OTTAWA - An RCMP source passed information to Mountie spies about talks between politician Tommy Douglas and actress Jane Fonda on efforts to stop the Vietnam War, newly declassified documents reveal.
The long-secret records say the "reliable source" of the RCMP Security Service learned from a prominent Montreal activist that Fonda and Douglas, then NDP leader, conversed about smoothing the way for Vietnamese participants to attend a citizens' inquiry to be held in Quebec.
"Fonda mentioned that she spoke to T.C. Douglas ... on Sept. 23, 1970, about starting to work on getting visas into Canada for the Vietnameses," says an RCMP memo dated Oct. 1 of that year.
"Douglas felt that there wouldn't be any problem as long as one started enough in advance."
Fonda -- whose antiwar stance led critics to brand her Hanoi Jane -- also said Douglas told her that Dennis McDermott, Canadian director of the United Auto Workers at the time, could "help out a lot on peace type of work."
The records are among the latest disclosures from a nine-volume file amassed by RCMP intelligence officers over a period of more than 40 years. Douglas died of cancer at 81 in 1986.
Daughter Shirley married fellow actor Donald Sutherland. Their son, Kiefer Sutherland, followed in his parents' footsteps, starring in the well-known TV series 24.
Shirley Douglas, a social activist in her own right, knew Fonda in the late 1960s and early '70s, inviting her to speak at a political event.
Fonda might have called her father, she said in an interview.
"She never asked me about him. And he never told me about a call. But that doesn't mean that she didn't make one," Shirley Douglas said.
"He was against that war from the beginning. And many people in the States knew of him as somebody who was adamantly against the war in Vietnam."
The secret material from the Douglas dossier was released by Library and Archives Canada in response to a Federal Court challenge launched by The Canadian Press in October 2009 to obtain portions of the file withheld by the government.
Following a closed-door hearing in the case last year, the government promised to review the remaining secret pages with an eye to disclosing more information.
The RCMP was responsible for domestic security investigations in Canada until scandals prompted the creation of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984.
The police force created files on hundreds of thousands of Canadians, including left-leaning politicians like Douglas, as well as trade unionists, peace activists, media and numerous organizations and societies suspected of having subversive members.
Widely hailed as the father of medicare for championing universal health services, Douglas was voted the greatest Canadian of all time in a popular CBC contest.
Following a stint as an MP, the pioneering politician became leader of Saskatchewan's Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in 1942, soon heading up the first socialist government in North America.
As premier, Douglas brought in public auto insurance, guaranteed hospital care and a provincial bill of rights.
The freshly disclosed material shows the Mounties took an active interest in the "New Party" clubs that paved the way for the birth of the federal New Democratic Party.
An April 1961 report details an informant's description of a New Party banquet Douglas had addressed at the Chateau Laurier hotel in Ottawa four days earlier. The dispatch was filed under the heading "Communist Party of Canada, Suspected Closed Clubs" -- suggesting the RCMP had little understanding of the fledgling force in federal politics.
Douglas became the first NDP leader later that year, serving for a decade.
The files also shed new light on the source of a 1964 tip alleging that Douglas had once been an active member of the Communist Party at the University of Chicago, where he had done postgraduate studies.
The source of the letter is revealed as J.S. Keenan, whom the RCMP believed to be a Toronto businessman with past Liberal connections.
A top-secret memo from a senior RCMP security officer to the force's deputy commissioner of operations says the only corroboration of Keenan's tip was a 1961 article in a "violently anti-Communist, anti-Semitic publication."
The files raise questions about the political sympathies of two of Douglas' assistants during the 1960s -- both said to be affiliated at one time with the Labour Progressive Party, which fielded Communist electoral candidates.
Shirley Douglas said her father "was not a believer in Communism" but was open to meeting and speaking with people of all political stripes.
"He was never afraid to talk to anybody."
Indeed, the files touch on numerous causes, events and people during various phases of Douglas' career -- from his support of labourers at a 1939 meeting in Ottawa to endorsement of a peace petition in 1981, two years after he retired as a sitting MP.
Many entries deal with opposition to the Vietnam conflict, sprinkled with a Who's Who of names including Dr. Benjamin Spock, author Farley Mowat and folksinger Joan Baez -- transcribed by the Mounties without a hint of irony as Joan Bias.
One memo notes a "source believed reliable" told the RCMP that Douglas' wife Irma had joined the Regina branch of the peace group Voice of Women in 1962 -- a passage previously blacked out.
Library and Archives released only some of the 1,142-page Douglas file to The Canadian Press in December 2006 in response to an Access to Information request.
It said the remainder could not be declassified, relying on provisions of the access law that allow agencies to withhold personal information and material that could interfere with Canada's "detection, prevention or suppression of subversive or hostile activities."
The news agency filed a complaint with the federal information commissioner, an ombudsman for users of the law, who took more than two years to decide the material was appropriately under wraps. The Canadian Press then took the matter to the Federal Court.
Summaries of the confidential hearing late last November show Judge Simon Noel questioned whether Library and Archives had released enough of the file given the institution's historical mandate.
The disclosure of new material comes just days ahead of a public court hearing in the case, to take place Wednesday in Ottawa before Noel.
It is unclear whether the latest release will satisfy the court, as more than one-third of the pages remain blank while others have significant redactions.
"What I would like to see is all the blacked-out sections lifted," said Shirley Douglas, who has submitted an affidavit to the court supporting declassification of the files.
"The black has to come off the paper."
