Blacklock's Reporter

If hindsight is 20-20 it’s also two dimensional. The past is often depicted by amateur historians and skillful propagandists as a morality play with cardboard characters: good, bad, black hat, white hat. This is the screenplay of every John Wayne film you ever saw.

More Than Just Games asks, why did Canada support the 1936 Nazi Olympics? There were several reasons. Co-authors Richard Menkis of the University of British Columbia and Harold Troper of the University of Toronto are talented writers with a keen eye for detail.

Just Games is not merely honest, it is compelling. First, Menkis and Troper dispense with myths.

No, Hitler did not pointedly refuse to shake U.S. sprinter Jesse Owen’s hand after the black athlete won gold. Hitler had shaken so many hands earlier in the games the International Olympic Committee told the effusive Fuehrer he’d breached protocol: no more handshakes.

No, Canadian athletes did not give the Nazi salute in the parade of athletes. They gave the traditional Olympic salute, arm straight from the side. It was a naïve thing to do, and uneasy British athletes dropped the salute altogether, but the 120-member Canadian delegation could be forgiven for being provincial.

And no, Olympic organizers never intended to give Hitler the Olympics in the first place. Two cities had bid for the 1936 games: Berlin and Barcelona. At a 1931 IOC meeting that settled the issue, Barcelona unsurprisingly received only 16 of 59 votes. “The German Weimar Republic and Berlin, if hardly rock stable, seemed to IOC members a far safer bet,” authors note.

Hitler would not seize power till 1933 and Spain was already a basket case. When the IOC voted, Spain’s King Alfonso had just fled the country, there were bread riots and a general strike in Madrid, Spain was ruled by a military dictatorship and three prime ministers had been assassinated to date. “From the vantage point of 1931, Berlin seemed a far more credible bet,” writes Just Games.

But Hitler did seize power and Nazi brutality was known by 1936. From the vantage point of 21st century readers horrified by the Holocaust, Canada’s participation seems inexplicable. Here Menkis and Troper crisply document the apologia of those pre-war years.

Nazis had consulates in Montréal and Winnipeg. The Deutsche Bund of Canada had 2,000 members and the German cruiser Karlsruhe was given a warm welcome by the Royal Canadian Navy when it paid a 1935 call on the Port of Vancouver.

Anti-Nazis of the era also had the taint of Bolshevism. High jumper Eva Dawes of Toronto boycotted the ’36 German games but had no qualms in competing at a Soviet-sponsored track meet in Moscow in 1935. Dawes returned from Stalinist Russia with high praise for the “great and marvelous work that has been accomplished in a country owned and built by the workers.” Dawes sadly passed away before the authors could complete a scheduled interview.

More telling, the Germans like Soviets were marvelous hosts. Overt anti-Semitism was tucked away for Olympic festivities and Canadian athletes would later write “we were royally treated everywhere.”

The great Olympic scandal of 1936 was not that Hitler hosted the summer and winter events but that Canada lost in hockey to Great Britain. As sportswriter Lou Marsh of the Toronto Star put it, “Canada has no real reason for dropping out of the Olympics unless Great Britain decides to withdraw her team.”

More Than Just Games is well-told and beautifully researched. In 1936 as today the IOC maintains a “low human rights bar,” authors conclude: “Low enough for all countries to qualify.”

By Holly Doan

More Than Just Games: Canada and the 1936 Olympics, by Richard Menkis & Harold Troper; University of Toronto Press; 254 pages; ISBN 9781-4426-26904; $27.95

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she routinely shares password-protected news stories with friends. Freeland’s remarks followed a Federal Court ruling won by Department of Justice lawyers that permits password sharing, a Canadian first.

“As you guys know I used to be a journalist,” Freeland told reporters. “I still read two newspapers every day in print and take pictures of the articles that I share with people.”

Freeland did not name her subscriptions. The finance minister was previously deputy editor of the Globe & Mail.

“We work for you guys,” Freeland told reporters. Her comments were in response to an unrelated question from Canadian Press.

“I am a huge believer in the value of the work that all of you guys do, the work of professional, salaried journalists,” said Freeland. She did not elaborate.

Federal lawyers on May 31 won a court judgment approving Canadians’ sharing of passwords to paywalled media content. The ruling came in a Blacklock’s lawsuit against Parks Canada for ignoring repeated warnings and “plainly visible” terms and conditions against sharing passwords without payment or permission.

Evidence showed Genevieve Patenaude, a Parks Canada manager, bought a single Blacklock’s password and then emailed it to any co-worker who asked, at least nine people, “if you ever need to access any Blacklock’s article.” Parks Canada had 2,160 employees at the time.

Patenaude refused to answer Blacklock’s when asked what she did with the password and later testified she was confused. Blacklock’s lawyers argued Parks Canada’s misconduct was unethical and a clear violation of property rights under the Copyright Act.

“Enormous Implications”

The Federal Court ruled anyone who believed they had a “legitimate business reason” could share a password to access paywalled media content. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair at the University of Ottawa, called the ruling a “huge win” for people who wanted free content with “enormous implications for libraries, education and users more broadly.”

Blacklock’s argued its password system was standard in the news business. Globe & Mail executives in 2020 testimony at the Commons finance committee said newsrooms had no choice but to sell passwords to paywalled content. “The majority of our revenue comes from the 120,000 digital subscribers and 110,000 print subscribers who currently pay to consume our journalism,” testified then-publisher Philip Crawley.

“The cornerstone of our business is not advertising which is a revenue stream that shrinks each year,” said Crawley. “No, the present and the future of the Globe is founded on readers and users paying for our content. More than 60 percent of our revenue comes from subscriptions, print and digital. Advertising revenue is now only 33 percent.”

Crawley said the Globe sold passwords and “put that reporting behind the paywall to drive subscriptions.” Copyright protection was “very important,” he said.

The Commons heritage committee in a 2019 report recommended that cabinet tighten the Copyright Act to protect creators from haphazard sharing “when the work is commercially available.” Nothing for sale should be copied without payment or permission, said the report Shifting Paradigms.

“This is not just a clinical report,” Liberal MP Julie Dabrusin (Toronto-Danforth), then-chair of the heritage committee, said at the time. “Creators talked about the impact on income they need to keep producing the works that we love.” Cabinet never acted on the report.

By Staff