<Begin Segment 8>

RD: Did you know Howard Palmer?

OK: Very well.

RD: Howard was a good, good friend of mine. I never... still, in some ways, haven't gotten over his --

OK: It was a tragic, tragic loss. Howard worked for me for a number of years, in fact, he was the one that established the Ethnic Histories project. And he was one of the people that we brought in with an academic background to start doing some of that stuff because what was known about most of the ethnic communities in Canada was anecdotal. And we knew nothing about the Japanese Canadian community, we knew nothing essentially important about the Ukrainian community or the Polish community or the German community. Most of it was some histories written by people within those communities who weren't academics.

And so one of the things that Bernard Ostry asked me to do was, "We've got to get a knowledge basis built about these communities so we can start talking about them in a meaningful way," that we can start talking about developing other programs based on what we either know or don't know. That, for example, you could not go in to start talking to educators about developing modules in social studies curricula about ethnic communities if you didn't know anything about them. So that's why the, one of the first studies that we commissioned was the book that came out called Teaching Prejudice. That it was astounding what was taught in the schools of Canada, that as a person who had gone through the educational system, I was unaware of what I'd been taught. I mean, when you think back and when you admit something like that, it's really admitting an ignorance. But, I mean, French Canadians referred to aboriginal peoples as "savages." So they were "savages"... words like that essentially had no meaning, but they had profound meaning to the aboriginal community. And French Canadians were viewed as "pea soupers." I mean, the stereotypical view of French Canadian that was taught in the history books aside from the political figures was just so awful. But we taught all that kind of stuff in the schools. And then you sit there and wonder, "I wonder why there was no acceptance of official languages. Why wasn't there an acceptance of multiculturalism?" Well, if you'd been teaching that kind of prejudice for so many years, and that you never really understood the hierarchy of ethnicities in Canada, which I did not understand until I started working in this area. I probably had a strong suspicion, but I didn't have any strong evidence until John Porter wrote his book on the vertical mosaic. And then you think, "My god almighty, look at this country."

I mean, how come we've let that be, that how could you have... one of the things that I'll never, ever forget is that I was asked to go to work in Alberta in 1974 by the minister to establish a multiculturalism program for the province of Alberta. And I went there assuming that I would have some measure of political support like I had in Ottawa, we had in Ottawa from the Trudeau government. And a couple of funny stories, when I moved there and I set up my office in the office building, and I put some pictures on the wall, and one was of Trudeau where he had signed a picture to me. And not too long after I was there, I entertained a meeting of, as it turns out, the wives of a couple of cabinet ministers. And one of the responsibilities that I was given in addition to establishing the Multiculturalism Program was establishing a cultural program for what were going to be the Commonwealth Games a few years down the road, and these women came to see me about the cultural program. After they left my office, a few hours later, I got a call from the minister saying, "What did you do to Mrs. Leach," and I can't even remember the other one. I said, "What are you talking about?" Said, "Well, they came back, spoke to the premier's office, the premier's office has called me, that you were hostile," or something, I can't remember the language he used. And I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Well, you have some pictures on the wall that they found very, very unacceptable." And I looked at my wall and I said, he said, "What have you got up there?" And I said, "I got a picture of Trudeau," and I can't remember what the other one was. And he said, "Now I know why they were so upset." I mean, here was this liberal, they told him, that had come into conservative Alberta and was going to upset the apple cart or something. The other thing that absolutely struck me, and that the minister, who was of German origin, had no awareness of until I sat with him and I said, "Have you ever looked at the list of deputy ministers in this province?" I said, "You want to establish a multiculturalism program, and do you realize every deputy minister in Alberta is of Scottish origin? Every last one of them, all twenty-four of them?" He said, "You're wrong. You've got to be kidding." And so then sat down and went through the list of deputy ministers, he was absolutely shocked to learn that. And here was a province that was one of the most culturally diverse provinces in the country, and not one person from any ethnic background other than Scottish was a deputy minister. And so I said, "I think we should start looking at the bureaucracy in Alberta and maybe we should start focusing some attention on changing that."

RD: What about the universities? Because, you know, I taught at Calgary several times.

OK: Well, you know what it was like. Alberta, the University of Alberta was a little different, but not much. But, I mean, the whole establishment in that province, the business community, the professional community, the academic community, the government, was of such strong Anglo-Saxon orientation. When you looked at the province in terms of the population, you said, "There's a real dissonance here. What's going on? Where are these people that have been here for generations, why are they not in these institutions?" It was a reflection of a dominant ethos in the country, that it was John Porter's vertical mosaic writ large. I mean, it just proved his thesis about where people of various backgrounds were. And those were the kinds of challenges that we faced in trying to introduce a program that was going to profoundly upset that if it worked. If it was successful, it was going to change all of that. And so we, in many ways, naively set out to start changing that. And ran into all kinds of opposition, I mean, particularly in the bureaucracy. I mean, the bureaucracy was steadfastly opposed to the program, he was steadfastly opposed to changing the nature of the society. I mean, why would you support changing something that's potentially going to affect you in terms of your own place in that country?

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.