Rebel yell

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2024 (313 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Many know Charlie Angus as the NDP Member of Parliament who has represented the northern Ontario riding of Timmins—James Bay since 2004. After two decades as an MP, and finishing as runner-up to Jagmeet Singh for the federal leadership in 2017, Angus has announced he won’t be running in the next federal election.

Perhaps this decision has triggered a need to write about his youth as a punk rocker and social activist. Angus’ Dangerous Memory: Coming of Age in the Decade of Greed is an engaging account of the tumultuous 1980s — a decade marked by Reaganomics, anti-nuclear protests, AIDS and the glorification of greed, among other things. The MP argues that today’s problems, including worsening climate change, homelessness and economic inequality, are linked to decisions made four decades ago.

Such decisions, Angus asserts, include the oil industry’s smothering of climate change research, the federal government reducing its support for public housing, the sell-off of public assets and opening our borders to globalization with free trade agreements.

Yet Dangerous Memory is not an NDP polemic about Conservative politics. Rather, it’s a very readable personal memoir of the author’s remarkable young adult years. In 1980, along with Andrew Cash, who later went on to a successful solo career, Angus founded the punk rock group L’étranger, a somewhat pretentious name taken from the title of Albert Camus’s existentialist novel. (Cash also served as an NDP MP from 2011 to 2015 in Toronto’s Davenport riding.)

Angus gives an account of the band’s countless performances in seedy bars and venues while travelling across Canada. The third chapter, “A Punk Kid on the Edge,” gives a colourful look into the Canadian punk music scene, including brief mentions of Winnipeg’s Dub Rifles, among other long-forgotten groups. Unfortunately, the volume lacks an index for looking up such bands and their musicians.

A young radical raised as a Catholic, at the ripe age of 23, Angus, along with his girlfriend (later wife) Brit Griffin, established a Catholic Worker House in Toronto’s South Riverdale, an area beset by poverty. They named it Angelus House. It was modelled on the first Catholic Worker House, which was opened by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in New York City in 1933. Such homes continue to exist across North America and operate according to Christian principles and teachings. They are meant to build communities among those in need, including those facing homelessness, mental health issues and addictions.

Dangerous Memory is filled with many characters who found their way into Angelus House — with many, if not most, non-Catholic. Attending mass services in the house was optional. Angus writes that he eventually left the Catholic Church due to stories about corruption and sexual abuse. He witnessed first-hand the impact of early abuse on many who sought refuge at the house.

While the ’80s were significant years in which choices made by those in power continue to negatively affect us, Angus argues that current activists should not give up hope. They can learn how activists in past years were not powerless. The peace movement helped promote the end of the Cold War, the gay community’s activism promoted the protection for current LGBTTQ+ rights and environmentalists fighting climate change can look to how threats to the Great Lakes from acid rain have now receded.

“Dangerous memories remind us that … malignant forces have been fought and beaten before. Better choices are within reach,” he writes.

Angus and his wife closed Angelus House in 1990 following the birth of their second child. They moved to the distinctly non-urban setting of the former mining town of Cobalt, Ont. At the time Angus was only 27, and moved on to other interesting things.

Now, at age 62, what comes next for Charlie Angus?

Christopher Adams is a political scientist and rector of St. Paul’s College at the University of Manitoba.