The second Post Office Board of Review on a ban of hate-mail has just concluded in Ottawa after a two-day hearing. The two hatemongers involved were David Stanley, 20, formerly of Toronto and more recently of Vancouver; and John Ross Taylor, 52, of Gooderham, Ontario, and their Organization “Natural Order.”
John Bentley, lawyer for the federal Justice Department, wound up his case by saying to the three-man board: “This is the most scandalous sort of attack on people. I don’t enjoy reading it and I’m sure you don’t enjoy hearing it.” He demanded that the interim orders prohibiting the two men and Natural Order from using Canadian mails be made final. Last November a similar hearing was held in Ottawa at which both Taylor and Stanley appeared but they were then appearing as representatives of an Alabama organization, against which the ban was upheld.
The paper from which Mr. Bentley had been reading was entitled “The Coming Red Dictatorship, “and deals with “a sinister Communist conspiracy directed by influential Jews.” Taylor admitted he had distributed thousands of copies of the paper across Canada since it was first printed in the United States in 1954. In his closing argument Mr. Bentley concentrated on establishing that the material was scurrilous as set out in the Criminal Code. “Scurrilous” was defined by him as abusive, insulting and offensive. He contended that the literature in question was all three.
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