Archive of conflict

Archive of Conflict
Conversation with Richard Halliday
April 7, 2004

Quote for those who must make change:
… Revolutionaries should not think through other people’s minds.
Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to?
How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody?
How else can one change it?
He who understands and forgives – where would he find a motive to act?
Where would he not? …
- Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1940. P.25. [1]

On the function of an individual in society, to those who once wielded power:
… It was a mistake in the system; perhaps it lay in the precept which until now he had held to be uncontestable, in whose name he had sacrificed others and was himself being sacrificed: in the precept that the end justifies the means. It was this sentence, which had killed the great fraternity of the Revolution and made them all run amuck. What had he once written in his diary? ‘We have thrown overboard all conventions; our sole guiding principle is that of consequent logica; we are sailing without ethical ballast.
- Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, P.206.

In the quotidian functioning of any institution, ideas are presented and passed around through series of memorandums. Following standard procedure, those ideas are acted upon, rejected or brought forward for future consideration. Ideas that might bring about major changes in the functioning of any given institution might travel the memo circuit for several years before being acted upon. When an idea 'comes of age'; reaches its time to be implemented or buried forever, a special moment in time arises. To prevent a breakdown in the chain of discussion during that moment, a strict protocol must be followed. All details of correspondence and events must be treated with importance, as there is always a danger for incidents to pick up speed like a runaway train. At some later time, it will become important for individuals and the institution to look back and evaluate the record of events, to assign a level of significance to the outcome.

When the change is important enough to affect all of the members of that said institution, a highly political process rolls into action. That process must ensure that the change is dealt with in a timely and efficient manner; and that the day-to-day routine of the institution stay on course. During the implementation of major change, there is a strong likelihood that Individual(s) key to the process will, at some point, be designated as no longer useful to implementation of the change and/or to the institution at large.

A 1963 Graduate from Painting and Drawing at the Vancouver School of Art, Richard Halliday had already worked for two decades as an Artist, Art Teacher, and Arts Administrator when he found himself caught in the middle of the Alberta College of College’s struggle for autonomy. It was during the 1982-83 school year, his first year as Director of the College, and he went through radical and trying career challenges. I was enrolled in third year at ACA at the time; everyone has her/his own memories of the events. Like many others, I also saved newspaper archives of some of the events that took place. My position in the conflict was far less hingeful or controversial as Richard Halliday’s. I continued to work through my courses and graduated in 1984. More than twenty years later, we sat down to talk about the archive of conflict from the 1982-83 school year.

Richard Halliday: “ … Ten years prior to that, there was a slow buildup, actually a wish to become identified as a separate college with a separate identity from SAIT, the governing institution. It probably started in the early 1970’s, 71-72 … when the art school took over the building that it is in. That was when there was a large influx of new instructors and a whole new dynamic in terms of the faculty. That's when Don Kottman arrived, Roger Evans, Howard Price, John Coleman, and a whole bunch of new people … they all came in the early 70's.

…So the school, first of all you have to think about the build up of frustration, everybody’s wish to separate from SAIT, to take over our own affairs as a management group within the College. The main managerial group in the school was called the Academic Planning Group, the APG, and we would meet once or twice a week. There was an academic council, student council, etc.; but the main operation was governed by the AGP. So if you looked way back at the minutes of the APG, the subject of autonomy for the school would always come up … and we would send memos, up to SAIT management on the 11th floor of the Tower Building, asking if some thought could be given to increasing the sense of autonomy of the school even, at that time, within the SAIT umbrella. We hadn't gotten to the point in our thinking that the best thing to do was probably to separate fully from SAIT until 79, 80 and 81.

…I remember a meeting that took place when the Minister of Advanced Education (Jim Horsman) came down to SAIT. We invited him for a tour of the Art College. I was the Acting Head at the College as Ken Sturdy (the Head) was away in England. Bob Douglas, the Building Manager was the other person there when the Minister came and there was a meeting. We sat with him for about a half an hour discussing the potential for autonomy; what it would mean, the positive aspects for the identity of the school, the future of the school, etc. There was also a Member of the Board for SAIT present. That person was very supportive. So everyone left and the next day both Bob Douglas and I were called up to the office of one of the SAIT Vice Presidents. We were told that if we ever invited anyone from Government or a Member of the Governing Board of SAIT to such a meeting again, it would come down on us and we would be immediately fired.

So that kind of put the scare into everybody for the time being and life went on. Ken (Sturdy) left the College in the spring/summer of 1982 and I was appointed Head in August. I remember making sure that my SAIT contract stated that if anything ever happened in the school that prevented me from carrying out my duties, I would immediately revert back to teacher status. And I am glad that I did that because of future developments. So anyway, the school year started.

… What threw the match into the gasoline was a memo that I was told to write by my Director John Carstairs. I think that the underlying factor in all of this was that the SAIT Board of Directors was negotiating with the SAIT Instructional Staff on a new contract. It had been worked out a few years before that the Alberta College of Art Instructors would be allowed one full day once a week in the studio to 'do your thing', enhance yourself as an Instructor. No questions were to be asked on that. SAIT was worried that because the Alberta College of Art Instructors were part of the whole body of SAIT Instructors, SAIT Instructors (as a whole), could ask contract negotiators to make sure that all SAIT Instructors had the same level of freedom to do whatever they wanted once a week. I was told by SAIT Management that it would cost millions of dollars to allow that to happen, so the updating day would have to stop. The original arrangements for this day had been approved on a handshake way back in the 70's and I was told that to allow the updating day to continue, teachers would first of all have to observe their full contract including specific articles relating to employment. The updating day would also have to be reviewed by management of the school. In other words, the work accomplished would be evaluated at the end of the year. So I was told to put this on a memo and hand it to the teachers as soon as possible. That's what I did and I sort of think that the ‘December 8th memo’ was the match that blew this whole thing up.

So that started it and my capability in terms of managing the school at any level, deteriorated. I didn't know from day to day what was going on, there were meetings that I didn't know about; I was basically excluded. I was wandering up the hill to SAIT Management to try to figure out what they were going to do, if anything. They never seemed to have a strategic plan in place, not one that they told me about, so I was basically out in left field without anything. I was getting nervous about it all. There was signage in the school, big monstrous ten foot by ten-foot papers hanging off the balconies, and I was sort of the ‘Ayatollah Khomeini of Art Education for Western Canada’ by that point.

Valerie LeBlanc: As a student I believed that the separation would ensure that a four year degree program would be initiated at some point; that it was our duty to get out there and get things happening. So I went to meetings, participated in the ‘work in,’ (An overnight occupation of the College) rode in a school bus to Edmonton, marched through downtown Calgary, and demonstrated. And sometimes I felt that we were left in the dark about a lot of strategies that were being played out. In the back of my mind, I knew that I had to be ready graduate by the end of the following year, and that made it more confusing. When I talked to my peers, some felt the same; in any case, we were informed of the next strategy and our roles in it, almost at a moment’s notice. Your situation was much different, but there were people making moves, sending out some information while withholding other information. Can you comment about that?

RH: Well there were a lot of things going on. I remember that during the summer that I took over the school, the graffiti stairwell had been repainted to satisfy a demand of the Calgary Fire Department. And there were a couple of students in the school that wanted to get it going again. I remember that there was a blue line or a green line that came out of the door of the Painting Department. It came out of studio 381, ended up on the wall of the graffiti stairwell. Then, week-by-week, in that time period starting from September ‘82, students were starting to repaint it again. That was something I was told to watch, to try to manage, but I couldn't. It got to the point where I couldn't manage anything. Nobody wanted to listen to me, nobody wanted to talk to me, and nobody wanted to allow me to contribute to anything. It took me a while to realize what was happening. I thought that I was being set up as the scapegoat for everything. Eventually of course, that seemed to be the case. That was my role in that operation. When I look at it now, I think that if nothing had changed, I think that if I hadn't written that memo, or if I had pulled it back, that we could still be writing memos to the President of SAIT. It would have taken longer and I think the whole thing needed that level of revolutionary action for anything really substantive to happen. The fact that I wrote that memo to the teachers and that they reacted caused it all to go down.

VL: I think that you are right; it is a good way of looking at it.

RH: Well, then I had to leave. Art school is a very social place and for anything to happen at the level that it did, I couldn't be in the building. In February, I got a call one morning to go up to a meeting in the SAIT Human Resources Office. I was ushered into this room, and there were 'all the president's men’ (the SAIT Management team) … The talk was basically, ‘Richard, the whole situation is in a mess down there and we have to take you out of the middle so that the 2 ends can come together in some kind of conflict resolution. So we are going to send you on holiday.’ They took out this piece of paper that John Carstairs had already signed and I signed myself out. I was gone from the middle of February. I was told not talk to the press and to keep away from the school.
So I was sent away, but there was an article in Alberta Report Magazine in January 1983 stating that I was being blamed for everything.

VL: Was it sympathetic toward you?

RH: Yes, it just laid out some facts. … Anyway, that was going to be my role, so from February onward, I just stayed at home.

VL: Were you able to paint at all during that time?

RH: I had a hard time. …I took personal letters and documents and memos that I knew I needed in case that this thing ever went to court, I phoned a lawyer and went to see him right away. After laying out the situation for him, he said, ‘go home and do whatever your employer tells you to do.’ So I did. And that was the day that Patrick Tivy of the Calgary Herald knocked on the door to interview me. He had a photographer with him. It was a day or two before the (Alberta Report Magazine) article came out. The first thing I said to him was that he had walked into the Watergate of Calgary culture, which I think in a sense, he did. The whole thing at ACA and SAIT was the big story that winter. At the beginning of 1983, the newspapers and the TV stations would send reporters up the hill to talk to the Susanne Agopsowicz, the President of the Student Association, or one of her representatives, first thing in the morning. A few people who were managing this thing identified with the Polish Revolution. They took the word autonomy and transferred that into the graphics of the famous Polish slogan.

VL: Solidarity. It was not that long after the Polish Revolution.

RH: Yes, the solidarity thing. So I was sent home and the only connection that I had with what was going on was basically through the newspaper. I would make sure that I got the Calgary Herald during the hot periods of the struggle. And there were meetings; I remember the day after I was released to go on holiday, there was a big interview on CBC news. The lawyer Chris Evans had a spot on the news once or twice a week. He would interview topical people. He interviewed one or both of the Student representatives, Christian Eckart (Richard is referring to the artist known as Chris Spindler at that time) or Susanne Agopsowicz. He also interviewed James Ulrich because at the time, the ACA instructors were putting him up as a possible candidate for Head. At that time, they didn't want me back in any form whatsoever; although they realized that the solution for me was still unresolved. Even though I was sent away on ‘holiday,’ that was still a nebulous area and nobody knew what was finally going to happen to me. Then the negotiations started between the ACA Instructors and the SAIT Management as to how this whole thing was going to be resolved. I think that Walt Drohan finally became the Interim Head. He was the liaison until Mickey (Arthur) Meades was appointed. And so that continued, and I continued what I was doing. I just basically stayed home and did a little painting but my mind was churning all of the time about what was going on up at the school.

VL: It must have been very upsetting.

RH: It was. I didn't know were I was at; I was out in left field without anything.

VL: The art world is a very small and very public place.

RH: But I couldn't do anything about it. I understood why I was being maligned but I couldn't do anything about that either. I couldn't contribute to anything. I remember I was feeling bad at one point because people were talking to Dick Johnson, the Minister of Education and I hadn't been called in to talk to him. I did eventually get a meeting with the Minister, and I also talked to the Board of Governors at SAIT. The Minister seemed to appreciate my situation but he couldn't do anything about it. All he wanted to discuss was who caused the trouble, why they caused it, things like that. I eventually ended up in Edmonton at Advanced Education. I remember walking into this office with a blackboard on the wall. There were diagrams and information about what was going on at the Alberta College of Art. It was like a war room for Management strategy. I talked to someone for about 2 hours. Before long, people started to filter into the room from other offices in the Education Department and they listened to what I had to say. Then I left, went back home and continued to wait and hope. I still didn’t know what was going to happen to me.

Archive of Conflict: Limbo

RH: So there was a time limit on my ‘Halliday on Holidays’ as they called it, and that was May of ’83. I had a meeting with SAIT Managers and their view was that as the emotions against me were still strong, I wouldn't be able to function in the school and nobody could function with me. So I was an outcast and that hadn't been resolved as yet. But they said that they were working on it, and that they were going to put me into a new position. That was the plan, so I became the Manager of Special Projects. (Laughs) Of course you have to remember that ‘special projects’ is another term for, “We can't figure out what to do with you, so we are not going to give you a specific job.” Nobody ever oversaw the job and I had a lot of freedom as to what I could do. So I sat in the SAIT Management Building and just worked. I did some research in art education for the (SAIT) President, which he probably never read; I did these video programs on artists, and some teleconferencing. So that was interesting and I went through a whole year working on those projects. Then I went back and became the Manager of Special Projects under a new interim contract. I still kept my Management position and Management salary for a whole year. Meanwhile, negotiations were ongoing with Dick Johnson. The problems still hadn't been totally resolved, and then I started to go through a series of negotiations with the (SAIT) President as to what was going to happen to me. I visited that lawyer quite a few times to get my contract looked at and eventually it came to a point where I had to accept the fact that I was never going to go back to the Alberta College of Art as the Head of the School. There were 2 options, I would either continue with SAIT in this Special Projects role or I would go back into ACA. My main objective at that time was what my original contract as Head stated; that I would go back as a member of the Instructional Staff at the Alberta College of Art. That took a while to resolve, as they worked on the principles of my return to the College. I think a lot of people were very nervous and I think that there was an academic planning group meeting where it was decided that Richard Halliday was still not welcome back.

VL: On a personal level, how does going through something like this affect you?

RH: I look back on all of the things that have happened at the school and I see that it was very positive for the school. It has gone through a lot of growing pains and I am actually glad that all of that happened for the school. I accept and forgive anything that happened to me regarding the autonomy struggle. I know that it made me stronger as a person. You finally have to decide that you are going to get on with the rest of your life. It put me back into the classroom as an Instructor, which I really enjoyed. I think I really made a positive contribution to a lot of lives at the school. And eventually you walk away from everything because it is your time, and it was my time last year.

VL: How many years did you teach?

RH: Basically, when I put it together, my teaching career spans about 36 years. I added it up one day; I probably dealt with over 4,000 students during that time. Since then my painting has developed and I am successful in that way, and I have another career going.

Author’s note: The Alberta College of Art and Design achieved its Autonomy in 1985 and is now a degree granting institution.

Richard Halliday was able to get through the events of the 1982-83 crisis by keeping his focus, maintaining his own records of the events, and through consultations with his lawyer. By ensuring that his contract had an option clause enabling him to retire from management and return to teaching in the event of unforeseen complications, he was able to restart his professional career as an Art Instructor. Richard retired from teaching at ACAD in 2003 and is presently enjoying success in a second career as a stage and film actor.

- Valerie LeBlanc
August 18, 2004

Notes:

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