Through social media, satire has the potential to reach more voters than ever before; left-wing activists are slowly figuring out how to take advantage of this shift.

But how do you gauge the effectiveness of these kinds of campaigns? The government may be considering amendments to Bill C-30 but the proposed legislation hasn’t disappeared. Meanwhile, conservative groups continue to prod the national conversation to the right, attempting to reopen issues that were long considered, such as contraception and the environment. What is the place of satire in Canada’s political landscape?

Like the court jester in ancient times, Sean Devlin, creative director of TruthFool Communications, sees political satirists as one of the last avenues for combating abuses of power. That’s why Christopher Geoghegan throwing a pie at then Alberta premier Ralph Klein in 2003 was funny, while Klein throwing money at the occupants of an Edmonton homeless shelter in 2001 wasn’t. “When it is coming from the bottom, pointed upwards, it tends to be empowering,” says Devlin. “When it’s the opposite it’s just kind of mean.”

Since founding the Shit Harper Did campaign during the 2011 federal election, TruthFool has been using satire to reach larger audiences on issues ranging from asbestos mining in Quebec to the exploitation of the Alberta oil sands, and more. Because of their connections to Vancouver’s comedy and independent film communities, the company is able to create professional-looking multi-media campaigns that engage younger voters who feel bored or disempowered by traditional news sources.

Aside from providing entertainment, TruthFool’s work is unbound from the news media’s tradition of objectivity. Devlin believes that young people are more likely to trust news sources that aren’t required to give credence to every mainstream political idea, no matter how insane.

“A lot of these issues that are really crucial for young people to do with the climate and the economy and that sort of thing, there’s so clearly a right or a wrong,” he says. “When the media feels forced to pay mutual respect to both sides of that story, it undermines their credibility in the eyes of younger people.”

On the other side of the country, in a campaign dubbed “McGuinty and Me,” a group of antipoverty activists under the banner Put Food in the Budget has been touring Ontario soup kitchens and food banks with a cardboard mannequin of Premier Dalton McGuinty. One of the results is a three-minute video produced by the Toronto Star of activists and welfare recipients pouring their hearts out while across the table Dalton McGuinty’s eerie white-toothed smile remains unchanged.

It’s a familiar image to activist Melissa Addison-Webster, a member of Put Food in the Budget’s leadership committee, who knows that her work often fails to capture politicians’ interest. “God knows you need humour as an antipoverty activist,” she says. “I’ve been advocating for increases to social assistance rates for close to ten years. You just don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere lots of days.”

Although she understands the place for other forms of resistance, Addison-Webster sees the Put Food in the Budget satirical campaign as a relief from the often-dour tone of activism. “More militant responses to antipoverty issues polarize classes and I don’t think that leads to social change. Social change will come when there is solidarity amongst all people.”

Devlin agrees. “Comedically speaking, funny is funny,” he says. “If someone has laughed at a joke you’re making, even if it’s political and they don’t agree with your politics, on some level you’ve convinced them because they’re laughing.”

There was a lot of disappointment when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives took a majority government in 2011, but that setback in no way condemns the rise of this new era of Canadian political satire to an early death—quite the opposite. The more willing the right becomes to bend credulity in its policies, the more material it hands to the new generation of satirists. Just as the Bush years marked a zenith in American political satire, perhaps the Harper era will be Canada’s.

Erika Thorkelson is a writer and culture critic living in Vancouver. Her work has appeared in the Vancouver Sun, Herizons Magazine, and Joyland.ca, and she is the host of the Canadian Fiction Podcast.

An XCC Match on the Walpole Island First Nations Reserve, August 2010. Photo by Jeremy Beal.

The champ climbs into the steel cage against the sounds of loud, thrashing theme music, polite applause, and the odd hiss. Caleb Grummet may be holding the championship belt, but the crowd isn’t here to see him retain the title. Chris “The Menace” Clements is waiting in the ring, and the 900 fans in attendance have already given their hometown boy a hero’s welcome.

Before the crowd even has a chance to roar, Clements opens with a rush of punches that lands one good right hook to Grummet’s ear and sends him scampering back. Grummet, knowing well he’s outgunned by Clements’ standup game, backs out and buys some breathing room. When the pair lunge again, Grummet performs a textbook takedown, twisting Clements onto his back and wrapping his neck in a headlock, cutting off blood to his brain and air to his lungs. Clements manages to wriggle his way out of the hold, only to be trapped yet again. The partisan crowd groans and the referee squints closely for any sign of submission or loss of consciousness. Clements moves calmly and conserves energy, working his weight against an imperfect hold all the while ticking down the seconds he has left.

Mixed martial arts will be sanctioned in Ontario for the first time starting in 2011. This type of combat sport, incorporating aspects of boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, and martial arts, is often referred to as Ultimate Fighting, from the name of its most prominent organization. Though six other provinces and at least 46 U.S. states allow professional MMA matches, Ontario has held out longer than just about any other major jurisdiction on the continent besides New York State.

Opposition to mixed martial arts has generally come in two flavours: concerns over medical health and concerns about the moral problem of condoning violence. At the annual general meeting of the Canadian Medical Association in August, the CMA’s then-president Dr. Anne Doig restated the association’s official call to maintain the ban: “We are concerned when people engage in activities, the sole purpose of which is to pummel, kick, punch, scratch—whatever methods they use—until either somebody is seriously hurt or injured, or somebody cries uncle and submits.”

The other major concern that this kind of fighting prompts is that, beyond being damaging to the body, it is also, in some way, corrosive to the soul—that the spectacle of two gladiators beating each other senseless satisfies an appetite too dark and primal to be sanctioned by a modern society. In August, Toronto writer Susan G. Cole called the new move to legalize “a sign of social depravity” and “repulsive,” in her column in NOW Magazine. “Does anyone really think we can do anything about reducing violence in our culture,” she asked, “when the government is making money by entertaining sadistic audiences with vicious bloodshed? The fact that it’s popular doesn’t make a difference to me. Blood lust has always been big, ever since the Romans sent the Christians to the lions.” The arguments against MMA are both scientific and emotional, but they’ve been outshouted by the cheering masses and the ring of the cash register all the same.

MMA might not have been legal in Ontario, but it has been going strong under the province’s nose longer than the current government has held office. Competitions have been running underground in southern Ontario for more than a decade, one of the province’s worst-kept secrets. As early as 1996, they’ve happened on First Nations reserves near Barrie, Brantford, London, and Windsor. The on-reserve location isn’t coincidental: in the wake of the Ipperwash crisis, the Ontario government has shied away from challenging the boundaries of First Nations’ sovereignty. The result was, and remains, jurisdictional ambiguity, allowing grey-market businesses— gambling, tobacco, extreme fighting—to thrive, a legal blind spot hidden in plain view.

But in less than a year, the Ontario government’s position on legalizing MMA shifted from visceral disgust to “not being on the radar” to fast-tracked official endorsement. The turnaround was in large part the result of concerted lobbying by the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC, the sport’s largest, richest, and most recognizable league.

UFC president Dana White has repeatedly called Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe the “mecca” for mixed martial arts, and expressed his intent to conquer. White told anyone who’d listen that “Ontario is the UFC’s biggest market,” that support for his sport was virtually unanimous, and that it was only a matter of time before legalization threw the doors open. In early 2010, White appeared satisfied with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s assessment that legalizing the sport wasn’t a top priority. “The world being the way it is, he’d be in real trouble if MMA was at the top of his list,” White quipped. After all, that was solid progress from the premier’s assertion that he “hated” the sport a few short months prior.

Privately, however, the UFC was lobbying hard. In May, White decided to flex his company’s considerable muscle: with almost no notice, he announced that the UFC would be making a “major announcement” at a Toronto press conference a few days later. That vague promise drew a scrum of reporters of every stripe, who turned out en masse. The move turned out to be some well-scripted posturing, and White announced to a disappointed crowd the opening of a satellite office in Toronto, helmed by former Canadian Football League commissioner Tom Wright. In addition to the well-known football heavyweight, the UFC had already retained former Ontario premier David Peterson’s bulldog lobbyist law firm Cassels Brock, who had already been applying pressure behind the scenes for some time.

The PR stunt was a pushy, calculated move, but the numbers did their share of talking as well. The nanny-state accusations, the lobbying pressure, and the promise of adding millions to the provincial coffers through sanctioned events proved enough to let MMA legislation skip the queue. On August 14, Sophia Aggelonitis, at the time Ontario’s minister of consumer services, announced that in the interest of keeping fighters safe, Ontario would be giving professional mixed martial arts the go-ahead starting in 2011.

Photo by Jeremy Beal.

On the Tuesday before the August 28th match, I’m hanging out at Adrenaline Training Center, a pristine MMA training centre sitting behind a hardware store parking lot in London, Ontario. Adrenaline opened in 2007, a stone’s throw from a rough neighbourhood notorious for OxyContin abuse and prostitution, but the gym’s interior strikes a hard contrast to its host neighbourhood. It’s almost fussily clean, with perfectly maintained equipment and clean-cut staff and patrons. A regulation boxing ring and an MMA-specific steel cage occupy opposite ends of the gym, while punching bags, free weights, and even a gift shop sit neatly between.

Alex “Pecker” Gasson greets me at the front desk and gives me the tour. He stands just under six feet tall and has won enough accolades in kickboxing, MMA, and Pankration (a fighting style descended from ancient Greek wrestling) to fill several trophy cases. Today he sports a pink crescent scar around his left eye, courtesy of a full three-round bout two months prior.

“Three stitches, a nice, clean cut,” he waves dismissively.

Upbeat and energetic, Gasson talks up the mix of groups that use the gym. It plays host to wrestling clubs, fitness fanatics, boxers, martial arts groups, and, of course, MMA classes, their bread and butter. (Though matches have never been sanctioned, official training in the sport is condoned and prolific throughout Ontario.) Their patrons come from varied backgrounds: students from nearby Fanshawe College and the University of Western Ontario flood in every fall; thirtysomething professionals arrive in their BMWs alongside teenagers on ratty 10-speed bikes.

The Ontario decision is only a few days old, but having spoken with Gasson a few weeks earlier, he thought the change was bound to happen. He thinks the organizations that have been operating illegally will flourish under a new regulatory regime. “The people going to the shows, they aren’t die-hard fans of the promoters,” he says. “They’re fans of the fighters. The organizations that know the fighters, that already have relationships with the big names—they’re the guys that will thrive.”

New sanctioning will bring with it a new provincial governing body and, most likely, strict guidelines that help justify the Ontario government’s change of heart on the issue. That means a board of governors and an oversight body. I ask Alex if there is anyone from the tightly knit community he thinks the province should bring onboard, in terms of expertise. “Sure. Me.”

When you make your living getting kicked in the face, a healthy dose of narcissism is more or less requisite. But Gasson and his cohorts from Adrenaline might just be the people best suited to take their sport into the light. They take it seriously, train top-shelf athletes and run a very tight, respectable ship. What’s clear in talking to Gasson and others is their ambition towards the mainstream credibility at home they enjoy everywhere else on the continent.

Chris Clements, a trainer and mainstay of the Adrenaline team, is often credited with holding the world record for fastest knockout in the sport, thanks to landing a quick haymaker to an opponent’s charging jaw in Montreal in 2006. Clements, 34, has been involved in MMA for about eight years. Trained originally in tae kwon do and then as a boxer, he was taking some time off when he read about MMA in the newspaper. Seeing a chance to fight in real matches for real money, he got involved and became one of the bigger Ontario names in the sport while it was still in its infancy.

Clements’ 80-kilogram frame sits slack and comfortable behind the gym’s desk, flanked everywhere by merch bearing his and his partners’ names. He speaks calmly and thoughtfully with the quick cadence of the southwestern Ontario accent, and falls naturally into a conversation about the state of the sport in the province.

“That’s one thing about these fights. Everywhere else you fight, there’s a commission guy watching you get your hands taped. There’s blood tests, steroid tests. On the reserves there’s no one. They could be taping metal bars to their hands. There’s hepatitis, HIV. Blood can get into your eyes, your mouth, you just don’t know.”

Consistency and fairness is another black-market problem. “Pecker and another guy had a draw at the last one. [The promoters] wanted them to go another round, and they said no, so they just went back and changed the scores.”

“With the amateurs it’s even worse. These promoters are making a lot of money. When I first started you had to be training for years. You’d have to have a known MMA coach, he’d put in a word for you, and you’d get a small fight. I’ve been at fights on native reserves, you go talk to the guy in the dressing room, ask him how long he’s been training. He says some guy in a bar offered him $500 to fight the night before. It disrespects guys like me who put in 10, 15 years of martial arts training. It makes us look bad. With some of these events, if they have 15 fights, I’d say out of 30, maybe six guys actually belong in the cage.”

Clements shares the opinion with the rest of the gym that the decision to sanction the sport is a good one. “I’m in the main event this Saturday on the reserve, and it’s my home town. I wouldn’t do it for any other reason. I’d rather see them get wiped out … I think they’ll go under.”

Crossing the bridge onto the Walpole Island First Nation on the Saturday evening, there isn’t much to tell you anything’s changed. The only visible difference is the lack of brand-name franchise stores in the strip mall. The hockey rink hosting the fight looks like anything you’d find in a thousand small towns across Canada.

But the reserve still carries a stigma among outsiders; I was surprised at the friends and family members who warned me of the dangers of setting foot on the reserve. Some expressed concern for my safety, others refused an invitation to come along. An astonishing number recited hearsay about the calamities that had happened to friends of friends who “went over there.” Of course, it was all disturbingly bigoted nonsense: whatever problems exist on this reserve, the urge to rough up white MMA fans with money to spend is not one of them.

The racial dynamics of the event are curious. You get the impression—from the demeanor of the Bkejwanong security guards and police on site and the notably small number of aboriginal fans in the crowd—that the event is regarded as an oddity at best. Native kids with skateboards stand and watch the crowd of almost exclusively white revelers lined up outside the arena with a wary curiosity. There are 900 people here to see the fight, but only a dozen or so are residents of the reserve.

Historically, these events have played the indigenous iconography to the hilt: the last organization to set up shop at Walpole was Fighting Spirit MMA, which bills itself as Ontario’s “Ab”original MMA organization. (The band council at Walpole recently cut ties with the group over some outstanding bills.)

Tonight, however, the promotional team is a company out of Michigan called Xtreme Cagefighting Championship, or XCC. The American league found an aboriginal silent partner to get around local ownership bylaws, which was contentious, but not contentious enough to stop the fight. The coming change could be a bellwether for the soon-to-be-legal business. With legitimacy looming, the larger, better-funded American leagues look poised to crowd out the smaller organizers—mainly aboriginal entrepreneurs—that have controlled the black-market sport for more than a decade. Tonight, titled “XCC 64: Battle at the Border 10,” marks XCC’s first foray into Canada.

MMA events may be illegal, but patronage, promotion, and sponsorship are alive and well: restaurants, energy drinks, gyms and gear outfitters are keen to slap their logos all over the event’s promotional material, and a select few are even shilling their wares in the arena the night of the fight. Local businesses, both directly related to the sport and others looking to advertise to the target demographic the events pull in, actively and aggressively sponsor rounds, intermissions and official after-parties. A small family-owned vitamin water company has been following the various tournaments so closely that their daughter is invited to sing the national anthem to start the night.

Before that can happen, though, an emergency of sorts breaks out. Woodrow James, the XCC lieutenant and promoter responsible for the evening, has been flitting in and out of the arena, dressing rooms, and small circles of agitated entourages, putting out fires. There have been some no-shows (more the rule than the exception at these events), and James is calming down a supremely agitated manager whose fighter is apparently without an opponent. The confrontation degrades almost instantly into a shouting match.

“Your guys should fucking be here; this is bullshit! You’re fucking amateurs! The whole setup is amateur!”

“Fuck you, then, leave—fucking leave!”

As it turns out, the two missing fighters had been pulled over en route from London by the police, who had clocked them at 180 km/hour in a 50 zone. Inexplicably, they were only delayed and all the fights advertised on the card went on, although in shuffled order.

Speaking with James, flush with excitement from having successfully quarterbacked his first Canadian event, he sounds more like the biggest fan in the building than the orchestrator. He is a thirtysomething former fighter who was plugged in to the London scene well before he got his job with XCC. He was roommates with Chris Clements and is on a first-name basis with most of the staff at Adrenaline. “Chris Clements is my best friend,” James says. “Business is business, but I’m scared as shit for him and I want him to win.”

James loves the location and considers it well above the median. “I love the arena atmosphere. The fighters get to have showers, a little breathing room, a place to sit.” Even south of the border where the events are legal, it seems frills like showers and proper dressing rooms are few and far between.

The fights start a full hour and 15 minutes later than advertised but the crowd barely seems to notice. The national anthems are belted out, the announcer spills out the opening ceremony and the fighting commences.

The first match of the evening neatly illustrates the Canadian Medical Association’s assertions about the risks of brain injuries in MMA: Jeff Silver, an Adrenaline-trained fighter, lands a right hook not 20 seconds into the match that leaves his opponent, D.J. Gamble, stupefied on the ground, announced colloquially as TKFO—“Technically Knocked-theFuck-Out.” The crowd doesn’t seem to mind trading substantial fights for highlight material, and excited chatter bubbles up while the next fighters are immediately introduced in the interest of making up the lost time.

The second fight is the sole women’s bout of the event, pitting Bernice Booth against Randa Markos. Their fight is a particularly technical one, filled with more punches and kicks than the average men’s bout. It ends with a full flip into an “arm bar submission,” whereby Booth’s elbow is hyper-extended against her opponent’s thigh, that forces Booth to tap out.

The evening is filled with strange juxtapositions: all-American looking dudes taking on tattooed punks; flabby bodies pitted against muscle-bound Atlases. Throughout the entire night there is a palpable current of energy flowing through the crowd, punctuated by the oohs and ahhs that accompany landed fists, knees, and all sorts of bloodletting. That it caters to baser instincts doesn’t make it any less irresistible or troubling. It’s dangerous and brutal, disciplined and technical, entertaining and grandiose, cheap and sickening.

Chris “The Menace” Clements looked to be on the verge of passing out from the arm twisted around his neck, complemented by an ongoing introduction to Caleb Grummet’s elbow. Somehow, Clements slips free and quickly rises to his feet, and the momentum of the match turns, with Clements landing a string of solid punches until the sound of the bell ends the round. The fighters retreat to their corners, Clements eerily composed, as if he’s standing in his own living room.

Thirty seconds into the second round, Clements’ fist opens up Grummet’s forehead, sending a torrent of blood spattering over both fighters. The cut is bad enough to put the fight on hold for some first aid, but Grummet is soon back on the mat, showing a brave face but not much else, and absorbing blow after blow until the referee halts the fight, calling the match in Clements’ favour and awarding him the belt. Adrenaline has another champion on its staff, and The Menace spends the next 20 minutes posing exhausted but victorious for the cameras, smiling and looking not even slightly dangerous.

These are the last days of underground MMA on the reserves, and whatever your opinion on the sport itself, having events sanctioned and governed by stricter and safer regulations should be a welcome change. Distaste for the sport does not justify indifference to the well-being of its participants. For all the gladiatorial hyperbole put on by the organizers who market the sport, the fighters consider themselves, and each other, legitimate athletes who are due the same protections and respect that their peers in boxing, hockey, and every other violent sport receive. This is a sport that prides itself on pushing limits and buttons, but the core of this phenomenon is still the men and women who choose to enter the ring, but have had to risk shoddy conditions to do so. Those conditions are set to improve, but there is a more important change coming next year. It’s all too clear that the appetite for this controlled violence exists: pay-per-view numbers and the draw to events like the ones on Walpole Island speak for themselves. These blackmarket venues provided a moral cover for Ontario’s collective self-image. MMA was condoned, but could essentially be dismissed as de facto criminals servicing a fringe group of ultraviolent thrill-seekers. Now that the sport has been embraced, it becomes a true piece of Ontario’s official identity. One wonders whether the province will be able to tell the difference.

The Simply People Festival shows there's still more to be done.

If the LGBT community can have Pride Week, complete with parade, then the world’s most undervalued minority — people with disabilities — can have at least one day to come together for disability pride.

That’s the idea behind Simply People.  Canada Wide Accessibility for Post Secondary Students [CANWAPSS] had its 6th annual Simply People Festival yesterday. It’s an opportunity  for Toronto’s disability community to gather under the shadow of city hall in Nathan Philips Square and listen to performers like Justin Hines or, as most people know him, “That guy in the wheelchair from the Ontario Tourism Commercial,” and bask in all they’ve accomplished — except Ontario has ensured they still haven’t accomplished much of anything.When David Lepofsky, chair of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act [AODA] Alliance and fellow disabled traveler, has to start his speech to those attending the festival with, “I’m going to give you good news, bad news and hopeful news,” you know that the disabled community is getting about as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield.

He was talking about the AODA. It’s that small piece of legislation the able-bodied population has largely no idea exists, which stipulates the province has to be fully accessible. If you don’t read past that sentence it is the good news he mentioned, but McGuinty runs Ontario like an infommercial so, “Some restrictions apply.” One of them being, and this is the bad news, that Ontario has until the year 2025 to get the province up to snuff when the law can actually be enforced.  Oh, and Lepofsky informed the attending audience that with five years already passed since  the law was enacted, the province is already behind schedule. If I live to 2025, I’ll be almost 40 and now with 100% accessibility even more behind schedule, who knows if any of us will live to see it.

His hopeful news was his hope that the larger disabled community would all get involved in pestering the provincial government even more than we already have, just to make sure our representatives stick to a commitment they already made. Well, as a member of the disability community, I am not a babysitter and I refuse to have a parent/child relationship with a politician. The most dangerous part of Lepofsky’s suggestion is that if this commitment falls through, disabled people may blame themselves and suddenly politicians can turn around and say, “You didn’t lobby us enough to make accessibility happen.” Whatever happened to doing something simply because it’s the right thing to do? Fundamentally, priority one of any government in Canada should be to  stay in line with our  Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Part of this general malaise for the causes of the disabled in Ontario, that puts any action toward improvement consistently on the back burner, is the fault of the disabled community.  Ironically, that was on display underneath the celebration Simply People was supposed to be.  Yesterday was supposed to be a celebration of disability pride, but there were too many empty seats to give you the sense that the majority in the community are prideful. If many of us won’t care to show up, there is no way an Ontario politician is going to care about our issues.

Looking to the stage, Justin Hines looks like a leader and a symbol of a person with a disability making a larger impact for all of us. The Justin Hines Foundation benefits people with disabilities. However, he is known to perform frequently at Hugh’s Room, one of the most inaccessible venues in the city and they don’t make it any more accessible for those times he’s performing. In fact, if you phone them up and ask them, they will tell you that they have no immediate plans for making the club accessible — yet, Hines performs there.

Also at the festival, Mayor David Miller emphasized that Toronto will finally get accessible street cars in 2011 as if he expected all of us to stand up and bow down.  Then my friend Saburah Murdoch turns to me and says, “In the 25 years I’ve lived in Toronto, I’ve never been able to ride a streetcar.”  I ‘m asking on what planet is waiting 25 years to ride a streetcar acceptable? Mayor Miller also pointed out that when Toronto’s media covered and debated the new streetcars, they neglected to mention that they were accessible.

If that doesn’t show that Toronto doesn’t give two shits about its disabled population, I don’t know what does.

Living in Ontario often makes me feel like I’m Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner and I’m the only one who realizes that there’s a world outside The Village that I’m desperately trying to wake others up to.

I grew up in Surrey B.C., a suburb of Vancouver, where much of the activism and political heavy lifting that Ontario is going through now, had already happened in the mid-80s. For much of my life, accessibility was simply normal and if something wasn’t accessible, Vancouver got right on that without so much of a hem or a haw. B.C. will be fully accessible by 2010.

Is it wrong for me to assume that Canada’s largest city and the province with the largest disabled population should be setting the standard, not getting its ass handed to it by a province on the other side of the country? Toronto has been established much longer than Vancouver and yet disabled Torontonians still have 16 more years of waiting to do.

I came here and suddenly, I had to get used to the new “We’re working on it” status quo. I meet frustrated disabled residents so used to waiting, that they’ve basically given up hoping for anything big in a timely fashion.  I saw it at The Simply People Festival: there were respectful claps, but there were no whoops and hollers. Just like the disabled community seems fine with waiting and nobody is willing to mobilize and get angry.

So before we celebrate disability pride, before we toot our own horns about how much we’ve already accomplished, why don’t we get something done for accessibility that won’t take 16 years to become reality.

The city had been embroiled in a racially charged public debate for months leading up to that landmark night last winter. At 6 p.m. more than 200 people crowded into the Toronto District School Board’s headquarters to offer passionate pleas both for and against a controversial idea that’d deeply divided Canada’s largest metropolis, in particular its black community. For some, it represented real equity, an attempt to achieve a place for their children in a system that’d historically forgotten them. For others, it represented nothing but race, a new form of segregation that went against everything their forefathers spent their lives fighting for. Either way, they were there to bear witness to history, as on that night, January 29, 2008, the school trustees cast their deciding vote on the proposal to open an Africentric school in Toronto, publicly stating their position on what has become the third rail of educational policy-the racially separated school.

This story originally published in the January-February 2009 issue of This Magazine

During the public submissions that preceded the trustees’ vote, many concerned citizens rose up and spoke out. Donna Harrow, the activist who’d brought the proposal to the board the year before, urged trustees not to be taken in by misinformation about the school’s purpose. Her colleague, Angela Wilson, argued that, despite the rhetoric that dogged the idea, a blackfocused school was “not about segregation” but “self-determination,” while Winston LaRose, the executive director of the Jane Finch Concerned Citizens Organization, charged that Toronto schools “don’t represent the diversity you so much talk about.” But others in the crowd fired back, crying out that black-focused schools did, indeed, represent a new form of segregation and were “a half-baked solution to the problems faced by black youth.” They alleged the school would further marginalize black children, not empower them as its supporters believed.

The trustees also added to the furor, offering emotional appeals on either side of the debate. Josh Matlow came out strongly in opposition—”We don’t believe students should be divided by race, even if it’s with the best of intentions”—while Gerri Gershon said that “separating kids by their colour is simply not the answer.” Maria Rodrigues countered that she couldn’t in good conscience deny “black parents their right to establish an Africentric school,” and Sheila Ward, who’d originally opposed the proposal, implored her colleagues to recognize the power of symbolism in supporting something that could give hope to “those who believe time is running out.”

When the trustees finally returned their verdict it was after 10 p.m. An evening that had been characterized by fierce emotion had reached its climax, and as the board pronounced its decision, Harrow and Wilson fell crying into one another’s arms. Their proposal had passed by the slimmest of margins, 11 votes to nine. For decades, black youth have been dropping out of Toronto high schools at an alarming rate, and now, finally, it seemed the powers-that-be were going to do something about it. The city would create its first black-focused school, scheduled to open in September 2009.

But passing the proposal hasn’t diminished the maelstrom of controversy surrounding the school, nor will it. In a country that defines itself by its commitment to multiculturalism, many believe the very idea of a black-focused school runs contrary to everything Canada stands for. Canadians are justifiably proud of a long-standing tradition of inclusion and acceptance, and anything that challenges those notions is considered untouchable. But in the country’s most multicultural city the dropout rate for black youth stubbornly sits at 40 per cent. A growing group of activists have forced the issue onto the agenda, and their proposal may just put some of those students back in the classroom. The experiment will soon be underway and the question is now whether it can work—and whether it can even survive.

There has always been a strong, although mostly underground, push for a black-focused school in Toronto. Activists within the black community have been searching for ways to keep young, black students engaged in the public system for nearly as long as there’s been a black population in the city. While the current debate over black-focused schools may appear to have dropped from the sky, there is actually a long history of grassroots advocacy behind it. In fact, the Africentric school that’s supposed to open next September is not the first of its kind. It’s actually the second.

The first black-focused school opened in Toronto more than two decades ago. It wasn’t just an Africentric program, a course on African history, or a tutorial service for black students, but an actual alternative school, a legitimate part of the York board of education. It had its own students and staff. It had its own space, at D.B. Hood Community School in the northwest end of the city. And it had its own name: the Afro-Caribbean Alternative Secondary School.

Yet while the ghostly traces of the school’s story have slowly disappeared from Toronto’s collective memory, in some ways D.B. Hood’s tale still haunts the city. In Canada’s most multicultural place, it’s tempting to think of racial inequity as a relic of the past. But the forces that ultimately killed the black-focused school at D.B. Hood are gathering again. The two stories are so eerily similar that it’s hard not to wonder if this forgotten, unhappy history is destined to repeat itself.

Just as it is today, the dropout rate among black youth in the mid-1980s was disturbing. Close to 40 per cent of black students weren’t graduating from high school, and alarmingly little was being done about it. So, in 1985, three activists—Jackie Wilson, Afua Cooper and Veronica Sullivan—decided that had to change. At the time, Wilson was pursuing her doctorate at the University of Toronto and working as a teaching assistant. She’d previously been involved with developing alternative programs for black high school students in the United States, and her plan was to initiate a grassroots campaign in Canada for a school tailored to the needs of black students. Like the movement’s current advocates, she believed such a school might just re-engage some of Toronto’s disaffected youth.

Wilson recruited first Cooper and then Sullivan to join her efforts. Cooper, then an enterprising undergraduate in her early 20s who’d emigrated from Jamaica five years earlier, was a student in Wilson’s class, and Sullivan was another teacher interested in black education. The trio began to meet regularly, convening around 10 to 15 times over the course of the year at a small West Indian restaurant on Eglinton Avenue and at the University of Toronto campus.

Their back-room conversations quickly grew into a series of town-hall meetings where parents came and discussed the problems their children were having in the existing school system. They discussed what an Africentric curriculum would look like, who the students would be, and how to gain the supportincluding proper resources and accreditation-of the local school board. They focused their efforts in the then City of York as it had, and still has, a large black population. Within a year the three women were ready to approach the York school board with their concept. Thanks in large part to Wilson’s stewardship and what had become a group of roughly 10 dedicated teachers and parents, the board agreed to their proposal and Dale Shuttleworth, then assistant superintendent of programs, announced that in September 1986 D.B. Hood would be home to an Africentric alternative school.

But, like today, the announcement was met with official skepticism and unease. While Shuttleworth and another trustee offered their support, much of the school board, including the then-co-ordinator of multicultural services, Rod McColl, maintained reservations. At the time, McColl contended that isolating any specific group ran counter to integrationist policy and said publicly, “There are a lot of other people [at the board] who are leery of it.” He did add, however, that “there isn’t anyone who isn’t saying, ‘If this experiment works, great.'”

While the details of the school’s short tenure at D.B. Hood aren’t well documented, it is known that the doors opened with a small staff of qualified teachers who taught approximately 45 students in three separate classrooms. Wilson, Sullivan and another teacher, Byron Stephenson, co-ordinated the school. (Cooper maintained her support from the sidelines-she’d completed her undergraduate degree by then and a new job kept her from participating directly.) The student body consisted of predominantly African and Caribbean Canadiansalthough applications from non-black students were also accepted-all of whom were over the age of 16. Every student, some as old as 35, had either dropped out or were having serious difficulties in the existing system. The curriculum, which offered advanced and general-level courses on black culture and the developing world, fulfilled the standard requirements of the York school board, meaning students received regular credits and a standard high-school diploma. The school offered daycare for students with young children and what Wilson called a more supportive and non-intimidating environment. Wilson and Sullivan also began to form relationships with the Toronto Youth Project, the University of Toronto and local community colleges, so that students would be able to move on to post-secondary education. However, despite a positive start, after only 18 months the school was moved from D.B. Hood to George Harvey Collegiate, another public school nearby. With the change in location-the York board said it needed the space at D.B. Hood-the school’s resources were also reduced and its status demoted to simply a program, an important symbolic difference. At George Harvey, the school lasted another year before it was unceremoniously shut down. Even today, Cooper remains mystified by the events that led to its closing less than three years after it opened.

“I’m not sure how it went down, but I know the opposition was constant,” says the now accomplished author and academic, who is currently a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. “It sort of fell by the wayside, and part of it, I know for sure, was because it wasn’t given the proper resources. As an alternative school, it died.”

Although Cooper believes opposition from the York board and the larger white community played a part in the school’s demise, Sullivan, who declined to comment for this story, intimated to Cooper years later that the school eventually fell victim to the same segregationist assaults that continue to plague the movement today. She told Cooper that she thought it was vitriol from within the black community that ultimately sealed the school’s fate. She said influential people in the community rallied against the project, claiming students were receiving substandard educations and that the teachers were under-qualified; meanwhile, those closest to the school said it was achieving positive results.

Sadly, segregationist rhetoric has consistently hijacked the debate over black-focused schools, overshadowing what’s really at stake. Proponents of the concept say it bears no resemblance to segregation, and that they can’t afford to worry about the political optics when they have the chance to do somethinganything-to address the crisis in black education in not only Toronto but the country as a whole. “The issue is the 40 per cent dropout rate,” says Cooper, who remains active on the issue today. “That number is critical. It’s a national disgrace, it’s a provincial disgrace and it’s a municipal disgrace that you can allow so many children to fail.”

Between the Afro-Caribbean Alternative School and the creation of the black-focused school today, there have been a number of attempts to improve black education. The issue gained traction in the mainstream with the release in 1994 of the Royal Commission on Learning, a government report on the state of education in Ontario, and again 11 years later when professor George Dei, one of Canada’s leading researchers on race and social inequity, rekindled the cause at a widely attended townhall meeting on black achievement. But despitethe report’s call to combat the “crisis among black youth with respect to education and achievement” and Dei’s public appeal, influential voices from both within and without the black community effectively put the movement to rest on grounds that it smacked of segregation. These sorts of attacks have repeatedly turned the public discussion about the practical application of Africentric education into an emotionally charged clash over racial inequality. It happened in the 1980s at D.B. Hood, it happened again in 1994 and 2005, and its supporters fear it will happen again in 2009.

The same unavoidable question lingers today: Will segregationist rhetoric once again derail the Africentric cause? While most of the prominent activists, educators and intellectuals involved with black education-regardless of whether or not they support black-focused schools-believe the segregationist comparison is inaccurate, somehow it inevitably takes hold of the discussion.

True to form, the current plans for a black-focused school have already been roiled by accusations of segregation. At the first public meeting on the present proposal in November 2007, about 100 people came to voice their opinions, most in support and some in opposition. “This is not a race issue, this is an education issue,” said one person, while another, who has five kids in the public system, chimed in, “Since there is no justice in the schools for our children, this would be a very good idea.” But the detractors were also vocal, with one shouting “No segregation!” in the middle of the proceedings.

The next meeting drew even more people-and even louder convictions. A retired teacher declared that black-focused schools were the “very thing Martin Luther King marched against,” while somebody else said that discussing the issue amounted to opening up a “Pandora’s box.” One parent responded, “Black-focused schools are not about segregation. They’re about finding a solution to the problems in the system,” before another argued to loud cheers that black students need to receive the same support from teachers as white students do. Later that November a frustrated group of supporters, led again by Donna Harrow and Angela Wilson, shut down a school board meeting after learning black-focused schools were not going to be discussed. About 100 supporters who believed a staff report on Africentric schools was going to be unveiled that night rose up in protest. One supporter, parent Vicki McPhee, strode defiantly into the middle of the room and said, “We are not going to let this happen again.” Wilson echoed her sentiment, telling the members of the board that they “should know how we feel,” and asked, “Why don’t you want our children to be educated?”

The incident proved just how deeply the supporters felt about the issue-but the political and media establishment quickly dismissed the idea. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty publicly opposed the proposal, telling reporters after the first community meeting, “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think our shared responsibility is to look for ways to bring people together. One of those most powerful agents of social cohesion is publicly funded education.” Before the trustees’ vote in January 2008, the media, which has played a significant part in perpetuating the segregation myth, also weighed in as all three major Toronto dailies condemned the proposal. The Toronto Star argued the “idea smacks of segregation, which is contrary to the values of the school system and Canadian society as a whole,” while the Globe and Mail ran a column that called black-focused schools “as insulting as they are ridiculous.” Even more vehement in its criticism, the National Post said the “concept of special schools for black students is one of those terrible ideas that refuses to die.”

But refuse to die it does. The movement scored a significant victory with the trustees’ endorsement last year, yet there remains a bittersweet mood amongst its grassroots advocates. While Harrow, Wilson and their colleagues were thrilled at the board’s decision, they recognize that an Africentric school is not a panacea to the problems facing black youth. For one, even with the vote of confidence from the board, the provincial government refuses to budge. McGuinty reiterated his earlier opposition, stating he was “disappointed with the board’s decision” and that his government would neither support nor fund it. As Harrow said, “the struggle continues,” and Wilson added, “it should have happened a long time ago, and it shouldn’t have brought all this pain back to our black community.”

While the proposal put forward by the current board remains vague, the principles it’s founded upon are reminiscent of those of the original Africentric school at D.B. Hood. Like the three activists’ vision in 1986, the new school is intended to reflect the black experience. But that concept is often misunderstood. What remains a frustrating constant is that now, as then, a disproportionate number of young black men and women do not graduate from high school.

“What we’re talking about is an educational philosophy,” says George Dei, who’s now the chair of the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. “We’re talking about creating a sense of belongingness for the students in the school environment. We’re teaching them about values-about respect, responsibility, community and history. We’re affirming their identities and talking about having a very complex understanding of what it means to be black or African.”

Although an academic, Dei, like Jackie Wilson before him, is pragmatic in his beliefs. An Africentric school is not an ideological or political symbol for him: it’s a real measure designed to combat a real problem. He is quick to point out that black-focused schools are not a cure-all for the problems facing black youth but an integral part of a larger web of fixes. What’s important is that the rest of the country-and, in particular, the different levels of government-recognize the urgency of the situation and finally act.

The black-focused school that will open at Sheppard Public School in September 2009 is a step in that direction. While the school itself is more vision than reality at this point-the board has made its “guiding principles” public but has yet to establish the specifics of the curriculum-the process is underway. The school, called the Africentric Alternative School, will offer classes from junior kindergarten to Grade 5 and is designed to teach both content and values. According to a draft document that the board plans to distribute to prospective students, those values will be the same ones Dei and other activists have been advocating for decadesinclusion, responsibility, community and leadership, only all in the context of the black experience.

“If you have to break down alienation and marginalization among students, you have to first respond to their human and emotional needs,” says TDSB Executive Officer for Student and Community Equity Lloyd McKell, who is currently in charge of the Africentric Alternative School’s development. A longtime advocate of black-focused schools, McKell became the first-ever equity officer at a Canadian school board in 2005 and immediately courted controversy when he expressed his support for the initiative in a sweeping interview with the Toronto Star. “We’re stepping outside the box to create new environments that promote success for different groups of students. In terms of the curriculum itself, that’s going to be under development over the next several months.”

Once the board has hired the school’s principal—a process that will begin in earnest this month—that person will work with a team of teachers and community members to create content for each of the six grade levels. As part of the Toronto board, the school is under the mandate of the Ontario public system and still has to satisfy the standard provincial requirements. What’s different is that both the approach and content will reflect the concept of what McKell calls the “African Village.”

The idea is not as lofty as it may sound, though. It’s more an attempt to refocus and refine the existing curriculum with a specific student body in mind. In approach, that means restructuring the classroom so that students are given opportunities to take leadership roles at every stage of the learning process. In content, it means students will not only study European history and the creation of European identities, but also African history and the creation of African identities. It’s not as simple as inserting a few black faces into the textbook, but the deliberate inclusion of African history and people is a starting point.

From there the board’s plan is to grow the content in stages. Essentially, the school will follow its first set of students through the system. As the original fifth-graders move onto Grade 6 next year, the school will add sixth-grade programming. As the sixth-graders move onto Grade 7 the following year, the school will add seventh-grade programming, and so on. Sheppard Public School can only house classes up to Grade 8, however, and the board has yet to look into the feasibility of a black-focused high school. But McKell says it’s in the works. The goal, he says, is to eventually evolve the concept to the point where curricula are in place for kindergarten all the way through to high school. Opening a secondary school is a critical step since the project must re-engage high school students who’ve dropped out of the existing system and prevent others from dropping out in the first place.

“As we develop this concept, I think we’re going to appreciate that this changes us and gives us a new sense of possibilities,” explains McKell. “The pedagogy is not restricted to content. I think it will be an opportunity, once it gets established, to help us learn some things that we’ll try in other schools. Because our ultimate goal, my goal, is to have a truly inclusive school system.”

In this sense, the Africentric project is designed not only to empower marginalized students but also to transform the traditional approach to public education. Notably, none of the school’s most prominent advocates see it as a permanent solution. Their desire is to help those who need it while also changing the way children are taught everywhere-regardless of their race. That’s why enrollment in the Africentric Alternative School is open to any student who wants to go there: the point is to use the school as a pilot program, one that will establish lessons and pedagogies that can eventually be transferred to the wider public system. The larger project is to create a truly inclusive institution. Whether that’s a realistic objective is what remains to be seen.

“If the school is about advancing or helping the situation of students who are not doing well, we have to start thinking about pedagogies that relate to those students,” says York University Professor Carl James, who has been involved with black education projects both in the academy and on the ground. “Education is not a simple thing. It’s very complex. It’s not teaching subjects but teaching people. That means thinking of them in terms of their race, their class, their community, everything. You have to build a program around those realities.”

For its proponents, a black-focused school is not something that will perpetuate inequity and injustice but a corrective measure intended to help right those past wrongs. They argue there is a fine but important distinction between forced segregation and separation by choice. “We separate students based on their education needs all the time,” says James. “What’s interesting is that as a society we have difficulty with the translation. People are only seeing the ‘black’ part of the school, which makes it only about race, and we don’t want it to be that way.”

Dei echoes that sentiment, pointing out that the school is defined more by the principles it’s founded upon than anything else. “Sometimes people miss the point,” he says. “It’s part of the confusion and misinformation around the issue. There’s a difference between an oppressive act and one that’s intended to deal with a long-standing problem.” Yet what makes challenging the segregation claim so difficult is that the idea of separation-by choice or otherwise-threatens to undermine the multicultural policies that Canada has cultivated for decades.

“I think there’s a feeling out there that we’re a very inclusive society and anything that attempts to question that is something that we don’t want to hear,” says Dei. “We always want to live with this sense of complacency-that we’re an integrated society where the school system is supposed to work for everybody.” The idea that Canada is a diverse, inclusive and integrated nation is an important part of its identity, and Toronto, so often touted as the most multicultural city on Earth, is supposed to embody those ideals. The reason Africentric schools are such a lightning rod is because the idea not only critiques the poor experience of black students in an education system that’s letting them down, it questions decades of received wisdom about the social fabric of our country. Which is not to say multiculturalism isn’t a good and noble thing. But it’s not above criticism.

“There is no doubt that we all want an integrative system and we all want to be in an integrated environment,” says Dei. “But we cannot continue to hold the flag or the banner of integration and not be concerned about the outcomes of our practices.” Lost in the ideological battles is the key issue that the country must morally answer for: 40 per cent of black youth in Canada’s most populous and diverse city aren’t graduating from high school. The reality is that there are already gaping inequities in the public system, and they need to be addressed. It was the case 22 years ago when the Afro-Caribbean Alternative Secondary School attempted to make a change at D.B. Hood, and it’s still the case today. Those behind the black-focused school movement both then and now advocate doing something-anything-to combat this disturbing reality. Black-focused schools are an important option that have never been given a fair chance.

“We won’t know to what extent this will work unless we try,” says Dei. “Sometimes people ask where is the evidence that it works. But I want to know where is the evidence that it doesn’t work. We must continue to search for the solution and this is one of many things that can be done. If the solution will work for the students, that’s what we should be driven by.” James agrees: “Such a school might fail the students-we don’t know. Of course, we’ll never know unless we try something. If you have 40 per cent of your children failing, I’d say it’s important to try something.”

Because if history is allowed to repeat itself and the polemic over black-focused schools comes to overshadow the urgency of the reality they’re meant to address, it’s Toronto children that suffer. And it’s the entire country that’s to blame.