Norman Criticizes Canadian Government’s Repression

[ No Fooling ]

No Fooling, Ritchie, 1931-08-13, The "Halifax Herald" cartoonist comments on the arrest of eight leaders of the Communist Party of Canada under Section 98 of the Criminial Code

[Toronto]
April 7, 1932

[To his parents]

[...]

Section 98 of the Criminal Code, which is a virtual suspension of free speech & thought, has been invoked with a vengeance, and 7 Communists leaders now reside in Kingston penitentiary with thieves, murderers and stock-brokers, without the right to read[,] a diabolical prohibition which even the most reactionary of other countries do not enforce on political offenders […] No more carping at Russia, whatever they do to the bourgeois we political reciprocate — We certainly cannot be accused of ‘heaping coals of fire’ on their heads — we are far more humane, we first starve the lower classes, and if they rudely and vocally object we are so kind as to either (1) shoot them and thus save both the state and themselves the trouble of supporting them, as the U.S. now does, or (2) give them free board and lodge in Kingston. You are perhaps fearing that I grow rabid, but as one who still pitifully clings to the evidently outworn idea of individual freedom of thought and speech for all, I cannot help but regard Section 98 as the most serious menace of our liberty since Federation.

[…]

Love — as ever,
Herbert

Source: University of British Columbia Rare Books and Special Collections, Norman Family Fonds, Box 1, File 1-5, E. Herbert Norman, Norman Criticizes Canadian Government's Repression, April 7, 1932

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