The Canadian Book Centre at Halifax, 1948–1950

War Devastated Libraries in Europe in 1945

In the summer of 1945, in the aftermath of war, many European communities lay in ruins. Millions of people had died, a mass displacement of persons and families had occurred, and food shortages were commonplace. Amid this disastrous situation, the daunting task of rebuilding and restocking many demolished libraries was no less serious. For example, an estimated 15,000,000 library items had been destroyed in Poland, especially in Warsaw. However, even before the war ended, there were plans to restore libraries, notably the American Library Association’s project to create an American Book Center for War Devastated Libraries to operate from the Library of Congress. From 1945–47, the ALA Center collected, documented, and shipped more than 3,500,000 books overseas to over 40 countries. Another international organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), founded in 1945, undertook to launch a number of reconstruction and rehabilitation programs. Canada was one of the twenty founding members interested in UNESCO library promotion, such as its Bulletin for Libraries launched in 1947, its Summer School for Librarians at Manchester and London, which several Canadians attended in 1948, and the Manifesto for Public Libraries issued in 1949.

In Canada, the efforts of the American Book Center attracted the attention of the Canadian Council of Reconstruction through UNESCO (CCRU), a voluntary organization formed in autumn 1947 to carry out a national campaign to supply the educational and cultural reconstruction of war-devastated countries in Europe and Asia. In the following year, June 1948, the Canadian Library Association (CLA) and the CCRU formed a Joint Book Committee chaired by Margaret Gill, the chief librarian for the National Research Council in Ottawa. She attended the first general conference of UNESCO held in Paris in November 1946 and spoke about her experience at the annual CLA conference held in Vancouver in 1947. With $50,000 approved for a one-year project by the CCRU, the Joint Committee quickly drafted a plan to establish a Canadian Book Centre to collect, document, and ship books and periodicals overseas to Europe and organize a nationwide campaign to collect books. Each book would bear a stamped gift bookplate indicating the source of the donation.

The Canadian Book Centre is Formed in Halifax, 1948

The first phase, establishing a Book Centre, began in September 1948 at Halifax, where the federal government provided a building close to pier 21 with 8,000 square feet of space that had been used as a hostel during the war. It was on Terminal Road near the dockyards and railway terminus and was quickly refitted with office space, furnishings, lighting, and shelving. The Centre, augmented with additional storage, formally opened in February 1949 under the direction of Maritimer, Margaret N. Reynolds (BA Dalhousie, 1935 and BLS McGill, 1938). She had worked as a special librarian before the war before serving as the chief librarian for the Canadian Legion Services and then overseas in London from 1944–46. Her assistant, a young BLS graduate from McGill (1947), Donald A. Redmond, had served in the Canadian forces after getting his BSc at Mount Allison in 1942. He wrote retrospectively about the hectic activity at the Centre: “Seven Months to Build a Library” in the November 1949 issue of the Canadian Library Association Bulletin. At the outset of operations in 1948, letters were sent to libraries across Canada soliciting contributions of scientific, technical, cultural, and educational books that could be used in European schools, public, and university libraries. In this initial request, libraries across Canada contributed almost 50,000 items transported to Halifax by the beginning of 1949. In the first few months of 1949, these materials were accessioned, shelved, and stored to await shipment to Europe arranged through Canadian consulates.

A broader second phase, a national publicity campaign known as the March of Books/En avant les Livres with the slogan Give a Book to a Hungry Mind was ready to be rolled out by October 1948. An extensive publicity campaign by newspapers, radio, and correspondence was conducted alongside contacts with organizations in cities and towns through the auspices of regional organizers. The National Film Board helped highlight the campaign by producing a short 16mm film for the CCRU, Hungry Minds, which was screened across Canada and documented the intellectual starvation of children and adults in European countries suffering from the aftereffects of war.

Approximately 185,000 books arrived in Halifax for potential distribution overseas. Regional committees were created from the Atlantic to the Pacific in such as large-scale program. These committees organized regional collection depots nationwide where initial screening of materials took place, often supervised by local librarians. For example, McGill University reported two best-sellers, Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor and Warwick Deeping’s Kitty, along with fiction and school texts that were not suitable for Europe were routed to local hospitals or forwarded to the Salvation Army for underprivileged children or appropriate groups. The regional depots reduced the work of the Halifax staff by culling unusable materials. At the peak of its operations, the Book Centre employed fourteen full-time employees. The staff unpacked shipments, screened the donations and organized materials into about twenty subject classifications. Then, shelved materials were screened again before simplified catalogue cards were typed with subject headings, and the books and periodicals restocked alphabetically by author under the relevant subject. Fifteen book lists in pamphlet form were then compiled, printed, and distributed between June to October 1949 to more than a thousand European libraries in the following countries: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Poland, Greece, and West Germany. Recipients were asked to check their required items and advise the Centre using forms developed by UNESCO, thus eliminating the shipment of unwanted or duplicate books.

By mid-1950, the work of the Centre was complete. It had received a reported 248,093 items and shipped 163,500 items with stamped gift bookplates— about 100,000 to Europe; 16,000 to India (UNESCO was sponsoring a New Delhi Public Library project in 1950–51); 15,000 to Trinidad that had requested assistance; 9,000 to the National Library in Ottawa; and about 20,000 to Canadian rural libraries and schools. The Centre had officially shelved 185,168 items and discarded 21,688, i.e. 12% of the total processed. The most requested subject field was Medical and Biological Sciences. The distribution of books was arranged overseas and official presentations made by Canadian embassy staff from External Affairs, such as the one in April 1950 for 5,000 books at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris by Major-General Georges P. Vanier (below at right), the Canadian ambassador to France.

Canadian books presented in Paris, 1950

Its work completed, the Book Centre closed in June 1950 after twenty-two months of operation. The CCRU continued assisting European schools, universities, and cultural groups, as well as offering fellowships for study until it surrendered its UNESCO charter in 1953. The brief March of Books campaign garnered the most publicity, but there was some residual publicity when the Book Centre was in its final stages. Newspapers and Maclean’s Magazine picked up on Margaret Reynolds’ collection of memorabilia from donated books: unusual bookmarks, photographs, locks of hair, Sunday-school certificates, liquor price lists, letters, news clippings, pressed flowers, badges, etc. It added a personal touch to a national drive that many Canadian librarians felt justified the work of the Book Centre. Although a relatively small contribution in sum, it was a worthwhile effort because the recipient libraries definitely requested each donation. At the summer 1950 CLA annual meeting in Montreal, Margaret Gill reported, “We feel that this aim has been achieved and that the real value of the contribution is many times the face value of the money invested in the project.”

The two librarians responsible for the Book Centre’s success went on to distinguished careers. Margaret Reynolds moved to Ottawa in 1950 to become the chief librarian of the Canadian Agriculture Library and expanded its collections and reputation greatly over two decades before her retirement in 1975. In 1996, she was honoured at a ceremony marking the official opening of the Margaret Reynolds Archival Collection of departmental publications. She died in 1997. Donald Redmond earned his MLS at Illinois in 1950 and became head of the Nova Scotia Technical College, 1949–60. During this period, he undertook development roles in  Ankara (Turkey) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He was a science librarian at the University of Kansas from 1961–66 and assisted with planning catalogues for the Costa Rica National Library. He returned to Canada to be the chief librarian at Queen’s University from 1966–77. An avid interest in Sherlock Holmes led him to write two Sherlockian books. He died in 2014.

See also:

The NFB documentary produced in 1948, Hungry Minds, is eleven minutes long and can be viewed at the UNESCO archives at this link.

My biography of Margaret Gill is available on the Ex Libris Association website.

Controlling Undesirable Magazines in Canada, 1946

Jessie Robson (Mrs. Austin) Bothwell and the Saskatchewan Library Advisory Council, The Problem of Controlling the Reading of Undesirable Periodical Literature. Regina: Saskatchewan Library Advisory Council, 1946. [A Brief presented to Saskatchewan Library Advisory Council on November 25, 1946; reprinted in the Ontario Library Review 31, no. 2 (May 1947): 125–136]

By 1950 romance comics were very popular with teenage girls

Undesirable Publications in Canada

In the immediate years following WW II, the mass production and distribution of cheap publications, such as comics, pocketbooks, magazines, and tabloids, quickly became a new phenomenon facing Canadians. At the same time, the issue of adolescent development, youth culture, and juvenile delinquency came to the fore. The rapid spread of youthful preferences in fashion, popular music, sports, vocabulary, dating, and reading attracted the attention of parents, teachers, home and school associations, religious organizations, women’s groups, and other civic organizations eager to influence or control the cultural activities of teenagers. Libraries, of course, were confronted with the ever-changing accessibility of popular literature to children, youth, and the working classes.  At the spring 1945 session of the School and Intermediate Libraries Section of the Ontario Library Association, a lively round table discussion, “Are we too conservative in choosing books for young people?” elicited differing comments from librarians who were concerned with the spread of cheap, sordid pulp magazines and unrestricted sales at newsstands of comics featuring gangsters in Crime Does Not Pay or the superheroes battling villains in Exciting Comics.

June 1946 issue

These new social trends disturbed many Canadians at home and across the nation. For libraries, issues about suitable reading were not new. The most immediate postwar library examination of undesirable or salacious literature came from the Provincial Librarian of Saskatchewan, Jessie Bothwell, in 1946. She was an active member of women’s organizations in Regina and was well-regarded for her community work. She was born in Regina in 1883 and married a Rhodes Scholar, Austin Bothwell, who died in 1928, leaving her as a working mother of three children. After earning a library science certificate from McGill University in 1931, Bothwell became Saskatchewan’s Legislative Librarian and was promoted to Provincial Librarian in 1944 in charge of the legislative, open shelf, and travelling libraries. She also spurred the development of a regional libraries act for Saskatchewan in 1946 and became a lifetime member of the Canadian Library Association. She retired in 1951 and died in Regina in 1971.

Jessie Bothwell Report on Controversial Literature, 1946

When the newly elected Saskatchewan Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government formed a seven-member Library Advisory Council in 1945, Jessie Bothwell became a member and its secretary. One of the aims of the Council was to investigate standards for library service. Possibly, this is the genesis of her report at the end of 1946 to the Council that was planning postwar expansion of public libraries. Her report documented arguments for and against questionable materials (mostly on newsstands, not libraries) and outlined contemporary efforts and ideas to control their circulation. There were six sections dealing with (1) the types of periodicals, (2) the arguments for and against, (3) the circulation of literature, (4) the distribution of magazines, (5) the efforts to control circulation, (6) three appendices with statistics on magazine circulation and a bibliography used for the report.

Types. Bothwell classed undesirable periodicals into five categories: (1) salacious and pornographic; (2) low-grade fiction specializing in love, crime, and westerns; (3) confession magazines such as True Story; (4) movie magazines; and (5) comic books. She noted there were already Canadian legal restrictions that could be brought to bear against the first class, which many people considered reasonable. The other categories were inexpensive and widely circulated across North America despite their objectionable, tantalizing features.

Arguments. In summarizing arguments about these periodicals, Bothwell stressed they were a kind of “literary malnutrition” that encouraged lazy reading and escapism. The emphasis on sex, violence and crude portrayal of human character indicated a decline in moral standards. Some materials were a poor substitute for more constructive leisure activities. She noted the argument that comic reading was associated with juvenile delinquency and dubious character formation. However, many people pointed to freedom read on the part of adults as a prime defence. As well, the step-ladder theory of reading and the potential of broadening a person’s knowledge of contemporary life were possible benefits. Further, attacking magazines alone could not solve the general problem of moral development because movies, radio, and popular songs were alternative questionable sources adults, adolescents, and children could access. Often, defenders stated that the causes of juvenile delinquency lay much deeper than reading comics.

Circulation and Distribution. Bothwell provided some interesting information on Canadian magazine reading habits post-1945 but was not able to identify specific figures for ‘problem’ magazines. She had to rely on American figures for the general classes she described. She felt the sale of American magazines followed patterns south of the border where comic books exceeded all other magazine genres in terms of readership: the monthly readership was estimated to be 100,000,000 per month. Popular weeklies, such as Liberty and Colliers, stood second in line. Women’s magazines came in third at just under 25,000,000 per month, followed by movie, confession and detective magazines. News and home and garden magazines were less popular than their newsstand rivals. There were only a few pulp magazines or comics published in Canada, and just ten percent of a 1941 poll read ‘story magazines’ (Redbook, True Story, etc.) Tobacco shops, general stores, and drug stores served as important retail outlets for these affordable magazines. She reported Canadian sales of $36,487,000 for books, magazines, and stationery for all of Canada in 1941.

Controls. The fifth section got to the heart of the matter, i.e., the control of controversial periodicals through legal means. Bothwell went into some detail on five fronts. She began by noting the federal Criminal Code prohibited the publication, sale, display, and distribution of mailing obscene matter that might corrupt morals. Provincial Attorney-Generals were responsible for enforcement. The federal post office had the power to bar obscene, immoral, seditious or indecent items from the mail. The federal Customs Tariff Act could seize seditious, immoral or indecent publications at the border, therefore preventing entry into Canada. These methods were workable, but it was not feasible to stretch the legal powers too far, as in the case of movie or confession magazines. Bothwell recounted the efforts to impose a tariff on periodicals in 1931 by the Bennett government that ended unsuccessfully because American firms began publishing magazines in Canada after the tax was introduced. The tax was repealed in 1935.

Provincial regulations were apparently not effective either. Provinces could legislate police in regard to public morals and delegate responsibility to municipalities. Municipal councils also controlled the licensing of newsdealers. A special sales tax on classes of periodicals was also possible through provincial legislation but there were problems concerning the collection of this tax, not to mention its unpopularity with the public. The report broached the difficult issue of grading periodicals, possibly into adult or juvenile classifications. The whole issue of establishing these grades, either by self-regulation or by the government, was left unsaid.

A second front, one educators and librarians had favoured for many years, was to provide alternative, wholesome reading, thereby opening the possibility of low-grade readers eventually transitioning to better publications. Of course, many of these readers did not use libraries. “Pressure must be put on publishers to bring out an increasing number of good books in paper-bound editions which are colourful, attractive and easy to read. The newsstands must also be encouraged to carry these.” Getting children to learn the ‘library habit’ at an early age was another potential counter to objectionable magazines and comics.

Canadian summer issue 1945

Bothwell then outlined attempts to influence magazine content. A community-based approach  — organized protests by women’s groups and community organizations against the “worst offenders” might induce publishers to “clean-up their publications.” As well, parents and teachers in homes and schools could influence better reading habits. Possibly, publishers themselves adhere to higher standards through self-regulating codes. Bothwell then turned to children’s reading, a concern to many educators, politicians, and librarians.

The fourth section on controls, that is, the intelligent use of comics, recognized this form of entertainment was likely to become a permanent feature. Already, some teachers realized that graphics, simple language, and comics type helped pupils grasp ideas more quickly. Comics could be an inspiration for artwork, posters, and dramatic productions and for instilling forward looking attitudes, ideas, and vocabulary building for some children. 

Finally, the report dealt with the potential to immunize children and adolescents against undesirable literature. Bothwell noted the conclusion of a recent British Columbia report on social welfare and education which recommended the government “lend every possible encouragement to the establishment and development of community centres, and the greater use of school buildings for recreational physical education, and other leisure-time purposes under the leadership of trained personnel.” With sufficient outlets for activities and a well-rounded life of work and play, children and young adults (a terminology that was becoming prevalent in libraries) would spend less time with comic books.

Jessie Bothwell’s report was the most substantive library report on the broader issue of controversial publications in Canada for many years. She did not elaborate on federal censorship of publications because these were not available for purchase by libraries. Nor did she wade into the issue of self-censorship by librarians selecting books. For the most part, she did not have to because libraries avoided steamy publications and they restricted adult access to risqué novels and controversial non-fiction subjects that adults normally had to request to read. Some publications that were sold in stores, such as Erskine Caldwell’s Tragic Ground or the magazine 1946 Cartoon, were subjected to criminal court actions during 1946. The Attorney-General in Ontario deemed these items salacious or obscene; however, court judges ruled otherwise during short trials and the charges against the Toronto book dealers and distributors were subsequently dismissed by early 1947. These test cases demonstrated the difficulty in pursuing criminal charges in the Canadian court system against realistic fiction and comic depictions of army jokes.

When the Ontario Library Association formed an Intellectual Freedom Committee in June 1948, it endorsed the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and adopted a ‘watch and ward’ tactic to investigate any perceived infringements affecting libraries and librarians. However, efforts by the the American Library Association to counter intolerance, suppression of free speech, and censorship with its revision of  the Library Bill of Rights in 1948, did not really influence OLA or library practice in Canada. For Bothwell and many others, the larger question of censorship and the production or distribution of published material was of less concern because her support for the established role of the library to substitute good literature to counter the “low-grade magazines” struck a responsive note. Indeed, Bothwell became chair of the Canadian Library Association’s Committee on Undesirable Literature for a short time in 1950–51, and two years later, this committee, now headed by Edgar Robinson (chief librarian of Vancouver Public Library), submitted a report to the federal Special Committee on Sale and Distribution of Salacious and Indecent Literature that reiterated this position:

“That we are convinced that the most effective means of combatting [sic]the bad book is by substituting the good book. That we believe that the demand for undesirable reading can be decreased by increasing the number of libraries, and, with them, the supply of acceptable reading matter.”

By the mid-1950s, the ‘Golden Age’ of comic books and mass-market pulp magazines was drawing to a close. American publishers introduced the Comics Code Authority in 1954 to self-regulate the content of comic books and appease critics. Paperback novels, radio dramas, and television shows had eroded the popularity of long-standing magazines such as Love Story Magazine or Weird Tales. Most adults using libraries were conservative in their literary tastes and reluctant to alter existing conditions in the sphere of intellectual freedom. It was a complacency based on community standards that few librarians were prepared to challenge. Yet, there were signs of liberalization: the 1953 CLA brief to the Senate had stated that censorship was ultimately more harmful than good. In a few short years, the courts would reverse the ban on the novel Peyton Place, and bolder libraries would venture to circulate Lolita.

There is an online tribute to Jessie Bothwell by the Saskatchewan Library Trustees Association that was originally prepared in 1975.

Read my earlier blog on the acceptance of The Grapes of Wrath by chief librarian, Alexander Calhoun, Calgary Public Library, 1939.