This article contains descriptions of police violence.
Bruce Arthur didn’t go into the 1997 APEC protest intending to cover it. The Ubyssey’s then-sports writer was planning to protest.
Arthur was near the front of the protest, staring directly into a line of police bikes. The Ubyssey’s then-coordinating editor Joe Clark was demonstrating a couple of rows behind him.
“There were thousands of people. [The police] cordon had expanded by then to include the Rose Garden," said J. Clark. "And that’s where the protesters met the police.”
On November 25, 1997, more than 1,500 protestors gathered to protest the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference taking place on campus. The conference was to discuss the member states’ “commitment to work together to meet the challenge of sustaining regional prosperity and stability” to achieve “ambitious” free open trade, according to APEC’s coverage of the summit. Meanwhile, students and community members were protesting the growth of neoliberalism and human rights violations from member states, particularly the Suharto government in Indonesia.
Protesters lined NW Marine Drive and many sat in the road, leaving APEC delegates with limited options but to leave campus amid the demonstration — RCMP Sergeant Hugh Stewart promised he’d use whatever force necessary to clear the way, according to Ubyssey coverage at the time.
Before about 50 anti-APEC protesters and a CBC cameraman could even blink, Stewart seared their eyes shut with streams of pepper spray. J. Clark and Arthur were next to each other in the line of fire.
“Sergeant Stewart showed up with a couple of other vans worth of cops and literally walked up to the front of the line, started saying, ‘Okay, you now need to leave the road. I’m giving you this warning,’ and then started pepper spraying people,” said J. Clark.
“There was no warning — he was finishing his sentence of warning when he began pepper spraying.”
J. Clark and Arthur were shielded from the spray with their jackets as they ran off the road.
“I just ducked at the right time,” said Arthur. “But I could smell it in my jacket for a week.”
Other protesters were less fortunate. J. Clark recalled haphazardly taking on first aid duties as people frantically tried to wash out sprayed protesters’ eyes.
Forty-nine arrests were made that day.
What happened in November 1997 — and more broadly, the tension that swayed UBC that whole year — is a tumultuous time in UBC’s recent history. You’ll still find the period’s echoes in the archives of online databases, and its relevance is emerging in a new way — in the wake of the Palestinian solidarity encampment that once sat on UBC’s MacInnes Field.
Many universities across Canada started their own encampments alongside UBC. Some encampments, like at UBC and UBCO, left on their own terms, while others, such as at the University of Calgary and University of Alberta, were dismantled by authorities.
University students have always been at the forefront of activism, whether through protest or reporting, but how do universities and law enforcement balance students’ right to free speech and peaceful protest while prioritizing public safety for protesters and the protested-against alike?
Building tensions
J. Clark, Arthur and The Ubyssey’s then-photo editor Richard Lam all recall that what happened on November 25, 1997 was the peak of a progression of student-led rallies throughout the year against UBC’s choice to host APEC’s world leaders.
“Being on campus, they had weekly protests. I remember there was a whole thing of trying to play street hockey at … Martha Piper’s driveway every Friday,” said Lam. “Some days there was more media than protesters.”
In January 1997, at the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum, press accreditation pass-bearing Jaggi Singh wanted to give an attending Indonesian delegate the flag of Indonesian-occupied East Timor as an act of protest. The island had by then been the setting of numerous alleged human rights abuses against its peoples.
According to a Ubyssey article J. Clark published, Singh didn’t get the chance since he was dragged out of the forum in a chokehold by out-of-uniform RCMP officer Captain J.W. Loran after Singh had refused to leave the venue before he had proof of his authority. Singh later pursued legal action against Loran.
“A van pulled up and dragged [Singh] into [it] and closed and then took him,” J. Clark said. “It really was something that you expect to happen in a dictatorship and that’s why people were protesting — we had invited these dictators to campus to talk about liberalizing trade.”
And in September 1997, UBC students Mark Luchkow and Shiraz Dindar were taken into RCMP custody for a day after painting “APEC Free Zone” around the Goddess of Democracy statue near what is now the Life Building. They were charged with mischief, though neither vandalized the statue itself nor obstructed public access to it.
After the police violence that unfolded on November 25, 1997, then-UBC President Martha Piper held a post-APEC forum with university students, resulting in a new policy which said the university would agree to not host government events without consultation from the university community.
Despite this, in 1998, 20 protesters who were arrested and pepper sprayed on November 25 filed a civil suit against the RCMP and then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien under evidence that the police “acted maliciously and that their treatment of protesters deserves not only compensation but also punitive damages,” according to Aymen Nader, one of the lawyers who represented the group in Ubyssey coverage from that time.
“The theme of this is that there were these moments of arbitrary police violence that were unnecessary because the protesters were peaceful,” said J. Clark.
The Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP later concluded Stewart, the RCMP sergeant responsible for the pepper spraying — and who would later be granted the nickname, Sergeant Pepper — did not give the demonstrators enough time to clear the road and that his use of pepper spray was “not a justifiable or appropriate level of force.”
“The thing that really bothered me, probably more than anything, was how Jean Chrétien reacted to [the pepper spraying],” said Arthur. “The famous line, ‘For me, [pepper,] I put [it] on my plate’ … that’s the epitome of really not caring about your citizens.”
Student protests continue
Twenty-seven years after the APEC protest, student protests still take place on campus.
People’s University UBC began a Palestinian solidarity encampment on April 29 and remained for over two months on MacInnes Field. Now, when you look toward the turf, it’s bare. Unlike in 1997, encampment protesters voluntarily left the field. But not too long ago, Palestinian flags swayed in the wind.
- UBC community begins Palestinian solidarity encampment
- One month of the Palestinian solidarity encampment
- UBC Palestinian solidarity encampment voluntarily ends after two months
People’s University UBC demanded UBC divest from companies complicit in Palestinian human rights abuses, boycott Israeli universities and institutions and publicly condemn what organizers and human rights experts are calling a genocide in Gaza. According to a report issued by a United Nations-appointed independent expert, there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
A few days into the encampment, police presence on campus began to increase. RCMP officers frequently patrolled the perimeter of its gates, on some accounts overnight.
GG, a People’s University UBC spokesperson whose name has been withheld due to safety concerns, said the Police Liaison Team would drop by frequently “to engage in conversation.”
“What we do in all public order issues or protests is we take a measured approach,” said RCMP Staff Sergeant and Senior Media Relations Officer Kris Clark in an interview with The Ubyssey. “Our process is deliberate and methodical and that actually starts out with a Police Liaison Team trying to engage both sides to come to a resolution.”
According to K. Clark, the Police Liaison Team interacts with protesters and the administration to mediate and find common ground between both parties and a resolution. Contingent on both sides being open to communication with the Police Liaison Team, this preliminary interaction aims to “eliminate the need for any enforcement.”
However, protesters were not looking to engage with police. As Moon, a UBC student and encampment protester whose name has also been withheld due to safety concerns, said the encampment’s community agreement asked members to not speak to law enforcement.
The encampment’s decision to not interact with law enforcement was in part to acknowledge the colonial origins of the RCMP. “We obviously are in solidarity with Indigenous peoples, and [the encampment] is sort of an Indigenous resistance movement,” said Moon.
The movement quickly adopted a decolonized stance to protesting that entailed a passive approach to dealing with the inherently colonial RCMP or Campus Security, a choice that Moon said was “important and strategic.”
“A lot of students and people at the encampment, for example, are from marginalized backgrounds and have had really awful experiences with police,” she said.
Campus Security has previously been under fire. In June 2020, then-UBC President Santa Ono called for an external review of Campus Security after a string of allegedly racially motivated incidents.
The review called on Campus Security to revise its security-related policies, implement diversity training and increase the diversity of its force. Campus Security is not a law enforcement or investigative body. Rather, it is an agency of officers who are UBC employees, certified and licensed for security work, according to the Campus Security website. In a written statement to The Ubyssey in 2022, former director of Campus Security Ali Mojdehi said that forming a relationship with the RCMP is “imperative.”
Campus Security declined The Ubyssey’s request for comment.
In a May 15 statement to The Ubyssey, University RCMP Corporal Christina Martin wrote that the RCMP attended the People’s University UBC Alumni Centre sit-in at the request of Campus Security. Both the RCMP and Campus Security were also present during protesters’ disruption and building occupation during the BC NDP Forward conference held in the Nest on June 1, where one protester was arrested by University RCMP.
- Campus protests, building occupations spark after UBC statement on encampment demands
- Arrest made after Palestinian solidarity protesters disrupt BC NDP conference, occupy campus buildings
“UBC has a duty and obligation to protect its students and alumni and continues to completely fail to do so,” wrote People’s University UBC in an Instagram post following the conference.
“Instead, they use police to surveil and intimidate us.”
Both GG and Moon said that at the BC NDP conference, the RCMP shoved protesters without giving them time to comply with orders. After the disruption, GG saw some protesters were shaken up and had lost their trust in the university looking out for their wellbeing.
“[The RCMP were] clearly there with intent to arrest,” said Moon. “Witnessing police violence first hand just really reinforced my belief that the police are not there to help us or to keep us safe and in fact, do quite the opposite.”
K. Clark said many protesters confuse peaceful with lawful.
“Even though the protests may be peaceful, they might not be lawful and both of those obviously have to be in effect for us to not take enforcement action,” he said.
K. Clark also said protests are considered to have gone beyond being peaceful gatherings when there is evidence of damage to property or a criminal offence such as mischief.
Margot Young, a law professor at UBC, said organized civil disobedience through public demonstration is the agent that spurs attention and action.
“We’ve seen throughout the history of progressive struggles that civil disobedience can be a very important tactic in claiming space to make minority marginalized perspectives that are progressive heard and carry some weight,” said Young.
“When we’re talking about taking over [a] field or [a] short-term takeover at [an] administrative office — there may be a different calculation in play, but it can’t be the fact that inconvenience alone renders it illegitimate or illegal.”
Young said effective protesting is necessitated by inconvenience because it is disruption that lends notice to an urgent call to action.
“The inconvenience that protest occasions is often the price of democracy and of having a community in which disparate, important perspectives are available for the public to consider and to contend with,” Young said. “The fact that something is inconveniencing to the public is not necessarily a reason to shut it down.”
Policing public demonstrations is historically difficult, and K. Clark said the RCMP took a “hands-off approach” to the encampment.
“[We] only took enforcement action when it was no longer peaceful, lawful or safe,” said K. Clark.
But this hands-off approach was not solely overseen by the University RCMP or Campus Security, but also the RCMP’s Critical Response Unit (CRU-BC).
GG questioned why the CRU-BC was assigned to address “peaceful protest” after the unit captured national attention and scrutiny for its heavily armed raids on the Wet'suwet'en-led blockades and its Fairy Creek operation on Vancouver Island. The backlash prompted a rebranding and a federal investigation into alleged rights violations that is still ongoing.
“The CRU-BC is uniquely positioned to respond to these types of events,” said K. Clark. “Although there has been some rhetoric around this unit, this is the appropriate unit to respond to these events.”
K. Clark gave the analogy of a person barricaded in a house in the possession of weapons — he said it would make sense to send the designated emergency response team trained to mitigate the associated risk. “In this same situation, you want the best-trained people to deal with that situation.”
For GG, choosing a law enforcement unit with a controversial record to oversee an inherently peaceful protest “created a true division between what the police were doing on campus and the wellbeing of the students."
One of the encampment’s demands was to keep the police off campus for the colonial values that these institutions were built on and the colonialism still perpetuated in its practices.
“I think having the university be open to working with us to address some of those harms and acknowledge that they were wrong in allowing that to happen on their campus, I think would be helpful and healing,” said Moon when talking about the RCMP’s handling of the People’s University UBC protests.
Since the encampment was dismantled, GG said that People’s University UBC has been in negotiations with the university. “We’re engaging in peaceful protest, and yes, it is disruptive. Yes, it’s loud and noisy, but it’s within our Charter rights,” said GG.
Students keeping students informed
Most Canadian student press editorials transition into a new masthead at the beginning of May, which happened to be the period when most Canadian university encampments began sprouting across the country.
With that came the question of how student newsrooms would tackle covering such a complex and ever-evolving subject with limited resources during a transitional period.
“[Covering the encampment] was a learning curve for us, and I think it’s a learning curve for every student publication that’s going through similar circumstances,” said James Bullanoff, deputy news editor for the University of Toronto’s student paper The Varsity.
“We just rolled with the punches and just did what we could to manage [the coverage] in a meaningful way, but also make sure that we were telling a story that was important for our student community,” Bullanoff said.
The Varsity’s News Editor Selia Sanchez explained that the team aimed for an on-the-ground approach to reporting, establishing connections with the encampment and the university to keep in the loop.
The University of Toronto encampment started on May 2. On May 27, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice granted the Toronto Police Service authority to arrest protesters on account of trespassing after an injunction between the encampment and the University of Toronto ruled on the university’s side. But, according to Sanchez, police presence was “fairly minimal” while the encampment was ongoing.
“Sometimes there [were law enforcement] cars parked by,” Sanchez said. “But it [was] never anyone super visible. The only times where we have seen an escalation … in campus safety or police, is when there’s a counter-protest.”
During People’s University UBC’s own clash with counter-protesters, approximately a dozen officers from the RCMP and West Vancouver Police stood between the protesters in solidarity with Israel and the encampment.
Although police presence at the University of Toronto seemed minimal, the University of Alberta’s encampment had a different experience. It was short-lived, lasting from May 9 to the early hours of May 11. The Gateway’s, Editor-in-Chief Lily Polenchuk recalled being accompanied by her dad to the scene the first night she went to check on it.
After Calgary police used flashbangs on protesters and counter-protesters to disperse the University of Calgary’s day-long encampment on account of a trespass order that resulted in five people being arrested and three others being ticketed, there was no telling what was coming for the University of Alberta’s own camp.
“Who’s to say Edmonton Police won’t do the same?” said Polenchuk.
The night before the encampment was taken down by the Edmonton Police Service at the request of the university, The Gateway’s Opinion and Managing Editors Leah Hennig and Dylana Twittey were on the scene.
“[They] were frightened that they would get arrested or hurt as well if the police did come,” Polenchuk said — The Gateway’s editors hadn’t secured press badges yet.
“Everything was happening very quickly. So [Hennig and Twittey] wrote ‘Student Press’ on pieces of paper and stuck them to their shirts.”
But in some cases, a press badge does not make a difference when dealing with security. When People’s University UBC staged a sit-in at the Alumni Centre on May 13, both Campus Security and University RCMP denied The Ubyssey’s press-pass-bearing reporters’ repeated requests to enter the building without explanation as to why student press was barred entry. And, during the BC NDP conference, Ubyssey reporters were given warnings for arrest alongside protesters.
On April 1, 26 students gathered outside of the University of Toronto’s President Meric Gertler’s office for a sit-in.
“There was a Varsity reporter who was able to get in because she had gone in with the student protesters at the beginning,” Sanchez said. “We had another person from The Varsity try to come and bring in food and blankets [for protesters], and they were also not allowed. So the student protesters inside had raised allegations of denying access to the press.”
The Varsity’s experience covering the Simcoe Hall occupation echoes The Ubyssey’s coverage of People’s University UBC’s sit-in at UBC’s own president’s office.
During People’s University UBC’s May 15 occupation of Koerner Library, one Ubyssey reporter was able to get inside. UBC Campus Security did not allow additional press-pass-bearing student journalists to enter.
- Protestors occupy President’s Office, call on UBC to give additional statement on encampment demands
“[Press badges are] supposed to give you access,” said Young.
Young also said media presence during police interference gives journalists the responsibility of being the guarantors of “accountability for police and effective, but accountable and constitutional state action.”
Sanchez recalled a separate incident when herself and another Varsity reporter were denied access to a press conference where events regarding the encampment were being discussed on account of the meeting being accessible to “select media only.”
The Varsity eventually received a recording of the conference from the university, but not an explanation as to why The Varsity was barred entry in place of other Canadian newsrooms.
“Freedom of expression is also freedom of the press,” said Young. “The Charter’s protection of the press and journalistic or media speech is really closely connected to the functioning of Canadian democracy.”
Young also said there is concern about the lack of media access to on-the-ground protest coverage.
“It’s clear that police are subject to the rights that the Charter provides to individuals and to members of the media,” Young said.
Limiting media access, said Young, to enclosed rallies without explanation hints at a short circuit in an issue that law enforcement should have planned to work around.
“We want to ensure that the media have the opportunity to observe and report on the actions of the police as well as the actions of the protesters,” K. Clark said. “It’s just that sometimes it’s difficult to provide full access because you have to also understand that there’s a police operation underway.”
But it isn’t just now that student journalists are subject to different standards than other press. J. Clark said that during the APEC protests, he and then-News Editor Sarah Galashan first heard about the expansion of the police cordon around the Museum of Anthropology from protesters camping around its borders. They rushed from the Ubyssey office as police began enlarging its borders without notice to include the area where protesters had set up their encampment.
J. Clark and Galashan were met with police dogs as they tried to report on the scene.
“We were yelling, ‘We’re the press, we’re the press,’” J. Clark said. The pair feared they’d get arrested, though neither did.
“Parts of the campus were being turned into No-Go Zones, places where students were no longer allowed, that the press was no longer allowed,” said J. Clark.
For years, many police in jurisdictions across the country have grappled with the question of how to denote media — some have trumped the definition completely while others have completely discredited the legitimacy of press passes.
“There’s no definition of a journalist,” said K. Clark. “Even the Canadian Association of Journalists does not want to specifically define what a journalist is, so we don’t have accredited media per se.”
Lam said that when it comes to student journalists and the authorities, “everyone’s got a job to do.”
“Sometimes student journalism, I’ve seen, push[es] the envelope a little bit too much. That’s our job. But again, we’re also going to work in this professional world where we have to know where our boundaries are,” said Lam. “There’s a certain line that you can go up to, and then once you start crossing the lines and not being professional, then [authorities] don’t treat you professionally.”
“I go back to saying respect — it’s a two-way street. It’s not just given, but it’s also earned,” said Lam.
The lack of an official definition of “journalist” in Canada has been shrouded in ethical complexities and is evidence of its fluidity, which is clear in protest settings where both roles can be perceived as activism that law enforcement monitors. As such, journalists and protesters are subjected to the same fears.
“We haven’t had much experience dealing with police themselves in our coverage,” Polenchuk said. “It was just always a recurring thought of, how do we actually keep ourselves safe without impacting our coverage, making sure that our coverage continues to be informative and transparent?”
The interplay between safety and accurate reporting undercuts protest coverage. And when law enforcement feels more like a threat than a sense of comfort, it can be difficult to return to the office with the confidence that what is being written serves those who need the facts most.
After being pepper sprayed at the APEC protest, Arthur returned to the office to write his first opinion piece, a recount of the demonstration.
“It was just a really big, emotional day. I did what most student journalists do — you go back to the office,” Arthur said. “I wrote a back page piece about what I’d seen, and what I thought of it.”
That day, Arthur walked the line between protester and journalist.
“Journalists are journalists up until they are participating,” K. Clark said. “And as soon as the journalist is no longer objectively covering the protest and starts to participate in some way, they’re no longer essentially considered a journalist.”
Young said though journalists and protesters are important pillars of a functioning democracy, they are subject to different obstacles when carrying out their duties. While the protesters are subject to the implications of civil disobedience, journalists must struggle to hold their rightful space on the scene.
“You’re not actually, as a journalist, occupying physical space in the way that typically protests do,” Young said.
Student journalists are often the only journalists covering student issues, including protests.
“It is a historical moment, and at times, it feels like the weight of reporting and covering this is on our shoulders because we’ve been here since day one,” said Sanchez about the University of Toronto’s encampment. “We have a responsibility to our readers to provide accurate and consistent coverage about this, and we want to do a good job.”
That’s the same as at UBC — The Ubyssey was often the only outlet that had the connections, location and flexibility to rush to any place on campus where something was unfolding, and it turns out that this has been the case since the APEC protests.
Even back when APEC’s Economic Leaders Meeting loomed over campus, J. Clark recounted that The Ubyssey would scramble to the scene — press badges in hand — and find themselves pumping out breaking news stories to keep their community informed.
“It was one day for the national media, but it wasn’t just one day for the student press," said J. Clark.
Young said student journalism “is critically important to a university community” as “the intimate doings [universities] are … not well covered by established outside media outlets.”
Students write about complex topics and navigate protest and police spaces all while learning how to be journalists.
“We want our students to be alive to the world around them,” Young said. “We want them to bring what they learn at the university to their judgments about larger issues in the world that happen off-campus, and the campus is a really important place for these kinds of contextually rich, sensitive, aware conversations to happen.”
And as student newsrooms, platforms for this knowledge exchange, connection and accountability, we’re not asking for much — just to be taken seriously.
“You’re not going to please everyone,” said Polenchuk. “Just knowing that there’s people that aren’t going to be happy with you … every reporter has to come to terms with [that].”
A previous version of this article misstated which Gateway editors were present at the University of Alberta encampment. The Ubyssey regrets this error. This article was updated on Monday, September 2 at 11:57 a.m. to reflect this change.
This article is part of The Ubyssey's 2024 student action supplement,Press the Issue.
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