As war heats up, Canada bans many leftist groups
THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: 1940
The Second World War was not going well for the allies in June 1940. The German blitzkrieg had raced across Western Europe, forcing British forces into a mass evacuation from Dunkirk between May 27 and June 4.
The fall of France seemed imminent, so Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini decided it was time to enter the war and share in the spoils. On June 10, Mussolini declared war on Britain and France.
“The hour of destiny has arrived for our Fatherland,” Mussolini declared in a speech before 80,000 people in the Venice Palace Square in Rome. “We are going to war against the decrepit democracies … to break the chain that ties us to the Mediterranean.”
As part of the British Empire, Canada declared war on Italy. But it had already been preparing for a larger, longer war by banning more than a dozen organizations across the country on June 5.
Some were pro-fascist, such as the National Unity Party, a Quebec organization that was sympathetic to the German Nazis. Its leader, Adrian Arcand, was a virulent antiSemite. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, he proclaimed himself “the Canadian Fuhrer.”
But many of the banned organizations were on the political left, such as the Communist party of Canada.
“Left Wing Leagues Outlawed,” read the front-page headline in The Vancouver Sun.
“The list included several foreign language organizations, as well as the Canadian Labour Defense League, the League for Peace and Democracy, and the Young Communist League.”
The “foreign language organizations” banned were mainly eastern European, such as the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Organization, the Russian Workers and Farmers Club, the Croatian Cultural Association, the Hungarian Workers Club, the Polish People’s Association, and the Canadian Ukrainian Youth Federation. But the Finnish Organization of Canada was also banned.
Asked by The Sun if his organization had expected to be banned, Charles Saunders of the Canadian Labour Defense League sounded bitter: “Our organization is for social justice and democracy — sure, we would expect it.”
Fergus McKean of the Communist party was more resigned.
“International developments have been leading in that direction for the last several weeks,” he said.
Italy’s entry into the war resulted in the ban of Italian-Canadian organizations sympathetic to fascism. But others were quick to assert that their allegiance was to Canada, not Mussolini.
The day Mussolini declared war, Vancouver lawyer Angelo Branca organized the Canadian-Italian War Vigilance Association at a meeting at the Hastings Auditorium in Strathcona.
“Today, an event that shocked the world by the depth of its perfidious cowardice happened — the declaration of war on the part of an arch-coward and his blind and senseless followers against our country,” said Branca. “He has desecrated the memory of those hundreds of thousands of Italians who, during the last war, fought side by side with the British and French. We beg of Divine Providence, and we hope and trust and believe that Great Britain and France will triumph.”
Nonetheless, 31,000 ItalianCanadians were designated aliens, and had to regularly check in with government officials.
Others were placed in internment camps.
According to Reg Whitaker, an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, 2,423 Canadian citizens or residents were placed in internment camps for political reasons during the war.
“Of these, 847 were interned for being pro-Nazi, 632 were pro-Italian, 782 pro-Japanese, 133 Communist, 27 National Unity, and two unclassified,” Whitaker wrote in an essay called Official Repression of Communism During World War II.
Many interned Vancouver Communists were released after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 and the USSR joined the Allied cause. But it took a while: The Sun has a “confidential” file on communism that includes photos of Fergus McKean greeting his family after being released in October 1942.
The Communist party was still banned in Canada, so many of its members formed a new organization, the Labor-Progressive Party. It became the Communist party again in 1959.