Canadian Member of Parliament Art Hanger called on February 3 for two copies of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, the 1955 novel about an obsessed pedophile, to be removed from the Library of Parliament in Ottawa. Hanger's Reform Party colleagues distanced themselves from his request. “I think the kind of conduct that is described is despicable,” Reform leader Preston Manning told the February 4 Ottawa Sun. “But I don't want to get into arguing about what books should be in the Library of Parliament.”
Hanger did not comment on the fact that the library is keeping the February issue of the Canadian edition of Hustler magazine in a brown envelope in a drawer, viewable on request by MPs, senators, and journalists. The issue features a contest that invites readers to say why they would want to have sex with Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. A library official told the press that any time a parliamentarian is in the news, every “publication of record” is kept on hand until the controversy dies down.
Posted February 8, 1999.