Grappling with the pollution problem also became a cause célèbre in this period. In November 1970, the News reported on a campus lecture by well-known American ecologist Barry Commoner, who set off student protests by claiming, of all things, that the "root cause of pollution was neither overpopulation nor affluence" but "industrial technology." Student Maoists had declared him an "agent of imperialism" and a "fascist scientist," since fighting pollution would merely cover up one of the evils of capitalism. Commoner's environmental message proved provocative enough to campus Maoists that they charged the stage during his lecture and the Montreal riot squad had to be called in.
Meanwhile, the Faculty of Agriculture (now Agricultural and Environmental Sciences) was threatened with relocation. The predicament had begun with a Ministry of Education recommendation in 1968 that the faculties of Education and Agriculture move downtown from the Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue in order to make room for a desperately needed English CEGEP (John Abbott College). Education moved willingly in 1970, but Agriculture fiercely resisted. In the mid-'70s, with relocation all but final as far as the University Senate was concerned, the faculty won a last minute reprieve when the Board of Governors refused to rubber stamp the proposed transfer: the Macdonald heirs -- important McGill benefactors -- had protested and the governors had listened.
A new proposal to share the grounds with John Abbott was finally approved in 1975, after seven years of uncertainty for Macdonald faculty and students.
On the downtown campus, Molson Stadium was being prepared for its part in hosting the 1976 Olympics, and just months after the Olympics had left town Quebec elected René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois. The new government's proposed Charter of the French Language (Bill 1) had the McGill community -- speaking through the unfortunately named Committee on McGill in Quebec, or COMIQ -- voicing strenuous objections to the "coercive measures" of the bill. On August 26, 1977, a revised version of the bill -- Bill 101 -- became Quebec law, restricting attendance at English-language schools and banning the use of any language other than French on commercial signs. While the law did not directly affect McGill policy and operations, University officials were keeping a wary eye on student enrolment and faculty and staff turnover, as the Anglo exodus down the 401 mounted. "The most threatening thing," said Principal Robert Bell at the time, "is the deterioration of the non-francophone community in Quebec."
