MONTREAL—Concordia University launched an investigation this week into the toxic and abusive culture that allegedly flourished in a creative writing program that has churned out many top Canadian authors.

Specific allegations of inappropriate relationships, groping, harassment and assault have been around for several years, discussed in tones ranging from hushed to strident, according to interviews the Star conducted this week with 11 former students.

On Friday, the Concordia Association for Students in English, a student association, said in a statement that professors who have been named online have had their courses reassigned and books written by the faculty members were removed from a display window in the library.

A university spokesperson would not confirm that information, but did say that an external investigator had been assigned to conduct a probe into the allegations.

Read more:

Concordia University president announces new measures amid sexual misconduct allegations at the school

Concordia University head ‘disturbed’ by sexual misconduct allegations

The problems became known to a wider public audience in an online essay by Concordia graduate Mike Spry, who said he was part of a “culture of cronyism, bullying, abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault,” can be traced back to the mid-1980s.

That is when the marriage of poet and Concordia professor Robert Allen ended and a toxic culture in the creative writing program was born, according to Stephen Henighan, a writer and Guelph University professor who studied under Allen from 1984 until 1986 and taught at Concordia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Newly single, Allen, who died in 2006, began accompanying his students to Montreal’s bars after classes. Rumours began circulating that he was sleeping with young women in the program.

One of Allen’s protégé’s in the late 1990s — and now one of this country’s most successful authors — two-time Giller Prize nominee Heather O’Neill, said he groped her.

“I remember thinking, how could I have got into a situation where I let that happen,” O’Neill said in an interview. “I was angry with myself.”

Speaking to the Montreal Review of Books shortly before his death, Allen credited the “force and ferment” of the city’s literary scene for his own late career success. He spoke proudly of writers and poets reading and performing at bars and clubs every night of the week — as if this was where writers earned their chops.

“In Montreal right now it’s halcyon days for a writer. For this writer, anyway,” he said.

Allen did help O’Neill publish her first manuscript of poems in 1998, under the title, Two Eyes Are You Sleeping. But to this day, she does not include it in her list of published work.

“I have never been able to feel pride about it because it resulted in the sexual harassment,” she said. “It just undermines your own sense of yourself as an intellectual and an artist, that you’re suddenly objectified.”

In the ensuing two decades, the world has changed greatly. Attitudes, language, policies and laws have advanced to protect against unwanted sexual advances. Boundaries have been erected, and “no” quite definitely means “no,” though too many still don’t listen.

But the stories being told this week suggest a corrosive pocket within Concordia’s creative writing program has somehow endured.

In announcing the investigation — which the university confirmed will be conducted by an external investigator — and a review of the creative writing department, Concordia president Alan Shepard refused to say whether any university employees had been suspended or reprimanded in connection with the allegations. And none has been publicly identified by the university or their accusers.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Shepard also claimed to have been in the dark about any of the alleged wrongdoing: “I wasn’t aware and if I had been aware I would have acted sooner.”

Many others did know. Allegations of an inappropriate relationship and assault were made against one professor by Toronto poet and former student Emma Healey in an essay published on The Hairpin website in October 2014.

In response, some students submitted a letter to Concordia’s English department in February 2015 regarding Healey’s essay.

The letter said students felt “uncomfortable and unsafe” attending literary events because of the involvement of the professors at the centre of that community. It also asked the school to issue a statement clarifying “appropriate boundaries in teacher-student relations.”

“The 2015 letter was managed at the appropriate level at that time. The department did meet with students and took action,” said Mary-Jo Barr, a Concordia spokesperson. “For reasons of privacy and confidentiality, we can’t provide more specifics.”

For some, the reaction points to a broader culture within the literary community, particularly in light of a similar scandal at the University of British Columbia involving the firing of author Stephen Galloway in June 2016 after allegations of sexual misconduct brought by a number of female students.

In that case, some of Canada’s top writers — most notably Margaret Atwood — rallied to Galloway’s side, saying he had been denied a fair hearing against his accusers.

“Concordia isn’t an aberration; it’s the norm,” author and UBC graduate Anna Maxymiw wrote on Twitter, revealing that she was among Galloway’s accusers.

This week’s revelations at Concordia are no surprise for Julie McIsaac. The former student also tried to complain about a case of harassment involving a male member of the Concordia faculty when she said she was informed that the school had no formal policies in place, though such relationships were discouraged.

She said she was advised to go to the police if the behaviour continued. But she made him aware that she had sought outside assistance about the situation and she never heard from him again.

McIsaac said in an interview that even there were a number of valuable opportunities available to her as aspiring young writer at Concordia, the road to a literary life in the Montreal program was fraught with hazards: conversations with faculty that shifted to the bar and ended in blind drunkenness; the offers of a hand-up from an established writer that turned into an unwanted hand on the leg.

“You think you’ve found a mentor and then it’s like, ‘Oh, wait . . . ,” McIsaac said. “The interest is in sex. It’s not in the ideas or the writing.”

Read more about: