Censorship

Canadian human rights and civil liberties activists have a long history of opposing censorship. State-imposed censorship manifested itself in a myriad of ways in Canada by the 1960s. Limits on speech were incorporated in the criminal code in relation to treason, sedition, blasphemous and defamatory libel, disruption of religious worship, hate propaganda, spreading false news, public mischief, obscenity, indecency and other forums. In its more extreme form, censorship could be imposed through the War Measures Act and the Official Secrets Act to protect the integrity of the state. Provincial and municipal bodies also had the power to restrict gatherings, performances, exhibitions, demonstrations, public speaking, displays of texts and pictures on billboards. Defamation laws limited a person’s ability to criticize others, and copyright laws regulated publications.

When imposed by the state, agents of censorship could include police, customs officers, post office workers, censor boards and public prosecutors. Police banned demonstrations, dispersed public gatherings and arrested people on picket lines; customs officials seized films, books and magazines at the border; the Post Office refused to forward obscene material; censor boards banned obscene films and regulated content; and, prosecutors indicted people for speech offences. Censorship generally fell into two categories: depictions of behaviours with the effect of undermining public morals (i.e. sexual material), and expressions of unpatriotic ideas. During both world wars the state imposed severe limits on the publication of materials which could undermine the war effort, and in the early years of the Cold War the government censored institutions such as the National Film Board for perceived pro-communist sympathies.

The first, and perhaps most famous, legal case in Canadian history on free speech was in 1937. Alberta's Social Credit government, as part of a major legislative package to regulate the provincial economy, passed the Act to Ensure the Publication of Accurate News and Information (1937). In essence, the law would have required newspapers to publish “corrections” from the government of any critical coverage, disclose sources and identify writers. Any violation of the law could include a large fine and a ban on publishing restricted information. It was, unquestionably, the most blatant peacetime attempt to censor the press. In finding the law ultra vires the powers of the Alberta legislature, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled for the first time that provinces could not unilaterally restrict fundamental freedoms. Justice Lawrence Cannon accused the provincial government of imposing a doctrine which “must become, for the people of Alberta, a sort of religious dogma of which a free and uncontrolled discussion is not permissible.” Justice Lyman Duff, writing one of the most cited legal decisions in Canadian history, argued that “even within its legal limits, it [public discussion] is liable to abuse and grave abuse, and such abuse is constantly exemplified before our eyes; but it is axiomatic that the practice of this right to free public discussion of public affairs, notwithstanding its incidental mischiefs, is the breath of life for parliamentary institutions.”

Such blatant attempts to censor speech, however, have been rare in Canada. A more common restriction on speech is laws regulating film and literature. The Catholic Women’s League, women’s farm unions, and the University Women’s Club, in conjunction with the government of Alberta, established an Advisory Board on Objectionable Publications in 1954. The Board convinced the four main wholesalers of magazines to submit to the board’s decisions regarding the publication of unacceptable material. Within ten years the board had censored 168 magazines. In Ontario, a similar arrangement was reached between the provincial government and civic and religious organizations to form an Obscene Literature Committee in 1960 to censor published materials in the province. Distributors, who feared prosecution for carrying obscene materials, welcomed the board as a way of avoiding expensive legal proceedings and submitted to its decisions; by 1964 the board had recommended the banning of 112 periodicals and 97 pocketbooks. Quebec was the only other province in Canada to possess a censor board for literature and, as with its cousins in Alberta and Ontario, it was operated by private citizens advising dealers with the support of the provincial government. [Although other provinces had no censor boards, there were still informal mechanisms for censorship in the early 1960s. The Attorney Generals of Saskatchewan and New Brunswick had managed to ban 28 books based on those materials having been banned elsewhere. In Nova Scotia, a magazine publisher removed 80 publications following a threat by a popular gospel preacher, Perry Rockwood, to drag the publisher to court. Newfoundland banned 23 girlie magazines seized from a drugstore in the same period and Prince Edward Island removed 8 magazines following a threat from home and school associations to take court action. Only British Columbia at the time had no plans for banning obscene books].

In 1962 the Supreme Court of Canada heard an appeal of a Montreal court's decision to ban D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover. The case challenged the federal government’s obscenity laws under the criminal code. It was a confusing decision with seven separate judgements. Nonetheless, the case resulted in a partial liberalization of the contentious obscenity laws by allowing experts to testify on the merits of impugned literature. One of the primary tools for censorship was the federal government’s cutoms bureau. However, since no lists were ever made publicly available on which titles were banned by Customs, it is impossible to know the full scope of censored literature.

Provincial films censors were far more prolific during the 1960s than their literature counterparts. The degree of censorship varied considerably. By 1963, “the average serious film circulating in Canada would be classified Restricted with a few minor incisions in Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia. In Alberta, it would be ‘chopped to pieces’ or banned. Saskatchewan would badly cut the film. Manitoba would merely cut it. And the Maritimes would condemn it outright.” [Malcolm Dean, Censored!] Every province sported its own censorship board for film in the 1960s, although most changed the name to ‘classification’ board. In theory, these new boards focused on rating and not banning films, but in practice films were just as easily kept out to the marketplace. “Classification simply means that films deemed unacceptable must be re-submitted with further cuts until they can be approved by a provincial board. The difference between ‘classification’ and ‘censorship’ is simply that boards which classify films do not provide their own editing services for distributors." [Dean, Censorsed!] Since most of their work was done in secret, films censors could ban pieces without having to explain their actions. Alberta’s censors insisted in 1959 on eliminating the word “floozie” from a movie titled Shadows and banned Marlon Brando’s classic The Wild One in 1953 for being a “revolting, sadistic story of degeneration.” Alberta was the only province to ban Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein in 1974.