Rise Up! Feminist Digital Archive
A Digital Archive of Feminist Activism
A group of “socialist feminist women who like to sing” came together to form the Red Berets in Toronto in 1981. Their first gig was at the 1981 International Women’s Day rally held at City Hall and their opening song was “Bread and Roses”. The group sang regularly at benefits, rallies, demonstrations and picket lines in and around Toronto from 1981 to 1988. Singing feminist songs as well as traditional songs of solidarity and struggle, the Red Berets also wrote their own songs or rewrote lyrics to highlight current issues.
A group of “socialist feminist women who like to sing” came together to form the Red Berets in Toronto in 1981. Their first gig was at the International Women’s Day rally held at City Hall on Saturday, March 7, 1981 and their opening song was “Bread and Roses.”
The Red Berets sang regularly at benefits, rallies, demonstrations and picket lines in and around Toronto from 1981 to 1988. Singing feminist songs as well as traditional songs of solidarity and struggle, the Red Berets also wrote their own songs or rewrote lyrics to highlight current issues. A Red Berets pamphlet from the early years says:
“We are a grassroots singing group dedicated to making music accessible by encouraging audience participation….While we sing about a wide diversity of social issues – workers’ rights, disarmament, anti-intervention, anti-racism, choice on abortion and sexual orientation – our emphasis is on integrating these issues with concerns of the women’s movement.”
Participation in the group was open, and numbers rose and fell over the years, but the group maintained a core of about twelve singers.
The group resurfaced in 2002 and 2005 to sing at labour history conferences and in May 2014 to be themselves in the play, Life on the Line: Women Strike at Eaton’s 1984-85, by Pat McDermott. The Red Berets still sing together in protest from time to time. Eight Red Berets gathered to sing with others at the Toronto Harperman Singalong (“Harperman, it’s time for you to go!”) on September 17, 2015.
The information on the Red Berets pages has been compiled from members’ collective memories, diaries, songbooks, and other records. Apologies for any errors.
Download the Red Berets Archive as a complete package, including photos and links to Related Materials.
Liz Martin Jane Springer Helena Wehrstein
