‘Restricted Clientele’: The painful history of racist ads in the Star
Reporter Mitch Potter reflects on the exclusionary language in ads from the 1930s and 1940s — and the readers who protested them
History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, the American poet Maya Angelou once said. But if faced with courage, it need not be lived again.
Hold those words close as you join us on a deep dive into a difficult corner of the Toronto Star archives. Caution: it’s a bumpy ride. Jaw-dropping, even.
Let’s start with the seemingly benign but in fact casually racist phrase “Restricted Clientele” — a phrase that appears in a wide range of old advertisements for jobs, apartments and resorts in and around Toronto.
It wasn’t just Toronto advertisers that employed the words. “Restricted Clientele” can be found in old newspaper ads from Vermont to Miami. Unpack the phrase and it bleeds blatant anti- Semitism and white supremacy.
And, perhaps this won’t surprise you — they appear more frequently in the 1930s and indeed, into the 1940s, when Canadian soldiers were fighting and dying to end Germany’s hate-driven Nazi regime.
A few examples: a mid-’30s ad for the now-defunct Beaumaris Hotel and Yacht Club in Muskoka offering sumptuous accommodation and “cuisine par excellent” with the glaring caveat, “Restricted Clientele.” Nearer to home, a 1935 classified ad for “attractive, newly decorated rooms with screened verandas” on Centre Island in Toronto Harbour, “Restricted Clientele.”
A cluster of ads for ski resorts in the Laurentian Mountains entices Torontonians to make the journey “90 miles north of Montreal” to sample the best runs this side of the Rockies. A majority of those ads include the phrase “Restricted Clientele” but one in particular, a1941 ad for Mont Tremblant Lodge, juxtaposes that small-type condition beneath a much larger banner message proclaiming, “Skiing For All.” What they are really saying is “Skiing for all white people, excluding Jews.”
Far less coded — far more direct — is the phrase “Gentiles Only,” which recurs in Star classified ads throughout the first third of the 20th century. Here’s a typical example from the mid’30s: “A fast-growing factory has a good opportunity for two neat, quiet women to fill good permanent positions. Gentiles only.”
It is easy enough to pass judgment on newspaper ads of 1930s Toronto through the lens of 2018.
If you want to launch your own keyword hunt, the online database is at your fingertips via the Toronto Reference Library. All you need is a library card. Be forewarned, once you start pointing fingers at the abundance of bias, you will quickly run out of fingers.
Me, I’m more curious about what, if anything, was said behind the scenes as the pages that carry these words were laid out.
The Toronto Daily Star’s home at the time was a stunning 22-storey art deco tower at King and Bay — a building so grand that Superman co-creator Joe Shuster used it as inspiration for Clark Kent’s Daily Planet.
Did the Star ever have its own Jimmy Olsen in the building, tugging on Superman’s cape — or at least the sleeve of a senior editor — to sound a warning against the casually offensive language right there, plain as day, on Page 27? These were not accidental phrases. Advertisers paid handsomely, by the word.
What we do know is that readers — some readers, at least — objected loudly to the language in letters to the editor.
One such letter, published in 1942 and signed with the initials “M.D.,” protests the sheer surfeit of resort pamphlets bearing the slogan “Gentiles only.”
“Hitler, Goebbels and all the rest of the hatred-sowing gang must chuckle with satanic glee when they hear of the fruit their seed is bearing in our so-called ‘democratic’ Canada,” M.D. writes.
“Thousands of our boys are fighting and dying overseas for the preservation of tolerance and freedom while at home their efforts are being sabotaged by small, narrow-minded people who still cannot get it through their thick heads that racial hatred is exactly what Hitler wants them to practice in order to undermine our efforts for his destruction.
“There can be no total war effort or national unity in Canada until this situation of petty ra- cial prejudices is wiped out in this great land of ours, and the sooner the better.”
Pretty much every commercial entity mentioned in this archival search is gone today — out of business, or, in the case of the Laurentian ski resorts, dis- tanced by multiple changes of ownership, corporate consolidation and redevelopment.
But there is one jaw-dropping exception: a series of sevenmember recruitment ads pub- lished in 1937 and 1938 by the Toronto-based Independent Order of Foresters, a fraternal benefit society that was among the first to offer not just friendship but to extend insurance benefits to average working families.
Foresters exists today under the trade name Foresters Financial, providing life insurance, savings, retirement and investment solutions to more than three million clients in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.
Foresters today is understandably proud of its barrierbreaking legacy — the transformative leadership of Dr. Oronhyatekha (“Burning Sky”), a Mohawk physician and scholar born on the Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford, Ont., who soared to the top of the organization, becoming its Supreme Chief Ranger in 1879. Dr. O. led Foresters for 26 years, attaining status approaching legendary at the time of his death in1907. The sheer volume of mourners was such that Foresters placed Dr. O.’s coffin at Massey Hall to facilitate crowds.
Dr. O. was “a man ahead of his time,” the Foresters’ website notes in its About Us page. He “championed the rights of women, children and minorities. He also insisted on admitting women as full members of the organization and providing benefits to orphans of Foresters members.”
Yet 30 years after Dr. O.’s death — in 1937 — Foresters launched a series of ads championing the organization, going so far as to list the names of a few prominent Toronto Foresters, including then-mayor W.D. Robbins and future mayors Allan Lamport and Nathan Phillips.
All seven of the ads include these three toxic words: “White race only.”
We approached Foresters Financial with this uncomfortable 1937 truth to see what the modern-day company had to say. The initial reaction was shock — followed by a promise to investigate.
It all transpired before the time of present-day employees, obviously. Yet the fact remains — 81 years ago, Dr. O.’s legacy notwithstanding, someone at Foresters approached someone at the Toronto Daily Star and the result was a series of whitesonly advertisements (with bonus obvious sexism).
“As you can imagine, this is the first we have heard of this and we are actively investigating to uncover the facts and circumstances,” Foresters spokesperson Greg Hubert, a former journalist, wrote in a statement to the Star.
“The advertisement from1937 is stunning and offensive and not reflective of the inclusive culture that Foresters is known for. The Independent Order of Foresters (IOF) has a long and proud history of inclusion and equal treatment. In fact, women were permitted to vote as members as early as 1898. We embrace diversity.
“This matter is particularly unsettling when considering one of our most important leaders, Dr. Oronhyatekha, was a Mohawk physician who led Foresters from 1879 to 1906. One of his many accomplishments included opening up membership to women and minorities.”
“Hitler, Goebbels and all the rest of the hatred-sowing gang must chuckle with satanic glee when they hear of the fruit their seed is bearing in our so-called ‘democratic’ Canada.” M.D. 1942 LETTER TO THE EDITOR