(The following article is from the September 1-15, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Chris Powell   

     Walking north on Toronto's Yonge Street, between Wellesley and College, you pass Alexander Street on your right. Amid the condominiums constructed over the last few decades is Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, an early twentieth century warehouse converted into a theatre in 1967. Until 1986 it was the home of Toronto Workshop Productions (TWP) under the artistic directorship of George Luscombe.

     This September 11, as we join with the Chilean-Canadian community to commemorate the thirty-fifth anniversary of "the original 911" - the US-orchestrated coup d'etat that installed the murderous dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet - it is worth pausing to consider the role that Luscombe and his TWP played in these events.

     Prior to September 11, 1973, Chile's history of constitutional democracy was second in this hemisphere only to the United States. In 1964 the Central Intelligence Agency spent three million dollars to prevent the election of Socialist Salvador Allende. In 1970, however, Allende forged a coalition with the other left parties and was elected president with a plurality. The response of then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." Kissinger began plotting the coup that would kill Allende and end Chilean democracy for the next seventeen years.

     Canada actively assisted the United States in these efforts. In the three-year period of preparation, the US placed a trade embargo on the Chile, during which consumer goods disappeared from store shelves. Canada participated in this embargo. Two days after the coup, The Globe and Mail welcomed Pinochet, editorializing, "The decision (for the military) to intervene now was probably taken as the only possible move if the country were to be spared all-out civil war." In the six-week period immediately following the coup, during which time thousands of Chileans were murdered, tortured and disappeared, Canada was one of the first countries to extend diplomatic recognition to the new regime. Commenting on events at the time, Canadian Ambassador to Chile Andrew Ross, stated, "You have to remember, this is South America," as if that somehow justified Canadian support of a fascist dictatorship. The government of Pierre Trudeau welcomed "the return of order and regular business relationships."

     Canada's relationship with the junta was illustrated in its attitude that most refugees fleeing Chile were political extremists that the country was lucky to be rid of. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent two officers, Clifford Wilbrod and Bill Knobs, to the Embassy in Santiago to liaise with US Embassy staff and representatives of the junta and assist in the collection of intelligence regarding political personalities who were trying to leave Chile. While the Swedish Embassy grounds in Santiago became a veritable refugee camp, the Canadian Embassy acted to keep most Chileans out.

     This was reflective of Canada's Cold War double standard policy. During the 1950s Canada allowed 30,000 Hungarians to enter the country following the Soviet intervention of 1956. Likewise, 11,000 Czechs entered Canada after the short-lived "Prague Spring." Later we would admit 60,000 "Boat People" from Southeast Asia. Despite reports of mass executions, disappearances, mutilation and torture, in the 1973-1974 period, Canada granted refugee status to only 2,000 Chileans, after intensive, and often humiliating, political and health screening.

     In April 1974, Luscombe and TWP resident writer Jack Winter attended a party in support of Chilean refugees. The two started to become aware of Canada's shameful relationship with Chilean fascism, and decided to use the theatre to expose it.

     Born in 1926 in working-class East Toronto, Luscombe had been active in a CCF youth group in the 1940s. From 1950 to 1957 he worked as an actor in Britain with the Theatre Workshop group under the direction of Marxist Joan Littlewood. He established TWP as Canada's first alternative theatre in 1959, moving into the Alexander Street address in Canada's centennial year. From its humble beginnings until its end, Luscombe made no bones that TWP was a political theatre.

     Titled You Can't Get Here from There, Winter researched and wrote the skeleton of a script, Luscombe and his actors workshopped it into a play. "It wasn't just a story about Pinochet or Allende," stated Luscombe in a 1990 interview, "it was really a story about the Canadian Embassy."

     The play's purpose, according to Luscombe, was to inform the public "of our government's involvement in the machinations of the CIA, and how they, in such a terrible fashion, support fascism..."

     This wasn't a Conservative government," reminded Luscombe, "it was a Liberal government and the man in charge was (Minister of Foreign Affairs) Mitchell Sharp and it was Trudeau who was (Prime Minister)... The Canadian government was sitting back with its thumb in its mouth, closing its doors on the refugees. Here we were in a clear situation of a coup, a murderous coup, the army slaughtering the youth of Chile."

     According to Luscombe, several Embassy staff approached him after seeing the play, congratulating him on such an accurate portrayal. They made no attempt to hide their disdain for Ambassador Ross and the actions of the Canadian government.

     Out of the darkness of the theatre the play began with film footage of the army attack on La Moneda, the presidential palace, and the carnage perpetrated in the streets of Santiago. Interspersed throughout a radio announcer's account of the coup is Allende's final address to the people of Chile: "Surely this is the last opportunity I will have to address myself to you. My words do not come out of bitterness, but may they be the moral punishment for those who have betrayed the oath they took as soldiers of Chile. They have the power, they can smash us, but the social processes are not detained. History is ours, and the People will make it... I have faith in Chile and in her destiny. Other men will overcome this gray and bitter moment. May you continue to know that much sooner than later the great avenues through which free men will pass to build a better society will open. Long live Chile!"

     The play also included the patriotic working-class songs of Chilean songwriter Victor Jara, as well as a recitation in broken English by a recently arrived Chilean actor of a translated poem by Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda. Jara was murdered in the National Stadium within a week of the coup, Neruda died a few days later of natural causes, some say of a broken heart. At the centre of the stage was a Plexiglas-enclosed area of pure white, representing the inaccessible Canadian Embassy in Santiago. Around it was an earth tone set representing the reality of Chile.

     Before the play opened, however, tragedy struck. In the early morning hours of November 5, 1974, the day of opening night, an arsonist attacked Toronto Workshop Productions, severely gutting the theatre. Years later, Luscombe conceded the fire might have been the work of a disgruntled former actor. His admittedly authoritarian leadership style certainly earned him many enemies. He also thought that it might have been related to five or six other acts of what appeared to be right-wing violence occurring in Toronto at the time, including the firing of several live rounds into the door of Progress Books, which sold communist literature.

     Whatever the cause, the opening was delayed by six weeks, during which TWP was rebuilt. Showing remarkable solidarity, the Toronto theatre community lent its full strength and resources into getting TWP up and running again. On December 31, 1974 You Can't Get Here from There opened.

     Ironically, between the fire and the opening of the play, the Canadian government reversed its policy, opening the doors to Chilean refugees and marking the start of what would become a vibrant and active Chilean-Canadian community. How much credit Luscombe and TWP can take for this is purely a matter of conjecture, but it is significant not only in illustrating the relationship between the political and the artistic stages, but also between Canadians and Chileans in fighting modern-day fascism.

     Through a series of convoluted political battles, Luscombe was dismissed by the TWP board of directors in 1986, in what University of Guelph Professor of Drama Alan Filewod has aptly described as a purge. The theatre folded two years later. Luscombe went on to teach as a sessional instructor at both Guelph and Trent Universities until his retirement was forced by diabetes, to which he succumbed in 1999. In his honour, the University of Guelph re-named its main theatre the George Luscombe Theatre.

     So this September 11, let us remember the victims of both 911s: the American victims of terror, and the victims of American terror. But let us also remember the many "little people" such as George Luscombe who continue to fight, fascism in their own individual ways, people who seem to have an innate understanding of Salvador Allende's parting words: "History is ours, and the People will make it."

     (The Archival Collection for Toronto Workshop Productions can be found at the Library of the University of Guelph. Jack Winter's notes for You Can't Get Here from There, along with his other work can be found in the archives of Mills Memorial Library at McMaster University. See also Neil Carson's Harlequin in Hogtown: George Luscombe and Toronto Workshop Productions, University of Toronto Press, 1995.)