Nancy Marrelli, longtime Director of Archives at Concordia and co-owner of Montreal’s Véhicule Press, was a Sir George Williams University graduate working at the University during the crisis.

LR: Am I wrong in presuming this [POINTS TO “THE PAPER” STUDENT NEWSPAPER] was a bit more of a conservative student paper…
NM: (laughs) That’s the under-statement of the year!! (laughs) The paper was—yes—very, very conservative!
LR: Did you take part in the occupation?
NM: No I didn’t. But the guy I was living with at the time was in the computer centre and just left before things blew up, just accidentally.
LR: Were you relieved that he wasn’t there?
NM: There was no question of relief at that time. It was just plain horrific from beginning to end… I think it’s awful that the police were called in in the first place… It’s totally, totally unclear—to this day, I think—whether the fire started before the police were called or after the police were called. I don’t think anybody really knows, even the people who were there. It never should have happened—the whole thing—never should have happened! The procedures within the University were completely inappropriate and incapable of handling things properly, and things just spun out of control because there was no decent way of appealing decisions. But there is no question that the incident changed the way things were dealt with internally at Sir George Williams University. It changed [the policies surrounding] access to documents, it changed all kinds of things for the better.
LR: I guess it’s a shame that it had to end so dramatically, and perhaps we’ll never know whether the changes would have been as deep and enacted as quickly if it hadn’t ended that dramatically.
NM: Absolutely not. I honestly don’t know that there was much of any possibility of it ending peacefully once it had begun.

Ann Diamond is a longtime Montreal author who, as Anne McLean, was news editor at the Georgian student newspaper from 1968 until the early 1970s.

AD: I arrived as an undergraduate in September 1968, and joined the Georgian staff soon afterwards. I was present on campus through the events leading up to the occupation, and its aftermath, but as a 17 year old girl, I was in no way a player.
LR: You are listed as News Editor in the issues covering the crisis itself.
AD: Victor Lehotay basically took over editing the Georgian during the crisis. He was older than the rest of us — possibly mid to late 20s, or at least he appeared older. He turned out a series of articles criticizing the administration. I think (Editor-in-Chief) Dave Bowman often felt overwhelmed — but I remember his editorial, which established the Georgian’s position in support of the black students and the occupation.
That started the ball rolling towards confrontation — and as I mentioned earlier, I was a neophyte who mainly just observed events as they unfolded. I think we all felt caught up in something that was both exciting, and out of our control. The Georgian office at that time was a real hub, with people coming and going — all sorts of people, including Mark Medicoff. Lehotay would come in, shut himself in Bowman’s office, and turn out another editorial (or diatribe). I think David Bowman was unfairly pilloried — he was a good, honest guy in my opinion — but lost control of a situation that was uncontrollable.
Another vocal radical in those days was Murray Smith, who used to harangue students from a microphone on the Mezzanine. He never wrote anything that I can remember. He is unfortunately now a homeless person hanging out in Guy Metro.
Generally, there was just a feeling of a collective movement that was headed somewhere, as we thought at the time — there were protest leaders, movers and shakers, people who held the spotlight — and there was the opposition, who eventually took back control. Most people were observers, swept along in the current, and learning daily lessons about politics and poltiical behaviour.
My current attitude is: events like the Computer Centre Crisis are often manipulated, in various ways, by various groups and players. On the other hand, we were all genuinely concerned about racism and we wanted the students to get a fair hearing. It was hard, from my perspective, to distinguish between real racism and the complex emotions and hidden politics, which led to polarization on both sides. Did someone really yell “Let the niggers burn?” I don’t know, as I didn’t hear it — but it’s very possible someone did, and others joined in. In the street that day, I can’t remember what people were chanting, possibly some slogan like “The whole world’s watching” — there was real fear and anger against the riot cops.
A few years ago I met a woman whose name I forget who was one of the 97 arrested students. She told me she had a very bad experience that day: the cops were brutal, the administration were liars, the fire was set by provocateurs, and she felt there was major deception about the way the students were treated afterwards,
I partly agree, but it happened very fast. And then it was over, and there were great efforts to sweep everything back into the closet, particularly the wrongdoing by the administration.
Georgian reporter Don McKay was arrested and tried, years later, for mischief. His defence lawyer was the famous and much-respected Bernard Mergler. I was called as a witness, and our strategy was for me to say that as News Editor, I had assigned Don to cover the computer centre story, which was why he joined the occupation. This, I must admit, was stretching the truth — Don joined because he supported the cause of the black students. My testimony was totally shredded by the brilliant but sleazy William (?) Shadley who terrorized me on the witness stand, and convinced the judge that I was just another casualty of the sixties (like the judge’s own daughter, as Mergler explained to me later…) I think in the end, though, Don was acquitted, or received a suspended sentence.
That courtroom experience underlined (again) how disorganized the Georgian really was, in that nobody was really formally assigned to cover the occupation. There was no strategy. All we did, as I remember, was offer editorial or moral support in a situation that turned into stalemate and ended in violence.
In retrospect, I don’t know how we should have dealt with it, as student journalists. There was no time to come up with a real strategy, and the race issue made it even harder — the black student leaders were not necessarily ready to give interviews or offer soundbites. Neither side was talking openly.

Don’t forget to check out the student newspapers of the time yourself on our Image blog here, as well as a gallery of photos extracted from these newspapers of the aftermath of the riots.