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TI: I'm curious, at this point, 1984...

OK: This was '85 by now.

TI: '85, okay, but in the United States, there had been hearings, a recommendation put out by the government for both an apology and money. Did that ever come into the discussion?

OK: Oh, yeah, very much so. And one of the things that I kept saying, and Doug Bowie kept saying and Anne Scotton and all of us kept saying was, "You can't ignore what's happening in the U.S. in Canada." It's going to have an effect. We were being told by the representatives of the minister's office and others that what's happening in the U.S. was no impact in Canada. It's irrelevant. And, in fact, nothing's going to happen in the United States. This is all fluff, this is all rhetoric, it's not gonna go anywhere. And I mentioned to Roger, when we had discussions about this in Kingston, that there were people in the conservative party who said they had great ties to Republicans in the United States, and all of their information was that Reagan and company are just beating their gums, it's not going to come to anything of any consequence, and they believed that. They firmly and honestly believed that, and believed that nothing would happen, that it would have no impact up here or in Canada. By the mid-1980s, mid-'85, I was essentially pushed out of this. The discussions were put on hold, and nothing was happening. And Murta was moved as the minister, and the new minister was appointed, Otto Jelinek. Jelinek had no appetite for the whole negotiation, and essentially stalled everything.

RD: Jelinek denounced me, you know.

OK: I'm not surprised, and --

RD: I had given a lecture --

OK: -- I think that's to your credit.

RD: I think in Winnipeg that winter -- may have been a different winter, but I think it was that winter -- it was colder than hell as it usually is in Winnipeg.

OK: [Laughs] Must have been '86, 'cause I think he didn't become minister until '86.

RD: Then maybe it was the other fellow. I'm not sure who --

OK: It wasn't... I'm sure Murta wouldn't have done that.

RD: Yeah. But I had given a public lecture and was asked about this, and I said, "Well, I think it's gonna come here in Canada, but it will only come after, after negotiation is completed and is," which I thought was going to happen, "and success is achieved in the United States." And that sort of infuriated some people on both sides of that issue. It was the thought that Canada could possibly follow American precedent, you know, it was that sort of thing. And then in the paper the next day -- I've got a clipping somewhere -- but they probably, in my stuff back in Cincinnati in the library, there was stuff in the paper because the Minister of Multiculturalism had been on the campus that day. And he was asked about it, and he said, "As usual, college professors don't know what they're talking about," or some such thing. It was not a particularly vicious attack, but I was sort of amused, particularly the way things turned out.

OK: Well, it very much sounds to me like that would have been Jelinek because of his character and his nature. I, throughout the '85, had periodic contact with Anne Scotton in Ottawa who had been given the responsibility by Doug Bowie to continue to carry the file but not really do anything with it. By '86, the NACJ had mounted a determined effort to get the negotiations going again. And the government opened discussions once again, and Scotton then became the lead person on the discussions. In September of '86, I was asked to go back to Ottawa to replace Doug Bowie as the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Multiculturalism. And Anne Scotton then reported to me, and I got back involved in the discussions about, with the NACJ. They started to have meaningful discussions. I mean, where things started to get put on the table, then Anne would come back to Ottawa and say, "Here's what they're saying they want." Ottawa would say, "Here's what we're prepared to do." Ottawa's position throughout '86 was, "No individual compensation, absolutely no individual compensation of any kind. We don't care what the Americans are saying, what is being said down there, there will be no individual compensation. What we're prepared to do is establish a foundation and endow that foundation, give authority for the foundation to the NAJC to do with what they want with the income off of the endowment," but they could not pay any individual compensation. They could establish programs, they could establish centers, they could establish scholarships, they could do anything they wanted short of individual compensation.

RD: And of course that was already on the table of the United States, but as an element of the other. There was no serious person by that time in the United States who thought that, anything other than individual redress was acceptable, even the people who were opposed understood that.

OK: Well, we... our position of the government was very firm on that. I mean, it was absolutely firm.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.