This excellent documentary isn’t the first to be made about the protests against anti-Black racism at Sir George Williams (now Concordia) University in Montreal in 1969, which ended with a police raid (see: Ninth Floor, 2015). But what struck me about True North, which premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, was how well it situates that flashpoint during a moment of Black internationalism.
For example, one of the Sir George students interviewed for the film talks about coming to Canada from Haiti, where the U.S.-backed government of François Duvalier was on a violent rampage. The man fled from Haiti to the U.S., where he knew he would likely get drafted to fight in Vietnam. So he took the bus to Montreal, a city of increasing importance among Caribbean people, having just hosted the Congress of Black Writers in 1968.
Directed by Haitian filmmaker Michèle Stephenson, True North is an impressive journey into the archives, and the black-and-white contemporary interviews are just the right touch to blend the past with the present.
This article appeared in the 2025 Oct/Nov issue.
