SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (5C): Firing of Stan Gray Prompts McGill Francais March
On March 21 1969, a massive march to the gates of McGill, initiated by mostly francophone CEGEP students, militant trade unionists and Quebecois nationalists of all political stripes, protested the firing of Stan Gray and called for a McGill Francais.
SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (5B): Senate and Board Walk-Ins for a Critical University
The left-wing Robert Hajaly Student Council, supported by departmental unions operating in parallel, tried to work through channels to negotiate the ceding of student power, but McGill faculty were intransigent and key liberal and social democratic student leaders gave them cover. The result was a series of walk-ins to the closed meetings of faculty committees, the Senate and the Board. The ranks of the protesters included individuals from all parts of the student left. They called on McGill to become a democratized Critical University that served the interests of all Quebeckers equally in a new Quebec. Repression followed.
SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (4B): The Realist and the SDU Sit-In, part two
The 1967 External Affairs report sought major democratization of McGill and acceptance of the minority status of English Quebecers in the new Quebec. This helps explain the ferocity of the repression by faculty, liberal student executives and the administration of those associated with the report in The Realist affair and the SDU sit-in.
SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (4A): The Realist and the SDU Sit-In, part one
The liberal Student Council of 1967-68 rejected the Wilson-Fekete proposals to seek a negotiated democratization of McGill. Fekete republished a political satire from The Realist. The administration and faculty responded by threatening three McGill Daily staffers with expulsion. When Stan Gray and the SDU lead a sit-in in support of the Daily, the administration, faculty and liberal Student Council executive seek criminal assault charges against Gray and add dozens of students to the list of those facing expulsion or suspension.
SIXTIES STUDENTS Simon Fraser (4): The Student Power Council Wins Parity
On May 30 1968, Simon Fraser students elected an openly left-wing student power slate to most of the seats in the Summer 1968 Student Council. The radical Council was thrust immediately into a mass mobilization of the student body, to raise eight demands for a full-scale democratization of the University (by rewriting the provincial Universities Act) and to vote for a student body moratorium on classes. They did this to support faculty who were seeing signs of a politicially-motivated purge of ‘troublemaker’ professors. They backed the demand of the left-led Faculty Union for Board acceptance of an Academic Freedom and Tenure brief.
