Talking History focuses on a wide range of topics in Canadian history, and it consists of articles by Canada's foremost historians and history experts. Our contributors use the power of narrative to bring the past to life and to show how it is not just relevant, but essential to our understanding of Canada and the world today. "Talking History" is a series made possible through a special funding grant from the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Stuart Henderson is a documentary film producer with 90th Parallel Productions, and author of Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s.

*****

When Canadian filmmaker Robin Spry died in a car wreck ten years ago this March, he was chiefly remembered as the man whose cameras had chronicled the infamous FLQ kidnappings of 1970. But, despite the fact that Action, his celebrated, if controversial, 1973 documentary about the October Crisis, has come to be remembered as his crowning achievement, I am actually here to discuss one of Spry’s least-revered works, the mostly forgotten 1969 gem Prologue. Because: this forgetting is a mistake. Indeed, as an historian of the period, this film stands as the one I am most inclined to watch and re-watch, looking for clues.

Despite being awarded a BAFTA for best documentary in 1970, Prologue actually operates as a curious mesh of cinema vérité and scripted narrative drama. Deliberately pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary, the film is structured to appear true, uncontrived; a kind of mimesis of the current scene. On this score the results are iffy, as while the characters do seem impressively naturalistic, they also come across as alternately tedious and shrill, caught in a trap where they have been told to act normal, and talk about THIS THEMATICALLY SIGNIFICANT THING NOW. Indeed, most of the film is clearly acted, if improvised by amateurs; though co-protagonist Jesse is played by semi-professional American actor John Robb, his co-star Elaine Malus is acting for her first time. However, the themes and questions with which these characters grapple are true, complex, and overall intriguingly presented. You may not particularly relish spending 87 minutes with these people, but you will leave having learned from them.

Stay with me, people, because I’m here to tell you that Prologue might just be the best “way in” to understanding the competing political pressures and social experiments of the late counterculture years you’re going to find. Moreover, and perhaps most impressively, its relevance today remains potent and palpable. If you want to know why the 1960s matter, the ways that the concerns that motivated activists and counterculturalists alike in those years live with us still, stick around.

Loosely plotted as a love triangle between Jesse, an idealistic young Montreal activist who has been radicalized by a recent violent attack, his thoughtful but restless middle class girlfriend Karen, and David, a draft resistor they take in, and set in the sultry summer weeks leading up to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the film poses a question that was at the core of the hip reality of the late 1960s, and which remains a crucial question for alternative communities and activists today: is it better to try to change the world or to try to change your place in the world? Separatism, or engagement?

Plus ça change

From the opening scenes, Prologue is both clearly set in Montreal, and yet also clearly positioned in a global context; mere minutes into the movie we see Jesse and Karen join a solidarity march for the Czechs who’ve just had their moment of freedom under Dubcek flattened under waves of Soviet tanks. At various points in the film, TVs run images of Japanese student riots and pitched street battles. And Jesse’s day job is selling underground newspapers full of reports of global turmoil. At one point we see the inside of the offices for this mimeographed newspaper, and the posters depicting both Ho Chi Minh and Paul Gagnon on the walls underline the ways Canadian politics are to be linked to wider contexts.

While selling his papers Jesse is jumped by three solid citizens. During this pile-on Spry’s camera pulls back to reveal scores of witnesses and bystanders who do nothing to stop the beating, an early signal about the key engagement or separation theme he explores. Jesse, emboldened to pursue these men through the courts, but his efforts are rebuffed by a judge who says that every witness had told police that he had been the fight’s instigator. Later, when it is suggested that Karen’s father could pull some strings to help Jesse secure a fair hearing from a judge, she demurs. While Jesse wants to work within the system, to make the system work, Karen edges in the other direction, it seems. Both of these moments are subtle signals about the central theme of the film.

After Karen quits her job as a waitress at a classy but exploitative go-go bar, the couple attends a Draft Resistance meeting at which they watch a graphic, disturbing film about the Vietnam War. We watch too, and sometimes we watch them watch; the images are of babies, flesh seared off of their skin by napalm, villages on fire, missiles fired from jet fighters, bamboo huts torn to smithereens, blood-soaked peasants crying for their dead kin. "How about throwing off your traditional Canadian apathy for once and doing something about it?" says the off-camera voice of a draft resistance activist. "Get rid of that guilt feeling." Exchanging glances, Karen and Jesse pick up a draft resistor to take home, the soft-spoken and hip know-it-all David.

David is here to represent a kind of authentic American hippie identity. In several (often interminably tedious) scenes, David talks (and talks) about how he has travelled all over the United States, how he claims to have lived past lives, how he’s done all sorts of drugs, has been with all kind of women, has got it all figured out at his tender age after an apparently action-packed couple years. Just to hammer home the point, David takes the guitar away from the "ashamed" Karen (who is only learning to play) and sings a song he has written about a woman who used to be his lover. Which is terrible, by the way, but which also instructively suggests that though “freedom” will kill you (the life-chasing protagonist of the song winds up in a pile of "chrome and steel"), it is ultimately worth pursuing anyway. Perhaps as a result of his accumulated wisdom, David has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t enjoy "the hassles of property." He asks if there’s a commune around before offering to pay their overdue rent.

Now that the central ménage has been established, Spry moves the action from their tiny apartment to a sunny Sunday on the Mountain, a gathering of hundreds of young. Here, among all of these different people from all over Montreal and beyond, Karen and David hook up with a few hippies from a commune in Massawippi (in the Eastern Townships) while Jesse meets Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman. In probably the most entertaining scene in the film, Hoffman and Jesse chat for several minutes about how the Yippies plan to disrupt and protest next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "That’s essentially what we’re going to do: throw a bunch of banana peels around Chicago," Hoffman explains, before demonstrating to Jesse that all he is interested in is the theatrics of dissent. The scene ends as, in the clearest visual metaphor in the film, Hoffman and Karen each pull at Jesse, a tug-of-war defined by Chicago v. commune.

Jesse and David meet at the newspaper’s office and enter into a key debate over the question of public protest. "You’re coming with us?" Jesse asks. "No, that’s not my scene," responds David. "Being against the war isn’t your scene?" asks Jesse, gobsmacked. "Oh, I’m against the war, Jesse," replies David. "Well, what do you do about it?" returns Jesse, some edge to his voice. "Oh, try to be peaceful," says David. "Your being peaceful isn’t going to stop the war," admonishes Jesse. "Is that?" David asks, his finger pointing to a poster alerting people to the upcoming action in Chicago. "It’s a start," replies Jesse, a bit unsure now. Perhaps this start is the prologue to which the title refers?

Soon after, Jesse and Karen meet at the apartment, and Karen tells him that David has left Montreal to go join the commune in Massawippi. Then, Karen breaks it off with him, explaining that she wants to go to join David, and that "I just don’t feel the same way about demonstration anymore. I just think the world’s gone too far for that." From there, the film flits back and forth for 45 minutes between the bucolic simplicity of the rural commune and the increasingly chaotic violence and confusion in Chicago. As Karen and David consummate their relationship, Jesse roves around the protest, recording his thoughts into a portable tape deck, and paying witness to the events as they unfold. As the violence breaks out and the tear gas flies, Spry’s cameras are suddenly in full documentary mode, tracking the police and the National Guard as they beat protesters, zeroing in on bloodied teenagers, following Jesse as he conducts an interview with a protester locked in a paddy wagon. Karen and David, on the other hand, don’t do or see much of anything, and wind up at the dinner table with the communards, discussing the relative merits of engagement in public versus retreat to a constructed innocence in a commune. The communards tend to see little of value in the world as it is, and maintain that distance from that corrupted reality, and immersion in their own authentic life on the farm, is the only way forward.

The Past, Now

This film is a powerful example of the interconnectedness of the global with the local in the various youth cultures of the period. Throughout the film we are offered offhand shots of non-Canadian youths engaged in political struggle. The great action of the second half of the movie involves a Canadian participating in a profoundly American event. But it also features an American, David, his escape to Canada, and then his apparent refusal of the Canadian (any?) wider political context, and his connection with an Australian man who argues that ignorance of the world as they have made it allows people to view the world as it is. Karen, perhaps marked by her Jewishness, remains above the fray somewhat, unable to dive headlong into the white, middle class guilt that appears (however unconsciously) to motivate these men.

What is amazing, and a real missed opportunity here, is the absence of any discussion of Quebec sovereignty. Apart from an image on the wall of the newspaper office of Quebecois nationalists Gagnon and Pierre Vallieres, and despite the fact that the film is English-language and set in Montreal for most of its runtime, this issue is never discussed. Indeed, and most remarkably, French is never spoken by anyone at any time in the film aside from a very brief instance early on. Moreover, although he is present in the film in the form of another image on the newspaper office’s wall, the recently-elected Pierre Trudeau is never mentioned by name, nor is his arrival on the political scene discussed in any way, despite the suggestion—through the presence of his image alongside those of Ho Chi Minh, Pierre Vallieres and Fidel Castro—that he may signal some radical change in direction for Canada.

What the film does most well, especially when compared to other films of the day, is to explore the contours of freer sexual roles for some young women by the late 1960s. Jesse and Karen are in love, but it is as much a platonic love and partnership as it is a romance. When Karen refuses sex in their only love scene it is presented as evidence of Karen’s deepening attraction to David and not as some failure on her part. Perhaps understanding this, Jesse offers no resistance when Karen subsequently tells him that she’ll be going off with David. (Recall David’s song about how the pursuit of freedom, though necessary and good, always winds up in death.) Karen is allowed her freedom, her individuality; she is never made to do, or to feel, anything she doesn’t want to. Her love scene with David is shot in such a way as to celebrate the naked body, not exploit it. (Though the NFB would torpedo this when, 30 years later, they’d release Prologue on DVD with a picture of her naked on the cover.)

Most importantly, Karen’s voice is allowed to rise above those of her male tablemates at the commune, her opinion is measured and, perhaps because it is unencumbered by ideology, it feels realistic. Hers is the pivotal role, her journey the one we are asked to follow, her decisions the ones we are most obviously asked to accept. Her final refusal of the false either/or of escape/engagement set up by the film is the clearest final message. Indeed, her last words to David—"One thing I feel is that I am very, very tired of these abstractions."—are the closest the movie ever gets to offering any clear opinion. And so, in the end, this is Karen’s film, a study of a thoughtful and free young woman who, disappointed after years of unsuccessful political engagement, tries her hand at escape to a commune, and finds it wanting. Uniquely open, disponible, Karen is the film’s true hero. When she returns to Montreal and reunites with Jesse (who will drop the case against his assailants after having seen “real” violence in Chicago), we begin to understand that this experience has been her prologue, the end of her beginning. And what’s next?  

Well, us. Some 45 years down the road,we are Jesse and Karen: a couple of generations worth of restless, disappointed, frustrated, and well-educated North Americans longing for… something. Is it to be found through engagement with the world as it is? Through pushing our way in, facing the "hard truths," occupying our opponents’ spaces and throwing ourselves on the gears of the machine? Or is it to be found in enclaves of separatism: communities of difference, alternatives, and refusal? Sure, this is a false either/or. The answer can be "yes, and". But it is that push/pull of separatism/engagement that remains the core question behind our ongoing attempts to change the world, and ourselves.  

Suggestions for Future Reading:

Debating Dissent: Canada and the 1960s, by Lara A. Campbell, Gregory S. Kealey, and Dominique Clement

About the Book: Although the 1960s are overwhelmingly associated with student radicalism and the New Left, most Canadians witnessed the decade’s political, economic, and cultural turmoil from a different perspective. Debating Dissent dispels the myths and stereotypes associated with the 1960s by examining what this era’s transformations meant to diverse groups of Canadians—and not only protestors, youth, or the white middle-class.

With critical contributions from new and senior scholars, Debating Dissent integrates traditional conceptions of the 1960s as a "time apart" within the broader framework of the "long-sixties" and post-1945 Canada, and places Canada within a local, national, an international context. Cutting-edge essays in social, intellectual, and political history reflect a range of historical interpretation and explore such diverse topics as narcotics, the environment, education, workers, Aboriginal and Black activism, nationalism, Quebec, women, and bilingualism. Touching on the decade’s biggest issues, from changing cultural norms to the role of the state, Debating Dissent critically examines ideas of generational change and the sixties.

Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the Sixties, by Stuart Henderson

About the Book: Making the Scene is a history of 1960s Yorkville, Toronto's countercultural mecca. It narrates the hip Village's development from its early coffee house days, when folksingers such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell flocked to the scene, to its tumultuous, drug-fuelled final months. A flashpoint for hip youth, politicians, parents, and journalists alike, Yorkville was also a battleground over identity, territory, and power. Stuart Henderson explores how this neighbourhood came to be regarded as an alternative space both as a geographic area and as a symbol of hip Toronto in the cultural imagination.

Through recently unearthed documents and underground press coverage, Henderson pays special attention to voices that typically aren't heard in the story of Yorkville—including those of women, working class youth, business owners, and municipal authorities. Through a local history, Making the Scene offers new, exciting ways to think about the phenomenon of counterculture and urban manifestations of a hip identity as they have emerged in cities across North America and beyond.

The Empire Within: Postcolonial Thought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal, by Sean Mills

About the Book: In a brilliant history of a turbulent time and place, Mills pulls back the curtain on the decade’s activists and intellectuals, showing their engagement both with each other and with people from around the world. He demonstrates how activists of different backgrounds and with different political aims drew on ideas of decolonization to rethink the meanings attached to the politics of sex, race, and class and to imagine themselves as part of a broad transnational movement of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist resistance. The temporary unity forged around ideas of decolonization came undone in the 1970s, however, as many were forced to come to terms with the contradictions and ambiguities of applying ideas of decolonization in Quebec. From linguistic debates to labour unions, and from the political activities of citizens in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods to its Caribbean intellectuals, The Empire Within is a political tour of Montreal that reconsiders the meaning and legacy of the city’s dissident traditions. It is also a fascinating chapter in the history of postcolonial thought.

The House That Jill Built: A Lesbian Nation in Formation, by Becki Ross

About the Book: What began as a doctoral thesis in sociology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education became this history of LOOT, or the Lesbian Organization of Toronto, which sought to subvert the history of lesbian invisibility and persecution by claiming a collective, empowering public presence during the mid-to late 1970s. Archival sources and interviews provide a view of the complex developments in community, identity, and visionary politics in the feminist, left, and gay-liberation movements of the time.

Stuart Henderson is a documentary film producer with 90th Parallel Productions. He has a PhD in cultural history from Queen’s University and spent over a decade teaching at the university level before he “retired". He has since worked as a Hollywood creative consultant, a syndicated Pop Culture columnist with CBC Radio One, and as an editor with PopMatters and Exclaim! Magazine. He is a juror for the Polaris and the Prism Music Prizes. Stuart is the author of the multiple award-winning book, Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s. He lives in Toronto with his family.