The renowned filmmaker muses on receiving the Order of Canada in perilous times.
by Bonnie Sherr Klein
"They desire a better country" (Desiderantes meliorem patriam) — Order of Canada motto
September 1967. We are holding our breath. We have to get into Canada immediately or Michael, my new husband, will be jailed. At the advice of the Montreal Committee to Aid War Resisters, we have arrived at Dorval Airport after midnight, when mostly sympathetic French-Canadian immigration officers are on duty. Michael has a hastily-offered letter of employment from Montreal Children's Hospital. Twenty minutes later, we are relieved to be welcomed as landed immigrants! We are among the wave of over 200,000 Vietam-era women and men who became an integral part of the Canadian mosaic.
Before our immigration, Michael had been offered a position as a medical officer in the American military but had planned to go to jail rather than serve the Vietnam War in any capacity. Serendipitously, the day he received the commission, I was at a seminar for documentary filmmakers and had just seen the Canadian documentary Mills of the Gods. In it, director Beryl Fox bravely sat filming from the cockpit of a helicopter as it sprayed napalm on a Vietnamese village. We Americans who opposed the war knew about the atrocities, but our US media never exposed them. A Canadian woman did, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation aired her film.