Montreal Speech, (43 min, 128 Kbps, mp3) 1991--We've been working on this speech off and on since 2001 (when I didn't even know what an mp3 file was), working from a very poor quality copy of a copy that was difficult to listen to due to horrible background noises because it was the only file that was available. The original of this file has been lost and thanks to Diana. who worked on it for weeks and a very skilled movie sound person who devoted countless hours of his expertise and labor, we now have an excellent version of this speech.

This will go on the Montreal summary page: It is no small feat that this speech is being presented online. When I first visited Nikki Craft, I lived in New Orleans. She invited me to go to Houston with her and attend a speech given by Andrea Dworkin and even spend some time with Andrea and Michael Moorcock after her speech. Andrea was powerful and truthful, in spite of her visibly declining health. Later, Nikki asked me to listen to a tape recording of a much ealier speech she had given in Montreal in the wake of the Marc Lepine shootings. I was stunned. The written versions of her speeches collected in the book Life and Death never conveyed the awesome power of her message the way her voice did. But the quality of the recording made it impossible to offer it to the public. Neither of us had any audio experience, but we jury-rigged a confused knot of cables to digitize it, adding plenty of static. I labored with video editing software, for days and weeks trying to modulate the volume and get rid of the noise while preserving her voice, and no choice was good. Nikki had previously sent the original tape to someone else who was supposed to clean it up and unfortunately the tape was lost. Meanwhile I got pregnant and had a baby, so the project was on hold. When I was strong enough again to get back to finishing it, we had to evacuate for this storm named Katrina, and left the only CD copy in my house, which flooded. That was the last recording of that speech anyone had and I assumed it was gone for good. My partner traveled back to New Orleans to assess the damage, and he brought back a plastic box of stuff he salvaged. In the box was Andrea's speech! I finished what I could. Still, the result was not up to par so I asked my dear friend who is an audio genius, and he worked his magic on it. Presto: the Montreal speech. He managed to bring her out of the shadows, into her glory. If you had heard what he had to start with, you'd never imagine it could be done. I'd say he's the protagonist of this story. --Diana, September 1, 2006 (Andrea Clark is transcribing this speech.)