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 (5A): the Political Science Strike
In Fall 1968, there were occupation-strikes across Quebec in the new largely francophone two year colleges (CEGEPS). They wanted more francophone Universities, more access from CEGEP to universities, student power and democratization. McGill’s Political Science departmental union supported their demands and waged their own strike for student power.
SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (2B3B): UGEQ and Student Syndicalism, part two
The ‘civil service’ of committees around McGill Student Council played an important role in researching and promoting new ideas about the relation of English Quebeckers to the new Quebec, about democratizing the university, and about changing the classroom to put students in charge of their own education.
SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (2A3A): UGEQ and Student Syndicalism, part one
McGill Student Society president Sharon Scholzberg fails to mobilize students to fight a fee increase. She then loses a referendum to join the unilingual French-language Quebec national student association (UGEQ). But many students are moving leftward, and many are open to supporting a new Quebec, where the francophone Quebecois exercize power proportionate to their (large majority) size of the population.
A conservative Council for 1966-67 is elected in Spring 1966. Ironically, it is on their watch that McGill students eventually vote to join UGEQ. An attempt to punish the student newspaper editor Sandy Gage for allowing publication of an article on a McGill professor’s research, that is used to aid the U.S. war effort in Vietnam, backfires on the student right. The SDU is created out of the student body defence of press freedom.
SIXTIES STUDENTS McGill (1): Serve the People in a New Quebec
Students at McGill University in Montreal built one of the most advanced student movements in Canada in the 1960s. The key conflict was over whether or not McGill would change itself to serve the interests of the French-language majority, and not just the English language minority, in a new Quebec.. In 1964-65 there were major protests over the Vietnam war, African-American civil rights in Selma and opposition to a fees increase.
