Anti-Semitic literature printed in California and Chicago and mailed in Ottawa has been received by the Mayor and various other municipal officials of the Dominion’s capital city, it was revealed in a communication by Miss Charlotte Whitton, Mayor of Ottawa, to the Canadian Jewish Congress.
Reporting on steps taken by the city administration to curb anti-Semitic agitation, Mayor Whitton said that during public hearings in Ottawa of the city’s Board of Control last June she complained of receiving “this discriminatory and vicious literature” and was joined in these complaints by all members of the Board, who disclosed that they had been on the anti-Semitic mailing lists for nearly two years. Members of the City Council were also receiving the propaganda, she added.
Following the Mayor’s discussion of the matter with the Board of Control the latter authorized her to raise the question with the police commission which, after a study of the case, found that it had no authority to act in the matter. It was then referred to the Crown Attorney who was asked to take up the matter with the Canadian Customs Department, Post Office and police force in an effort to half the flow of the propaganda across the border.
As a result of raising the issue publicly and the attempts to obtain legal action against the mailers of the anti-Semitic literature, the mailings stopped abruptly, Mayor Whitton reported.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
