Freedom to Read Week: Selected Salacious Filth Found in a Toronto Controller's Dresser Drawer

David A. Balfour
1889 - 1956
RIP

The joke that is Rob Ford isn't funny anymore, right? We all know where he's heading, the only real question is whether he'll be taking anyone with him. Torontonians, take extra care as you cross at the intersection, a black Cadillac Escalade may be just around the corner. 

No, not that funny at all. That's where Ford breaks with the buffoons of the city's past, my favourite being Controller David Balfour. If the name seems familiar, it may be that you've once strolled through Toronto's David A. Balfour Park.*

Balfour was no friend of parks, once calling for the removal of all flower beds, but his real foe was reds. He saw them everywhere, pressuring both Queen's Park and Ottawa to round up anyone he considered a communist leader. This included aldermen and Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury, who once dared speak in his city. Reds taught children to spit on the cross, claimed Balfour, adding that Bathurst United Church was a centre of communism. A Catholic, the controller fought Ontario Attorney-General Leslie Blackwell's move to  regulate bingo operators.

When not protecting children from those who would teach them to spit, he was working to shield their eyes and those of their parents from "salacious books" being circulated by lending libraries. Balfour's obsessive focus on "immoral literature" provided many column inches for Globe & Mail City Hall reporter Frank Tumpane. The six on the right come from the 22 March 1947 edition.

Balfour was a great collector of the material he sought to ban, encouraging others in the battle to send filth his way. "I stick them in the top drawer of my dresser," he told council. "I'm ashamed of them."

The controller was short on titles, amassing a lengthy list that he was never  willing to share. However, over the years he did mention five titles, one of which was Jan Peel's The Bed and the Blonde (Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949). I don't have a copy in the top drawer of my dresser, so can't provide a cover image. Here are the rest:

Forever Amber
Kathleen Winsor
New York: Macmillan, 1944

Kitty
Rosamond Marshall
Toronto: Collins White Circle,  1944

Duchess Hotspur
Rosamond Marshall
Toronto: Collins White Circle, 1947

The Flesh is Willing
James Clayford
Toronto: News Stand Library, 1949

A fin de la semaine bonus:

The Globe & Mail, 30 September 1949

* David Balfour is, of course, also the name of the central character in Robert Lewis Stevenson's Kidnapped, which was published just three years before the controller's birth. I'm not certain that this wasn't just a coincidence.

Freedom to Read Week: Condemned by Coren

How Do You Spell Abducted?
Cherylyn Stacey
Red Deer, AB: Red Deer College Press, 1996

Newspaper columnists don't always write their headlines, but I think Michael Coren had something to do with this one:

TAXES FUND OFFENSIVE CHILDREN'S BOOK ABOUT ABUSIVE FATHER:
Suddenly your dad is no longer a man to be loved or trusted

Published in the 31 July 1996 edition of the Financial Post, the column that followed lit amassing gas beneath the seat of Alberta backbencher Julius Yankowsky, who called for the book to be banned and its publisher's funding to be pulled. The MLA aped the columnist, repeating Coren's assertion that it was "hate literature", all the while acknowledging that he hadn't actually read the thing. After all, How Do You Spell Abducted? is 135 pages long, and some of the words have eight letters. Just look at that title!

A few months later in Books in Canada, Coren reported that the controversy he'd started over Do You Spell Abducted? had been "so much fun" – his words, not mine… as are these:

It begins with bad old Dad, divorced from good old Mum, forcing his way into his ex-wife's bedroom and screaming at her until she weeps. He then kidnaps the kids and they are so terrified they think he might kill them all and then commit suicide.

Well, no.

Dad never forces his way into any room, least of all his ex-wife's bedroom. Mum does indeed weep, which has been known to happen in divorces. Dad leaves with the kids on what is meant to be a vacation, but it soon becomes clear that he has no intention of returning. That stuff about the kids being "so terrified they think he might kill them all and then commit suicide" was fabricated by Coren; it isn't in the book.

Michael Coren is currently employed by the Sun News Network.

Not to be outdone or ignored, in the 19 August 1996 Western Report an anonymous reporter bravely worked to fan dying embers with the claim that "the fictional father threatened to kill or prostitute his progeny". It's a lie, plain and simple, but then the late magazine was never tied to the truth. More crap follows:

Her book features three other men: a crabby oldster, a fat and stupid state trooper and a good Samaritan who has been unjustly denied legal access to his own children.

There is no "crabby oldster" in the novel. The state trooper, girth never mentioned, is pretty sharp. The good Samaritan, named Dusty Andover, is a very fine and generous gentleman. He has never been denied access, legal or otherwise, to his children, though there is estrangement. Dusty's adult offspring – no sexes mentioned – begrudge his having spent their inheritances in fighting their mother's cancer.

How Do You Spell Abducted? is a rotten title, but the book isn't half bad. The characters, particularly the father, are well drawn. The plot is believable, disturbingly so, though the resolution is forced and fantastical.

I can say these things because, you see, I've read the book. I have Michael Coren to thank for bringing it to my attention.

Object: An unattractive trade-size paperback. The cover illustration by Jeff Hitch depicts a scene that does not feature in the novel.

Access:

It will be forgotten before we can say 'bleeding-heart neurotic'.

— Michael Coren, Books in Canada, Oct 1996

Found in most of our larger public libraries. Used copies are cheap, but I encourage anyone considering purchase to buy it new. Yep, How Do You Spell Abducted? is still available. Setting It Right, Michael Coren's book from the same year is long out of print.

Freedom to Read Week: Ben Hecht on Front Page …of The Ottawa Citizen

The Ottawa Citizen, 31 October 1947

Freedom to Read Week: Robertson Davies' Dad Against Censorship (and Misleading Cover Art)

Senator William Rupert Davies
12 September 1879 - 11 March 1967
RIP

For my part, I do not believe this senate has any business at all legislating what I or anyone else should read. This is a free country, and we are not the keepers of our brothers' consciences to that extent. It would be going to far to try to tell adult Canadians what they should read… I think we should have confidence in the rising generation and try not to protect them too much. After all, character is formed by overcoming obstacles and resisting temptation.

— William Rupert Davies, 5 May 1953  

The Globe & Mail, 6 May 1953

Related posts:

Mordecai's Mom's Memoirs

True Crime Stories with David Cronenberg's Dad
Christmas with Neil Young's Dad

Freedom to Read Week: Catherine Seppala, the Book Burning Mayor of Fort William, Ontario

Catherine Seppala
1907 - 1975
RIP

Day Two of Freedom to Read Week, but I consider this the real beginning.

Welcome to the working week.

Looking over past Freedom to Read Week posts, I see I've written about personal heroes – Jean-Charles Harvey, Irving Layton, Norman Levine, F.R. Scott, and Dana Porter – while casting much more light on villains like Howard Burrell, Len Wynn, Raoul Mercier, Premier Maurice Duplessis, Fr. Harrigan, Col. Colin Harding, Sgt. John Watson, Det.-Lt. Lucien Quintal, and the forbidden books card catalogue of Lt.-Col. (Ret'd) John Merner.*

It probably doesn't reflect well on me that I focus so much on those who seek to suppress… and here I am doing it again with Catherine Seppala, once Mayor of Fort William, Ontario.

There's a good deal to admire about Mrs Seppala: she was a conservationist, a dedicated volunteer, a city councillor and Chair of Fort William's carnival queen contest.

The News-Courier (Charleston, SC) 10 January 1956

In 1959, she was elected Fort William's first and only female mayor. Sadly, the accomplishment is marred by abuse of power. It all began when the newly elected mayor visited the offices of the Central News Company and "suggested" to manager Henry Batho that he remove all copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover from city news stands. So persuasive was Mrs Seppala that Mr Bathos not only removed the book from sale, but received permission to use the city's incinerator in burning all seven hundred or so copies.

The Globe & Mail, 13 October 1959

Mr Bathos later told The Globe & Mail that he had feared a lawsuit. The same report has Mayor Seppela admitting that she hadn't actually read the Lady Chatterley's Lover, but she fully intended to one day. Ignorance in no way prevented her from deeming the novel as "a dirty rotten piece of filth", "the dirtiest thing ever put into print." "I will not hesitate to enforce a ban", she warned.

Condemnation followed, the most noteworthy coming in not one but two Globe & Mail editorials. Here's the second, published 14 October 1959:

(cliquez pour agrandir)

And then there were the letters; so many that I offer but a sampling:

The Globe & Mail, 7 October 1959

The Globe & Mail, 19 October 1959

The Globe & Mail, 27 October 1959

Mrs Seppala seems to have been undaunted, mailing a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover to Minister of Justice Davie Fulton and asking whether he considered it obscene. Minister Fulton's response was to remind the mayor that her local police had the ability to launch test cases against publications they believed to be prohibited under the Criminal Code.

How far Mayor Seppala was willing to go is anyone's guess. A few months into the crusade she was struck by ill health, which in turn led to her resigning the mayoralty.

The Globe & Mail, 7 October 1959

Anyone wishing an opinion as to whether a book might be obscene is invited to mail same to my St Marys address. And, no, you can't have it back.

* No light will be cast on Barrick Gold Corp. I rush to add that Peter Munk, Anthony Munk, Howard L. Beck, William Birchall, Jamie C. Sokalsky and Brian Mulroney are mighty fine people. Really.

Related post:

Going to Bat for Lady Chatte

Freedom to Read Week – Wednesday

Freedom to Read Week: Hugh MacLennan's Profane and Vulgar Barometer Rising

The Calgary Herald, 9 December 1960

Freedom to Read Week: Councillor Howard Burrell Worries About Dick Tracy's Shotgun and Hatchet

The Globe & Mail, 22 March 1949
(cliquez pour agrandir)

Freedom to Read Week: Norman Levine Accuses Canadian Booksellers of Censorship

The Globe & Mail, 30 May 1959

A baffled reviewer:

Jean Swanson in The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, 20 December 1958

Freedom to Read Week: Irving Layton's Defence of Dog Show Girl and Deviate is Not Taken Seriously

The Globe & Mail, 17 April 1973

I began by attacking the puritanism and the anti-sexuality that was in this country then, and the philistinism and the materialism, and I still go on attacking those things which I find are defects in our body politic.

– Irving Layton, 1979

Freedom to Read Week: Embracing Elinor Glyn

Philip Alexius de Laszlo. Elinor Glyn (1912)

                                       Would you like to sin
                                       With Elinor Glyn
                                       On a tiger skin?
                                       Or would you prefer
                                       To err with her
                                       On some other fur? 

                                                        – Anonymous

The scandal of Three Weeks now a century past, is it not high time we take Elinor Glyn to our collective bosom as a daughter of Canada? I'm not suggesting that we confer some silly posthumous citizenship, rather that we recognize her parentage and upbringing.

In her day, our press all but ignored Mrs Glyn's Canadian roots; The Globe & Mail referred to her always as an "English novelist". This Editorial Note from the 25 November 1927 edition of the Financial Post is unusual:

Now, wasn't that uncalled for?

This film was playing in theatres across the country on the day that dig was published:

How very Canadian – flinging faeces at those who have done well – but I think there's more to this. A woman who moved to support her family when her alcoholic husband could not, Elinor Glyn was by turns a novelist, a journalist, a war correspondent, a screenwriter, a director and a producer. The staid, conservative Financial Post wouldn't have liked that, but her greater sin was that she wrote about sex and populated her stories with strong, confident women – women like herself.

I think she could take the criticism.

The Vancouver Sun, 28 October 1941

Postscript:

Above is the edition of Three Weeks that was seized by Toronto police back in 1911. Don't you prefer this?

Related post:

Freedom to Read Week: The Police Raid Britnell's

Freedom to Read Week: The Police Raid Britnell's

Or maybe not:

The Globe & Mail, 10 April 1910

I was familiar with Three Weeks – it was, after all, penned by scandalous semi-Canadian Elinor Glyn – but I have Staff Inspector Kennedy and Detective McKinney to thank for bringing Cynthia in the Wilderness and The Yoke to my attention. Both products of the fertile mind of Hubert Wales, they'll soon be added to my library.

What sold me were these solid synopses found in David Trotter's The English Novel in History, 1895-1920 (London: Routledge, 1993). Of Cynthia in the Wilderness, he writes:

Cynthia's husband, Harvey, revered her spirit and is consistently unfaithful to her body. She meets a man who appreciates both. They become lovers. However, the increasingly brutish Harvey catches them in the act and beats her lover over the head with a golf club. The lover survives. Meanwhile one of Cynthia's friends has self-sacrificingly poisoned Harvey and taken the rap. Cynthia returns from the Wilderness to marry her lover.

And of The Yoke, which Prof Trotter describes as "Racier still":

Angelica Jenour, still a virgin at forty, realizes that her twenty-year-old ward, Maurice, is awakening sexually, and fears that he will resort to prostitutes. One of Maurice's friends contracts venereal disease and commits suicide. Angelica decides that she will save Maurice from a similar fate, and herself from the "yoke" of repression by becoming his lover. After educating him in love, and in "racial health", she passes him on to his future wife.

Two years after the raid, Albert Britnell was convicted of knowingly selling indecent and obscene books. He was later acquitted. The appeal can be found online in Canadian Criminal Cases, vol. XX (Toronto: Canada Law Book, 1913).

The novels themselves are available gratis to all online, Torontonians included: Cynthia in the Wilderness, The Yoke, Three Weeks.

Meanwhile, Staff Inspector Kennedy and Detective McKinney spin in their respective graves.

Albert Britnell, 241 Yonge Street, Toronto
Stationary & Office Products 1911
(cliquez pour agrandir)

Freedom to Read Week: On Burning Comic Books

Young minds are so very impressionable, aren't they? How fortunate then that we have dedicated souls like Father B.W. Harrigan and Len Wynne, head of Vancouver's Junior Chamber of Commerce youth leadership committee, to serve as role-models. That's Mr Wynne above adding to a bonfire of comic books, bringing to an end a month-long campaign dedicated to moulding juvenile reading habits:

The Globe & Mail, 11 November 1954
(cliquez pour agrandir]

I wonder if Mr Deschner managed to organize that "meeting of all major Canadian book publishers". If so, he must have left feeling disappointed; later news stories have it that the cost of the exchange books came out of Junior Chamber of Commerce coffers.

Apparently, Messrs Deschner and Wynne hadn't thought to speak to the Vancouver Public Library. Director E.S. Robinson found their proposal abhorrent and refused participation. His opinion was echoed in editorials from the country, the harshest of which came from a hometown paper. "The public hangman burned books in the Middle Ages," said the Vancouver Sun, "Hitler's youth were encouraged to burn them in our day."

Hitler Youth? The Jaycees? Yikes.

Victoria's Junior Chamber of Commerce cancelled its own book burning, deciding that the whole idea smacked of "Hitlerism and communism". Mayor Fred Hume also backed away. The torch was passed to Alderman Syd Bowman, who on 11 December 1954 set 8000 comic books alight at Strathcona Park.

"It may have been a slightly melodramatic gesture," allowed Mr Wynne, "but drastic action seemed necessary to bring young reading habits to parents' attention."

Yes, young minds, so very impressionable...

The Ottawa Citizen, 3 December 1956

Freedom to Read Week: Father Harrigan Moves to Protect Ontario's Girls Against 'Love' Comics

The Calgary Herald, 18 August 1950

Ah, "love" comics... much better than "sex comics", the term Father Harrigan and the OCPTA had been using. There had been such unfortunate headlines:

The Globe & Mail, 12 April 1950

The Globe & Mail, 18 January 1950

Father B.W. Harrigan turns the first sod for the Holy Rosary Parish Hall and School, Burlington, Ontario, c.April 1950.