The War Exchange Conservation Act was designed to preserve Canada's balance of trade with the United States and banned the import of a broad range of nonessential items from the U.S., including such luxury items and diversions as cocoa paste, champagne and pictoral postcards. It also targeted what had become for many people not a luxury, but an essential distraction from the harsh realities of everyday life: the pulps.
Detectives. Sex. Westerns. Confession stories. These were topics that sold magazines, and Canadian publishers knew it. People would still want their weekly fix of grisly murder, winking pin-up girls, thundering hooves and vicarious heartbreak; if the Americans could no longer supply it, someone else would have to.
Canadian Pulp Fiction, 1940-1952 is a great site, full of information and nice design too.
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I never quite understod what was being saved with these laws -- Canada and the US still produced lots of paper -- but at one point US comics were reprinted in Canada (because it was illegal to import them). The printers would get paper (yes, paper) plates from the American publishers and make very low-quality printings of Superman et al. Canadian printings are worth much less than the original US editions of these comics.
ReplyDeleteThe Ontario wine industry is the same. Unless wine is labeled VQA it likely consists of up to 80% foreign grapes that are bottled here. So much for our Canadian content laws.
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