“9 Months and $300 Fine, Lesson For Lauding Hitler,” Toronto Star. July 10, 1940. Page 07. ---- London Railroader Jailed - Secretary of Seaman’s Union Held in Montreal ---- ‘GUARD ON TONGUES’ ---- A sentence calculated in the words of Magistrate C. W. Hawkshaw to teach ‘people to be guard their tongues’ was passed in a London, Ont., police court today on John Navin, 44-year-old railway employee. He was convicted last week of having made statements in praise of Hitler.
Navin was given nine months in jail plus a $300 fine, which, if not paid, will add six months to the term.
A petition signed by 200 railway employees and immediate neighbors of Navin, and representations made in his behalf by J. H. Finch, a member of the railway union. induced the court, he said, to give less than the maximum penalties.
The magistrate stated that he had also taken into account that Navin had lived in London 14 years as a good citizen.
Navin’s sisters burst into tears as sentence was pronounced.
Jack Chapman Arrested Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced today in Montreal that Jack Chapman, secretary of the Canadian Seamens union, has been arrested under the Defence of Canada regulations as a member of the Communist party.
Chapman’s arrest, an official said, has ‘nothing to do with his association with the seamen’s union.’ He was taken into custody with several other alleged Communists.
‘Pat’ Sullivan, president of the union, was detained recently by R.C.M.P. under the Defence of Canada Act.
John Bold, 45-year-old farmer of the Marcelin district, 70 miles west of Prince Albert, Sask., will appear there Saturday for preliminary hearing on a charge of attempted treason. (Parliament has given first reading to imposing the death penalty on this charge.)
Andrew Bilecki and W. C. Ross, Communist members of the Winnipeg board of education, have been interned or have left the country, the board was told last night. Jehovah Witnesses Raided In Vancouver, police seized 12 tons of literature in raids on three branches of Jehovah’s Witnesses, an organization recently declared illegal. No arrests were made.
Charged with being members of an illegal society and of offending against the Defence of Canada Regulations W. G. Brown, Toronto, and William Bembridge, Niagara Falls, were remanded to jail at Goderich until Thursday. The two were arrested in a raid on a Blue Vale farm house. Half a ton of Jehovah’s Witnesses literature and maps was seized. Police at St. Thomas also raided headquarters of Jehovah’s Witnesses yesterday and seized dozens of cartons of books and pamphlets.
[AL: A useful round up of the concerted crackdown on groups and individuals deemed to be dangerous traitors to Canada’s war effort - from the outlawed Communist party (an enemy of the reactionary Canadian ruling class well before the war) and Jehovah’s Witnesses, who refused to stand for the anthem or salute the flag and thus had to be harassed and imprisoned. Some of the explanations were deeply disingenuous - despite claims to the contrary in this article, governments and their police forces genuinely believed rounding up communists would end the strikes and union militancy taking place in 1940 - which was driven by the increase in cost of living, demands for higher output with no pay increase, and the suppression of collective agreements and striking in the name of ‘winning the war.’ This crackdown was far more severe than even in Great Britain, under far more threat, and is a direct expression of the paranoia, panic and small-mindedness of Canadian police and political authorities. In Navin’s case, the remarks that got him sent to prison included, not ‘praise of Hitler’ but pessimism about Britain’s ability to win the war.]