Canada: THE DOMINION: Squat on the Squatters

The squatters moved in on Montreal last week. And the Communists moved in on the squatters. Leader of the Montreal squatters, who took over two empty gambling joints, was Henri Gagnon, 36, Quebec’s No. 1 Communist and an organizer of the Communist Labor Progressive Party. The Montreal squatting movement, like others in Canada, was born out of the attempts of non-Communist veterans to find living quarters. At the first Montreal meeting, Gagnon appeared, had himself elected president of the newly formed Homeless Veterans’ League, and led the squats.

Premier Maurice Duplessis, who hates and fears Communists, cried excitedly: “It is part of a worldwide Communist plot to disrupt democratic institutions.” But the Premier, who is empowered under Quebec’s Padlock Law to close any establishment in which subversive activities are being carried on, could not move against the squatters until the courts rule on whether Gagnon’s squat constituted forcible entry.

In Ottawa, where squatter chief Franklyn E. Hanratty’s Veterans’ Housing League had won considerable man-in-the-street support and a measure of respectability, people took a new and harder look at his organization. The Ottawa Journal thought it saw some Communists in the membership, and said so. Ottawa’s Citizen wagged a warning finger about Communist “disrupting of established order.”

That touched off trouble in the Citizens’ Housing Committee, a civic house-finding group of which Hanratty was a member. Father John MacDonald, director of the Catholic Family Service, quit the committee, said he would stay out until Hanratty “throws the Communists out of his Veterans’ League.” Committee Chairman C. E. Pickering added his own ultimatum to Hanratty: clean house or quit. Hanratty said he would not force resignation of two Communist officials in his league, bristled: “If they want to get me out, they’ll have to pick me up and toss me out.”