In His Own Words

Remembering Matt Cicero

Two years ago today, a body was found along the Ottawa Parkway, near the Kichi Sipi (Ottawa River). A week later, elder Albert Dumont told me he happened to see an obituary for our friend Matt Cicero (Morgan-Brown). It was Matt’s body near the river. He had been missing for two years, and this was not the outcome we hoped for.

Matt was an excellent activist, a gifted writer, and had both a warm heart and a sharp wit. He also struggled with mental health issues, and believed he had been raised in and escaped from a Satanic cult. Needless to say, he was on quite an epic healing journey for the ten years that I knew him.

We often ended up chatting at the various rallies, marches, and other actions we attended or organized. Matt was navigating trauma and mental health issues, while I was navigating physical health issues. Many times, we would be pleasantly surprised that while we were trying different healing modalities, there would be striking similarities.

In January, 2019, Matt joined a writing support group I was in. We all met up at the Black Squirrel in the Glebe, and shared each other’s writings. Matt seemed well, and busy with writing projects. He was tapering himself off medication.

Matt shared a short piece that he said was part of a longer project he was working on. It was about being arrested for allegedly assisting in firebombing an RBC branch in the Glebe of Ottawa. The charges against Matt were stayed in December 2010 “due to a lack of evidence.”

On February 10, 2019, Matt sent a single line that he was too busy for the writing group. That was the last I heard from him.

For the two years before he was found, I prayed for him at ceremonies. Albert and I had tried every way we could to reach Matt as the days trickled into weeks and then months since the last time we had seen him.

For those two years, I tried to accept that if he was alive, he was choosing not to contact us. And to accept that he may be dead. When his body was found, many of us had been grieving for him for two years already.

I have checked, and I don’t think Matt ever published the piece he shared with the writing group in 2019. In memory of Matt, here it is:

Introduction - to an unpublished work by Matt Cicero, January 2019

June 18, 2010, Ottawa. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, and I was walking to the St-Laurent shopping centre to take the bus. I was still sleepy, and I was late for work. I had a bad hangover.

As I was about to cross the street a police car stopped in front of me. A white cop got out of the driver's seat, and walked towards me.

“Matthew Morgan-Brown?” he asked.

Then a white man in a suit – a detective – approached from my right. “Mr. Morgan-Brown you're under arrest for arson,” he said. They handcuffed me and put me in the back of the police car. The uniformed officer got in the front seat, and drove to a nearby side street.

“Do you understand that you are under arrest for arson?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford a lawyer, a lawyer will be provided to you free of charge. Do you want to speak to a lawyer?”

“Yes, I'd like to speak to a lawyer.”

“You have the right to remain silent. If you choose not to exercise that right, anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, okay. I understand.”

The officer noted my answers, typed something into his computer, and then started driving to the Ottawa police headquarters on Elgin street. Soon after this, though, he got a request to go to my father's apartment to drop off the keys to my father's residence. After he'd done this he drove to station. He drove into the basement of the station's parking garage, and stopped the car in front of the entrance to the holding cells.

It was 1:00pm on Friday, June 18, 2010. I was 32, and my life had just permanently changed in ways that I didn't understand, and could never have predicted.

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It's been eight and a half years since I was arrested by [editor’s note: I removed the names of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) officers for this Substack]. I regret that I haven't written something sooner, and that I didn't even just take some notes about what happened.

Fortunately, I have interviewed other activists who were around at the time, and, through privacy requests, gotten access to my Ottawa Police Service file, a video recording of my interrogation on May 18, and my file from the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC). Both the interviews and the documents have helped me to better remember what happened, as well as providing additional information and insight into what happened, and why it happened. This is how I know the names of the officers who arrested me, and what time the arrest and subsequent interrogation took place.

At 5:00pm I was taken from my holding cell to an interrogation room where I was questioned for three hours. Since I have the recording of the interrogation I've transcribed some of it below.

I haven't included the entire interrogation – it would be too far too long, and far too boring. Instead I've picked out the most relevant, interesting and illuminating bits. I also chose to edit the interrogation (although I didn't want to) because of the way that the interrogator spoke: long, run on sentences and sentence fragments that are (I think) deliberately confusing and deliberately boring. It was hard to follow at the time, is hard to follow on the video, and is even harder to understand through text alone. These edits means that this transcript is missing the almost hypnotic drone that the interrogator created through his semi-coherent rambling over the course of the three hour interrogation, but this hypnotic drone is almost exactly the opposite of good writing. Instead I'm going to ask you to try and remember that I was tired, cold, scared and in shock, that the interrogation took three hours, and that my interrogator was being deliberately confusing.

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I was so looking forward to reading more. It was a tantalizing piece of writing, and I thought next meeting, we would be reading that interrogation. Instead, I am left to wonder.

Left to wonder about the contents of that hypnotic drone interrogation. And left to wonder about the circumstances of Matt’s death. But that will be for another time.

For now: thank you, Matt, for your friendship, and for your dedication to co-creating a better world. And thank you for your words, left unfinished.