HOPPER ON THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA’S EROTICA COLLECTION,
A LOOK AT THE COUNTRY’S EXTENSIVE EROTICA COLLECTION
Recently, Library and Archives Canada noted something apparently true for years: The Government of Canada is sitting on the country’s most diverse collection of pornography.
Well, not pornography, per se, but erotica: literature or images meant to appeal to prurient interest. After all, the mandate of the archives is to “preserve the documentary heritage of Canada” — and a lot of that heritage has included looking at dirty books.
The National Post decided to delve into just how steamy a bunch of Canadian government archives could possibly be. Our best findings are below:
THE WORLD’S FIRST H ARLEQUIN ROMANCE
Naturally, Library and Archives Canada is absolutely stuffed with Harlequin romance novels. Harlequin is a Canadian creation and has likely shaped world literature more than any other Canadian export. The Manatee is the world’s first Harlequin novel, and appears to be about a gruff sailor who has a thing for the wooden figurehead on the front of his whaling ship.
SISTER OF THE DAMNED
This is a 1949 pulp novel packed with steamy lesbianism. But to avoid arousing suspicion, the Canadian publishers decided to cloak it as a cautionary memoir from an “insane” person. Library and Archives Canada holds an extensive assemblage of pulp magazines and novels, which are among the rarer items in their collection.
STAG MAGAZINE
During the Second World War, the Canadian military ran on a steady diet of racy books and pin-up girls. Many soldiers returned from the war with new-found smoking habits, so it’s not unreasonable to assume they also came home with a new- found love of scantily clad lady photos. While Stag Magazine would become an unapologetic pornographic magazine, the ones from this era had only the occasional innocent bathing beauty alongside R- rated cartoons and articles.
OLD PLAYBOYS
Playboy, as any disappointed teenage boy knows, is mostly longform journalism, dirty jokes and ads for cognac. Sometimes Playboy even has Canadian content, like one that featured an interview with media theorist Marshall McLuhan. It’s possible to find old Playboys at a variety of participating Library and Archives Canada libraries, with the largest single collection at Queen’s University.
FACTUAL DETECTIVE STORIES
A 1946 edition of Factual Detective Stories that’s part of the collection gave readers a thrilling digest of true crime, illicit sex and (presumably) buxom women napping. Newsstands were once filled with these Made in Canada purveyors of guilty pleasures, until moral outrage led to a 1949 Canadian law banning pictorial depictions of the “commission of crimes, real or fictitious.” In an age when the Criminal Code prohibited all manner of sex acts between consenting adults, this effectively kneecapped the pulp industry.
NAKED GERMAN MEN
There are several photo collections in the archives of 19th- century European men and women in pretentious poses. It’s probably wrong to characterize this as erotica, however. The photographer, Hermann Heid, appears to have specialized i n photographing naked people for artists to use as models. If you were a Montreal painter working on a heroic portrait of Julius Caesar, you could pick up a set of these rather than finding a fit young man willing to pose nude.
HUMANOID LIONS HAVING SEX
A moderately psychedelic image of a lion humping a human-breasted lioness is described by archivists as an ad for Couples, a travel agency. “Now. The couple takes its rightful place in the sun,” declares a description below the image. The lions are the creation of Canadian graphic designer Heather Cooper, who won a Juno award for album art in 1980 with a depiction of a kind of swan-headed Pegasus.
SWEET ECSTASY
Library and Archives Canada has a vast collection of publicity photos for touring musicians. The Canadian funk group Sweet Ecstasy does lay on the sensuality pretty hard in one image.
POSTER FOR PORN ART EXPOSITION
In 1967, Montreal hosted an International Pornographic Art Exposition, and the collection includes the show’s promotional poster by Vittorio Fiorruci, featuring a stylized keyhole, bull’s-eye and moustache.
SEXCULA
Screened only once after its 1973 creation, the tacky CanCon masterpiece known as Sexcula would have been lost to history unless Library and Archives Canada had not acquired the film in 1984. Featuring such characters as Dr. Fellatingstein and a gorilla, it’s definitely a hardcore porn movie, with a full cast of anonymous Vancouverites who are likely grandparents now.