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The first established civil liberties groups in Canada emerged in the 1930s. In reaction to the passing in 1937 of Quebec’s Padlock Act, a repressive piece of legislation designed to stamp out communism in the province, rights associations appeared in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Vancouver. These associations referred to themselves as branches of the Canadian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU), and, although national in name, they were autonomous organizations with few links to each other. Members of the cclu were not the first civil liberties activists in Canada; however, as in the case of the Canadian Labour Defense League formed in the 1920s, previous civil liberties organizations had partisan affiliations. The Canadian Labour Defence League was affiliated with the Communist Party of Canada and was exclusively concerned with the defence of the rights of the working class. The 1930s generation of rights associations was dedicated solely to the preservation of rights irrespective of class, beliefs, or background. Rights associations during this period were fervently non-partisan and were solely concerned with the defence of traditional British liberties against state abuse. Following the federal government’s decision in 1945 to deport Japanese-Canadians and the hearings of the espionage commission, in which several individuals were incarcerated and deprived of basic due process rights, several more civil liberties groups were formed. By 1946 six rights associations were active in Canada.
Attempts to form a national rights association in the 1940s were frustrated by the divisions between communists and social democrats. In 1941 the Montreal branch of the CCLU attempted to create a national rights association, only to be rebuffed by those who refused to work with communists. A second attempt in Ottawa to form a national civil liberties association in 1946 failed and has been characterized by Frank Clarke as a “rancorous affair." C.S. Jackson of the communist-led Civil Rights Union in Toronto called for a broad-based organization to include organized labour, while J.P. Erichsen-Brown of the Ottawa Civil Liberties Association rejected the idea of a communist being a legitimate civil libertarian. The conference broke down and no consensus was reached.
By the 1950s most of the rights associations that had emerged in the thirties and forties were largely inactive or defunct. Rights activists in Toronto had formed two separate national organizations, including the Association for Civil Liberties and the League for Democratic Rights. Although the latter could boast of chapters in more than a dozen cities across the country, neither organization lasted very long. Both groups were also centred in Toronto, and the inability of the two to work cooperatively highlighted the ideological divisions of the period. Members of the Association for Civil Liberties were predominantly left-leaning liberals and social democrats, including B.K. Sandwell (editor of Saturday Night) and Charles Millard (United Steelworkers of America). In contrast, the League for Democratic Rights was led by such figures as C.S. Jackson of the communist-led United Electric Workers and C.B. Macpherson, a Marxist professor at the University of Toronto. By the end of the fifties both groups were inactive.
Between 1960 and 1982, 41 separate rights associations were born in Canada. Some groups barely lasted a year whereas others survived for more than forty years.
The origins of individual rights associations varied considerably. Civil liberties organizations were most often created in reaction to specific rights abuses by the state whereas the bulk of Canada's human rights groups emerged out of International Year for Human Rights in 1968 (the 20th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Several rights associations sought to create chapters in their respective provinces. In a few cases they were successful in creating associations which would stand the test of time and would eventually become independent from their parent organizations. By and large, however, such efforts proved ineffective. Only four of the ten chapters formed by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association lasted for more than a handful of years and chapters formed by the Newfoundland-Labrador Human Rights Association and the Ligue des droits de l'homme all became defunct soon after their creation. No group was more prolific in the formation of chapters or in encouraging other associations to become affiliates than the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. By 1972, however, only five chapters remained active and most of these were affiliated organizations which had only minimal contact with the Toronto association. According to the 1972 Secretary of State report on rights associations in Canada, the failure of the CCLA to effectively operate chapters outside Toronto was a result of the parent organization's practice of using chapters simply as free labour and as part of its attempt to be perceived as a national organization. Most telling was the CCLA's unwillingness to provide affiliates or chapters with a strong voice within the organization's executive or with sufficient financial resources.
In most cases, however, the failure to create viable chapters was simply a question of insufficient resources or lack of leadership and volunteers. As a result, the history of rights associations is largely dominated by groups scattered across major urban areas.
This database does not include the large number of small chapters which only lasted for a few years. Another report produced for the Secretary of State by Don Whiteside, which identified forty-six active groups in 1972, referred to several human rights committees set up by mayors in cities such as Kenora and Sudbury which are not discussed here.
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