Repression and Resistance

Examining the history of human rights in Canada from 1930 to 1960, the period just before the emergence of contemporary human rights groups, Repression and Resistance focuses on the activists who fought against what they perceived to be the major human rights injustices of the time: the Quebec anti-communist padlock law, the violation of civil liberties during the war, the post-war attempt to deport Japanese Canadians, campaigns to obtain effective anti-discrimination legislation, civil liberties violations during the Cold War, and the struggle to obtain a Bill of Rights.

Using newspaper files, government documents, collections of personal papers, and interviews with former political activists, Ross Lambertson demonstrates how certain Canadians – including members of ethnic, labour, religious, civil libertarian, and other organizations – were sufficiently "aroused by injustice" so as to fight for human rights. The book shows how these different activists and their organizations were inter-related, but also how, at the same time, they were very often separated by ideological, cultural, and geographic divisions.