#- Sunday, February 17, 1985 - North Shore News

Alice in censorland

t the risk of sending you to sleep, we return
today to the subject of censorship. But stay
tuned. You may even get a laugh.

On Friday, we cast a scaly
eye at the porn-hunters. But
there are many other censors,
and they're all closely
related.

Canada is a front-runner in,
the great censorship stakes.
But the best story concerns
Red China, the darling of the
pinko set, where Alice in
Wonderland and Through
the Looking Glass are
banned.

Dangerous stuff, that. You
never know what the masses
will do if they’re allowed to
read that bit where Humpty
Dumpty says ‘‘When I use a
word, it means just what |
choose it to mean.”’

*‘Censorship
fashions change
but in Canada the
ridiculous is
always with us.’’

I will believe that China is
loosening up when we see a
headline in the Morning
Wimp stating:

“Alice Back In China!’

Censorship fashions
change, but in Canada the
ridiculous is always with us.

In 1941, before the Nazi in-
* vasion of the USSR, the
American communist
magazine New Masses was
banned from the tand
because it opposed the
United States’ becoming in-

é

volved in the war. The Sutur-
day Evening Post, which
preached the same thing, was
not banned.

{In Toronto, — half-witted
librarians took Charles Lind-
bergh's books off the shelves
because he had said that the
U.S. could not win the war
for Britain no matter how
much aid was given. One of
the books was W'e, which
told ihe story of the early
transatlantic flights.

In Vancouver, in 1943,
school board candidate John
Stanton wanted a schoolbook
thrown out because it ‘‘utter-
ly distorted history’. The
book was critical of Russia.
Hilariously, Stanton stated:

“The author claims that
secret police and the army
rule Russia and keep the peo-
ple in check. And a number
of other passages contained a
slander that Stalin is a dic-
tator. It seems all nonsense in
view of the way the people of
Russia have fought in this
war.”

Kindly old Uncle Louis St.
Laurent sometimes didn’t
have much time for freedom
of speech either, In 1943,
Agnes McPhail of the CCF
said that all Canadian judges
were political. heelers. Uncle
Louis announced in the
House that he would ask the
censors to look out for such
Statements and suppress
them. So much for the pro-
mise that the Defence of
Canada Act would be used
only to prevent the broadcast
of information useful to the

ay

Rae

Doug Collins

enemy.

In 1945, the Vancouver
Sun was fined $300 lor hav-
ing the audacity to say that
West Coast defences were
weak.

The censors had plenty of
work to do after the war, tco,
and are as active as ever to-
day (vide the Customs ban on
The Hoax of the Twentieth
Century). In 1950, Leon
Trotsky’s Excerpts from My
Diery was banned, but Joe
Stalin’s golden words were
not. At that time, too, Blair
Fraser of Maclean's
Magazine reported there were
$05 books of all sorts on Ot-
tawa's ‘‘forbidden”’ list.

Yesterday, it was mainly
the left-wing that was under
attack. Today it’s the right-
wing and ‘‘racists’'. School

y
TO y 0 ¢ F
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St. Andrews

E. Esplanade

books that mention ‘Heap
Big Indian’? are out. For
years, Little Black Sambo
wasn't on the ligrary shelves.
But the watchdogs must have
forgotten about him, because
he’s now crept back.
(Professor Robin Ridington
please note!)

Last August, the RCMP,
acting on a complaint from
“human rights’? fanatics and
the Canadian Jewish Con-
gress, swooped on. visiting
U.S. speaker Col. Jack
Mohr, grabbing $5,000 worth
of tapes and books deemed
by those purity experts to be
obnoxious. The mainstream
media snored.

I guess this country likes
censorship.

Hello Alice. fs that you?

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LAST DAY

1984
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