In May, we attended the screening of the recent documentary Sept-Îles ’72: Archives du monde ordinaire, directed by Étienne Langlois. The film revisits an essential episode in the country’s class struggle: the occupation of the city of Sept-Îles by militant workers, in the context of the 1972 Common Front general strike.
There will never be enough cultural works to preserve the revolutionary history of the working class. This film contributes to that goal by illustrating the creativity and courage of workers united in the momentum of a general strike.
A teacher recalls how he picketed alone in front of his factory. Archival footage shows the trenches ingeniously dug by construction workers to block traffic. We were struck by how vivid and revelatory these images were, reminiscent as they were of the barricades erected by the Paris Commune in 1871. They allow us to affirm that the Quebec working class, too, has its own revolutionary history.
One of the film’s most striking testimonies is that of Jacques L. Boucher, a union activist:
“When the police retreated from the confrontation, someone said, ‘That’s it, this is revolution! We weren’t ready for that. We weren’t prepared to take power. This was new.”
This quotation alone reveals the great lesson to be learned from the 1972 Common Front: for a moment, the Quebec bourgeoisie was powerless in the face of workers’ power. But the opportunity was not seized to overthrow it. The riot police had time to prepare their counter-offensive, arresting more than a hundred demonstrators in a single day. After several days of struggle, the occupation was finally crushed.
Despite this defeat, the revolutionary audacity of the Sept-Îles workers constitutes a precious heritage for the labour movement. It is this memory that troubles the Quebec bourgeoisie. Even today, it refuses to speak of revolution, reducing the Sept-Îles events to a mere social crisis.
A single historical fact suffices to illustrate this: during the occupation, an individual motivated by anti-union hatred drove his car into a crowd of demonstrators, killing one young worker and injuring some thirty others. How did the bourgeois newspapers present this terrorist act? As an unfortunate “accident”.
Lies are a weapon of choice for the ruling class. The victim’s brother took the floor at the screening to thank the director for helping to set the record straight.
For Étienne Langlois, this rich revolutionary history is above all personal. By interviewing those close to him who took part in the occupation of Sept-Îles, including his father, the film gives a voice to “common folk”.
This is undoubtedly its greatest artistic quality. Through the anecdotes and recollections of workers who lived through the events, it is the voice of the exploited – those who fought to transform society – that emerges with force and authenticity. It’s up to us to raise this voice to its highest peak by achieving socialist revolution in our own lifetime.
Anyone wishing to grasp the vibrancy of the greatest revolutionary moment in Quebec history must watch Sept-Îles ’72: Archives du monde ordinaire.
Interview with director Étienne Langlois
Among all the focal points of struggle of the 1972 Common Front, why focus on Sept-Îles in particular?
From a historical and personal point of view. Sept-Îles is where the occupations, demonstrations and walkouts were the most important [in proportion to the population]. I come from there, I grew up there. Not only that, but my parents come from a working-class background. They quickly became active thanks to union initiatives. By the time I was born, the events had long since passed, but they were still very much with us. When friends and family came to the house, we always talked about it. And since I’ve always wanted cinema to be linked to my political and community involvement, when I rediscovered this story with my father in 2010, I said to myself that I had to make a film about it.
And how do you explain the fact that this episode in Quebec’s history, the biggest strike the province has ever seen, is only mentioned in passing in history textbooks?
I think there’s a filter at the Ministry of Education. Under the pretext that we don’t have time to deal with these issues—“local issues”, as they say—we focus on the big politicians and their big bills. The Sept-Îles story didn’t make the textbooks, probably because there was a seed of revolution in it… Now, I know a lot of teachers who still talked about it. Teachers who took the textbook into class, threw it in the garbage and said: “I’m going to teach you history.” (Laughs).
After watching the film, one realizes that much of the memories you convey on-screen were initially preserved by the workers themselves. We see this with Paulo, the amateur archivist who guides the narrative, a veritable goldmine of documents. What kind of research did the film involve?
I had privileged access, that’s for sure. I grew up with most of the people in the film. Paulo used to say to me: “Yes, my boy, come and see us! My box is there, ask all your questions. Would you like a beer? Or two? Or three?” (Laughs.) Age is also a very important factor. These people are seventy-five and over: they can’t remember everything. Memory fades, even among activists – hence the importance of documenting. So personal archives were at hand, but they had to be supplemented. And journalistic archives are not free. Radio-Canada is the Crown corporation that’s supposed to belong to us, but we’re talking about $25 a second. It’s been frustrating.
You chose to use only witnesses and participants in the occupation. Why?
My film doesn’t explain: it recounts. I didn’t want a meta-analysis produced by a “specialist” of the union movement. My aim is not to pass judgment on what these people did; I simply wanted the grassroots to speak. That’s a point of honor. “We, the common folk” was the slogan of the Common Front in 1972, and I deliberately included it in the title. It’s an editorial choice I’m very proud of. It means that it’s the common folk who are expressing themselves here.
And how is the film received among common folk, anyway?
The response is fantastic. The desire to fight in the face of repression and injustice is really what stands out. I’ve shown the film at union meetings, and members want to see it again for inspiration, to see how they can mobilize even more. Manifestos like “Ne comptons que sur nos propres moyens” and “L’État, rouage de notre exploitation” show that there was real work being done to mobilize and inform people at the time. It makes you want to get back into it. I think the film gives them that impetus.
This brings us to the political content of the film, which raises the question of the legacy of 1972 in today’s union movement, notably by ending on last year’s general strike. What is the film trying to say about the long history of class struggle in Quebec?
We’re talking about people who take care of our community, who raise our children. Remove them, and what do you have as a base? Since capitalism was born, we haven’t given these people, the backbone of society, the means to live decently and be happy. As we saw recently with Amazon and the childcare workers’ strike, it was the same old story. From 1972 to 2025, the parallel is still there. Always the same strategies—divide and conquer. “You’re taking society hostage!” The theme song is also a response to this: “The world may be small, but there are more of us. If we stood together, we’d be fabulous.”
