UW Gazette, March 26, 1997

                              

     Remarks by Dr. Jeff Shallit, of UW's computer science
department, as he took part in a Freedom to Read Week event
in the Student Life Centre on February 27:
     
     It's a great pleasure to read The Well of Loneliness
at this celebration of Freedom to Read Week.
     My pleasure is tempered, however, by the recognition
that the University of Waterloo is, sadly, one of the most
censorious institutions of higher learning in North America.
     Waterloo's record is pitiful. Not only did it ban
computer newsgroups such as rec.humor.funny (later
rescinded) and alt.sex.stories (still in effect), the
University of Waterloo also took the drastic and
unprecedented step of actually censoring newspapers from the
library, such as the Washington Post.
     And not only did Waterloo censor an issue of the
Washington Post - supposedly on the basis of "legal advice"
- it has refused to release the text of the legal advice on
which the decision was based.
     And not only that. Just this past week, the man
responsible for much of the censorship at Waterloo - Provost
Jim Kalbfleisch - was unanimously recommended for a second
term in his position as Vice-President, Academic and
Provost. What does it say about our university when someone
who takes actions so inimical to the spirit of free inquiry
is not only not chastized, but actually rewarded?
     So as I read the next selection - The Well of
Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall - take a moment to ponder that
the same kind of censorship she endured in her lifetime
continues today, at our very own university.
     The Well of Loneliness was published in England in
1928. It is the very chaste story of Stephen, a woman who
has a love affair with another woman. Today it would be con
sidered excruciatingly tame, but at the time it was daring.
Recall that Queen Victoria vetoed a bill making lesbianism a
crime, because she refused to admit there were any lesbians
in England.
     The author, Radclyffe Hall, was a forty-seven year old
woman at the time of publication; she was known to her
friends as "John". The Well of Loneliness was banned in
England shortly after publication.
     One contemporary reviewer said, "The book gives
evidence of a pestilence afoot which is devastating young
souls - called Sexual Inversion and Perversion. Those hor
rors are flaunting themselves in public places with
increasing effrontery, and more insolently provocative
bravado.É I say deliberately that this novel is not fit to
be sold by any bookseller or to be borrowed from any
library.É I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy
girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel."
     In Canada, The Well of Loneliness was banned in 1949,
one of a list of more than 505 books censored by Article
1201 of the Customs Tariff. It had good company. Also banned
at the same time were Faulkner's Sanctuary and Tobacco Road
by Erskine Caldwell.
     When a woman asked John in 1929 if she thought
toleration of lesbians would ever come to pass, she replied
"there was a faint light in the darkness, but that it would
probably not come in our lifetime".