Dangerous Memory

As a Catholic kid growing up in suburban Toronto, Angus embraced the views of Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, which emphasized justice and charity. Her selfless actions to help the poor and disadvantaged inspired and politicized Angus, setting him on the road to social action in his early 20s. 

Angus and his girlfriend Brit Griffin, later his wife, decided to help street people by offering them a temporary place to stay. Thus, Angelus House was born. Unfortunately, while trying to help the homeless, Angus and Griffin ran headlong into the impacts of alcoholism and drug abuse among their new housemates. Crack cocaine, Angus writes, “had poisoned roots in the dirty battles of the Cold War and corporate greed of the 1980s.” The people who sought refuge at the house were “the innocent victims of corporate mercenaries.” But the lack of boundaries led to interpersonal problems.

Angus also came by his street savvy as a believer in the power of punk. He used his early band, L’étranger (named after Albert Camus’s existentialist novel), as a platform for his social criticism. His book doubles as a thumbnail history of the growth of punk rock, with dozens of punk bands profiled as astute observers of wrongheaded government policies, socially inept actions and solutions that were failing to address people’s real problems.

The AIDS epidemic and the advent of Gay Pride provide other dangerous memories that illustrate how resistance to perceived wrongs can transform into significant social change. Near the end, a chapter entitled “Operation Race to the Bottom” recalls the free-trade debates and the advent of globalization that paved the road to ruin for many workers. But Angus encourages readers to remember the victories of the past and to “imagine an alternate future.”

Angus has given us more than a trip down memory lane. The book is a call to arms at an uncertain time. Dangerous Memory offers a supportive message to all of us to come together in collective resistance against an attack by forces that are the offspring of a brutal “decade of greed.”