women and, though young feminists did not join the Council, it continued to unite local feminist organizations throughout the 1970s.183 So too did feminists collaborate on a number of projects including a Zonta daycare project and the Women’s Information Project (which involved the Halifax Women’s Centre and other local feminist groups). In the late-1970s, at a time when political austerity exacerbated resource concerns, Haligonian feminists established coalitions of varying permanency. Ad hoc committees came together to organize annual events such as International Women’s Day events or Take Back the Night marches. Other coalitions came together as issues emerged. Feminists endeavoured to be inclusive in their coalitions, regularly inviting well-established and emerging organizations to join. The Coalition of Women’s Groups, which met at A Woman’s Place-Forrest House, drew together the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women-Nova Scotia, Black Professional Women’s Association as well as Voice of Women-Halifax and the Provincial Council of Women among others.184 Together, this inter-generational group addressed feminist concerns related to the operation of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women. 279 Though differences continued to distinguish Haligonian feminist organizations, they clearly preferred cooperation to isolation in their campaigns for gender equality. Throughout the late 1970s African-Nova Scotians also began to build local coalitions as a means to present a united front and forge a truly provincial Black consensus. Under its second Executive Director, Arthur Criss, the Black United Front (BUF) established better relationships with local activist organizations. Notwithstanding improved relations, little in the way of a formal coalition resulted until the early 1980s. In 1981, at a meeting in Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, BUF and the Bilalian Development Association of Nova Scotia pledged better cooperation within the movement for racial equality.’185 The Tatamagouche Agreement responded directly to the years of division and limited contact and presented a vision of unity, mutual aid, political influence and community development.186 In 1982, cooperative strategies expanded when the Black Professional Women’s Group (HBPWCG) joined the Nova Scotia Alliance of Provincial Black Organizations.187 In 1982-3 BUF reported that the Black Educators Association and the African United Baptist Association (AUBA) had joined the Alliance188 BUF proposed the formal adoption of the Tatamagouche Agreement, the formation of a new National Black Coalition of Canada and a closer relationship between the AUBA and BUF.189 As indicated throughout this dissertation, cross-movement cooperation took numerous forms. And certainly such cooperation did not begin in the 1980s when feminists and labour activists aided African-Nova Scotian campaigns against the Ku Klux Klan. In the early 1960s, Voice of Women-Halifax women joined with the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Colored People to oppose racist 280 hiring practices among local employers. Friends of the Nova Scotia Project, a cross movement group of activists, formed in the mid-1960s to raise funds for the Student Union for Peace Action project in Halifax led by Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones. Even following his turn to militancy, Jones consulted Muriel Duckworth on issues of social justice and activism. Female representatives from the Black United Front and the Black Women’s Congress (of which the author found only one reference in the archival record) were consulted when women were organizing A Woman’s Place- Forrest House. Finally, groups including the Black Women’s Congress and Black Professional Women’s Group blurred the lines between the movements by structuring an organization around both a gender and racial identity. BPWG joined the Alliance of Provincial Black Organizations and, previously, worked cooperatively with African-Nova Scotian SMOs. Local umbrella organizations, such as the Movement for Citizens Voice and Action, which was led by Muriel Duckworth and drew together forty diverse SMOs around community development and urban renewal issues, also communalized resources, presented a united front and, as did all coalitions, strengthened the bonds within and across movements.190 So too could activists’ favoured political party, the NDP (itself a generalizing reform project of sorts), be considered to serve a purpose similar to inter-movement coalitions. Local Activists’ Place in National Movements Living under a federal political system, rights activists in Halifax struggled for greater equality on multiple fronts. Local action alone was not enough for communities whose equality was a shared jurisdiction. With Canadian women more 281 or less evenly distributed across the country, the federal jurisdiction had long been a focal point of feminist activism. This was less so for Affican-Canadians whose communities existed as pockets across the country and whose organizations, before 1969, were provincially focused vehicles for equality. Conversely, Nova Scotia’s feminists had long worked through national activist federations such as the Business and Professional Women of Canada, the Canadian Federation of University Women, Zonta International, and the Council of Women. African-Nova Scotians could claim no such experience. By 1970, the movement for racial equality had mobilized only one national organization — The National Black Coalition of Canada (NBCC) — and by the mid-1970s it had fallen into disarray. Younger feminists, meanwhile, used recently established federated organizations — such as the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women — and an umbrella organization, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, to demand gender equality in Canada. The National Black Coalition of Canada (NBCC, f. 1969) was the first national Black organization in Canada. Although challenged by the very breadth of its membership and the client-patron relationship, the NBCC presented a united Affican-Canadian voice in Canada’s political forums. The NBCC authored a number of briefs to municipal, provincial and federal officials, one of which addressed the Oldland affair in Halifax.191 In spite of internal difficulties the NBCC made important political interventions including their brief to the Special Joint Committee on the Constitution on the subject of racial discrimination in Canada. Haligonians played a central role in the NBCC. H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum was active on the 282 NBCC executive from its inception. In 1979, at a conference convened in Halifax to reconstitute the National Black Coalition of Canada, members elected Wedderbum as Chairman and A.E. Criss (Executive Director of the Black United Front) as • 1Q7 . Secretary/Treasurer and located its headquarters in Nova Scotia's capital. When it collapsed again in 1983, the Black United Front resolved itself to again resurrecting Canada’s only national Black organization. For both feminists and African-Nova Scotians, the most important federal campaign of the period centred on constitutional negotiations and an entrenched bill of rights. As the NBCC prepared its brief, feminists from Halifax joined with their national counterparts to ensure that their rights were respected in constitutional negotiations. Like their African-Nova Scotian counterparts, Haligonian feminists (who built a determined local feminist movement) played prominent roles in national organizations and federal lobbying efforts. In 1979, Lynn McDonald was elected president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC established 1972).193 By 1981, Kathy Moggridge sat as Vice-President of NAC and chairperson of their employment committee.194 In 1980, Muriel Duckworth (who, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, had served two terms as national president of the Voice of Women) sat as president of the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women. Each, along with the many feminists supporting such organizations, shaped the Canadian feminist response to constitutional reform and placed Halifax feminists at the centre of that campaign. Lynn McDonald guided NAC into constitutional debates. Under McDonald’s leadership, NAC held a public forum on the constitution in Toronto on 18 October 283 1980 as one in a series of regional meetings. Two days later, NAC’s executive presented a brief to the Special Joint Committee on the Constitution.195 The National Action Committee collected pledges of support from Canadian women and forwarded them to political authorities.196 NAC also engaged the national media and encouraged member organizations to launch provincial pressure campaigns. In addition, NAC endorsed a new feminist coalition mobilized in the wake of cancelled Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women conferences. The Ad Hoc Conference on Women and the Constitution responded to political interference with the Advisory Council and a perceived need to coordinate feminist activism around the constitutional question.197 Haligonian feminists participated in the Ad Hoc Conference on Women and the Constitution and NAC’s annual conference. Nationwide, more than 1,000 women gathered for the Ad Hoc Conference convened in Ottawa on 14-15 February 1981. Among those in attendance was Voice of Women-Halifax member Elizabeth Mullaly. Upon her return, VOW-Halifax minutes (from a meeting hosted at Saint Mary’s University), read: In her opinion the women who organized the conference, women from Toronto and Ottawa, got what they wanted. However many women attending from the east and west were not as satisfied. It was a very political conference. E.M. found it hard to get a sense of what women in Canada want, in common.1 QR When NAC convened its annual meeting in March 1981, one month after the Ad Hoc Conference, they continued to attract the support of feminists from across the country. Delegates from both the Dalhousie Caucus of Women and the Law and A Woman’s Place-Forrest House attended the conference. Additionally, Judy Wouk represented the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women and the 284 Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee sent delegates. There, younger feminists joined with representatives from well-established organizations such as the Canadian Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) and the National Council of Canada in the struggle for constitutional influence.199 Among the tactics employed were a letter writing campaign directed toward Minister of Justice Jean Chretien, letters to Members of Parliament, a nationwide phone-tree, intensive personal lobbying of federal legislators and an advertising campaign.200 As a result of feminist efforts, a CFUW newsletter circulating in Halifax reported that ‘the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as amended in the House of Commons on April 23, 1981 will guarantee women’s equality.’201 Canadian legislators recognized the claims of Haligonian activists. In Nova Scotia African-Nova Scotians and feminists actively participated in the dialogues that shaped the provincial rights program. Local activists also raised their voice in the dialogues giving shape to a national rights program. Federal legislators even recognized the contributions of feminists and African-Nova Scotians. Noting that the Special Joint Committee on the Constitution had heard from over 300 Canadians, Minister of Justice Jean Chretien declared that he ‘was most impressed by the eloquent and moving testimony of the National Association of Japanese Canadians and of the National Black Coalition of Canada.’909 African-Nova Scotians, whose efforts had helped resuscitate and keep the NBCC afloat, were recognized as a compelling intervener in one of Canada’s pre-eminent rights documents. Local feminists received similar recognition. Acknowledging the pressure mounted by 285 Canadian feminists, and Haligonian contributions to that campaign, an official from Jean Chretien’s office wrote to Muriel Duckworth on 5 June 1981: Dear Ms. Duckworth: The Honourable Jean Chretien, Minister of Justice, has asked me to reply to your recent telegram regarding the equality of status between men and women under the proposed Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As you undoubtedly know, on April 23 and 24, 1981, the House of Commons and the Senate adopted the following amendment to the Charter: “28. Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.” This is a significant provision, since it ensures that all rights are guaranteed equally to both sexes, and thus removes any possible doubt as to the equality in law of persons, regardless of sex. The government was most impressed by the representations made by the various women’s organizations following the Ad Hoc Conference on Women and the Constitution held in February. The proposals for amendments to the Charter were closely examined and it was felt that the above amendment covered virtually all of the legitimate concerns.203 Although many Canadian feminists received similar letters, its sentiment was no less genuine. Conclusion Although constrained by political consciousness, structure, mandate, resources, and the limits of political and public tolerance, Haligonian activists participated in the series of overlapping dialogues then informing Canada’s rights revolution. Public policy outcomes reflected a middle ground among the many rights agendas being promoted. That middle ground was decidedly in line with state preferences for a 286 liberal and integrationist rights regime. Nevertheless, by the end of 1982, feminists and African-Nova Scotians possessed new rights and had become key players in the national dialogue on rights. Notwithstanding an emerging backlash to rights claims, local activists and their counterparts throughout Canada would use their new found standing as political actors to push for greater equality in the post-Charter era. Historical context played an important role in the tactics deployed. Existing local movements for racial and gender equality provided examples to be emulated or avoided. The local dimensions of inequality, meanwhile, formed the evidence mustered in dialogue with the public, elected officials and bureaucrats. Parallel (inter)national movements inspired local activists and provided them with examples to be emulated or avoided as well as scholarship/theory to frame their interventions. The emergence of national organizations paralleling both local movements also enabled local activists to participate in federal dialogues, as members and leaders. Rising literacy and educational rates gave local activists the essential skills and decreased deference to engage political authorities as equals. Earlier facets of the mobilization process also shaped the tactics deployed. The political consciousness(es) reached by any particular group shaped the tone of activism. Radicals and confrontational activists, for example, routinely refused to support respectful tactics and moderate, integrationist goals. The organizations established, leaders identified and social networks linking activists, meanwhile, determined the nature and scale of activism. Some activists created research organizations while others prioritized political action. Some local organizations were large and staff-based while others were dependent on volunteers. Organizational 287 mandate, its leadership and the network supporting the group determined what would be done and on what scale. Resources also determined the scale of activism, and also determined timing. Without resources, no action whatsoever was possible. Again, the Canadian state also shaped activist tactics by determining what actions were acceptable and could, therefore, bring activists into the dialogues on rights. Activist influence was not merely a matter of persistence, mustering numbers or raising the loudest voice. Participants did not meet on a level playing field. Based on perceptions of power, legitimacy and threat, provincial and federal officials actively silenced and empowered various groups within each movement. Public financing was only one part of a state strategy which also included privileged access to authorities, negotiation, and employment. On the other end of the spectrum, dramatic events such as the October Crisis clearly defined the limits of dissent in Canada and demonstrated how the state responded to extremists. Less dramatic forms of state repression occurred everyday, including stonewalling, surveillance and harassment. Yet, activists were not merely pawns. Local African-Canadians and feminists exercised agency by persisting in the face of political intransigence and harassment, engendering public support for their positions, choosing to work within state structures in an attempt to effect change from within, and preying upon officials’ perceptions and fears of radicals to wrest further concessions from them. In order to realize their political and social objectives, local activists played a wide range of roles including political challenger, collaborator, social critic and educator - to name but few. 1 Neil Stammers, “Social Movements and the Social Construction o f Human Rights,” Human Rights Quarterly 21 (1999): 980-1008 288 2 Alexandra Dobrowolsky, “The Women’s Movement in Flux: Feminism and Framing, Passion, and Politics,” in Miriam Smith, ed. Group Politics and Social Movements in Canada (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2008), 166. 3 NSARM, Record Group 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57 (G.I. Smith), Folder 16-1 (a), Memo from Department of the Attorney General, 30 July, 1969. New Left organizations and the Vancouver Women’s Caucus, which organized the Abortion Caravan in the spring o f 1970, also became the subject of state surveillance. See, for example: Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan and the RCMP,” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 463-496. 4 Charles Tilly, “Repertoires of Contention in America and Britain, 1750-1830,” in Mayer N. Zald and John D. McCarthy, eds. The Dynamics o f Social Movements: Resource Mobilization, Social Control, and Tactics (Cambridge: Winthrop Publishers, 1977), 131. 5 Sethna and Hewitt, “Clandestine Operations,” The Canadian Historical Review 90.3 (September 2009): 463-496. 6 On feminist campaigns including jury duty, the municipal franchise, and gendered job advertisements, see: NSARM, Manuscript Group 1, Volume 1596, Maijorie Grace Wombolt Fonds, Volume 55, Letters, Papers, Legal Status o f Women etc. 1938-54, various; Volume 60, Lectures and Papers - Women in Political Life, 1954-1958; Volume 64, Lectures and Papers: Right o f a Married Woman to an Independent Domicile, Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Right o f a Married Woman to an Independent Domicile;” Volume 65, Letters and Papers, 1949-52, “A Woman’s Role, Her Rights and Responsibilities;” Volume 82, HBPWC Fonds, 1949-52, various; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 711, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 8, Minutes of Meeting May 1959-May 1960, Minutes of Board Meeting, September, I960;” MG 20, Volume 715, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 65, Women Jurors: Data 1951 and 1978 Item 65.7, Club History, 24 March, 1958, for 20 Question Challenge Program on CHNS; MG 20, Volume 716, HBPWC, Volume 73, Coastwise, 1947-1976, October 1947,2; MG 20, Volume 716, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 73, Coastwise, Item 73.38 A Round Up of Women: Business and Professional Women’s Club o f Dartmouth, Nova Scotia;” MG 20, Volume 717, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 91, Booklet: Choosing a Career; MG 20, Volume 717, HBPWC Fonds, Volume 2, “With Enthusiasm and Faith: History of the Canadian Federation o f Business and Professional Women’s Club, 1930, 1972;” and MG 15, Volume 16, Nova Scotia’s Ethnic Community Fonds (Blacks), Volume 19, Nova Scotia Human Rights Act, Item 32, Human Equality — Nova Scotia's Human Rights Act. See also: Judith Fingard, “Women’s Organizations: The Heart and Soul of Women’s Activism,” in Judith Finguard and Janet Guildford, eds.Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work and Social Policy in Post-1945 Halifax (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 2005), 25-48. On interwar and postwar Black activism, see: Bridglal Pachai, Beneath the Clouds o f the Promised Land'. The Survival o f Nova Scotia's Blacks, volumes I and II (Halifax: The Black Educators Association, 1990). 7 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 91, Jim Robson (Assistant to the Premier), No Folder Number, Briefs, Brief by Provincial Council o f Women, May 1971. 8 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2932, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 6, Speeches, Briefs and Reports, 1968, Brief Presented by Voice of Women of Halifax to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada. On VOW’s RCSW brief as an early expression of women’s liberation thinking in Halifax and Lubka’s professional interest in issues of gender equality, see: Frances Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time: The Halifax Chapter of the Voice of Women in the 1960s,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality, 253-280. 9 Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status o f Women, Herself/Elle-Meme (Halifax: Government o f Nova Scotia, 1976), submissions. Among those submitting briefs were Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women, the Halifax Women’s Action Committee (later changed to the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee), Halifax Rape Relief, Judy Wouk, Linda Ruffman, Pro-Feminae, Provincial Council o f Women and the Canadian Federation o f University Women. 10 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1981, Letter from Terrence B. Donahoe dated 1 February 1980, Letter to Dr. Gerald Sheehy, Minister of Health, dated 12 April 1980; Letter to Chief of Police dated 16 April 1980; Letter to G.A. Regan, Minister of Labour, Labour Canada, 12 October 1980. Also: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, Minutes of Member’s Meeting, March 289 22, Veith House; February 1978 Position Paper: The Appointment o f Women to Boards and Commissions in Nova Scotia. 11 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 2, Canadian Human Rights Commission, Brief to the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission. 12 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 1992-515/083 (John Buchanan), Folder 59-4.1, Status of Women, Letter from Linda Christiansen-Ruffman dated 24 February 1981. 13 Library and Archives Canada, MG 28, Volume 41, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, reports, 1969, ACLM Brief to Chairman, Law Amendments Committee Re: Bill No. 1 1969. 14 NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia Ethnic Communities (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 28, Copy of Address by G.I. Smith; LAC, MG 31, HI 44, National Black Coalition o f Canada Fonds, Volume 1, No Folder Number, UMOSA, 1970. 15 See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Fonds, Folder 27, Coalition o f Women’s Groups, Item 27.9, Letter from Jacqueline M. Austen; RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 1992-515/090 (John Buchanan), Folder 59-4.1, Letter from Dr. Mairi St. John Macdonald dated 21 October 1981. 16 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 21, National Action Committee, Item 21-9, Form Letter to Jean Chretien c. March 1981. 17 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2911, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 28, Housing in Nova Scotia, letter and copy o f Brief from NSCL&HRA. 18 NSARM, MG 15, Nova Scotia Ethnic Communities (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 28, Copy of Address by G.I. Smith. 19 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 30, ‘The Black Paper,’ n.d. Written sometime after 1970, the title ‘The Black Paper’ was undoubtedly a play on the White Paper dealing with aboriginal rights. 20 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 31 (Robert Stanfield), Folder 16-1(a), Study of Negroes, Memo from Robert L. Stanfield dated 24 April 1967, 1. 21 Interview: H.A.J. ‘Gus’ Wedderbum conducted 21 April 2005. 22 Ibid. 23 Government officials and the Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights regularly called on Oliver to report on 'the situation' in Nova Scotia's Black communities. Oliver’s opinion became a strong voice for African-Nova Scotians. Oliver wrote broad histories o f the Black community for the government, and regularly appears in the minutes o f the Interdepartmental Committee's meetings. See, for example: NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 15, Reverend Dr. W.P. Oliver,The Negro in Nova Scotia, 1686-1967. Oliver's paper was circulated and discussed at the March 23, 1968 meeting of the Interdepartmental Committee. See: NSARM, RG 85, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Volume 2, Item 20, Agenda of the Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 23 March 1968. Oliver also regularly corresponded with the sitting Premier regarding the Black communities o f Nova Scotia. See: RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9 (Robert Stanfield), Folder 16-1 (a), Study o f Negroes, Minutes of Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, various dates, Agenda of Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, various dates and Correspondence between Oliver and Premier Robert Stanfield, 1964-65. See also: McMaster University Archives, Combined University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament/Student Union for Peace Action Collection, Box 9, The Nova Scotia Project, Folder: The Nova Scotia Project. Nova Scotia Project Activists reported, upon their arrival, that “one university-educated man, for instance, whom the white establishment chooses to consider a spokesman for the Negroes, is actually employed by the government...” 24 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 16, NSWAC, NSWAC: Minutes of Members’ Meeting, 22 March, Veith House. 25 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 80 (Gerald A. Regan), Appointments Completed 1971 (7 files), various. 26 Dalhousie University Archives, MS 11 -4, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 3.4, New Democratic Party. 27 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 80 (Gerald Regan), no file number, Appointments Completed, 1971, letter from Carlyle W. Warner dated 9 June 1971. 290 28 Jules Ramon Oliver, “Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement o f Colored People: An Historical Evaluation of the NSAACP and the Role it has Played in the Area o f Employment,” Master o f Social Work Thesis (Halifax: Maritime School of Social Work and Acadia University, 1969), 10. 29 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 1596, Wombolt Fonds, Folder 55, MGW: Letters and Papers, Legal Status o f Women, “Legal and Economic Status o f Women;” and Folder 60, Lectures and Papers, Women in Political Life, 1954-1958, “Women Power In Canadian Politics;” Folder 65, Letters and Papers, “A Woman’s Role, Her Rights, and Responsibilities: Presented to the Dartmouth-Halifax Chapter o f the National Secretaries Association, 3 January 1962.” 30 Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 263. 31 Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 264. 32 Unfortunately the CFUW records only reach back to 1970. Nevertheless, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1658, The Canadian Federation o f University Women-Halifax Branch Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, 1970-1977. 33 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, Jewish Labour Committee Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, “A Pilot Project in Self-Determination on the Part of Nova Scotia’s Negroes, ” 5. 34 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, The ACLM, volume 1, number 1, March 1969, 2. 35 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 130, The Black Paper, 6. 36 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1552, AWP Fonds, No Folder Number, Newsletters, February 1978, 12. 37 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1261, AWP Fonds, Folder 1, House History, Item 1.9, To be voted on at the general meeting, 1-2. 38 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Coalition of Women’s Groups, Item 11 - 3, Letter from Nancy Kimber MacDonald dated 21 November 1977. 39 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2905, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 25, CRIAW 4th AGM, Toronto 1980, CRIAW Nova Scotia Meeting 2 December 1980; MG 20, Volume 1558, Local Council of Women Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, march 19 1981 to Dec 3 1982, Minutes 10 April 1981. 40 Dalhousie’s Women and the Law joined with NSWAC and several unions under the banner the Women and Work Committee to organize and fund a Women and Occupation Health and Safety Workshop. Perhaps not surprisingly considering Judy Wouk’s work with Pro-Feminae, NSWAC teamed with that organization and Canada Manpower to develop and present an educational series and bibliography on women and work. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSARM, no file number, Women’s Issues. On NSWAC workshops, see: MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1. 41 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1867, CFUW-Halifax Branch Fonds, Folder 1, Newsletters-Halifax Branch, 1978-1987, January 1981. 42 See: LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, JLC Fonds, Folder 40-5, Correspondence: The Institute for Public Affairs, Dalhousie University Halifax, N.S., Letter from Sid Blum dated 25 September, 1959; NSARM, MG 1992-718/001, Fred R. MacKinnon Fonds, Volume 1, 1962-3, “Panel Will Air ‘Human Rights,”’ dated 25 January 1962; and MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 40, ‘Negroes Still Fight Job Bar,’ The Mail Star, 20 November 1967 43 NSWAC convened many public meetings and panels, especially workshops. See for example: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 4, Correspondence, 1975-1977; MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1981; and DUA, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 3.7, Mailings, various NSWAC updates. 44 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 13, AWP Activities, AWP Program of Activities, 1 April-31 March 1980, 1. 45 Among the issues addressed were feminism, women and the law, women and health, women’s sexuality, personal finances, women’s literature, and women and alcoholism. See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 13, AWP Activities, AWP Program o f Activities, 1 April-31 March 1980. 46 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, No Folder Number, Women’s Issues, Women and Health Poster. 291 47 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, no folder number, Women’s Issues, Pro- Feminae. 48 For example, see: NSARM, Record Group 85, Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission Fonds, Folder 2, Premier’s Report on Human Rights, Final Report of the Negro Youth Employment Strategy, 5; MG 15, Volume 16, Black Communities Fonds; MG 20, Volume 1356, NSWAC Fonds; and Volume 2002-066, Black United Front Fonds; Interview: Muriel Duckworth conducted 20 May 2005, Interview: Kathy Moggridge conducted 15 January 2007, Interview: Christina Simmons conducted 22 September 2006, Interview: Linda Kealey conducted 23 May 2006. 49 NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Final Report on the Problem o f Unemployment for the Negro. 50 Qt. Myma Slater in Video: “Making a Difference: Halifax Women Remember the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s,” filmed 7 May 1999. A special thanks to Janet Guildford for sharing this video: part o f the project that eventually led to the book Mothers of the Municipality. For Social Workers Newsletter see: NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 19. For Nova Scotia Teacher’s Union newsletter see: MG 15, Volume 20, Item 10. For government produced pamphlet, Pearleen Oliver, "An Historic Minority: The Black People o f Nova Scotia" published at the request o f the AUBA in 1981 see: RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 41, Item 58, reel 9241. Among religious publications, The Atlantic Baptist offered perhaps the most space to Black activists, although the United Church was also a valuable ally. See: MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Communities Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks) Items 56, 58, 59 for example. 52 Other Black media sources included: Black Insights, a six-week long television series on CBC in 1978 hosted by Burnley ‘Rocky’ Jones and Ebony Express (later Black Express) a Black newspaper published between 1979 and 1982. See for example: Nancy Lubka, “Schiff Letter to School Board: Racism Hidden in the Forms?” The Fourth Estate, 1 May 1969, 9; Nancy Lubka, “Freedom Coming Slow for Canadian Women,” The Fourth Estate, 15 May 1969,9; Nancy Lubka, “Blacks Struggle to Fund Themselves,” The Fourth Estate, 24 July 1969, 11; Nancy Lubka, “Black United Front Raises Questions: Action or a $470,000 Bureaucracy?” The Fourth Estate, 13 November 1969, 3; Nancy Lubka, “1895 Revival Group: Women’s Liberation Grows in Strength,” The Fourth Estate, 26 February 1970, 13; Judith Wouk, “The Do-Nothing A-G,”The Fourth Estate, 1 October 1970, 3; and Judith Wouk, “Duckworth Again elected National President: War is Most Serious Polluter, Says Voice o f Women,” The Fourth Estate, 12 November 1970, 3. See also: Nancy Lubka, “Ferment in Nova Scotia,”Queen’s Quarterly 76.2 (summer 1969): 213-228. 54 NSARM, Manuscript Group 15, Volume 20, Item 26. "Black Journal: A New Approach to Inter racial Relations," Dartmouth Free Press, June 16, 1971, 6. 55 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2906, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 13, CRIAW-Nova Scotia Branch, Provincial Conferences, Information Letter re: Conference: Women and Research: Health Issues; and MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 7, Minutes Miscellaneous and Miscellaneous Correspondence, Minutes, CRIAW, 18 October 1978. The series was made possible through a grant secured through the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement o f Women. 56 See: Steve Kimber, “Growing Racial Problems: Ignoring the Facts Isn’t the Answer,”The Fourth Estate, 17 June 1971, 3; and J.A. Manette, ‘“Making Something Happen’: Nova Scotia’s Black Renaissance, 1968-1986,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University (Ottawa: Carleton, 1987). 57 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 20, Item 26. "Black Journal: A New Approach to Inter—racial Relations," Dartmouth Free Press, June 16, 1971, 6. 58 Marjorie Wolfe, “Working in Words: Feminist Publishing in Canada,” in Maureen Fitzgerald et al., eds. Still Ain’t Satisfied! Canadian Feminism Today (Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1982): 265-275. 59 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, VOW Constitution, Memo on the Aims and Activities o f Voice o f Women, presented by International Affairs Committee, 5. 60 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1347, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 38, Correspondence, 1977-1982, Item 38- 54, Web Drawing: Publicity Network. 61 DU A, MSI 1-4, NSWAC Fonds, Box 1, Folder 1.8, Unemployment, CBC TV Interview re: Women and Unemployment. 292 62 For example, see: NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Communities Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks); MG 20, Volume 1356, NSWAC Fonds; and Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds. 63 Interview: Duckworth, Interview: Moggridge, Interview: Simmons, Interview: Kealey. 64 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2914, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 3, Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW), Address of National President Mrs. Ruth Bell. 65 Interview: Duckworth. See also: NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 2, VOW Constitution, Voice of Women: Education through Involvement; and Folder 9, VOW Minutes - Halifax Branch, 1960 - 1985, Minutes, 10 May 1963. On both developments, see: Frances Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 266; Wanda Thomas Bernard and Judith Fingard, “Black Women at Work: Race, Family, and Community in Greater Halifax,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers o f the Municipality, 205. Bernard and Fingard attribute the study to the 1961 Interracial Council. However, based on interviews and the records of VOW-Halifax, Early attributes the campaign to VOW-Halifax’s Human Relations Committee. The latter view has strong support in my research while Bernard and Fingard provide no footnote as to their sources. 66 NSARM, MG 1999-023-002-7-17, Constance L. MacFarlane Fonds, Folder 38, Zonta President’s Report, 1962-1963. 67 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Clubs Fonds, Folder 65, Women as Jurors: Data 1951-1978, Item 65.7, Club History; and Volume 717, Halifax Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, Folder 89, Report - Committee on Vocational Guidance for Girls; MG 1, Volume 1596, Maijorie Grace Wombolt Fonds, Folder 64, MGW: Lectures and Papers: Right o f a Married Woman to an Independent Domicile. 68 See: NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 43, From Slavery to Ghetto, 6; Volume 20, Item 15, The Negro in Nova Scotia, 1686-1967; MG 20, Volume 1053, Folder 3, various; Sound and Moving Image Collection, FSG 20 AC 2128, Pamela B. Collins Collection, Rocky Jones on HERO, 27 November 1977. 69 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 43, From Slavery to Ghetto, 6. 70 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 20, Item 15, The Negro in Nova Scotia, 1686-1967. 71 On work with the Institute o f Public Affairs, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 13, Blacks in the Economic Structure of South-West Nova Scotia. On the creation of an ‘unofficial’ research division see: Volume 2002-066/001, BUF Fonds, Folder 2, Provincial Council, 1980-2, Minutes, Council Meeting, 4 October 1980. 72 On the Women’s Bureau, see: Susan Perly, “Bureau Has 4 Major Projects: Helping Women Achieve Equal Rights in Nova Scotia,”The Fourth Estate, 22 July 1971, 3; Staff Writer, “Women and the Law in Nova Scotia,” The Fourth Estate, 14 September 1972, 11. 73 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2915, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 50, Halifax Women’s Bureau, ‘Myths About Working Women or How to Keep a Good Woman Down.’ 74 See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1053, Folder 3, various. Among the studies produced were as “A Tribute to the Black Loyalists o f Nova Scotia, 1783-1983,” “An Historic Minority: The Black People of Nova Scotia, 1781-1981,” and “From Generation to Generation: Bi-Centennial o f the Black Church in Nova Scotia, 1785-1985: A Synopsis.” 75 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, no folder number, Women’s Issues, Women and the Law Pamphlet Revision Committee. 76 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, G.I. Smith/Gerald Regan, Folder 16-1 (a), Study o f Negroes, Exodus Newsletter dated December 1970,4. 770n AWP, see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1347, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 33, Financial, 1977-9, Items 33.1-5, Various Financial Reports. On funding from charitable organizations, see also: Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 14, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-3, Secretary o f State Grant Application, 4. HBPWCG activists secured $1,550 dollars of funding from the Children’s Aid Society in the early 1980s. On the BEA, see: Volume 2002-066-014, BUF Fonds, Folder 24, Black Educator’s Association, 1986-1994, Letter from Dolly Williams, Fundraising Committee dated 31 March 1994. On HBPWCG, see: Volume 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-1983, Letter from Secretary, Black Professional Women’s Group dated 23 January 1980; Volume 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-1983, Secretary of State Grant Application, 4. In 1977, the Black Educators Association acquired an office 293 and staff through grants from the provincial Department of Education, Secretary o f State, and Nova Scotia Human Rights Association. A funding application prepared in late 1979 revealed that the HBPWCG employed two salaried members. 78 Leslie Pal, Interests of State: The Politics of Language, Multiculturalism and Feminism in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1993). 79 NSARM, Sound and Moving Image Collection, FSG 20 AC 2128, Pamela B. Collins Collection, Rocky Jones on HERO, 27 November 1977. 80 LAC, MG 28, Volume 41, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports, 1969, The ACLM, volume 1, number 1, March 1969,2. 81 Susan Perly, “Bureau Has 4 Major Projects: Helping Women Achieve Equal Rights in Nova Scotia,” The Fourth Estate, 22 July, 1971, 3; Community Calendar, The Fourth Estate, 16 March, 1972,20. The Women’s Bureau is briefly discussed in: Jeanne Fay, “The ‘Right Kind’ of Single Mothers,” in Fingard and Guildford, eds. Mothers of the Municipality, 156. 82 On the Women’s Bureau, see: Perly, “Bureau Has 4 Major Projects: Helping Women Achieve Equal Rights in Nova Scotia,”; Staff Writer, “Women and the Law in Nova Scotia,”The Fourth Estate, 14 September 1972, 11. 83 Activist Questionnaire: Judith Wouk; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 39, Item 39.3, Secretary o f State Grant Application Form dated 3 December 1979. 84 Video: “Making a Difference.” 85 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 20, Item 26. "Black Journal: A New Approach to Inter-racial Relations," Dartmouth Free Press, June 16, 1971, 6. 86 Video: “Making a Difference.” 87 Ibid. 88 On the expansion o f Canadian universities in the postwar decades, see: Phillip Massolin, Canadian Intellectuals and the Tory Tradition and the Challenge of Modernity, 1939-1970 (Toronto: University o f Toronto Press, 2001). On Nova Scotia see: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 28, The Status of Women in the Halifax Metropolitan Area, Jennifer Smith, “Provincial Social Policy During the Stanfield Era,” Journal o f the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 6 (2003): 1-16; and Judith Fingard, Janet Guildford, and David Sutherland, Halifax: The First 250 Years (Halifax: Formac Publishing Company Limited, 1999). 89 Gail Campbell et al. “Celebrating the Origins and Teaching o f Women’s History at Atlantic Province Universities: A Symposium,”Acadiensis 33.2 (Spring/Printemps 2004): 68-104. See also: Wolfe, “Working in Words,” 268. 90 Simmons, “Responses-Veteran Feminist Project.” A special thanks to Christina Simmons for sharing her responses to this questionnaire which was distributed as part of an American feminist history project. 91 NSARM, Sound and Moving Image Database, FSG 30, AC 2128, Pamela B. Collins Collection, Rocky Jones dated 27 November 1977; and FSG 33, nf 333-1, Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall Jr. Prosecution, Tape 1314, Rocky Jones. The Transition Year Program readied First Nations’ and African-Nova Scotian students for university study. 92 Philinda Masters, “Women, Culture and Communications,” in Ruth Roach Pierson et al. eds. Canadian Women's Issues, Volume I: Strong Voices (Toronto: James Lorimer and Company, 1993), 406. See also: Wolfe, “Working in Words,” 265-275. Wolfe challenges Masters’ assertion that the mainstream press was uninterested in publishing articles and books on women’s issues. 93 A brief history of Atlantis, written by those working with the journal is available at: www.msvu.ca/atlantis. A brief description of the events leading to the journal’s founding can be found in Margaret Conrad’s contribution to Campbell et al. “Celebrating the Origins and Teaching of Women’s History at Atlantic Province Universities” . 94 Donna Smythe, “Margaret Conrad in Conversation with Donna Smythe, Founding Editor of Atlantis ,”Atlantis 25.2 (spring 2001): 105. 95 Staff Writer, “New Woman’s Journal Bom in WolfVille,” The Fourth Estate, 29 October 1975, E2. 96 Ibid. 97 See: NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 19, Miscellaneous, Elizabeth Shilton Lennon, “Sex Discrimination in Employment: The Nova Scotia Human Rights Act;” and MG 20, 294 Volume 1346, NSWAC Fonds, No Folder Number, Women’s Issues, Judy Wouk, “Equal Pay Legislation.” 98 NSARM, Record Group 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 9, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-l(a), Study of Negroes, Press Release, dated 1 December 1965. Oliver had previously worked for the same department, on a part-time basis, for 16 years. 99 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1(a), Study of Negroes, Minutes o f the Interdepartmental Committee on Human Rights, dated 9 August, 1967. 100 Ibid. 101 NSARM, Record Group 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 31, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16- 1(a), Study o f Negroes, Letter from Carrie M. Best to Premier Robert Stanfield, dated April 11 1967. 102 R. Brian Howe, and David Johnson, Restraining Equality, Human Rights Commissions in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). 103 Elizabeth Zimmer, “Women’s Bureau Needed in Province,”The Fourth Estate, 30 September 1971, 17. m Ibid. 105 NSARM, RG 85, Volume 1, NSHRC Fonds, Folder 8, Study of the Preservation o f Civil Liberties in Nova Scotia and Human Rights Act, 1973, Guidelines in Human Rights Legislation Prohibiting Discrimination Based on Sex. See also: Folder 8, Study of the Preservation of Civil Liberties in Nova Scotia and Human Rights Act, 1973, “PC ‘bill of rights’ legislation defeated,” 3 February 1973. 106 Questionnaire: Judith Wouk, completed 13 June 2007. 107 Video: “Making a Difference.” 108 Ibid 109 Questionnaire : Wouk. 110 Fillmore, “Demonstrating a Waste o f Time,” The Fourth Estate, 18 June 1970, 5. 111 Wilson Head, “Blacks Should Seek Political Power,” Ebony Express, February 1981, 3. 112 Feminists active in national organizations, including the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, also favoured the NDP. Though Liberal and Conservative partisans also supported NAC, NDP partisans were the most numerous . On Canadian feminists’ partisan allegiances, see: Lisa Young, “Going Mainstream? The Women’s Movement and Political Parties in Canada and the US,” in Joanna Everitt and Brenda O’Neill, Citizen Politics: Research and Theory in Canadian Political Behaviour (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2002), 413-425. 113 Interview: Wedderbum. 114 Ebony Express, 2May 1980, 5. 115 DUA, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 3.4, New Democratic Party, letter from Alexa McDonough dated 8 September 1978. 116 On disruptive tactics, see: Doug McAdam, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (US: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Lacking traditional resources or frustrated by inaction, activists may use, or threaten, tactics disruptive to public order and the normal functioning o f society as a negative inducement to bargaining. 117 MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 20, Folder 10, The Nova Scotia Project, Dan Proudfoot, “Canada’s Own Stokely Carmichael,” Toronto Daily Star, 2March 1967, 7. 118 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 8, International Women’s Day, 1979 & 1980, Statement of the International Women’s Day Coalition, 1. 119 Interview: Duckworth. Public disruption had long been a strategy o f the labour movement. Among peace/rights activists, Muriel Duckworth remembers the street demonstrations as a first — and it certainly was uncommon— but the earliest claim to a street demonstration among pacifists in Halifax belongs to the Combined University Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CUCND). Small, fragile, and only sporadically active in Halifax, the CUCND first staged a street demonstration in 1961. See: MUA, CUCND/SUPA Collection, Box 4, Dalhousie University, 1964-5 Collection, Woody MacLean, “CUCND: Now you see it...Now you don’t.” 120 Interview: Duckworth. 121 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 50, “Negro Defence Fund Started,” Chronicle Herald, 5 December 1968, 1. 295 122 “Rocky the Revolutionary,” inThe Globe Magazine, 15 February 1969,24; and Interview: Wedderbum. 123 Ibid. 124 NSARM, MG 15, Volume 16, Ethnic Community Fonds (Nova Scotia Blacks), Item 43, From Slavery to Ghetto: The Story of the Negro in the Maritimes, 4. 125 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/021, BUF Fonds, Folder 8, Oliver, Jules: Addresses and Articles, 1969-1971, Conflict, Confrontation Leading to Social Reform, 4, 126 Nick Fillmore, “Oldland Named City Manager Despite Charges of Racism,” The Fourth Estate, 26 March 1970, 10. See also: LAC, MG 31 /H 144, National Black Coalition o f Canada Fonds, Volume 1, No File Number, ‘UMOSA’, One Issue, 1970. 127 Ibid. 128 Interview: Wedderbum; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/021, BUF Fonds, Folder 20, Warner Human Rights Issue, Press Statement. 129 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/022, BUF Fonds, Folder 20, Warner Human Rights Issue, 1972, BUF o f Nova Scotia to All Board Members and Council Members, 1. 130 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/022, BUF Fonds, Folder 20, Warner Human Rights Issue, Letter from Jules Oliver, 21 February 1972, 1; and Folder 20, Warner Human Rights Issue, 1972, Chronological Events to Date, 1-2. 131 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 80, Gerald Regan, no file number, Appointments Completed, 1971, letter from Carlyle W. Warner dated 9 June 1971. 13 NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Folder 1, Item 19, “Government Has Failed Black People,” The Chronicle Herald, 26 June 1972, np. 133 Interview: Moggridge. 134 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, A Woman’s Place Fonds, Folder 24, NSWAC Press Releases, 1974-1980, Item 24.28, Letter from Mary Ann Hustak, 2 February 1976. 135 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 4, Correspondence, 1975-9, For Immediate Release dated 17 February, 1977; and DU A, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Volume 2, Folder 2.1, Letter from Linda Kealey 18 February 1977. Two months later, Premier Regan wrote NSWAC announcing that his government would introduce equal pay measures in the public service. See: DU A, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Box 2, Folder 2.1, Correspondence, letter from Gerald Regan 4 April 1977. 136 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 80, Gerald A. Regan, Appointments Completed 1971 (7 files), Letter from Jane Hussett dated 2 February 1971. 137 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1631, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 11, Women’s Centre Newsletter, Letter from Dawna Gallagher, n.d. 138 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2903, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 14, Correspondence/Papers Jan-Dee 1981, A Woman’s Calendar March 1981,4. Among the organizations officially endorsing the International Women’s Day March was Voice of Women-Halifax. 139 Janet Guildford, “A Fragile Independence: The Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women,” in Fingard and Guildford, Mothers o f the Municipality, 285-6. 140 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds , Folder 11, Coalition o f Women’s Groups, Meeting o f 15 November 1979 (with resigned members o f Advisory Council); and Item 11-24, A Coalition of Women’s Groups Minutes 9 April 1980, YWCA. 141 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Coalition o f Women’s Groups, Item 11- 18, Letter form Irene Lefort acting president NSACW 14 February 1980. 14? NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Coalition o f Women’s Groups, Item 11-17, Press Release c. February 1980. 143 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Coalition of Women’s Groups, Item 11- 24, A Coalition o f Women’s Groups Minutes 9 April 1980, YWCA. 144 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1, Letter to Linda Kealey dated 18 February 1980. 145 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1345, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 5, Correspondence, 1980-1, Letter to Linda Kealey dated 11 January 1980. 146 Manette, “Making Something Happen,” 139. 296 147 LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, Reports 1969, A Pilot Project in Self-Determination on the Part o f Nova Scotia’s Negroes, 5; and Bridglal Pachai and Henry Bishop, Historic Black Nova Scotia, Images o f Our Past Series (Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2006), 80. 148 LAC, RG 106-A-4, Volume 22, No File Number, Submission — Secretary o f State, Women’s Programme, Secretary of State Draft Submission: Women’s Programme, 3. 149 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office, Volume 31, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1 (a), Study of Negroes, Letter from Premier Robert Stanfield to Carrie M. Best, dated 14 April 1967. 150 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 66, Robert Stanfield, Folder 16-1 (a), Study of Negroes, Memo from Robert L. Stanfield dated 15 June 1967. 151 NSARM, RG 85, NSHRC Fonds, Volume 1, Folder 2, Premier’s Report on Human Rights, various. 152 LAC, MG 28, Volume 75, JLC Fonds, Folder 41-1, Correspondence: Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee, ACLM Brief to Chairman, Law Amendments Committee Re: Bill No. 1 1969. 153 NSARM, RG 89, Volume 1, Nova Scotia Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, Minutes 16 November, 1976,4; Volume 1-067700013.1, Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 10, Correspondence, 1978, Memo dated 28 September 1977,1-2. 154 NSARM, RG 89, Volume 1, Women’s Directorate Fonds, Folder 1, Minutes, various. See also: Guildford, “A Fragile Independence,” 281-304. 155 See, for example: Pat Verge, “Important Clause Omitted: New Law Prohibits Discrimination on the Basis of Sex,” The Fourth Estate, 8 June 1972, 3; Betsy Chambers, “Members named to new N.S. advisory council on women,”The Chronicle-Herald, 15 September 1977,4. See also: Guildford, “A Fragile Independence,” 284. 156 McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, eds. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements, 15. 157 LAC, RG 106-A-4, Volume 22, No File Number, Submission — Secretary of State, Women’s Programme, Letter from Mary Gusella, 17 November 1975. 158 Interview: Wedderbum. 139 Fillmore, “Oldland Named City Manager Despite Charges o f Racism,” 10. 160 Nick Fillmore, “Only BUF Making Progress: Halifax Waiting for a Knight in Armour?” The Fourth Estate, 9 April 1970, 3. 161 DUA, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 3.4, New Democratic Party, letter from Alexa McDonough dated 8 September 1978. 162 DUA, MS 11-4, NSWAC Fonds, Folder 3.4, New Democratic Party, letter from Jeremy Ackerman 18 June 1980. 163 Nick Fillmore, “Funding May Cease,” The Fourth Estate, 31 August, 1972, 1; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/008, BUF Fonds, Folder 10, BUF: An Evaluation Report, 1975, Report. 164 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1817, Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 2, ‘With Enthusiasm and Faith: A History o f the CFHBPWCC-FCCFCLC, 1930-1972,” 88-103. Also: Fingard, “Women’s Organizations,” 37. 165 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 23, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Item 23.32, NSWAC: Summary of Activities, 1975-76; and Folder 24, Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee, Item 24.27, Operation of the N.S. Women’s Action Committee, 1. 166 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1817, HCHBPWC Fonds, Folder 3, A History of the Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women, 1936-1976. 167 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP-FH Fonds, Folder 21, National Action Committee, Item 21-10, Agenda for NAC Annual General Meeting. '^Interview: Duckworth. '69 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2000-066/001, BUF Fonds. 170 Early, “A Grandly Subversive Time,” 267. 171 Interview: Duckworth. 172 Fillmore, “Funding May Cease,” 1. 173 / bid. 174 Mildred Schwartz, Party Movements in the United States and Canada: Strategies of Persistence (New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 297 175 NSARM, RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 57 (G.I. Smith), Folder 16-l(a), Memo from Department o f the Attorney General, 30 July, 1969. 176 Ibid. 177 See, for example: NSARM, RG 100, Volume 31, Premier’s Office Fonds, Folder 16-1 (a), Study of Negroes, letter from Ethel L. Coles dated 10 December, 1968; Volume 57 (G.I. Smith), Volume 16- 1(a), Study o f Negroes, letter from R. Cartier (unclear) dated 23 January 1969; RG 85, Volume 1, Nova Scotia Human Rights Committee Fonds, Folder 19, Correspondence, Fashion Show Entertainment; Fillmore, “Only BUF Making Progress,” 2; Letter to Editor, “Police Okay, Blacks Want Superiority,” The Fourth Estate 21 May 1970, 8. 178 Nick Fillmore, “Demonstrating a Waste of Time: But What About Politics - Say Civic Politics?” The Fourth Estate, 18 June 1970, 5. 179 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/019, Black United Front Fonds, Folder 6, Human Rights Commission, 1972-1979, various. 180 Ebony Express, December 1980, 1; NSARM, RG 85, Volume 2, Folder 4, News Releases Clipping, Staff Writer, “Human Rights must be protected,” The Chronicle-Herald, 27 October 1982, 22; Folder 4, Press Releases, 1981-2, Press Release dated 10 August 1982; Press Release, nd; Press Release dated 23 September 1981; News Releases, Staff Writer, “United front against racism,” Chronicle Herald, 25 February 1981, n.p.; MG 20, Volume 1552, AWP Fonds, Folder 7, Calendars, Programs, Notices 1981 -2, No Item Number, A Woman’s Calendar February 1981; and A Woman’s Calendar April 1981. 181 Canadian Human Rights Commission, Discrimination in Canada: A Survey of Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Concerned with Discrimination (Ottawa: Canadian Human Rights Commission, 1979), 12. 182 Canadian Human Rights Commission, Discrimination in Canada, 14. A similar study o f attitudes toward linguistic rights conducted in 1980 and 1981 found even higher levels o f resistance to official bilingualism in Canada. Almost 1 in 2 Canadians, including 55 percent of those living outside of Quebec, felt that Canada should not have two official languages. Further, 35 percent o f Canadians felt that French Canadians ‘have too much power.’ See: Reginald Bibby, The Precarious Mosaic: Intergroup Relations in the Canadian 80s (Lethbridge, AB: University of Lethbridge, 1982). 183 In the late 1970s, the Canadian Federation o f University Women, Halifax Branch elected members to the executive of the Local Council while Zonta sought support from the Council for various campaigns including their pressure campaign for daycare reform in the wake o f the Nova Scotia Taskforce on the Status o f Women Report. As late as the early 1980s, the Voice o f Women also sought support from the Local Council of Women . See: NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1658, Canadian Federation o f University Women - Halifax Branch Fonds, Folder 5, Reports, 1976-1981, Report of the President, Halifax Branch, CFUW, 1977-78; MG 1, Volume 2000-07/001-043, Constance L. MacFarlane Fonds, Box 42, No Folder Number, Day Care (Report From Zonta); Volume 2000- 07/001-043, MacFarlane Fonds, Box 42, No Folder Number, Local Council o f Women, General Meeting 15 April, 1982. 184 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 11, Coalition o f Women Groups, Item 11.7, Contact List. 185 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066, BUF Fonds, Box 14, Folder 16, Black Business Consortium, 1990, 2. m Ibid, 1-2. 187 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/020, BUF Fonds, Folder 21 Nova Scotia Alliance of Provincial Black Organizations, 1982-1988, Letters from Hamid Rasheed, dated 9 June 1982 and 6 October 1982; and Letter from Doris E. Evans dated 4 June 1982. 188 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/014, BUF Fonds, Folder 18, Cultural Awareness Program, 1980-3, Fiscal Budget 1982-3, 76. 189 Ibid, 76-7; and NSARM, MG 20, Volume 2002-066/020, BUF Fonds, Folder 21, Nova Scotia Alliance o f Provincial Black Organizations, 1982-8, Letter from Hamid Rasheed dated 6 October, 1982; and Letter from Doris E. Evans, dated 4 June, 1982. 190 On MOVE, see Video: “Making a Difference,”; NSARM, MG 20, Volume 715, Halifax Club of Business and Professional Women Fonds, Folder 62, CFBPWC - Miscellaneous Notes Re: Conventions, Reports, Memos etc. 1937-1972, Item 62.34, MOVE: Movement for Citizen’s Voice 298 and Action Newsletter 1.1, September 1971, 3; MG 1, Volume 2907, Muriel Duckworth Fonds, Folder 1, MOVE: Histories and General Information, Movement for Citizens Voice and Action, Brief History of MOVE, 2; Brenda Large, “MOVE Frustrated by Failure to Get Funding,” The Fourth Estate, 11 May 1972, 1; Community Listings, The Fourth Estate, 13 April 1972, 28; Farmer Brown, “MOVE Looking for Funds,”The Fourth Estate, 27 April, 1972, 6; Farmer Brown, “MOVE Compiles Big Document,” The Fourth Estate, 4 May 1972, 6; Staff Writer, “MOVE Criticized Both for Its Strengths and its Weaknesses,” The Fourth Estate, 15 February 1973, 5. The sole criteria for membership in MOVE was that ‘groups be action-oriented, self-help, grass-roots, and with little power or access to power.’ After having secured funding enough to rival the Black United Front, the organization suffered internal ideological conflict and subsequently failed to secure sufficient financial resources. '9I LAC, MG 31, Volume H144, NBCC Fonds, No Folder Number, UMOSA, 1970. The Oldland affair centred around a controversial and actively opposed appointment for city manager. 192 For a report on the organization's history and rebirth, see Ebony Express, November 1979, 3-7. 193 Lynn McDonald, who is remembered by some as a polarizing figure, was active in the feminist movement during her time in Halifax. She became active in the Nova Scotia Women’s Action Committee while teaching at Dalhousie University. Previously she had taught Kathy Moggridge at McMaster University. She was elected president o f NAC in 1979, in part based on the reputation she built while in Halifax. In 1982, McDonald was elected to the Canadian House o f Commons as an NDP Member of Parliament. She sat as an MP until 1988. 194 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, Folder 21, National Action Committee, Item 21-25, Annual Meeting and Conference - National Action Committee on the Status o f Women - Ottawa, March 13- 15, 1981; and RG 100, Premier’s Office Fonds, Volume 1990-515/090, John Buchanan, File 59-4, Women, Letter from Kathy Moggridge dated 9 March 1982. 195 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 21, Constitution, Item 21A-20; National Action Committee on the Status of Women presentation to the Senate - House o f Commons Special Joint Committee on the Constitution o f Canada. 196 NSARM, MG 1, Volume 2914, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 19, Women, Human Rights and the Constitution...The Next 100 Years. 197 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1867, Canadian Federation o f University Women, Halifax Branch Fonds, CFUW-FCFDU Journal, Volume 22.6, 1981, “Let the Government Know You Want Equality Now!” 1. 198 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1900, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 9, VOW Minutes, Halifax Branch, 1960-1985, Report on Counter Conference on Women and the Constitution, 2. 199 LAC, MG 31 K22, Volume 8, File 8.9, NAC Annual Meetings and Conference 1977. 200 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1262, AWP Fonds, Folder 21, Constitution, Resolutions Adopted at the Conference on Canadian Women and the Constitution. 201 NSARM, MG 20, Volume 1867, CFUW Fonds, CFUW-FCFDU Journal, Volume 22.6, 1981, “Let the Government Know You Want Equality Now!” 2. 202 LAC, MG 31, Series HI 55, Daniel G. Hill Fonds, Volume 8, Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1-2. 203 NSARM, MG1, Volume 2903, Duckworth Fonds, Folder 14, Correspondence/Papers Jan-Dee 1981, Letter from Jacques A. Demers dated 5 June 1981. 299 Conclusion Between 1960 and 1982, Canada’s ‘rights revolution’ took shape through a series of overlapping dialogues on rights. Befitting shared jurisdictions within the Canadian federation, the revolution occurred at local, provincial and national levels. Indeed, Canada’s rights revolution might be viewed as a series of related rights revolutions, each responding to unique local and/or provincial realities while also contributing and responding to common (inter)national developments. Many political and social actors drove the process of dialogue and reform, each promoting a particular rights agenda and vision. Historian Michael Behiels has likened Canada’s rights revolution to a ‘pressure cooker’, in which provincial and federal authorities felt pressure from ‘above’ by the United Nations and from ‘below’ by local Canadian activists. In turn, federal and provincial authorities pressured each other. Of the many actors engaged in dialogue, activists faced the greatest challenges. Without constitutional standing to compel their participation, and with comparatively few resources, activists were placed at a considerable disadvantage. In spite of the difficulty, African-Nova Scotians and feminists mobilized and sustained a 22-year struggle for greater equality according to a ‘local logic’ shaped by manifestations of trends prevailing in the North Atlantic world. This study examines activist mobilization as one element of many within a period characterized as the second phase of Canada’s rights revolutions, because of what it can reveal about social movements as a means for political change. Other studies, animated by questions related to social change and rights reform, have 300 looked to key players and public policy outcomes. The resulting body of literature reveals much about the development of Canada’s rights revolution and the changes to Canadian rights and citizenship. Although many of the themes that emerge from those studies are reinforced here, a somewhat different question anchors this study, one related to social movements generally: how do poorly resourced individuals, without the benefit of legal standing, mobilize to influence public policy? This longitudinal study of two successful postwar social movements operating in the same historical context helps to answer this question. The history presented here brings local evidence to social movement theory. In its most general sense, this study applies and tests the ‘political process’ model of social movement dynamics. It documents the challenges faced by two groups of activists as they engaged many other, often better equipped, social and political actors. Activists within each movement faced a similar series of challenges, each well captured by the political process theory of social movements. In order to engage the formal political system, feminists and Affican-Nova Scotians created a base of support, gathered the necessary resources, and designed tactics that harnessed the potential power of their constituent communities, navigated the limits of political and social tolerance, and seized opportunity while mitigating risk. Occasionally, they even demonstrated leadership in the Canadian context. However, the theory itself says little of any particular group, or how each met the challenges associated with mobilization. Generality is the source of the framework’s potentially broad applicability and utility for historians, though its silence regarding any particular time, place or movement demands close attention to historical context. Only further 301 testing, through comparable case studies, will prove how broadly applicable the political process theory is. A longitudinal case study approach, such as that adopted here, may provide a useful model for future studies of social movement dynamics.1 By selecting multiple groups from a single place and time, the historian is able to test theoretical generalizations while also developing a historical understanding of particular movements. Similarly structured studies of social movement dynamics will enhance our understanding of social movements as a force for political change. The longitudinal approach adopted here need not be limited to any particular time, place or movement. Nor should such studies avoid ‘failure’ in terms of public policy outcomes or periods of movement stagnation. Studies tend to focus on ‘successful’ movements, for a range of practical reasons (e.g., existing records), but periods of stagnation and limited influence are equally critical to our understanding of social movements’ historical function, the challenges faced and the importance of historical context on movement trajectory. In addition to testing a theory and presenting a model, this study makes a contribution to the history of Canada’s rights revolution. Activists were key participants in the dialogues (re)shaping Canadian citizenship and the rights upon which it was based. They did not meet other participants on an equal playing field. State actors enjoyed constitutional standing and enormous coffers. Bureaucrats enjoyed a privileged place in the policy development process, and were paid to conduct research and offer opinions. Even labour unions had comparatively large financial resources. Rights activists in Halifax, by contrast, often held other jobs or 302 attended school and cobbled together human, financial and material resources by any means necessary — activities which in some way supported their political goals but undeniably also created competing priorities. This dissertation has examined how relatively disadvantaged groups became key players in the dialogue(s) shaping public policy during a critical period of Canada’s political, constitutional and legal development. In the process, it presents a history of the inner workings of two local postwar social movements as a means to answer the broader question. More specifically, this dissertation suggests that, in practice, the movements for racial and gender equality grew, diversified and influenced public policy by successfully navigating a multifaceted, dynamic and specific historical context that supported their mobilization. Deeply rooted in the social, economic and political developments then shaping other urban centres, African-Nova Scotians and feminists were strongly influenced by trends prevailing in the North Atlantic world. In Halifax, the ‘local logic’ driving mobilization among feminists and African-Nova Scotians brought together (international trends and local realities, presenting a unique mix of opportunity and risk to the two movements under study. As African- Nova Scotians and local women joined the ‘new’ urban economy and enrolled in educational programs, they encountered discrimination. Racial and gender inequality, which shaped their daily lives, stood in contrast to the Cold War rhetoric of equality and encouraged local activism. Movements for gender and racial equality had been active for decades prior to 1960 and provided a base upon which to build and an example to be emulated or avoided. However, by the 1960s, education and reflection had led to decreased 303 deference to political leaders among the aggrieved, and, increased local activists’ agency by encouraging critical engagement, research and advanced literacy skills. Simultaneously, threats had to be mitigated: a generational divide threatened to weaken each movement and the threat of state repression or cooption and social backlash loomed large in both movements. This history of mobilization pays particular attention to the critical interactions among state actors and local rights movements during this period. Contrary to populist theories of the state, the Canadian state — its governments, bureaucracies and judiciary — actively participated in the revolution and did so with comparative advantages. Though it should not be treated as a monolith, the state for the most part promoted a liberal program of rights reform designed to integrate excluded groups within the capitalist and democratic socio-economic system, as it existed. Participants representing the Canadian state enjoyed the primacy of constitutional standing, enormous resources and prerogative power. Far from neutral arbiter of societal interests, state officials actively influenced whose voices were heard in the dialogues (re)shaping rights and Canadian citizenship. Yet, state actors were not without restraints. Canada’s founding documents, laws, precedent, policies, institutions and constitutional convention constrained elected officials, bureaucrats and judges. Activists and the state influenced each other in a reciprocal process, which shaped the dynamic historical context surrounding both. In Halifax, the 1960s were preceded by long periods during which both movements were smaller, less diverse, less influential, though equally persistent. When a heady mix of demographic, 304 political, social, economic and cultural forces converged in the 1960s, both movements enjoyed spectacular growth and diversification. Mobilization among a new generation of feminists and African-Nova Scotians resulted in more highly heterogeneous network structures, including moderate, pragmatist and radical groups as well as conservatives, liberals, social democrats and communists (in their many variations). Evolving movements, tactics and demands triggered state responses and vice-versa, all of which contributed to the dynamic historical context in which activists mobilized. State-movement dynamics were akin to a game of strategy in which activity reshaped the context in which action took place. A similar dynamic was at work within each movement, where two generations and a whole range of activists sought different solutions to similar problems. Activists working within diversifying local movements played a wide range of roles within and across the movements for racial and gender equality. The historical literature describes activists as political challengers and often characterizes their role implicitly, if not explicitly, as champions or even crusaders: winning or wresting rights. In Halifax, activists were certainly challengers and some individuals approached their activism as champions, while others acted as crusaders. But, more often, local activists were critics (of social norms, political solutions and each other), collaborators (in research and reform), convenors (of discussions, groups, conferences), confronters (of injustice), collectors (of evidence), colleagues (as bureaucrats, educators, lawyers and journalists etc), compromisers (on matters of public policy) and chorus of voices (for equality, justice and freedom). Each 305 movement, in its considerable diversity, contained individuals playing one or more of these roles, with some playing more than one role, over time or at once. To conclude, I return to the question animating this study: how do activists mount an effective challenge to comparatively well-resourced rivals? The title of this study captures the activist perspective on mobilization: that they attended to ‘all the messy details’ including building support, gathering resources, creating organizations, conducting research, authoring briefs, educating themselves and their contemporaries and taking action. Activist determination was an essential part of the equation, to be sure. As the original question relates to rights activism in Halifax between 1960 and 1982, activists navigated their environment, capitalizing on opportunity and mitigating risk in an attempt to promote their reform agenda. Mobilization, however, did not guarantee success — as confrontational feminists and militant African-Nova Scotians learned. Mobilization did not even guarantee the size, shape or trajectory of any particular movement. It might result in a handful of tired students, employees and/or parents, meeting in a church basement to plan their next event or project. In Halifax, between 1960 and 1982, the trajectory and success of the movements for racial and gender equality resulted from a dynamic interaction of activist determination and historical context. This study would not be complete if it only reflected on the ‘how’ of mobilization without a word on activist influence. The policy outcomes comprising the ‘rights revolution’ in Halifax ultimately reflected a ‘middle ground’ struck upon by participants during a 22-year dialogue on rights. The state, supported by bureaucrats and pragmatic activists, advanced a liberal vision of human rights by absorbing and channelling dissent in favourable directions. In Halifax, negotiation and compromise led to the creation of an integrationist human rights program based on the liberal conception of individual rights defined by a state that assigns more or less sufficient resources to their protection. In staking out a ‘middle ground’ many participants claimed some form of victory in 1982, a year which capped a period of significant public policy reform with rights entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Moreover, new rights and citizenship shaped the historical context in which the next phase of Canada’s rights revolution(s) took place. In Halifax, individual feminists and African-Nova Scotians created new organizations and projects to support their revised goals. After 1982 the movements for racial and gender equality in Halifax continued to shape and adapt to their historical context, as was the case during the second phase of Canada’s rights revolution. 1 Theorists, in search o f comparable studies, have called for the production o f detailed local studies. 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New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1987. 329 Appendix A Newsletters of Social Movement Organizations Active in Halifax, Nova Scotia from 1960 to 1982 ORGANIZATIONNEWSLETTER DATES AVAILABLE AFR1CAN-NOVA SCOTIAN GRASP 1970-1978 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Black United Front Black Horizon 1979-unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Affo-Canadian Liberation The ACLM 1969-unknown Library and Archives Canada Movement FEMINIST Council of Women Council of Women Unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Newsletter National: CFUW-FCFDU Unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Canadian Federation of Journal University Women Halifax: CFUW-Halifax Unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Branch Newsletter Business and Professional Coastwise Unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Women’s Club Voice of Women/La Voix Voice of Women 1960-unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management des Femmes Halifax Women’s Centre- Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Women’s Centre Newsletter 1974-1975 Brenton Place (in the A Woman’s Place-Forrest House Collection) Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Nova Scotia Women’s Periodically from (in the A Woman’s Place-Forrest House collection) NSWAC Newsletter Action Committee 1976-1982 Dalhousie University Archives A Woman’s Place-Forrest AWP-FH Newsletter 1977-unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management House 330 Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of CRIAW Newsletter 1976-unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Women NEWLEFT National SUPA Newsletter 1965-unknown McMaster University Archives Nova Scotia Scene 1965-1968 McMaster University Archives Nova Scotia Project Club Kwacha Report unknown McMaster University Archives OTHER Newsletter of the Interdepartmental Government of Nova Scotia 1965-unknown Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management Committee on Human Rights IMPORTANT NEWSPAPERS The Fourth Estate 1969-1976 Ebony Express 1979-1982 Black Express 1982-unknown WORK EXPERIENCE 2008-Present Public Health Ageng of Canada Ottawa, O N / Sydney, N S Policy Analyst ■ Policy development/advice to senior management. * Strategic relations planning and implementation. ■ Verbal and written briefings. 2008 New Brunswick Labour Histoiy Project Fredericton, NB Research Officer ■ Qualitative and quantitative analysis. ■ Database construction, manipulation, analysis. ■ Author reports. ■ Digital Imaging. ■ Collaboration with project team. 2004-2008 MSVU/UNB/STU Halifax/ Fredericton Instructor, History/Human Rights ■ Design learning tools. ■ Write and deliver weekly lectures. ■ Direct students in learning exercises. ■ Assess student progress. ■ Received outstanding personal reviews. Courses Taught ■ Atlantic Canada Before Confederation (UNB) ■ Human Rights and Non-Government Organizations (STU) ■ Canada in Confederation (MSVU) ■ History of the Canadian Worker (MSVU) 2006-2007 Senate of Canada, Office of the Speaker Fredericton, N.B. Special Project Research Officer ■ Research/analysis. ■ Author report: Aspects of Canada’s Rights Revolution. ■ Administer local constituency office. ■ Collaboration with internal partners. 2002A Atlantic Canada Portal Project, Electronic Text Centre Fredericton, N.B. Research Assistant ■ Scanning and digitization o f historical records. ■ XML coding to create searchable records. * Member of project team. PUBLICATIONS Articles: Matthew James J. Baglole, “Many Closet Supporters Will Come Forward: New Brunswick’s Confederation of Regions Party” in Marie Hammond- Callaghan and Matthew Hayday, eds. Mobilisations, Protests and Engagements: Canadian Perspectives on Social Movements (Halifax, NS: Fernwood Publishing, 2008). Matthew Baglole et al, “The Canadian Story,” Acadiensis XXX.2 (Spring/printemps 2001). Reviews: Matthew James J. Baglole “Winds of Change: Canadian Social Movements and Social Change,” Reviewed for Left History', Forthcoming. Matthew Baglole, “From Outsider to Insider: Bora Laskin and Canadian Legal Thought,” Reviewed for H-Canada, 2007.______