Talking Radical: Resources

Learning from Movements – Florence Stratton

By on Monday, March 3, 2025

(Originally published at The Media Co-op.)

Florence Stratton has been involved in social justice struggles since the 1960s. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, and in the last decade, her work has been particularly focused on efforts to end homelessness. She is also active with many different groups focused on peace, ending poverty, public transit, Palestine solidarity, and other issues.

The Media Co-op: Give readers a brief overview of who you are and of your past and present involvement in grassroots political work.

Florence Stratton: I grew up in Regina in the 1940s and 50s. The elementary school I attended was, until recently, named “Davin” — after Nicholas Flood Davin, one of the architects of the residential school system.

During my years at Davin and even in high school I learned nothing about Canadian settler colonialism. When I look back on my education, I sometimes feel resentful. Yes, I learned to read and write, add and subtract, and multiply and divide — all very useful skills, no doubt. But that is about all I learned of any value.

Much of the rest of the time was devoted to lessons in white supremacy: stories of heroic explorers, hardy pioneers, and laudable political leaders — along with the glories of the British Empire, on which the sun never sets. 

I am an accidental activist. At least that’s how it started. In 1967, I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. The Vietnam War was raging on but I wasn’t paying much attention to it. When I walked out of my Shakespeare class one afternoon, I encountered students crying in the hallway. My first thought was, “Oh these Americans. They’re so emotional. They cry over every little thing. Why can’t they be like Canadians and control their emotions!” The next thing I knew, I too was crying.

I had been vaguely aware that there was a Dow Chemical recruitment office on campus and that students had occupied it. Dow is the company that manufactured napalm, a flammable liquid that melts flesh and causes horrific wounds. The US used it during the Vietnam War.

On this day, the university had called in the police who threw tear-gas bombs into the building, which is why we were all crying. I watched as the students exited the building with their hands over their heads. As they came out the door, the police bashed each one on the skull with a club. They fell to the ground.

Before I knew it, I was helping to push a police car into Lake Mendota. Once this goal had been achieved, I beat a hasty retreat, recalling that I was on a student visa and could easily be deported.

My re-education didn’t really begin until 1968 when I went to Sierra Leone with CUSO [Canadian University Service Overseas] to teach English at Njala University College.

I learned a lot in Sierra Leone, but the most important lessons had to do with colonialism. I recall saying to a Sierra Leonean colleague not too long after I arrived, “Isn’t it wonderful that both Sierra Leone and Canada are part of the British Commonwealth.” She looked at me with disdain and responded, “The British Commonwealth is just an extension of the British Empire.”

At the urging of Sierra Leonean colleagues, I began to read books about the European colonization of Africa. These books included Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat.

After a number of years of reading and conversations, I gained something of an understanding of the colonization of Africa as oppression and exploitation — and not the civilizing mission I had been taught it was in school. I also eventually came to understand that the exploitation had not stopped with independence, but was ongoing.

I am not, as you may have gathered, a very quick learner. It gets even worse. In the early 1980s, I spent a few months doing research in London, England, living in a residence for international students. Conveniently, the residence had a bar on the premises to which I would retire most evenings.

Many of the other bar regulars were white South Africans. I shunned those white South Africans, making a point of not talking to them. After all, in the 1980s, South Africa was still under apartheid and Nelson Mandela was still in prison.

But one night I was awoken, both literally and figuratively, from a deep sleep and sat straight up in bed, hit by a couple of revelations:

  • That Canada too was colonized land; and
  • That the main difference between Canada and South Africa was a matter of demographics: in South Africa, Indigenous peoples — Africans — outnumbered white settlers, while in Canada it was the reverse, and white settlers outnumber Indigenous Peoples. 

Clearly, I had no reason to feel superior to white South Africans.

These were huge revelations. Indeed, as I was to discover even later, Canada’s racist Indian Act formed much of the basis for apartheid policies in South Africa.

I moved back to Regina in 1994, after spending two and a half years as a volunteer at the New York Catholic Worker. (I am not Catholic.)

Since returning to my home town, I have been involved in a number of grassroots peace and justice activist groups. Currently these include Making Peace Vigil, Regina Peace Council, End Poverty Regina, Regina Citizens Public Transit Coalition, Get The Lead Out (of Regina drinking water), Warm Welcome Coalition, The HAWK Principle Community Service Co-operative, and Palestine Solidarity Regina.

My focus for the past decade has been on ending houselessness. Like other Canadian cities, Regina is experiencing an ever-worsening houselessness crisis. Regina is a rich city in a rich province, in a rich country. What kind of people are we?!

In addition to creating and distributing pamphlets, signing petitions, speaking at city council meetings, and lots of other things, I have participated in two acts of civil disobedience:

  • End Poverty Regina’s 2017 occupation of the Legislative cafeteria demanding that Saskatchewan income assistance rates be raised above the poverty line.
  • The 2024 police take-down of the encampment in front of City Hall. I was so outraged, I chose to be arrested — for the first time. Better late than never.

TMC: What are a couple of important things you’ve learned from struggles that you’ve never been personally involved in, and why are those things important?

FS: One that comes to mind is “A Luta Continua” — the struggle continues — which was the rallying cry of Mozambicans during their struggle against Portuguese colonial rule in the 1960s and ’70s. All of us involved in the struggle for peace and justice must adopt it as our slogan.  

Another is related to Indigenous Peoples’ struggles against ongoing colonialism in so-called Canada: I am seeking to unlearn colonial thinking and to learn how to be a good ally. White settler Canadians hold most of the power, so for justice ever to be achieved, allies are needed. But we settlers have to put aside our white privilege—to unlearn it. We also have to learn how much we don’t know about Canadian settler colonialism and set about educating ourselves.

TMC: I agree that the insight of the slogan “a luta continua” is an important one for our movements. Can you give an example where that insight has been important in your own participation in social movements, whether for you personally or for a group that you were a part of?

FS: Here are four local examples that I’ve been involved in, to give you a sense of what I mean.

Study War No More — In September 2014, military training was added to the curriculum of Regina high schools. Students signing up for the program would earn two credits toward graduation and be paid $2,000. The program had the support of the Canadian military, the federal government, and both parties in the provincial government.

In January 2016, the program was cancelled, having only been offered once. How did this happen? There are two answers to this question.

First, four Saskatchewan peace groups — three in Regina and one in Saskatoon — came together under the banner “Study War No More” and mounted a campaign that included sponsoring a workshop; writing letters to the editor; collecting signatures on a paper petition, which, in the end, garnered 2,047 signatures; and distributing pamphlets. 

One of the pamphlets found its way into the legislative assembly, in the hands of Sask Party MLA Yogi Huyghebaert, who after admitting that the pamphlet included “some key facts [about the program] which seem to be correct,” condemned the producers of the pamphlet, saying “it’s one of the CAVE units, and CAVE stands for Citizens Against Virtually Everything.” After some creative adaptation, the group decided to embrace the CAVE moniker: Citizens Against Violence Everywhere.

The second answer to the question is Regina high school students. Despite being offered two credits toward graduation, along with $2,000, they did not sign up for the program in any numbers. The 2015 program only graduated nine students. By late January 2016, only five students had enrolled in that year’s program. In other words, it was mainly the good sense of Regina young people that rendered the program defunct.

Still, the peace groups would like think that their persistence helped raise public awareness and thus contributed to the cancellation of the program. 

(A fuller discussion of this campaign is provided in a chapter I wrote for the book Divided: Populism, Polarization & Power in the New Saskatchewan(2021), edited by JoAnn Jaffe, Patricia W. Elliott, and Cora Sellers.) 

No Business in the Park – Established in 1912, Wascana Park is commonly known as “the Jewel of Regina.” It is one of the largest urban parks in North America — twice the size of New York’s Central Park.

In 2016, Conexus Credit Union offered the University of Regina up to $8.25 million for its College Avenue Campus Renewal Project to be used to restore the old college buildings. In return, Conexus got a 90-year lease on 2.6 acres of land in Wascana Park on which to build its head office.

Around the same time, Brandt Industries Limited, the fourth largest private company in Saskatchewan, applied to build an office tower in the Park. 

In response to the Conexus and Brandt moves and on the initiative of Lorraine Weidner and Jim Gallagher, No Business In The Park, was formed in 2017 as a grassroots citizens group. It took as its mandate “to stop commercial development in Wascana Park.” Arrayed against us were a formidable number of opponents, including the Sask Party government and Regina City Council.

Actions taken by No Business In The Park included the distribution of pamphlets around the city; petitions opposing commercial development in Wascana Park; and email campaigns to Conexus, Brandt Industries, the provincial government and Regina City Council.

Our main action, however, was a weekly rally, held every Wednesday from noon to 1 pm, at one of the proposed construction sites, starting with Conexus. Still, the Conexus plan went ahead, with the destruction of Park trees beginning in June 2018. We had considered direct action — like blocking the machinery — but rightly or wrongly, had decided against it. We did not, however, give up the campaign. The struggle continued.

We refocused our efforts on stopping the Brandt office tower from being built in the Park, continuing our weekly rallies, this time at the proposed Brandt location, and also calling for an auditor’s review of the approval process of the Brandt office tower. 

On March 11, 2019, construction of the Brandt office tower was halted until the auditor’s report was completed. When the report was released in December of that year, it was damning. And no Brandt building has been built in Wascana Park. Nor has any further commercial development been proposed for Wascana Park.

Had we not stopped Brandt, Wascana Park would have been overrun by commercial buildings.

Conexus, however, still has its ugly head-office building in our Park. We need to get a campaign going for Conexus to donate the building to the University of Regina. The struggle continues — at least intermittently. 

Get the Lead Out – Some 3,000 Regina residences have lead water service connections owned by the city. Multiple tests of Regina tap water have returned average lead levels higher than Flint Michigan.

According to Health Canada, lead is unsafe at any level in drinking water, causing reduced intelligence in children and kidney damage, heart disease, and other negative health outcomes in adults. City officials have known about the problem since at least 2017.

On the initiative of Trish Elliott, Get The Lead Out was established as a citizens group in 2021, after city council abandoned an earlier commitment to replace all city lead service connections in five years — by  2025 — and instead voted to take 15 years to get the lead out — which would not be until 2036. By contrast, Flint removed almost all its lead water lines within 5 years.

Actions taken by Get The Lead Out include the distribution of pamphlets, a paper petition, letters to the editor, presentations at city council.

In October 2024, Regina elected a new Mayor and eight (out of 10) new councillors. The struggle continues!

Ending Houselessness in Regina – A number of Regina grassroots groups are working to end houselessness in Regina. These include Making Peace Vigil, End Poverty Regina, the Warm Welcome Coalition, and The HAWK Principle Community Service Co-operative.

Actions have included: letters to the editor; emails to city councillors; presentations at City Council meetings; a petition to the provincial government to make available for occupation the over 500 empty Sask Housing units in Regina; and a soon to be launched campaign to get the federal government to restart the national affordable housing program, cancelled in 1993 — which, for a period starting in 1973, created about 20,000 affordable housing units every year.

As the houselessness crisis continues to worsen, the struggle continues!

TMC: What are a couple of sources related to struggles that you’ve never been involved in that you’ve found to be particularly useful or important?

FS:

TMC: What are a couple of key things about struggles that you are (or have been) involved in or about your approach to activism and organizing that you would like other people to know more about?

  • Be very knowledgeable about the issue.
  • Seek connections between issues. For example: “FUND HOUSING, NOT WAR” or “WAR & WARMING.”
  • Learn from other activist groups: I’m thinking here in particular of Regina’s Fridays For Future group, and more broadly of both the youth and Indigenous climate action movements — Greta Thunberg and Indigenous Climate Action, for example. After all, on a per person basis — that’s you and me — Canada is the world’s second biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
  • Do media training and have an up-to-date list of media contacts.
  • Celebrate victories. Have some fun. 
  • Be trusting of each other. Avoid inner conflict. Get good at de-escalation. Make a joke. Keep your cool.
  • Minimize hierarchical organization. Make a circle.
  • Seize the moment, as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde did in her homily — the bishop who spoke truth to Trump was doing her job!
  • Don’t give up — at least not easily. The struggle continues!

TMC: I’d like to hear more about your sense of what it looks like to really take seriously the importance of learning from other activist groups. How have you or groups that you’ve been a part of done that in the past? How do you think activists and groups can get better at doing that?

FS: With specific reference to Regina’s Fridays For Future group, one lesson I have learned is the importance of commitment. The members of this group are all high school students. Their lives are much busier than the lives of many of the folks in the activist groups I belong to. Yet they carry on the struggle! 

The Regina activist groups I belong to also learn from each other. One particular lesson we have learned is that face-to-face interaction with the public is particularly helpful in changing hearts and minds. Thus, for example, we have come to favour paper over online petitions and the distribution of flyers on the street.

We have also learned to work together on campaigns.

One final lesson learned: seize the moment — react as quickly as possible to any new development —and have some fun along the way.

How can we get better at learning from other groups? Keep reaching out. In addition, we continue to learn from reading about struggles in other places.

TMC: What are a couple of sources related to struggles that you are involved in or to your approach to activism and organizing that you would want other people to read/watch/listen to/learn from?

FS: 

Talking Radical: Resources is a collaboration between The Media Co-op and the Talking Radical project. In these interviews, activists and organizers from across so-called Canada connect you with ideas and with tools for learning related to struggles for justice and collective liberation. They talk about how they have learned, and about ways that you can learn.

Scott Neigh is a writer, media producer, and activist based in Hamilton, Ontario, and the author of two books examining Canadian history through the stories of activists.

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