by H. Blair Neatby

In the spring of 1949, Tim Buck, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Canada, was invited to Carleton College to give a speech. There were plenty of precedents -- Buck had spoken on other university campuses. But the repercussions of this invitation gave insight into the Cold War, and also into student life at Carleton.

H. Blair Neatby at the site of the former Carleton College on First Avenue.

It began with a request to the students' council from the Labour-Progressive club for permission to invite Buck. It was a reasonable request. The club had only two members, but it was one of many political clubs on campus and the others regularly invited the leaders of their parties to the campus. But it was still a touchy issue at a time when the West felt threatened by Soviet expansion in Europe.

Douglas Hartle, president of the students' council, was in favour of giving permission to the club; he believed that the students should be allowed to listen to Buck and judge for themselves. But Hartle also recognized that this was not an appropriate issue for students to decide. The Carleton students might be proud of their autonomy but they were still students -- in statu pupillari. So Hartle went to President Maxwell MacOdrum, who shifted the responsibility to the executive committee of the Board of Governors, where Hartle presented his case. Hartle was convincing, and the committee left the final decision up to the students. The students' council gave its permission, and the Labour-Progressive club duly invited Buck to speak.

The incident would probably have passed unnoticed if the Ottawa Journal had not been outraged. It printed a provocative editorial to warn its readers that "the unspeakable Tim Buck, Canadian communist leader, is to address the students of Carleton." The editorial conceded that the students should know about communism but said that to invite Buck to speak to "an impressionable body of young people" was surely unacceptable. It was even more disturbing, according to the editorial, that the invitation had come from the students' council with the approval of the president and the executive committee of the Board of Governors. This, it suggested, "will surprise and, we think, shock many persons in Ottawa who have given this institution financial and moral support." The Journal concluded that Carleton was inviting trouble "if it opens its doors to Red agitators and their well-organized propaganda."

At least one person in Ottawa was shocked by the news. Frank Ahearn, a prominent businessman, announced that he was canceling his pledge of $3,000 to Carleton College.

The editorial appeared on a Saturday. Buck was to speak on Monday. But the students' council was able to react in a way that would be inconceivable today. It undertook to organize a mass rally on Sunday, relying on telephone calls and word of mouth to alert the students. The full-time enrolment at the college was less than 600, but 200 interested students showed up. At the rally, the council proposed that the students should attend Tim Buck's address the next day, but, instead of being disorderly, should maintain absolute silence during the speech and the question period and then walk out in protest. At the same time, the students' council proposed a $2 contribution from each full-time and part-time student to replace the money that Ahearn had pledged to the college. The students supported both proposals with enthusiasm and agreed to spread the word to those who were not there.

The strategy was politically impeccable. It would demonstrate the students' maturity, their respect for freedom of speech, their abhorrence of communism and their willingness to pay the price of their high principles. It was also a response that only a small and close-knit student body could orchestrate. Tim Buck was certainly impressed; he decided not to come.

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The students could not let it end there. They held the meeting on Monday with Tim Buck present in effigy. Speakers made the point that Carleton did not have what the provincial premier had allegedly described as the "Red Rash". The students' council also agreed to finance an extra edition of The Carleton to denounce the Ottawa Journal's editorial, with enough copies to permit distribution in downtown Ottawa.

That same day, the lead editorial in the Journal apologized for any suggestion that the college authorities or the students might be sympathetic to the "reds", and the paper reversed its position by concluding that the "Ottawa people have taken great pride in this institution and there is no reason why they should not support it wholeheartedly."

But the students had made their plans, and no apology would stop them. On Tuesday, many of those who should have been in class were on downtown street corners passing out copies of The Carleton that denounced the Journal's bigotry. It was ironic that the Journal on that same Tuesday had yet another conciliatory editorial commenting that "Carleton College comes out of the incident with its head high."

Fortunately, the Journal did not retaliate. Two days later, in a final editorial on the topic entitled "We are Lambasted", it noted with some amusement that The Carleton had done "a spirited job on us." It had no objection. "In fact, we find much to admire about this copy of the college paper; the vigor of the writing, the fierceness of the editor in defending a cause in which they believe, and this proof that although Carleton College is young in years it commands in its student body affection, pride and respect. We are seeing the development of a Carleton tradition."

There the incident ended, in part because the special edition had almost exhausted The Carleton's budget. The next and last issue of the term came out in April, when the students had more pressing concerns. It made only passing references to the Tim Buck affair. It reported that the "Three Grand Club" had almost reached its $3,000 objective, and quoted the flattering reference in the Journal to the emerging Carleton tradition. There was also a discreet apology on the front page for not having given credit to the Ottawa Journal for some photographs that The Carleton had printed. Life was zig-zagging back to normal.