Mike Darnell

Doug Miller 00:00

Okay, here we go. Mike Darnell. I’m Doug Miller here in Montreal with Mike Darnell out in BC and Jane Armstrong in Toronto. Thank you, Mike, for participating in the Canadian Anti-Apartheid Activist History Project. And I sent you a letter of consent some months ago, and we have already gone through this, but I will do it again, because we are officially recording. Have you read that letter of consent? And do you agree that you’re going to be interviewed for this project, and that we can use the fruits of this interview for purposes of education and research in the future?

Mike Darnell 00:37

I agree. And I consent, emphatically.

Doug Miller 00:40

Okay. Great. Your consent is accepted. Granted. So, Mike, you’ve obviously had a long history, and often it starts before the union. So just give us a little bit of your background and how you came to be involved, first and foremost, with union work but, then, secondly, with anti-apartheid in the SACTU Solidarity Committee.

Mike Darnell 01:08

Well, I grew up on the Fraser River, where the Fraser River flows into the Pacific Ocean, actually. Small town called Ladner, where fishing was the industrial, primary industrial kind of activity around that area. So in my town of Ladner, if you weren’t going to be a nuclear physicist, you went to the fishing industry, like you went to Chrysler’s in Windsor. Okay. Some of us in any case. But I went to the commercial fishing industry. And, of course, in those days, it was a little different than it is now. You would get on the boat in May head to the north and come home in October.

Doug Miller 01:50

Holy smokes.

Mike Darnell 01:52

So in those days, you were gone for quite a few months. Generally five men on a boat. I think I’ve said this to Jane before: I was always very fortunate to be involved in an industry where, when you got on your boat in May, you carried your bag of clothes in one hand, and a very large bag in the other full of books. Because there’s no TV. You might get tired of your companions’ conversation. So, believe it or not, the fishing industry was very literate. First year I went fishing, everyone on the boat but me were Greeks. And I mean Greeks that are just coming to Canada, not too in the far past.

I’ll put it this way: fishing is a very, when you’re in the middle of nowhere at two o’clock in the morning, a very philosophical industry. And people in the industry had a great respect for history. So older men were always telling us younger men about what had happened. I look back at that, and it was a wonderful culture. I remember fixing nets one day in a pounding rainstorm, and the captain Peter de Moston took us all in the house for brandy and coffee, pulled down a large map and then started to explain the Battle of Salamis against the Persians. And, you know, these things were common.

Homer Stevens, you know, who lived in my town as well was the president of the union [United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union]. But Homer grew up as a fisherman on the Fraser River. But whenever you were together, people like Homer and others would say, “Why did the sun go down later in the north than in the south?” These are actual questions that I remember. There was a constant priming of the older to the younger to be literate, to be educated.

And so in the union, you know, the Fishermen and Allied Workers Union, we had a lot of individuals who had read fat books with no pictures. And I look back at it now and go, “Wow, that was an incredibly exciting kind of a culture to be in and, again, very philosophical, because you’re killing things for a living. If I may be that blunt, fishing was a dangerous industry when I look back at it now. In 1976, when we went herring fishing, we lost 13 people in three and a half weeks. I was on two different boats that sank over the course of those years. Fortunately, nobody died. However, I look back at it now: when you’re rescued, you never say, “I’m quitting fishing. You go, “I’m getting on a better boat.” But I think all of those things result in a culture, especially over the course of 100 years or so.

But I was active with the union in the winter months. And I should say, the first time I ever went to the union meeting, I’d never been to one before, of course, I was amazed that people were discussing things that you’d never heard in your own house. People were getting up and condemning the Vietnam War, for instance, and demanding that letters be written on the matter. It was a different culture than the one that I had heard my parents and their friends discussing. But I got active. Obviously we’re gone in the summer, but in the wintertime, I started getting active in the union. And because I lived so close to the president, Homer Stevens, I got drawn into the debate. As things went on over the next several years, in 1978, the union called me and asked me if I would become the provincial or the northern representative of the union up in Prince Rupert.

Doug Miller 06:33

How old were you then?

Mike Darnell 06:35

Twenty-eight.

Doug Miller

Wow.

Mike Darnell

And so I went to Rupert, and then spent the next five years there working for the union.

Mike Darnell 06:46

Rupert, it’s a lot different. We had about 15,000 Indigenous people in the immediate area, and several thousands of them were members of ours in the fishing industry, both in the fish plants, fish boats. And which was fabulous. I spent numerous years in the winter down in the village. The many villages I should say, on the Fraser River. But I spent about five years in Rupert and ran for city council while I was up there. So, for a period of time, I was an elected council person. And so, obviously, that took a lot of my time between the union and the municipal council. Things were popping. But, obviously, all of this time I’m in a union which had been ostracized from the Canadian Labour Congress.

Doug Miller 07:55

Okay. Why would that be?

Mike Darnell 08:00

They felt that there were too many of Mandela’s friends running the union. They gave us a proposal from the Canadian Labour Congress: get rid of Homer Stevens and the known members of the Communist Party of Canada, and you can merge with the Canadian Labour Congress. So Homer being a democrat, put that entire issue to the members in the way of a vote. And the members overwhelmingly said goodbye to the Canadian Labour Congress. So, we were outside and when, I believe it was in 1972, the Congress made a proposal for us to come into the Canadian Labour Congress through the meat cutters union. But, again, the union refused. And in 1972, we went into the Congress, right through the front door. The demand was too great by other members of the Congress and I think I went to that first convention in 1972 [McDermott first year CLC press was 1978, McDermott would have been UAW CDN Director]. If memory serves, Dennis McDermott and the crew were there. We were overwhelmed by the discussion, at that point, about the union. But once we were back inside the Congress, things flowed along quite nicely.

Doug Miller 09:45

Okay. So, in fact, the members from the floor of the Congress voted you in against the management [CLC administration] decisions?

Mike Darnell 09:53

Well, yeah. Exactly. So many people, new people, and too many people who Homer knew – the union knew – knew that this kind of anti-red thing was out of favour. Now I have to point out that we were at the height of the Cold War. And it was during this time that people like Lauren Robson, Bill Zander, Homer Stevens, Libby Davies, and rafts of other people that were, quote, CPC, were at their zenith, both in leading unions and municipal politics, and that kind of thing. So there was a lot of activity, and people like Dennis McDermott and others, some of the international unions, were nervous. And they weren’t great supporters of the question of Nelson Mandela, for obvious reasons.

Doug Miller 10:55

Okay. Well, so how did the South African struggle figure in all that?

Mike Darnell 11:01

Well, obviously, you couldn’t go to a local meeting and the local fishermen without having emotional support. They supported Brother Mandela, but, obviously, other unions, such as the Canadian Auto Workers and others, were involved in financial support. So a community of Mandela supporters grew up and around the union movement, in spite of the tension with some of the internationals. And Vancouver was kind of a hotbed. We had some activities. We had Ziad Gameet and some others from SACTU invited to Vancouver. We were a very active support group for Mandela at that time, your early ‘70s. So it was an issue that was on your doorstep. And it just became part and parcel of one’s daily thinking.

Doug Miller 12:13

Do you remember any particular actions or events that might make that come to mind?

Mike Darnell 12:18

Oh, God, over the years there were many. There was a large contingent of people at that time in Vancouver who would visit the liquor stores and accidentally drop South African bottles of wine on the floor and apologize profusely. I remember going out with some of these guys, and they were older, and I was, you know. But yeah, it was simply going to a liquor store and picking it up. And, as a member, when I went in with one gentleman, one day, he picked up a bottle and dropped it on the floor. Of course, wine was everywhere. And of course, when they would come in, he would apologize profusely and then lean down and go, “Oh, Jesus, it was only from South Africa.”

But there was also a lot of solidarity work that was being done through unions and that type of thing. But the first active event that I actually participated in was when I was working for the fishermen’s union that was down in Vancouver and found out that there was a ship coming into Vancouver, from South Africa, carrying products for Anglo American steel, which was a South African outfit at the time. Then I thought that we had to do something to demonstrate, to take advantage of the fact that this ship was going to be here in any case.

So I remember getting hold of Davy Lomax who was the president of the longshoremen’s union at the time. And I went over to his house on a Sunday afternoon and sat down with him and said, “You know, the ship is coming to Vancouver. We just can’t let it come and go without some kind of activity around it.” So he looked into his contracts and he said, “Well, I can give you 72 hours under our contract. We can respect your picket line for 72 hours but no longer, otherwise we will suffer the financial costs.

And of course, I came from a union. In my own union, my own president went to prison for a year over a strike that we had conducted in Prince Rupert. And I remember the judge ordered Homer Stevens to stop the strike, and Homer informed the justice that he had no constitutional authority to order the strike to end. And I remember him saying “that’s unfortunate, that your constitution prevents you from doing that”. He said, “Because it’s going cost you a year in prison.” And so he put Homer Stevens and Jack Nichol in prison for a year. Jack got out after 40 days on a technicality. But in any case, Homer put the year in prison, no days off for good behaviour. But I’m sure they were glad to get rid of Homer by the time he left.

Doug Miller 15:50

He probably organized the prisoners.

Mike Darnell 15:52

Well he did organize the prisoners, he organized some incredible stuff in there. And I remember the one fisherman would drive up to the Agassiz prison farm where Homer was being kept and bury bottles of Scotch outside the fence. And then Homer’s wife would go and give them the map when she got her visitation rights. At that time, Homer was in a work camp. There they were cutting brush. Then Homer came up with an idea. He said that there were about 30 of them. And he said, “This is crazy. We’re all working.” He said, “Let’s do it by shift. On one day, five people will work, then the next five will work on the next day, and the rest will just sit around.” And they actually got away with this for a while. Because they had summer guards that were students. But in the fall older guards came back on, and when they saw what the prisoners were doing, they said absolutely not. You’re all going to work.

So they had a meeting in the bunkhouse. And Homer said, “Look, no one can talk to this guard. Nobody, anybody who talks to him is a scab.” And so for the next seven days, no one in the crew would talk to this guy. And after the seventh day, he relented and let them go back on their shift because he couldn’t take the pressure.

Jane Armstrong 17:34

I’m going to take you back to the shipyard. So you started off with talking about the 72 hours.

Mike Darnell

I heard from the longshoreman that their contract says that you’re allowed to respect another person’s picket line for 72 hours. But after that, you have to get back to work. So we looked at that question, and we said, “Well, if we got 72 hours to tie this ship up, we can at least get the publicity out of it.” So we put out a couple of leaflets. And I remember we got a massive response. We had people down on the dock. We had African drumming groups. And it was quite a contingent.

But that was probably the first large action that was taken around here. And of course, it got a lot of press and publicity. And when the ship finally left Vancouver, there was nobody in Vancouver that didn’t know a South African ship had come here. But like I said, that was the action that was, you know, that I was personally involved in at that particular time. And that was in the early 70s.

Doug Miller 18:58

Tremendous. And where did you run into the SACTU Solidarity Committee? At what point did that come into your vision that was basically around that issue?

Mike Darnell

I mean, obviously, I knew of SACTU and a number of people that were involved in, as I said, Ziad Gameet, and some others. But at that time, like I said, it was quite different. I would leave fishing in May, and it wouldn’t come home until late fall. And so most of this activity was in the winter until I went full-time with the union in 1978.

Doug Miller 19:38

Now, SACTU, as I understand it, started getting active around the early ‘80s, ‘81. The solidarity committee that I’m talking about is not the Union of South Africa. And did you ever have time with them as well?

Mike Darnell 19:56

Oh, yeah in a peripheral way. By the time the ‘80s came along, I was, well, let’s see. I went up to Rupert in ‘78. But after five years there, I came out in ‘83 or so. And, as a matter of fact, when I left Rupert, I worked about another six months for the union down here. And then I took a leave of absence and spent a year or so training race horses, which was always my passion, but never my calling.

And one day, I got a phone call from Jack Nichol who was now the president of the union. Homer was no longer the president this time. And Jack told me he wanted to talk to me in his office on a Sunday morning, which was very unusual. He was the only person in the office. So I laughed and said, “What’s all the subterfuge?” “Well,” he said, “I want to ask you something, not officially. There’s a group of fishermen out on Lake Erie, who are writing to me regularly and asking me to come out there and form a union in the fishing industry on Lake Erie.” That fishery was the largest commercial freshwater fishery in the world at the time. And he said,” I don’t know if I want to commit. They’re too far away to serve as a union.” But, he said, “If you would agree to go out there and help them get going, we’ll sanction that kind of activity.” So I said, “Well, let me think about it.” And I thought about it. And I called him back later that afternoon and said, “Sure, I’ll go out.”

And that was how I ended up having to go to Ontario. My original job was to go out there and help them get certified, do the Labour Board work for them, to get their paperwork in order. And then we would give them moral support. And so I drove out there and it was quite a fascinating group, because it was about a year after 1200 Portuguese immigrants had all come to Canada, specifically to fish Lake Erie. And when I got out there, things were very primordial because everybody in the union was a recent immigrant. Many of them had been forced into military service because, again, this was prior to 1975 when they were there under a fascist government. And so it was a bizarre situation, because most of the fish companies at that time were owned by the Sicilian community. So it was the Sicilian versus the Portuguese in a great class war.

So when I got out there, the union was being run, or the attempt to unionize was being run by an individual named Domingo Bello. “Beautiful Sunday” in English. But he was a bit of a loose cannon. And so when I got out there, there was an immediate confrontation. Let’s put it that way because Bello didn’t really understand the rules. And he would be having union meetings and saying, “Anybody who doesn’t join our union is going to be expelled from the fishing industry.” I’d have to get up and say, “no, no, no, you can’t say that.” Things of that nature. Anyway, it caused the confrontation between the two of us that got fairly hostile because I can see as long as this guy was around, there was no union going to be developed there.

And a number of the Portuguese people had come to me and said, “Look, we don’t like this guy. We don’t think he’s leading us in the right direction kind of thing.” And I said, “Well, then you’ve got to get rid of him.” But people were nervous. No, I remember saying one night at a meeting, “You’ll never have a union as long as he’s around because the Labour Board won’t certify a union that’s making those kinds of threats in public.” They weren’t certified at this particular point. I said quite frankly that if he disappeared it would be a good thing for you.

Mike Darnell 25:40

I meant this in a very – I did not mean this anyway, literally. But on that particular night, a bomb went off near his house, and one blew the roof off his business down in the town of Leamington.

Doug Miller 26:02

That sounds dangerous.

Mike Darnell 26:04

Well, they called everybody together and said the thing is, I had been a miner in Flin Flon, Manitoba. So the police came to me immediately because I was the only one who had a blasting ticket. But I laughed that off and said, “Obviously, I wasn’t involved in anything of that nature.” This guy, this guy was such a blight on the city, that I got a call from the chief of police to meet him at Wendy’s restaurant. And I went down there. By the way, this is the Wendy’s restaurant that wasn’t the chain store. This was actually a restaurant called Wendy’s. When I walked in there, the chief of police said, “Sit down Mike.” And he looked at me and he said, “Mike, Leamington is a town that facilitates birders and tourists. We can’t have this bombing shit going on. So he said, “I understand Mr. Bello has fled into the United States the previous night.”, He said, “If he doesn’t come back, and there’s no more problem from you guys, we’re not going to raise another thing.” And that’s how the question of Domingo Bello was put to bed. He was gone. And now the union was free to kind of proceed on a more logical path. We certified things, started getting our certifications in that kind of thing, and then built a union. And it became the Great Lakes Fishermen and Allied Workers.

Doug Miller 27:45

Wow, what a story. And it’s so interesting that so many of the fishermen were ex vets of the Portuguese army in Africa probably.

Mike Darnell 27:55

Well, they were conscripted at 16. So there were a lot of families that left Portugal just for that reason. If you had two sons, you’d send one to the war, but you weren’t sending two.

Doug Miller

Tremendous.

Mike Darnell 28:11

So most of the fisherman, had, sorry say that again Jane.

Jane Armstrong 28:20

I would suspect that a lot of those fishermen would have had tattoos from Angola.

Mike Darnell 28:28

Well, in those days, when you went to the war, you went to Angola, Guinea, or Mozambique. Those are your three destinations. And all of the members who are in the army had served in one of those places.

Mike Darnell 28:49

Some of them had been involved in horrible situations like Tony Santos and others who were part of what they call the civilian control squad. And these are guys that would just get a list of names in the daytime and they would go kill them at night. So some of the people, three or four of my members, would see psychologists regularly to deal with the post-traumatic aspect of being part of the civilian control squad. I saw a lot of pictures in people’s albums. All of the people who are part of this group dyed their hair white with peroxides so you knew that they were part of that group. Yeah, very bizarre.

Now again, all of my members, even the ones that had been in the war, knew they all hated fascism. And they knew they’d gone there to facilitate a son-of-a-bitch. But nevertheless, it was part of their history.

Doug Miller 30:14

How would they have responded to your appeals for support for the anti-apartheid struggle in the SACTU work?

Mike Darnell 30:21

Well, that’s what we started to get into. We had discussions, and I had many discussions with them about the war, you know, in the coffee shops. I understood the kind of duality and what they were dealing with. Yeah, they’d all been to the war. But did they all agree with the war? No, they just went. In the end, there was a heavy, anti-fascist tilt to that entire membership for obvious reasons. Most of them understood that Mandela was part of that. And so that whole thing came to fruition when Peter Mahlangu was posted to Canada. Peter was the first Black representative of the ANC in Canada. And he had been in Canada for about three months [ed. as ANC rep; prior to that as SACTU rep].

And I met him at a meeting in Toronto. And I said to him, “I represent 1000 Portuguese people. Most of the men had been to the wars. Come down to our local union and talk to them.” Then Peter thought about it. And he went, “Wow, how do you think I’d be received?” I said, “I think you’ll be received well, they’ve all been in the war. But they’re anti-fascists. They’re democrats. So I think they get that connection.” But I said, “Let me make a couple of phone calls.” So I called a man named Carlos Cordero. Now Carlos was one of the strange individuals who liked the war, in fact, signed up for two terms. But I called him and I said, “I want to bring a guy down here that was on the other side. What do you think?” So he called a couple of the other vets. They said, “Sure, bring him down.” So I invited Peter to come down to one of our local meetings. I remember it very well, because we had 800 people at that meeting.

Doug Miller

Holy smokes.

Mike Darnell

They brought their families because many of them went to the union meetings. We had an interpreter. We met at the Lebanese club. The place was packed wall to wall. And I got up and then introduced Peter. And he got up and began to speak. And he was quite brilliant. And he said, “I’ve been in Canada for three months.” And he said, “I’ve met 1000s of people.” But, he said, “Tonight is the most joyous night I’ve ever had.” Because, he said “Tonight, I’m in a room with my fellow Africans.”

Mike Darnell 33:50

And I always remember that was brilliant, because he recognized the 300 years of colonial activity of Portugal and Africa. But he referred to them as Africans. And he said “Tonight I’m in a room with my fellow Africans.” And when he said that, the entire room stood up and chanted. It was quite something. And he spoke to the members for about the next 40 minutes, it was basically the only thing on the agenda. About war. Well, Mandela, globalism, too, and by the end of the evening, the members lined up to invite him to come and stay at their house. And that night, the president ended up taking him home to his place. I remember very well because we watched reruns of the World Soccer Cup till five o’clock in the morning. Soccer is universal.

Doug Miller 35:05

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And soccer is coming up here soon. Jane, please help me out here?

Jane Armstrong 35:17

Well, two things, I think you need to talk about the relationship that emerged between the Great Lakes Fishermen’s Union, and CAW local 444. And your working with Local 444, which eventually led to some more anti-apartheid work with Larry Bauer?

Mike Darnell 35:45

Well, yeah. obviously, the Canadian Auto Workers in Windsor was the resident union. And up to that point, I hadn’t had a lot of communication with them. The Globe and Mail ran a story on the front page, and the title was Storm Over Erie. It was about the strike. Or sorry, it was about the union. It was about the bombings. You know, the entire insanity that was going on at the time. And Bob White was flying across Canada. And he was reading the Globe and Mail. And when his plane landed, he called the president of Local 444, Ken Gerard. And he said, “Get a hold of that Darnell.”

Mike Darnell 36:45

He said, “I liked the work they’re doing down there.” So I got a phone call from a guy named Ken Gerard, who somehow rather knew that I had been involved in harness racing. Ken owned a harness horse. And he said, “Meet us at the racetrack.”

Jane Armstrong 37:03

Ken Gerard, by the way, was the president of Local 444, the big CAW local in Windsor at the time.

Mike Darnell 37:12

Right. So I went down to the Leamington racetrack on a Friday night. And there was Ken in a motorhome. And he had brought the executive with them, including Larry Bauer. He invited me in and he sat down and had a few drinks and discussed the union movement. And Ken said he wanted to stay in touch. And that was basically the first communication I’d had formally with the Auto Workers. No, I was just trying to bring about a lot of first contracts at the time and again, as the Sicilians were not happy about their family businesses being assailed by the Portuguese.

Mike Darnell 38:09

So things were happening in the streets, obviously. There was a number of confrontations, knifings, and middle of the afternoon assaults going on. And I should point out that these were the five Sicilian families of Ontario, the Dragoness, the Figliomeni’s the prerogatives [check tape for these names; Darnell can help},

Basically the person that headed up this entire go round was an individual named Vito Figliomeni in Palermo. So these confrontations between the union and the companies were very public. And it caused, like I said, Leamington being a small town of 14,000, one thing led to another. You know, we went through a number of Labour Board hearings that we did get certified as a union. And we started trying to negotiate first contracts and of course, that was difficult because a lot of them weren’t going to bend. So strikes took place. And again, I didn’t have a lot of members compared to some unions. As I said to Jane once, when we started to go on strike – and of course a lot of the people who would be on strike were women, because they’re filleters so I remember the first picket line. I was looking at them. Most of these women didn’t speak English, but they were all ready to go.

I said later when I left Leamington, for years people lived under fascism. And it really, really grated on them. And when they came to Canada, where they couldn’t be killed or tortured, they affiliated to the union as vengeance, to get back at Salazar and that crowd. And to me, it was always kind of like a campaign to re-earn their dignity, which they could do in Canada, what they weren’t doing, or were too afraid to do, in Portugal. And it was quite incredible.

A lot of them showed me their paperwork from Portugal. In Portugal, at that time, you couldn’t change jobs without applying to a central ministry. And you’d have to get written authority. So they knew where you were all the time, even as a worker, and the Portuguese are fastidious about keeping all their old documents.

And, in fact, lawyers in Toronto would tell me that there’s such a thing in the industry as a Portuguese mortgage. That’s where you get one percentage less off your interest rate. Because the Portuguese were so fastidious about keeping paperwork and paying their bills. And that was a direct result of coming out of a system where you reported when you left your house. No, again, that ended in ‘75. But my members all came to Canada prior. So in any case, in the union finally a large confrontation took place. The Sicilians were worried now that the union looked like it was really going go. One night, they drove a truck down Main Street and six other guys jumped out of a truck in the afternoon and attacked a number of Portuguese on the streets.

Doug Miller 42:10

Oh, boy, and this business?

Mike Darnell 42:13

Well, that’s resulted in a number of knifings. And several of my members were taken into court and you know, things were strange at that particular time. So, obviously, I was in that bizarre situation where I was doing the Labour Board work for the union. Because they had no money, I ended up doing the criminal work in court. So how was that very strange situation of actually being in the street when things were taking place? And then getting in my suit and going into the courtroom and adjudicating all these questions, with help from the judges, of course. So that was a strange, strange experience. But in any case.

After about a year and a half of this very frenetic activity, I got a phone call from Nicola Rubino, who was the president of Lake Erie Fishing Company and kind of the head of the Sicilian families: he was the lieutenant. He said he wanted me to come down to his office and meet someone. Somebody from Italy. He didn’t say Palermo at the time. So I drove down to the company. I went into the office and there were many of the Sicilian business guys that I knew from around the area.

And when they walked into the room, I remember them picking up this man’s left hand and kissing it, boy, and then kissing him on the cheek and then going and sitting down. So when I walked in, he was a beautiful, elegant man about six foot two with beautiful, white hair. His name was Antonito Figliomeni. When I came in, he got up and came over and shook my hand right away and said, “Michael.”, He had grace and elegance. Then he says, “ it’s a great pleasure to meet you.” I said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you” kind of thing.

And he just said to me,” Michael, this has been a rough year and a half kind of thing and we want to do business in a whole different way. We don’t want any more violence or we don’t want any more newspapers.” And he said, “I have come from Palermo to settle all issues. I want you to tell me what your problems are.: And he said, “We’re going to try and fix them.” And he said, “After today, I’d appreciate it if you just contact me directly if you have any issues.” Because there was a lot of, war going on in the newspapers and the Windsor Star was having a ball, as were the Globe and Mail and others.

So I said, “Well, that company and I pointed to one of the people in the room owes me $15,000, for an insurance policy they canceled on one of my members.” And he just looked at his niece and said, “Zita, go get Michael, $15,000 in an envelope, please.” And I had five or six matters, which we settled on the moment. And when it was all over, he said to me, “Is there anything else?” And I said, “Not at this time.” So he said, “The guys would like you now to be my guest at the Roma Club.” This was the big Italian club in winter. So we all went down to the Roma Club and drank brandy and black coffee.

And while I was down there, Nick Rubino said to me, “Mike, you should consider coming to Sicily at Christmas.” And I said, “Nick, this is on the soul of my recently departed mother.” I will quote him. “Nick, how many steps would I get down the plane before the shot rang out?” And Nick says to me, “Michael, that would never happen if you were my guest.” Now, I should point out that one of the people I was dealing with, besides Nick, was a man named Tony Giacalone. And Tony Giacalone, he was the nephew of Tony The Fat Duck Giacalone, who was the aide-de-camp for Jimmy Hoffa.

Doug Miller 47:05

Oh, boy, you’re dealing with mighty tough characters.

Mike Darnell 47:09

Well, these are the five Sicilian families in Ontario they’re still there. The only person who didn’t veto Peralta -check tape] was the one guy who owned a company of his own. And he kept saying to me, “Mike, I’m not part of the family business.”

Doug Miller 47:28

But Mike, can we just return again to South Africa and SACTU When you’re going to the local in Windsor, again, 444.? Did you then start again, having more contact with the SACTU solidarity?

Mike Darnell 47:48

Basically because of that newspaper article that White had read, local 444 started thinking they would like us to come and join them. And one thing led to another and, inevitably, that’s what happened. We took all these fishermen into the Auto Workers Union through local 444. And we became part of that structure. And we had auto workers and a bunch of Portuguese fishermen all in one union. It’s quite amazing.

Jane Armstrong 48:24

I want you to recall, before we run out of time, the events after Ken Gerard died, and Larry Bauer became president. You were sort of Bauer’s executive assistant for lack of a better term, heavily involved in all sorts of aspects of the union from bargaining to events on the shop floor, etc. And I got to fast forward to 1990 because by then 444 had done a number of things around support for SACTU. But I want you to recall the events in 1990, January 1990.

Mike Darnell 49:24

Larry Bauer became the president when Ken died. And I was his executive assistant., It was January and that particular point of the year that you’re talking about I remember we had just come back to work for the we had took a 10 day break over the summer or over Christmas, came back to work and we were kind of putting together the month. And I said to Larry, “Nelson Mandela is, something’s going happen with him this year,” I said, “they’ve either got to kill him, or let him out.” Because there was a kind of global agitation going on about Mandela. So I said, “Let’s have a solidarity night for Mandela here in the local”. And he said, “Well, what if they don’t let him out?” I said, “Well, then we’ll have a solidarity night to demand that he get out.”

So he said go down to Walter in the basement, who was our janitor and find out when we’ve got to the hall free. And so I went down and talked to him. And he goes, “Oh, we’re booked up this month and this and that. This Saturday is available, not this Saturday, but a Saturday later in the next month.” I said, “Okay, just book it in.” And once we booked the date, we started passing out leaflets for a solidarity night for Nelson Mandela. And that immediately brought a delegation of two people from a very conservative group over in the auto plants.

And they wanted a meeting with Larry at five o’clock. So they came in, and I’m going to quote now for the purposes of posterity. He said, “Larry, why is our local sponsoring a night for a nigger that cuts people’s hands off?”

Doug Miller

Oh, boy,

Mike Darnell

Yeah. I’m giving you the history. And Larry –, by the way, Larry was six four and 280 – just said, “Look, guys” – Larry was cool under fire. He sat down and said, “This guy tried to form a union just like ours.” And then he explained, in very vivid terms, the life Mandela had had, that he tried to be reasonable, that he was a lawyer, but inevitably ended up being put in a hole where white guards urinated on him every day. And when Bauer finished, he said, “A man like that can be a brother of mine and a member of my union any time.” And they left. And I always remember that kind of object lesson because Larry gave it right on the spot.

Windsor obviously, is a labour town. People are used to organization. And so it didn’t take long for people to get an idea that there was something going on for Mandela. And we started getting a lot of people calling and coming and saying that we’re going to come into the hall. Now I call Peter Mahlangu who was still in Canada. And I asked if he would come on down to our Mandela night. And he agreed. And things went on that way until about three days before. Because I’m not sure, Jane, of the days but was Mandela released in February?

Jane Armstrong 53:23

Yes.

Mike Darnell 53:27

Anyway, about three days before our Nelson Mandela night, murmuring started coming out of the press that something was going to happen with Mandela. And by Friday morning, we were getting solid reports that Mandela was going to be released. Now, again, this was serendipitous, because we’d booked the hall almost six weeks before.

And I then got a phone call from a young woman from Detroit. She gave me her name, which I can’t remember at this point, which she said, “I’m the head of an all-black choir in Detroit. We have read that you’re having a Nelson Mandela night. And we hear that he’s going to get out soon. And we would love to come over and sing for him”. So, I said absolutely get over here. 22 of them. Fabulous.

And on Saturday morning, it was now being reported, globally, that Mandela was about to be released the following day. So needless to say, we were the only people in Canada having Nelson Mandela night on Saturday night. So we ended up with over 1000 people in the hall. Wow. That was absolutely stunning. The CBC reporter whose name escapes me now, the woman. She walked up to Larry and said, “I’d have to ask you a question. Nobody in the media knew that Nelson Mandela was getting out of prison. How could you guys have a party for him this far in advance?” And Larry looked at her and said, “We’re a little upset. We called over there and we demanded that he be out by Saturday, but they can’t do it till Sunday.”

And within a minute of him saying that and of course, I’m still chuckling as I walked away. Somebody ran up to me and said, “Darnell, White’s on the phone, you got to get upstairs.” So I ran upstairs and I picked up the phone and said, “What’s going on Bob?”, and he goes, “Darnell, get that Peter Mahlangu up to Toronto, the media is driving us crazy. We need that guy up there. Right now. There’s all kinds of festivities going on. And we need the ANC rep here in Toronto.” So I went down, and I did say to Bob, “Bob, anybody going have a party for Mandela after he’s out?” But in any case, we put Peter on a plane the next morning and shipped him up. And that was that event. But it was wildly successful.

Doug Miller 56:25

Oh, yeah. There were festivities everywhere that weekend.

Mike Darnell 56:29

And of course, my own members in the Portuguese contingent were there celebrating and, yeah, it was quite, quite astounding. How, you know, like I said, even my members who had been heavily engaged in the colonial wars understood that they were all victims.

Doug Miller 56:56

Absolutely.

Mike Darnell 57:00

Let me put it this way. The experience with people who actually fought in Africa over this issue, yeah, was quite compelling to be around to watch them make that transition.

Doug Miller 57:17

Fantastic. Well, Jane, where do we go now?

Jane Armstrong 57:25

When well, that pretty well covers it. I remember in the 1980s, Darnell became a bit of a legend because of the battles. The fishermen, trying to get contracts, etc. went on for many years. All that work. But you were back and forth, often, to Toronto for CLC conventions and in the Auto Workers, we had a parliament, or we called it our parliament. We met four times a year with delegates from coast to coast, and they would get reports back from the president of the union, Bob White at the time, but also various committees. The issue of apartheid support was very prominent at, many of those events, and Mike was involved with local 444 and others’ support at mics and in various ways that we ended up supporting the struggle.

Mike Darnell

Well, I do have to point out that one of the first visits that Mandela took when he got out of prison was, do we all remember where? Toronto well, you met with Bob for a couple of hours as I recall.

Jane Armstrong 59:05

Well, he not only met them, I mean, he called straight in. I mean, he understood the financial support he had gotten from the CAW because they used to ship Clancy. Yes. Clancy, old, white-headed, pot-bellied man shipping to South Africa on a tourist visa with a $200,000 money belt around his waist to feed the ANC.

Doug Miller 59:34

Wow, those are tremendous stories.

Mike Darnell 59:36

Because we raised a lot of money for those guys. But in those days, it was illegal to offer them that kind of support. So it was done surreptitiously.

Jane Armstrong 59:49

Yeah, and it was almost all support for SACTU. But of course, SACTU was allied with the ANC and CCP and or the SACP. And so, you know, the money was used in solidarity or sent in solidarity to be used as they saw fit to move forward the struggle.

Mike Darnell 1:00:19

Well, I remember Bob told me that Mandela said to him, to Buzz, “what do you want to do in Canada?”. And he said, “I wanted to do something with children.” So, the CAW contacted the teachers union and said, “Hey, Nelson Mandela was coming to town, what can we do?”.

And what they did was they rented that massive 40,000 person stadium down there in Toronto, brought 30,000 school kids from all over Ontario, into Toronto, and had an afternoon with Nelson Mandela. That was a phenomenal go around. Mike Harris, the scum sucking Tory Premier of Ontario at the time knew that most everybody knew Mandela was going to be the next leader of South Africa. At that point, yes. So Mike Harris called us and requested that he be allowed to come down and address the gathering to bathe in some of the light. And of course, we didn’t say no to the premier, but he came down and when his name was announced, he was roundly booed by the children in that stadium.

Jane Armstrong

I remember well, I’ll never forget.

Doug Miller 1:01:42

And anyone covered by a union contract.

Mike Darnell 1:01:45

Yes. And the CBC reporter said to Buzz later.” What did you think of those children booing the premier?”” And Buzz’s magnificent answer was –Well, how did he put it? –he said, I was glad to hear it because I’d been hearing that people were saying that kids these days weren’t getting a very good education.”

Mike Darnell 1:02:20

Tremendous, but in any case, yeah, that was then and Bob, they were telling me I mean, they went to a house party with Mandela and that kind of thing. And Mandela would set the buzzer, apparently. You know, I don’t if he said the buzzer at one point, I’ve been to many of these, I’m going have to go to a lot more. I don’t necessarily really enjoy them. But they’re absolutely necessary for the movement.

Sometime after that, I ended up speaking to the first Black ambassador to Canada, from South Africa. And he came and addressed our Canadian Council. And I was talking to him after his remarks one day, and I said, “So how’s it going? For Mandela, like, what’s he actually involved in?” And he said to me, “It’s crazy, he said, “We have spent the last part of the century running around and telling people to resist. Now that we’re the government, we bring in government policies, we’re running to the same village and going don’t resist, don’t resist. Because the culture is ‘resist’.”

Doug Miller 1:03:34

Yes, of course.

Mike Darnell 1:03:37

And, he said, “Comrade Mandela sits at his desk, and yesterday, a man came in and sat before him, and complained to him that his wife was no longer having sex with him.” And would he talk to her? He’s still a village leader. It’s not the head of the country, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean to a lot of people. He’s still a village leader. Absolutely. And you go to him with your problems and sex with your wife was one on one”, in any case, no, I remember that very well. It was very poignant. Well, that’s in any case, you know, that’s, I don’t know what else I could make as a contribution once all of that formalization of the movement.

Doug Miller 1:04:36

That’s a whole other story now.

Mike Darnell 1:04:38

Yes.

Doug Miller

Well, well, Mike. Jeepers, unless you have anything more. I think we’ve really covered the ground here. Pretty good.

Mike Darnell 1:04:48

Yeah, I can’t think of anything else that would be salient for your project. Like I said, I wasn’t I wasn’t involved in non-stop SACTU activities over 20 years, like a lot of people were. My life was a bit more diversified. But Mandela, and that whole situation were a serious part of that whole culture.

Doug Miller 1:05:16

Was just built into the DNA of your work.

Mike Darnell 1:05:19

Of course, yeah. Well, again, having a membership from Africa? Yes.

Jane Armstrong 1:05:27

Yes, I’ll correct you on one thing, Mike. Most people, the reason they were able to get involved in solidarity was because they were rooted in the community and the union movement. And the solidarity was part of that work. But there were only a couple of people who were at it full time. Everybody else was rooted, that we worked with was rooted in the union movement. And that was what they did most of their time, either on the shop floor as a shop steward, or full time as a local union person or national union officer. But it wasn’t far from their consciousness during the 80s and the early 90s. Because of people like yourself, people like Tommy McGrath and Homer Stevens, you know, they are all people that did the work over the decades.

Mike Darnell 1:06:39

Well, it’s the realization when you get to the realization of the universality of dignity. It’s the old you know, I always say there’s, you know, how Einstein and others revealed the physical laws of the universe. But there are spiritual laws of the universe. And one of them is you’re entitled to demand only what you offer. When you demand more than that, you’re in contradiction.

And the idea of Mandela and by the way, before I hang up, when Joe Slovo came to Toronto. Oh, God, I can’t remember what year. But anyway, I was on my way to Ottawa. I was going to meet a couple of members of parliament in Ottawa. And so that night I stopped in Toronto and went to the meeting with Joe Slovo, which is a public meeting. And a number of people came out and listened to him speak. And the next day, I got onto a bus and went to Ottawa. And I got a cab from the bus, stopped at a Seven Eleven, got back in the cab, and then went to the house of a woman named Jackie, who was the executive assistant to Steven Langdon. At that time, he was the financial critic for the New Democrats. And I went to her house.

And as I was walking up her sidewalk, two young gentlemen, mid 30ish, civilian clothes, bomber jackets, came up behind me and said “Mike”, and I turned around and didn’t recognize either, and they said, “Mike,” and they were both from CSIS. And they announced themselves as being from CSIS. And by that time, I just walked up the porch on Jackie’s house. And they said, “Mind if we look in your briefcase?” and I broke out laughing and said, like, Fuck and I broke out laughing. And I knew right away who they were and what they were.

Just then Jackie opened the door and Jackie is a blonde woman and she walks out on the porch. And I said, “Gentlemen,” I said, “this is Jackie, she’s the assistant to Steven Langdon, the Member of Parliament who I’m meeting tomorrow at one o’clock Why don’t you join us all for the meeting?” Of course, they just will turn around and walk away. CSIS did actually follow me all the way from Toronto, on the bus through to the cab.

And I’ll finish off this story this way. When I left the Canadian Auto Workers and came home to British Columbia, I was sitting in the Ladner Landing hotel and hadn’t drank for about 25 years by that time. I got by to see who has their agenda. Someone came up to me and introduced himself. And he says, “Mike, my name is Ron.” He said, “I’m a retired member of CSIS.” And he said, “I had your file for 15 years. And let’s have a drink.” Well, I actually sat down and had a drink with him. And talk to me about George Hewison and myself, and I said, “Ron, I said, “What pisses me off about you guys Is all the fucking money you have spent over these years. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have told you straight to your face.”

And, and just to cap that off. A month later, I was invited to a Christmas eve dinner at the home of a man named Peter Toigo. You wouldn’t know him out here. But Peter Toigo owns the White Spot chain restaurant. Jane would be familiar with? Yes, yes, and he and Jimmy Pattison divided the city between them, did well. In any case, at this Christmas dinner, there was Peter and his wife, myself and my girlfriend at the time. And the CSIS officer and his wife. And I always remember Peter Toigo, looking up and going, “Jesus, what a Christmas Eve, he says, “I’ve got the CIA, my left. And a communist in front of me.”

Doesn’t get better than that. We had we had a drink for that kind of thing. But by the way, I do. I’d say that I did run for the party when I was younger provincially in the area, so everybody knew. But in any case, that’s basically all I can give you.

Doug Miller 1:12:03

Well, listen, it’s a tremendous story. I want to thank you so much for it. It’s a great story and a lot woven in there. Especially bringing Africa into the Portuguese fishery and their struggle for dignity. So fascinating. Fascinating. Jane, I’m, if you’re okay with it, I’m going to say thank you. And Mike, this has been tremendous. It’s taken a long time to get it together. And it’s been really good. Thanks a lot.

Mike Darnell 1:12:34

Not a problem if it’s useful in any way.

Doug Miller 1:12:39

It’s going to be sitting in Library and Archives Canada in about two weeks.

Mike Darnell 1:12:46

Yeah, 100 percent. Welcome. Congratulations on your project and good luck.

Doug Miller 1:12:52

Yep, CSIS won’t have to search further than the next door in Ottawa when they’re looking for you.

Mike Darnell

No kidding.

Doug Miller

Okay, so thanks a lot.

Mike Darnell

No problem. Nice meeting you. Good luck in your future ventures.

Jane Armstrong

Okay, we’ll be in touch.

Mike Darnell

Okay, yeah that’s great. I’m glad that’s out of the way.

Doug Miller

I’ll give you a call later today.

Mike Darnell

No problem, Jane, have a good one.

Jane Armstrong

Were you talking to me Doug?

Doug Miller

No, I’m talking to Mike.