Sir George Williams Computer Riot - Background

Background

The direct reason for the eruption of the computer riots at Sir George Williams University was the year-long dispute between students and the university administration over a charge of racism brought against a white professor by a group of eight west Indian students. But there were additional events happening at the university and in the city of Montreal that contributed to the festering crisis and its destructive conclusion.

In October 1968, a few months before the riot, Montreal hosted two conferences on the position of black people in society. The first conference was hosted at the University and organized by black alumni and some professors and other members of the University. The first was a conference engaging Black organizations across Canada represented by Black leaders from Halifax to Vancouver. According to "Expression", a quarterly publication of the Negro Citizenship Association Inc (Conference Issue Winter 1968) the purpose of the conference was to examine the "problems in the Canadian society with reference to Black people." The second, “The Black Writers Conference” was hosted at McGill University. This conference was focused on “the ideology of Black Power and Black Nationalism”. The two conference held weeks apart and at the two different venues reflected formal agreements to disagree on priorities and span of action: domestic versus international. Both of these conferences contributed to the tensions at Sir George Williams University.

Other elements that contributed to the riots were a series of miscommunications between the students and the University administration, and the nature of the University itself, which was an institution that encouraged non-traditional educational philosophy, openness and accessible higher education to a wider range of students from different backgrounds and different social standings.