Table Of ContentBurn it Down!
Anarchism, Activism, and the Vancouver Five,
1967–1985
by
Eryk Martin
M.A., University of Victoria, 2008
B.A. (Hons.), University of Victoria, 2006
Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the
Department of History
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
© Eryk Martin 2016
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Spring 2016
Approval
Name: Eryk Martin
Degree: Doctor of Philosophy (History)
Title: Burn it Down! Anarchism, Activism, and the
Vancouver Five, 1967–1985
Examining Committee: Chair: Dimitris Krallis
Associate Professor
Mark Leier
Senior Supervisor
Professor
Karen Ferguson
Supervisor
Professor
Roxanne Panchasi
Supervisor
Associate Professor
Lara Campbell
Internal Examiner
Professor
Gender, Sexuality, and
Women’s Studies
Joan Sangster
External Examiner
Professor
Gender and Women’s Studies
Trent University
Date Defended/Approved: January 15, 2016
ii
Ethics Statement
iii
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the experiences of five Canadian anarchists
commonly known as the Vancouver Five, who came together in the early 1980s to
destroy a BC Hydro power station in Qualicum Beach, bomb a Toronto factory that was
building parts for American cruise missiles, and assist in the firebombing of pornography
stores in Vancouver. It uses these events in order to analyze the development and
transformation of anarchist activism between 1967 and 1985. Focusing closely on
anarchist ideas, tactics, and political projects, it explores the resurgence of anarchism as
a vibrant form of leftwing activism in the late twentieth century. In addressing the
ideological basis and contested cultural meanings of armed struggle, it uncovers why
and how the Vancouver Five transformed themselves into an underground, clandestine
force. At the same time, it also situates these five activists into a broad social, political,
and cultural context that extends beyond the boundaries of anarchist armed struggle,
and beyond the local political environment of Vancouver.
The dissertation argues that the Vancouver Five were part of a wider
phenomenon of armed struggle taking place across the United States and Europe in the
wake of the 1960s. Drawing inspiration from an eclectic mixture of leftwing guerrilla
movements, these activists sought to disrupt specific political projects, and expand the
militant scope of social movement activism in Canada. While this global context shaped
the political contours of the Vancouver Five, the dissertation also argues that their
militancy reflected local patterns of anarchist activism, politics, and culture in Vancouver
that originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Moreover, the dissertation illustrates
that anarchism’s development across the late twentieth century took place through
conscious engagement with non-anarchist social movements. Therefore, it maintains
that both the Vancouver Five and the broader anarchist resurgence developed in
conjunction with a range of activist struggles against patriarchy, militarism,
environmental degradation, capitalism, and imperialism that flourished after the 1960s.
Based on oral interviews and archival research, is not only one of the first sustained
histories of anarchism in post-war Canada, it also the first academic history to focus
extensively on the Vancouver Five.
Keywords: Anarchism;; environmentalism;; feminism;; anti-militarism;; Vancouver;;
political history
iv
ation
In memory of
Brian Goble (1957–2014) and Lenore Herb (1947–2010)
v
Acknowledgements
It is with great enthusiasm and appreciation that I would like to thank the many
people who contributed to this project. First and foremost, I would like to thank those
activists who shared their memories with me. Many of these people also opened up the
contents of their personal archives to me, which greatly enriched the diversity of
evidence upon which this study is based. Extra appreciation is also due to Jill Bend,
Larry Gambone, David Spaner, Brent Taylor, and Alan Zisman for their reading and
feedback on previous drafts of the dissertation. Brian Goble and Lenore Herb, both of
whom were supportive of the project in different ways, passed away before its
completion. Many thanks are due to both of them for the time they gave to me, but more
importantly for their contributions to social justice movements in Vancouver.
I am also deeply thankful to the thoughtful support of my committee. Mark Leier
was an exceptional supervisor who not only taught me an incredible amount about
historical research, writing, and teaching, but also provided the invaluable support that
comes from consistent and kind encouragement. Roxanne Panchasi and Karen
Ferguson were likewise wonderful supervisors who contributed to this project in many
ways. Lara Campbell and Joan Sangster were excellent external examiners whose
careful and close readings of the dissertation have greatly helped to expand the scope of
my thinking on this topic.
I would also like to extend my extensive appreciation to the academics,
librarians, archivists, and support staff who provided me with access to a huge range of
archival material. In particular, I would like to thank Allan Antliff at the University of
Victoria, Eric Swanick at Simon Fraser University, and Randy Smith of the online Arm
the Spirit Archive for all their hard work. Many thanks are also due to the staff in the
Department of History for all their work in shepherding graduate students through the
twisted contours of daily life at the university. In addition, I would also like to thank both
the Social Science and Humanities Research Counsel and Simon Fraser University for
supporting this project.
vi
Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family for their heartfelt support. I
would like to thank my family for their constant encouragement of my work and for their
understanding of my many absences. Your patience means everything. Many thanks go
out to my friends outside the academy for keeping me grounded and for reminding me
where I came from. Good colleagues and close friends—Laura Ishiguro, Maddie
Knickerbocker, Jeremy Milloy, Sarah Nickel, and Abby Rolston—kept me going,
provided critical support, and made graduate school one of the most meaningful and
important times in my life. Thank you all. Finally, none of this would be possible without
the consistent support of Kendra Milne and our dog Diesel. This has been a crazy trip
and you have been the best of companions.
vii
Table of Contents
Approval ........................................................................................................................... ii
Ethics Statement ............................................................................................................ iii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ........................................................................................................................ v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ vi
Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... viii
Introduction.. .................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 Northern Lunatics: Anarchism, the New Left, and the
Counterculture in Vancouver, 1967–1972 ................................................. 19
Chapter 2 Crazy Dreams: Vancouver’s Anarchist Resurgence and the
Recreation of Social Revolution, 1972–1983 ............................................ 53
Chapter 3 Learning to be Guerrillas: Anarchism, Armed Struggle, and the
Transnational Origins of the Direct Action Collective ................................ 89
Chapter 4 Conflicting Currents: Anarchism, Environmentalism, and the
Politics of Hydroelectric Power in British Columbia, 1970–1982 ............. 129
Chapter 5 “Refuse the Cruise”: Anarchism and the Unexpected Politics of
Anti-nuclear Activism in Canada ............................................................. 168
Chapter 6 Resisting Reel Violence: Anarchism, Feminism, and the Struggle
Against Pornography, 1974–1983 ........................................................... 201
Conclusion…. .............................................................................................................. 240
Bibliography. ................................................................................................................ 247
viii
Introduction
On 31 May 1982, a bomb exploded on the outskirts of a small Vancouver Island
town, destroying the partially completed Cheekeye-Dunsmuir hydroelectric power station.
An anarchist group calling itself Direct Action claimed responsibility. Four months later, a
truck packed with over 500 pounds of dynamite exploded outside an Ontario factory that
was producing parts for the American government’s controversial cruise missile program.
Again, Direct Action claimed responsibility. In the fall of 1982, two members of Direct
Action joined with seven other radical feminists in order to fire-bomb three pornography
stores in the greater Vancouver area, an action they claimed under the name of the
Wimmin’s Fire Brigade. In addition to these high-profile bombings, activists involved in
these two groups also engaged in other illegal work, including the accumulation of
dynamite and firearms, the creation of fraudulent identities, auto theft, and armed robbery.
Such activity enabled them to create the underground infrastructure necessary for what
they hoped to be an enduring urban guerrilla campaign against environmental
degradation, nuclear proliferation, patriarchal violence, imperialism, and global capitalism.
While this activity lasted for two years, stretching across 1980 and into the early months of
1983, the extensive surveillance powers of the Canadian state eventually identified and
located five individuals in connection with these events: Ann Hansen, Gerry Hannah, Brent
Taylor, Doug Stewart, and Juliet Belmas. In a dramatic sting operation in which police
forces posed as a road construction crew, the state apprehended the activists as they
headed into the mountains above Vancouver. In the aftermath of their arrest, Hansen,
Hannah, Taylor, Stewart, and Belmas were labeled the Vancouver Five (the Five) by the
press, charged and convicted with a multitude of criminal offences, and sentenced to jail
terms ranging from six years to life in prison.1
1 Because they were apprehended near the town of Squamish, the group is also often called the
Squamish Five. Nevertheless, this dissertation will use the name Vancouver Five, or simply the
Five, to refer to Hansen, Taylor, Stewart, Belmas, and Hannah as a group. More often, however,
it uses the organizational names chosen by the activists themselves, namely, Direct Action and
1
This dissertation investigates the social, cultural, and political dynamics of these
militant actions by situating the emergence of the Direct Action and the Wimmin’s Fire
Brigade within a longer history of anarchist activism whose origins lay in the period
between the late 1960s and the end of the 1970s. While Vancouver was a critical setting
for this anarchist resurgence, the dissertation also places these radical movements into a
broader political and geographical scope by demonstrating how this small group of
Canadian activists were, in their own unique ways, part of a much wider pattern of armed
political action that was taking place across the world. At the same time, it was not only
Direct Action and the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade’s support for armed action that linked them to
these broader militant political movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Rather, the
dissertation argues that Direct Action was part of a much broader anarchist resurgence
that was taking place both locally and globally. Furthermore, it also maintains that this
resurgence was constructed through anarchism’s relationship with other political
movements. While no political project exists in a vacuum, the pluralism of anarchism’s
political ideology, and its re-emergence within a specific post-1960s landscape defined by
new and emerging forms of social movement activism, produced a situation in which
anarchist activism both shaped, and was shaped by, a broad array of left movements. In
this sense, the dissertation is both a history of anarchist politics, culture, and activism, as
well as a history of the counterculture, the New Left, environmentalism, the peace
movement, and feminism. Based on oral interviews and archival research, it argues that
both the Vancouver Five and the broader anarchist resurgence of the 1970s and 1980s
were deeply entangled with these global patterns of political dissent and social
movement organization that flourished in the second half of the twentieth century. As a
result, the dissertation not only provides a close examination of anarchism between the
1960s and the 1980s, but it also offers new insights into the connections between local,
national, and transnational configurations of radical activism. Overall, this work looks to
the Wimmin’s Fire Brigade. The most extensive exploration of the Direct Action collective and the
Wimmin’s Fire Brigade is Ann Hansen’s autobiography, Direct Action: Memoirs of an Urban
Guerrilla (Toronto/Oakland: Between the Lines/AK Press, 2001). Hansen’s autobiography reflects
a larger trend in the writing of anarchist history in the context of Vancouver. By and large, it has
been activists who have been responsible for writing accounts of Direct Action and the broader
anarchist movement. In addition to Hansen, anarchist activists Jim Campbell and Larry Gambone
have both written short accounts of the group’s actions. See Jim Campbell, The Vancouver Five:
Armed Struggle in Canada (Montreal: Insoumise Anarchist Library, n.d.);; Larry Gambone, No
Regrets: Counter-culture and Anarchism in Vancouver (Edmonton: Black Cat Press, 2015), 156–
159. Direct Action is also referenced in Susan Tabata’s excellent documentary on Vancouver
punk, Bloodied But Unbowed (Vancouver: Tabata Productions/The Knowledge Network, 2011),
DVD.
2
Description:transformation of anarchist activism between 1967 and 1985. (London: Pluto Press;; Toronto: Between the Lines, 2005);; Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive!: used the idea of a long sixties to refer to broad patterns of social, political, and
