The fanatical anti-communism of U.S. Sen. Joe McCarthy and his acolytes in the late 1940s and early ’50s is regarded as one of the low points in modern American politics.
“‘We should go about the job right away of getting rid of all these suspects — Dr. MacKenzie, Dal Grauer and all the rest,” said Harris. “We should chase them out of the country.’” A who’s who of Canadians were on Hansell’s list, including Toronto Star publisher E.J. Atkinson, painter A.Y. Jackson and CCF Leader M.J. Coldwell, who Hansell said was a member of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship League, a “Communist front.”
The Sun’s Jack Scott weighed in that “the Hansell nonsense, while quite amusing, serves to show how far this Communist bogeyman stuff had gone.” Ironically, The Sun’s front page on April 13 contained a story by Ray Gardner, a gifted writer who was later blacklisted after he became the executive-director of the B.C. Peace Council.