By: Ronak Ghorbani
October is Canadian Women’s History Month and here at McClung’s we’ve decided to feature each week different Canadian women that made a difference in the fight women’s rights and equality.
“I am certainly not opposed to peaceful protest. Yet, I also believe that to make real social change people and movements must be prepared to go beyond. In some cases that means so-called political violence.” Q & A with Ann Hansen
I first heard about the Wimmin’s Firebrigade last year while doing research for an anti-porn story I wrote for the McClung’s winter 2009 issue. In 1982 the Firebrigade firebombed a porn shop in Vancouver called Red Hot Videos, that circulated videos of gang rapes. I’ve always been fascinated by direct-action, though for my personal politics I prefer non-violence, so I looked up the group. Turns out one of the women involved, Ann Hansen, was part of the radical anarchist group the Squamish 5 who were responsible for detonating a bomb at Litton Industries in Toronto in 1982. Since this was the cold-war era, they were protesting the fact that Litton was making guidance components for U.S. cruise missiles.
