John Marshall, now 79 and retired from the faculty of library science at the University of Toronto, will return to Victoria, B.C., November 18 to hear public library board Chair Neil Williams offer an apology for his dismissal 44 years ago. Marshall was hired as bookmobile director in December 1953 and fired January 28, 1954, because the board disapproved of his attendance at Canadian peace conferences and his editorial work for The Westerner, a leftist paper published in Winnipeg.
According to the October 21 Vancouver Sun,Marshall's story was included in the Un-Canadians, a 1996 film about the Red Scare in 1950s Canada. "I had known about his story a long time," Williams said. "It kind of haunted me." He has already publicly apologized to Marshall at the Canadian Library Association meeting in June.
Posted October 26, 1998.