"Keep Communism out of Our Schools": Cold War Anti-Communism at the Toronto Board of Education, 1948-1951

Abstract

THE ISSUES FACING the candidates for election to the 1948 Toronto Board of Education — school renovations, hot lunches for students, sex education, teacher salaries, and comic books in the schools — seemed far removed from the West's worsening relations with the Soviet Union. But one candidate was determined to remind voters that what was taking place overseas was much closer to their communities than they realized. Harold Menzies, a realtor and candidate for one of the two Trustee spots in Ward Five, distributed a campaign blotter urging voters to Keep Out of Schools. blotter depicted The Looter, a Karl Marx-like figure destroying Toronto schools and scooping up books with such titles as Our Way of Life. Appealing to voters to remember Poland, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — forcefully acquired Soviet satellite states — the implication was clear that the same fate could befall Canada. Don't be apathetic, the blotter warned, Your Innocent Children's Future Depends on YOUR VOTE. campaign document implied that the other Ward Five candidates, John Boyd and Edna Ryerson, were Communists whereas Menzies proclaimed himself as The Man Who Sees Danger in Communism and the Only Candidate Not a Communist. Menzies was not unknown to school Board voters, having served on the