In the cafeteria, squeezed in the corner of the overcrowded Holy Cross table, Denis Boulet holds court. House members sit around him, taking in his thoughts on politics, religion and history like disciples at the Last Supper. His speech is soft, well paced and articulate. It has an air of deep reflection as he searches for the precise phrase, yet he also seems to have a thoughtful comment for each passerby. He seems to know everybody.
But the 24-year-old history major is more than just a social animal. This young francophone is one of the major driving forces behind the Red T Movement; a group formed out of a protest last school year that wants to reverse the recent tuition hike. On Friday, the movement brought in an organizer from the 2012 Quebec student protests to give workshops.
Boulet defines himself as “anarcho-communist” or “anarcho-syndicalist” and is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. He quotes the writer Samuel Beckett: “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
It’s something that reflects the roller coaster he’s already experienced in his young life. You’d be surprised how many different shades go into his red.
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Boulet hails from Connors, a logging community of 150 nestled in the Madawaska panhandle where New Brunswick meets Maine and Quebec. His father owns a Christmas tree farm and from an early age he followed him into those woods to work.
“Living so close to the land, there is something of a individuality and a sort of a prize on the social unit,” he said.
Fredericton may be a big city compared to Connors, but by the time he arrived last year he’d already had worlds of experience.
In 2010, Boulet was seeking a solid sense of right and wrong and found it in Islam.
“I have to preface this by saying that the exploration in Islam was born out of a deep existentialism malaise born out of a really hard time with depression,” he says. “I would turn to spiritually, mysticism and religion as a way of finding truths or finding myself.”
Although the conversion occurred in Edmundston, he found himself on his way to Morocco in December of that year. He only lived in there for three weeks, but was pressured into marriage.
“In Islam, to get married is to fulfill one’s faith,” said Boulet.
When he returned to Canada, his wife was not granted entrance. He was alone and his faith wavered. When he eventually left Islam in 2012, he says he was totally spurned by that community.
“In Islam, when you become a Muslim and you say the Shahada; it’s a permanent mark for them,” said Boulet. “You cannot revoke it and if you do, in Islamic law you are to be condemned to death because there is no more point to your life.”
He has since been cut off from any contact from his wife.
“I wonder where she is and the tragedy is that I’ll never know. The people who would know avoid me like the plague and in fact deny my existence.”
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Boulet read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which put out the last embers of Islam and religion as a whole for him, and came to STU to study history. As his passion for the French Revolution deepened, he discovered the Spanish Civil War, the great lost cause of the 20th century political left.
Unlike his spiritual beliefs, he says his political views are strong and unwavering.
“Everybody pays tuition and I think the overwhelming majority of students are opposed to it. So, why should they not join up in a movement that wants to include them and their views into it?”
He understands that the administration is in a tight spot because of the freezing of STU’s operating grant and increasing costs. But for Boulet tuition hikes comes down to a choice of where the government directs our resources.
“I come from a place where they’re abandoning roads, for God’s sakes. I know New Brunswick is poor. But I also come from a place where I see arenas being built for no goddamn reason.”
He wants the administration to take a stance.
“They would rather ignore the students rather than work with them,” he says.
Boulet also sits on the Students’ Representative Council and has trouble seeing eye-to-eye with many members of the STUSU, who he sees as not taking a principled stance against tuition hikes and the administration.
“I think that some people sitting around that table might feel uneasy about my presence, and that’s OK because I admit I am a little uneasy sitting around that table. It’s a grey area, and I don’t know what my future is on the SRC.”
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The truth is, on an average Friday night you won’t find Boulet singing songs at an IWW meeting or reciting the communist manifesto on a soapbox to passersby. You’ll probably find him in Holy Cross House playing Dungeons and Dragons with his roommate. That’s who he is, a student who wants to have fun with friends, laugh with them and study with them. He just wants to do it at a reasonable price.
“I am susceptible to ideologies, ” he said. “Now (this is) the way I am. Anything that’s not compatible with my political views, I reject whole hand.”
So, as he casts that 20-sided die to decide what his character will do next, it lands with a number facing up. But like the die, you can’t see all of the sides of Boulet at a glance.
He knows the road ahead of him is long with lots of detours –maybe even a few dragons – but he offers up an Oscar Wilde quote as a compass.
“A map of the world is incomplete if Utopia is not on it.”
