Robert Mitchum

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American actor, director, author, poet, composer, and singer. He rose to prominence for starring roles in several classic films noir, and his acting is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include "Out of the Past" (1947), "The Night of the Hunter" (1955), "Cape Fear" (1962), and "El Dorado" (1966). He is also known for his television role as U.S. Navy Captain Victor "Pug" Henry in the epic miniseries "The Winds of War" (1983) and sequel "War and Remembrance" (1988).
Mitchum was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945). He is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of Classic American Cinema.
Early life.
Robert Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 6, 1917, into a Norwegian-Irish Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet Gunderson, was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter; his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker of Irish descent. His older sister, Annette (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career), was born in 1914. Their father, James Mitchum, was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919. Robert was one year old, and Annette was not yet five. Their mother was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. Her third child, John, was born in September of that year. Ann married again to Lieutenant Hugh "The Major" Cunningham Morris, a former Royal Naval Reserve officer. Ann and Morris had a daughter together, Carol Morris, born July 1927, on the family farm in Delaware. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the "Bridgeport Post".
As a child, Mitchum was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When he was 12, his mother sent him to live with her parents in Felton, Delaware; the boy was promptly expelled from middle school for scuffling with the principal. A year later, in 1930, he moved in with his older sister Annette, in New York's Hell's Kitchen. After being expelled from Haaren High School, he left his sister and traveled throughout the country, hopping on railroad cars, taking a number of jobs, including ditch-digging for the Civilian Conservation Corps and professional boxing. At age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he said he was arrested for vagrancy and put on a local chain gang. By Mitchum's own account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. During this time, while recovering from injuries that nearly cost him a leg, he met Dorothy Spence, whom he would later marry. He soon went back on the road, eventually "riding the rails" to California.
Acting.
Mitchum arrived in Long Beach, California, in 1936, staying again with his sister, now going by the name of Julie. She had moved to the West Coast in the hope of acting in movies, and the rest of the Mitchum family soon joined them. During this time, Mitchum worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. Julie convinced him to join the local theater guild with her. At The Players Guild of Long Beach, Mitchum worked as a stagehand and occasional bit-player in company productions. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. According to Lee Server's biography ("Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care"), Mitchum put his talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for Julie's nightclub performances.
In 1940, he returned to Delaware to marry Dorothy Spence, and they moved back to California. He gave up his artistic pursuits at the birth of their first child James, nicknamed Josh, and two more children, Chris and Petrine, followed. Mitchum found steady employment as a machine operator during wartime era WWII, with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, but the noise of the machinery damaged his hearing. He also suffered a nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary blindness), due to job-related stress. He then sought work as a film actor, performing initially as an extra and in small speaking parts. His agent got him an interview with Harry Sherman, the producer of Paramount's "Hopalong Cassidy" western film series, which starred William Boyd; Mitchum was hired to play minor villainous roles in several films in the series during 1942 and 1943. He went uncredited as a soldier in the Mickey Rooney 1943 film "The Human Comedy". His first credit came in 1943 as a Marine private serving under a commanding officer and star of the film Randolph Scott in a Marine Raider unit in the Pacific Island war film "Gung Ho"!
Mitchum continued to find work as an extra and supporting actor in numerous productions for various studios. After impressing director Mervyn LeRoy during the making of "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," Mitchum signed a seven-year contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He was groomed for B-Western stardom in a series of Zane Grey adaptations.
Following the moderately successful Western "Nevada", RKO lent Mitchum to United Artists for "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945). In the film, he portrayed war-weary officer Bill Walker (based on Captain Henry T. Waskow), who remains resolute despite the troubles he faces. The film, which followed the life of an ordinary soldier through the eyes of journalist Ernie Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith), became an instant critical and commercial success. Shortly after filming, Mitchum was drafted into the United States Army, serving at Fort MacArthur, California, as a medic. At the 1946 Academy Awards, "The Story of G.I. Joe" was nominated for four Oscars, including Mitchum's only nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He finished the year with a Western ("West of the Pecos") and a story of returning Marine veterans ("Till the End of Time"), before filming in a genre that came to define Mitchum's career and screen persona: .
Film noir.
Mitchum was initially known for his work in . His first foray into the genre was a supporting role in the 1944 B-movie "When Strangers Marry", about newlyweds and a New York City serial killer. "Undercurrent", another of Mitchum's early noir films, featured him as a troubled, sensitive man entangled in the affairs of his brother (Robert Taylor) and his brother's suspicious wife (Katharine Hepburn). John Brahm's "The Locket" (1946) featured Mitchum as bitter ex-boyfriend to Laraine Day's femme fatale. Raoul Walsh's "Pursued" (1947) combined Western and noir styles, with Mitchum's character attempting to recall his past and find those responsible for killing his family. "Crossfire" (also 1947) featured Mitchum as a member of a group of World War II soldiers, one of whom kills a Jewish man. It featured themes of anti-Semitism and the failings of military training. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, earned five Academy Award nominations.
Following "Crossfire", Mitchum starred in "Out of the Past" (also called "Build My Gallows High"), directed by Jacques Tourneur and featuring the cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. Mitchum played Jeff Markham, a small-town gas-station owner and former investigator, whose unfinished business with gambler Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) and femme fatale Kathie Moffett (Jane Greer) comes back to haunt him.
On September 1, 1948, after a string of successful films for RKO, Mitchum and actress Lila Leeds were arrested for possession of marijuana. The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers as well, but Mitchum and Leeds did not receive the tipoff. After serving a week at the county jail (he described the experience to a reporter as being "like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff"), Mitchum spent 43 days (February 16 to March 30) at a Castaic, California, prison farm. "Life" photographers were permitted to take photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform. The arrest inspired the exploitation film "She Shoulda Said No!" (1949), which starred Leeds. The conviction was later overturned by the Los Angeles court and district attorney's office on January 31, 1951, after being exposed as a setup.
Despite, or because of, Mitchum's troubles with the law and his studio, his films released immediately after his arrest were box-office hits. "Rachel and the Stranger" (1948) featured Mitchum in a supporting role as a mountain man competing for the hand of Loretta Young, the indentured servant and wife of William Holden. In the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's novella "The Red Pony" (1949), he appeared as a trusted cowhand to a ranching family. He returned to in "The Big Steal" (also 1949), where he reunited with Jane Greer in an early Don Siegel film.
Career in the 1950s and 1960s.
In "Where Danger Lives" (1950), Mitchum played a doctor who comes between a mentally unbalanced Faith Domergue and cuckolded Claude Rains. "The Racket" was a noir remake of the early crime drama of the same name and featured Mitchum as a police captain fighting corruption in his precinct. The Josef von Sternberg film, "Macao" (1952), had Mitchum as a victim of mistaken identity at an exotic resort casino, playing opposite Jane Russell. Otto Preminger's "Angel Face" was the first of three collaborations between Mitchum and British stage actress Jean Simmons. In this film, she played an insane heiress who plans to use young ambulance driver Mitchum to kill for her.
Mitchum was fired from "Blood Alley" (1955), due to his conduct, reportedly having thrown the film's transportation manager into San Francisco Bay. According to Sam O'Steen's memoir "Cut to the Chase", Mitchum showed up on-set after a night of drinking and tore apart a studio office when they did not have a car ready for him. Mitchum walked off the set of the third day of filming "Blood Alley", claiming he could not work with the director. Because Mitchum was showing up late and behaving erratically, producer John Wayne, after failing to obtain Humphrey Bogart as a replacement, took over the role himself.
Following a series of conventional Westerns and , as well as the Marilyn Monroe vehicle "River of No Return" (1954), Mitchum appeared in Charles Laughton's only film as director: "The Night of the Hunter" (1955). Based on a novel by Davis Grubb, the thriller starred Mitchum as a monstrous criminal posing as a preacher to find money hidden by his cellmate in the cellmate's home. His performance as Reverend Harry Powell is considered by many to be one of the best of his career. Stanley Kramer's melodrama "Not as a Stranger", also released in 1955, was a box-office hit. The film starred Mitchum against type, as an idealistic young doctor, who marries an older nurse (Olivia de Havilland), only to question his morality many years later. However, the film was not well received, with most critics pointing out that Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, and Lee Marvin were all too old for their characters. Olivia de Havilland received top billing over Mitchum and Sinatra.
On March 8, 1955, Mitchum formed DRM (Dorothy and Robert Mitchum) Productions to produce five films for United Artists; four films were produced. The first film was "Bandido" (1956). Following a succession of average Westerns and the poorly received "Foreign Intrigue" (1956), Mitchum starred in the first of three films with Deborah Kerr. The John Huston war drama "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison", starred Mitchum as a Marine corporal shipwrecked on a Pacific Island with a nun, Sister Angela (Deborah Kerr), as his sole companion. In this character study, they struggle to resist the elements and the invading Japanese army. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. For his role, Mitchum was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor. In the WWII submarine classic "The Enemy Below" (1956), Mitchum gave a strong performance as U.S. Naval Lieutenant Commander Murrell, the captain of a U.S. Navy destroyer who matches wits with a German U-boat captain Curt Jurgens, who starred with Mitchum again in the legendary 1962 movie "The Longest Day". The film won an Oscar for Special Effects.
"Thunder Road" (1958), the second DRM Production, was loosely based on an incident in which a driver transporting moonshine was said to have fatally crashed on Kingston Pike in Knoxville, Tennessee, somewhere between Bearden Hill and Morrell Road. According to "Metro Pulse" writer Jack Renfro, the incident occurred in 1952 and may have been witnessed by James Agee, who passed the story on to Mitchum. He starred in the movie, produced, co-wrote the screenplay, and is rumored to have directed much of the film. It costars his son James, as his on screen brother, in a role originally intended for Elvis Presley. Mitchum also co-wrote (with Don Raye) the theme song, "The Ballad of Thunder Road".
He returned to Mexico for "The Wonderful Country" (1959) and Ireland for "A Terrible Beauty"/"The Night Fighters" for the last of his DRM Productions.
Mitchum and Kerr reunited for the Fred Zinnemann film, "The Sundowners" (1960), where they played husband and wife struggling in Depression-era Australia. Opposite Mitchum, Kerr was nominated for yet another Academy Award for Best Actress, while the film was nominated for a total of five Oscars. Mitchum was awarded that year's National Board of Review award for Best Actor for his performance. The award also recognized his superior performance in the Vincente Minnelli Western drama "Home from the Hill" (also 1960). He was teamed with former leading ladies Kerr and Simmons, as well as Cary Grant, for the Stanley Donen comedy "The Grass Is Greener" the same year.
Mitchum's performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady in "Cape Fear" (1962) brought him further renown for playing cold, predatory characters. The 1960s were marked by a number of lesser films and missed opportunities. Among the films Mitchum passed on during the decade were John Huston's "The Misfits" (the last film of its stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe), the Academy Award–winning "Patton", and "Dirty Harry". The most notable of his films in the decade included the war epics "The Longest Day" (1962) and "Anzio" (1968), the Shirley MacLaine comedy-musical "What a Way to Go!" (1964), and the Howard Hawks Western "El Dorado" (1967), a remake of "Rio Bravo" (1959), in which Mitchum took over Dean Martin's role of the drunk who comes to the aid of John Wayne. He teamed with Martin for the 1968 Western "5 Card Stud", playing a homicidal preacher.
Music.
One of the lesser-known aspects of Mitchum's career was his foray into music as a singer. Critic Greg Adams writes, "Unlike most celebrity vocalists, Robert Mitchum actually had musical talent." Mitchum's voice was often used instead of that of a professional singer when his character sang in his films. Notable productions featuring Mitchum's own singing voice included "Rachel and the Stranger", "River of No Return", and "The Night of the Hunter". After hearing traditional calypso music and meeting artists such as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" in the Caribbean islands of Tobago, he recorded "Calypso – is like so ..." in March 1957. On the album, released through Capitol Records, he emulated the calypso sound and style, even adopting the style's unique pronunciations and slang. A year later, he recorded a song he had written for "Thunder Road", titled "The Ballad of Thunder Road". The country-style song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching number 69 on the "Billboard" Pop Singles chart. The song was included as a bonus track on a successful reissue of "Calypso ..." and helped market the film to a wider audience.
Although Mitchum continued to use his singing voice in his film work, he waited until 1967 to record his follow-up record, "That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings". The album, released by Nashville-based Monument Records, took him further into country music, and featured songs similar to "The Ballad of Thunder Road". "Little Old Wine Drinker Me", the first single, was a top-10 hit at country radio, reaching number nine there, and crossed over onto mainstream radio, where it peaked at number 96. Its follow-up, "You Deserve Each Other", also charted on the "Billboard" Country Singles chart. He sang the title song to the Western "Young Billy Young", made in 1969.
Later years.
Mitchum made a departure from his typical screen persona with the 1970 David Lean film "Ryan's Daughter", in which he starred as Charles Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered schoolmaster in World War I–era Ireland. At the time of filming, Mitchum was going through a personal crisis and planned to commit suicide. Aside from a personal crisis, his recent films had been critical and commercial flops. Screenwriter Robert Bolt told him that he could commit suicide after the film was finished and that he would personally pay for his burial. Though the film was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning two) and Mitchum was much publicized as a contender for a Best Actor nomination, he was not nominated. George C. Scott won the award for his performance in "Patton", a project Mitchum had rejected for "Ryan's Daughter".
The 1970s featured Mitchum in a number of well-received crime dramas. "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" (1973) had the actor playing an aging Boston hoodlum caught between the Feds and his criminal friends. Sydney Pollack's "The Yakuza" (1974) transplanted the typical story arc to the Japanese underworld. He also appeared in 1976's "Midway" about an epic 1942 World War II battle. Mitchum's stint as an aging Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler adaptation "Farewell, My Lovely" (1975) was sufficiently well received by audiences and critics for him to reprise the role in 1978's "The Big Sleep".
In 1982, Mitchum played Coach Delaney in the film adaptation of playwright/actor Jason Miller's 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "That Championship Season".
At the premiere for "That Championship Season", Mitchum, while intoxicated, assaulted a female reporter and threw a basketball that he was holding (a prop from the film) at a female photographer from "Time" magazine, injuring her neck and knocking out two of her teeth. She sued him for $30 million for damages. The suit eventually "cost him his salary from the film."
"That Championship Season" may have indirectly led to another debacle for Mitchum several months later. In a February 1983 "Esquire" interview, he made several racist, anti-Semitic and sexist statements, including, when asked if the Holocaust occurred, responded "so the Jews say." Following the widespread negative response, he apologized a month later, saying that his statements were "prankish" and "foreign to my principle." He claimed that the problem had begun when he recited a racist monologue from his role in "That Championship Season," the writer believing the words to be his own. Mitchum, who claimed that he had only reluctantly agreed to the interview, then decided to "string... along" the writer with even more incendiary statements.
Mitchum expanded to television work with the 1983 miniseries "The Winds of War". The big-budget Herman Wouk story aired on ABC, starring Mitchum as naval officer "Pug" Henry and Victoria Tennant as Pamela Tudsbury, and examined the events leading up to America's involvement in World War II. He returned to the role in 1988's "War and Remembrance", which continued the story through the end of the war.
In 1984, Mitchum entered the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs, California for treatment of a drinking problem.
He played George Hazard's father-in-law in the 1985 miniseries "North and South", which also aired on ABC.
Mitchum starred opposite Wilford Brimley in the 1986 made-for-TV movie "Thompson's Run". A hardened con (Mitchum), being transferred from a federal penitentiary to a Texas institution to finish a life sentence as a habitual criminal, is freed at gunpoint by his niece (played by Kathleen York). The cop (Brimley) who was transferring him, and has been the con's lifelong friend and adversary for over 30 years, vows to catch the twosome.
In 1987, Mitchum was the guest-host on "Saturday Night Live", where he played private eye Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, "Death Be Not Deadly". The show ran a short comedy film he made (written and directed by his daughter, Trina) called "Out of Gas", a mock sequel to "Out of the Past". (Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.) He also was in Bill Murray's 1988 comedy film, "Scrooged".
In 1991, Mitchum was given a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures, in the same year he received the Telegatto award and in 1992 the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards.
Mitchum continued to act in films until the mid-1990s, such as in Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man", and he narrated the Western "Tombstone". He also appeared, in contrast to his role as the antagonist in the original, as a protagonist police detective in Martin Scorsese's remake of "Cape Fear", but the actor gradually slowed his workload. His last film appearance was a small but pivotal role in the television biographical film, "James Dean: Race with Destiny", playing "Giant" director George Stevens. His last starring role was in the 1995 Norwegian movie "Pakten".
Death.
A lifelong heavy smoker, Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. He was five weeks shy of his 80th birthday. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea, though there is a plot marker in the Odd Fellows Cemetery in Delaware. He was survived by his wife of 57 years, Dorothy Mitchum (May 2, 1919 – April 12, 2014, Santa Barbara, California, aged 94); his sons, actors James Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum; and his daughter, writer Petrine Day Mitchum. His grandchildren, Bentley Mitchum and Carrie Mitchum, are actors, as was his younger brother, John, who died in 2001. Another grandson, Kian, is a successful model.
Legacy.
Mitchum is regarded by some critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Roger Ebert called him "the soul of ." Mitchum, however, was self-effacing; in an interview with Barry Norman for the BBC about his contribution to cinema, Mitchum stopped Norman in mid flow and in his typical nonchalant style, said, "Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. That's it." He had also succeeded in annoying some of his fellow actors by voicing his puzzlement at those who viewed the profession as challenging and hard work. He is quoted as having said in the Barry Norman interview that acting was actually very simple and that his job was to "show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks, and go home". Mitchum had a habit of marking most of his appearances in the script with the letters "n.a.r.", which meant "no action required", which critic Dirk Baecker has construed as Mitchum's way of reminding himself to experience the world of the story without acting upon it.
AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars lists Mitchum as the 23rd-greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema. AFI also recognized his performance as the menacing rapist Max Cady and Reverend Harry Powell as the 28th and 29th greatest screen villains, respectively, of all time as part of AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains. He provided the voice of the famous American Beef Council commercials that touted "Beef ... it's what's for dinner", from 1992 until his death.
A "Mitchum's Steakhouse" is in Trappe, Maryland, where Mitchum and his family lived from 1959 to 1965.


Cecil Aylmer Cameron

Major Cecil Aylmer Cameron (17 September 1883–19 August 1924) was a British Army officer and spymaster and also a central figure of a notable fraud trial of 1911.
The son of Colonel Aylmer Cameron VC, he was educated at Eastman's Royal Naval Academy, Bath College, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1901. On 3 June 1909, he married Ruby Mary Shawe at St George's, Hanover Sq.
In 1911 he and his wife were convicted of fraud in Edinburgh and sentenced to three years' imprisonment for attempting to defraud Lloyd's by claiming £6,500 for the theft of Mrs Cameron's pearl necklace, which had not actually been stolen. He refused to give evidence in his defence and served the full sentence. Following his release, a petition for a pardon was signed by, among others, five dukes, twenty privy councillors, and 126 generals. During her imprisonment, his wife confessed that she alone was the guilty party and Cameron had only been protecting her. He received a full pardon and was restored to his rank of Lieutenant.
He served as a staff officer in France during the First World War, during which time he was mentioned in dispatches four times and awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Under the codename EVELYN he was responsible for running spies in German-occupied France and Belgium from stations at Folkestone in England, Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and Montreuil in France.
In 1918 he was transferred to the War Office in London, but as a fluent Russian-speaker was soon afterwards appointed Chief Intelligence Officer with the British Military Mission to Siberia during the Russian Civil War, for which he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Siberian War Honours of January 1920. In 1920 he returned to the War Office as a General Staff Officer in the Military Operations Directorate and also served in Ireland.
Cameron, aged 40, was found shot dead at Hillsborough Barracks in Sheffield in 1924.


Agreement Between Great Britain and Norway Relating to the Suppression of the Capitulations in Egypt

An agreement concluded between the British and Norwegian governments in Christiania (now Oslo) on April 22, 1921, in order to regulate legal relations between Norwegian citizens and the court system in Egypt. Ratifications were not exchanged for this agreement, since the issue was not mentioned in it, and the agreement went into effect. It was registered in the "League of Nations Treaty Series" on May 28, 1921.
Background.
The Capitulations system has been introduced into the legal system of the Ottoman empire and some other Middle Eastern countries as a result of western pressure. This system provided that in case a foreign citizen was charged with a crime, he or she shall not be tried by the local legal system, but be tried by a special court to consist of foreign judges, in accordance with his country laws.
The Capitulations system also prevailed in Egypt, which was under actual British rule from 1882 onward. Following the First World War, pressure was mounting on the British authorities in Egypt to grant greater freedom of action to the Egyptian government in matters of control over its own legal system. As a result, the British government agreed to modify some legal arrangements.
Terms of the agreement.
In article 1, the Norwegian government renounced all privileges to its citizens in Egypt in exchange for their protection under the British system. Article 2 stipulated for the abolition of Norwegian consular courts throughout Egypt. Article 3 stipulated that Norwegian citizens in Egypt shall enjoy the same privileges as British citizens. Article 4 stipulated that Norwegian consular agents shall retain their diplomatic privileges as before. Article 5 determined which Anglo-Norwegian treaties shall remain valid under the new arrangements.


Hirota v. MacArthur

Hirota v. MacArthur, 338 U.S. 197 (1948), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which held that “the courts of the United States have no power or authority to review, to affirm, set aside or annul the judgments and sentences imposed on these petitioners [by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East] and for this reason the motions for leave to file petitions for writs of habeas corpus are denied”.
The appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was made following the death sentence against Kōki Hirota and six other Japanese leaders tried for war crimes.
Legacy.
In March 2008, the U.S. government cited "Hirota v. MacArthur" as "directly applicable" in "Munaf v. Geren", 553 U.S. 674 (2008), in which it argued before the Supreme Court that U.S. federal courts lacked jurisdiction over two U.S. citizens being held by the military in Iraq and thus could not review their petitions for habeas corpus.


Otto Brenner

Otto Brenner (8 November 1907 - 15 April 1972) was a German trades unionist and politician. Between 1956 and 1972 he was the leader of the powerful IG Metall "(Industrial Union of Metalworkers)".
In a tribute published in 1967 to celebrate Brenner's sixtieth birthday the politician-commentator wrote that "Otto Brenner ... embodies more than any other German trades union leader that generation - a link between the older generation of the Weimar years [before 1933] and the younger generation that grew to maturity after 1945 - which rescued the best traditions of the German labour movement to the present day, bridging the intervening abyss of the Fascist rule".
The for the promotion of scientific research and knowledge is named after him, as is the annually awarded .
Life.
Provenance and early years.
Otto Brenner was born and grew up in Hanover, the third of his parents' four children. His mother was a "washerwoman". With the outbreak of war his father was conscripted for military service and life became harder: Otto was just seven. Hanover was (and remains) home to several large engineering/manufacturing businesses: Brenner eventually trained successfully for work as an industrial electrician. However, the family was not wealthy, and the immediate postwar period was one of acute economic hardship. When he first left school the family could not afford for him to embark on any sort of period of training. Instead he went to work first as a grocery store assistant and then for a small business that manufactured boilers. Here he was engaged in physically heavy work as a rivet-warmer and rivet-presser. He worked next to an extremely hot industrial furnace which produced high levels of carbon monoxide. By the time he reached the age of fifteen he had contracted a severe lung disease which would leave him vulnerable to lung disorders for the rest of his life.
Politics and trades unionism.
He joined the in 1920 and the Metal Workers' Union in 1922. Driven by a conviction that alcohol and tobacco were contributing to the catastrophic material condition and what he perceived as the political lethargy of working people, he campaigned energetically against their misuse, and in 1926 founded a local branch of the , taking on the chairmanship himself. He would remain a life-long non-smoker and vegetarian. He consumed alcohol only very sparingly. Meanwhile, it was at the social events organised by the that he met Martha Werner who would subsequently become his wife.
It was in 1925, after a period of illness, that he took unskilled work in the electrical components section of the local Hanomag railway locomotive and road vehicle plant. Taking advantage of adult education opportunities and evening training sessions, he was soon able to qualify as a skilled assembly worker. As a young man he became a sports and fitness enthusiast. He also demonstrated a commitment to political education, leading the Marxist study circle of the Hanover and developing his own (not always uncritical) philosophy of socialism. At around the same time that he launched the local DAAB branch, by now aged 21, he also joined the Social Democratic Party ("Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands" / SPD).
Between 1 November and 3 December 1928 he participated in the so-called which involved, according to at least one source, the largest industrial lock-out in the industrial north-west of Germany during the entire Weimar period. In the end the strikers succeeded in pushing through significant wage increases. Brenner drew valuable lessons about both the responsibilities and the sheer power of trades unions from the experience. However, the Wall Street Crash ten months later ushered in a period of sustained economic downturn across Europe. Unemployment in Germany rose to six million: those affected suffered real hardship. In 1931 Otto Brenner became one of them. Brenner had long held a strong belief in the power of self-education, however, and over the several years of unemployment that ensued he was able to devote more time to reading political books.
As later as 1932 the SPD held the largest number of seats in the Reichstag ("national parliament"), and even at the July 1932 election they still comfortably out-polled the Communists. Nevertheless, the rise of the extremists and of other right wing parties meant the SPD were no longer part of the government coalition after 1930. It was therefore from a position of relative political weakness that in 1931 the party supported the building of a new generation of war tanks. Citing a "credibility deficit", Brenner resigned angrily from the party. According to some reports he was expelled from it. Either way, he now joined the breakaway Socialist Workers' Party (" Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands" / SAPD). By the start of 1932 the local SAPD for Braunschweig-Hanover had a membership of around 200, and they elected Brenner their branch chairman. The defining purpose of the SAPD was to promote a coming together between the SPD and the Communists (KPD) in order to protect the country from a take-over by right-wing populists. Brenner decried what he saw as the "capitulation policy" ("Kapitulationspolitik") of the SPD leadership and their trades union allies. Later he would make it clear that he believed that the SPD must accept a share of the responsibility for the collapse of Germany's first republic. He called for a "united proletarian front" of the KPD, SPD and SAPD. His urgent arguments, and those of fellow SAPD activists, failed to find significant resonance within the SPD and the KPD, however.
In the light of developments in the Federal Republic of Germany after the Nazi nightmare ended in 1945, it is nevertheless important to emphasize that through the 1930s Brenner never stopped supporting the economic positions of the SPD, especially with regard to economic democracy ("Wirtschaftsdemokratie") as propounded by two particularly influential economists, Peretz Naftali and Rudolf Hilferding. For them, and for Otto Brenner, economic democracy offered the route towards a socialist democratic structure by means of a gradual and peaceful transition. The 1929 market crash and the economic depression that followed, along with the subsequent paralysis of the Reichstag that was ended only by the National Socialist take-over in January 1933, all combined to strengthen Brenner's conviction that, in the context of the relationship between economics and the world of politics, the underlying principal for trades unions must always be that democracy is a prerequisite for trades union activities, and economic actions must be subject to democratic control.
National Socialism and war.
Regime change was followed by a rapid transition to one-party dictatorship during the first part of 1933. The SAPD, like most other political parties, became illegal. Otto Brenner nevertheless believed in the need to use the party as an instrument of resistance to tyranny, and despite the ban continued to work on party recruitment and organisation. There are references to his having led and/or been part of the "SAPD Resistance Group" in Hanover with his brother and sister-in-law Kurt and Käte Brenner. He visited a number of cities in order to create and build contacts with local SAPD parties across the country.
During the summer of 1933 he was also involved with the , a resistance group built up since 1930 by the Hanover communist Eduard Wald, apparently in anticipation of the National Socialist take-over. The extent and nature of Brenner's involvement in the group is hard to determine, however, and it probably lasted for no more than a few months.
An important personal development was Brenner's marriage to his long-time friend Martha Werner on 3 August 1933.
In the immediate aftermath of the Reichstag fire the authorities concentrated their harassment/persecution on political activists identified as communists. Many were arrested and others fled abroad. On 30 August 1930, however, after he returned from one of his trips, Otto Brenner was arrested and taken into investigatory custody. During the eighteen months of uncertainty that followed he was permitted to remain in touch with his wife by letter. The charge, when it came on 9 May 1935, was the usual one under these circumstances: "Preparing to commit high treason" ("Vorbereitung zum Hochverrat"). The verdict was largely a foregone conclusion, but the sentence, delivered by the on 25 June 1935, was relatively mild. He was sentenced to a two-year jail term. This had largely been spent in pre-trial detention, and a few months later he was able to return to his wife in . He remained under police surveillance till the end of the 1939-45 war, however.
Following release he was permitted to work as an electrician in and around Hanover, though during the next ten years the risk of re-arrest never went away. He was deemed "wehrunwürdig" ("unfit for military service") and therefore, despite the return of war in September 1939, he avoided conscription. He was, however, sent to work in Frankfurt on civil engineering projects and as a courier for the Frankfurter Zeitung.
A couple of years after the war started, on 1 October 1941, Heike Brenner, the Brenners' only child, was born.
During the final part of the war Brenner was back in Hanover, able to experience the destructive British and American bombing which peaked in the Autumn/Fall of 1943; but the bombs continued to drop till April 1945. Having lived through the German disaster between 1933 and 1945, Otto Brenner drew one conclusion in particular to which he would remain true for the rest of his life: "Another 1933 must never be allowed to happen."
Aftermath of war.
Hanover was liberated by the US 84th Infantry Division on 10 April 1945. Otto Brenner and his family had survived. Filled with the hope that it might at last be possible to build a new life Brenner committed himself unreservedly to rebuilding the city. True to his longstanding conviction that the war represented a crisis-management response to issues involving capitalist means of production, he concluded that under a capitalist system there could never be true peace. This meant that the post-war order must deliver a non-exploitative, non-capitalist socialist society. After various exploratory political contacts, he decided to rejoin the Social Democrats. Although the important decision would have been his alone, one factor in it will have been discussion with Kurt Schumacher who had settled in Hanover following his liberation from the Neuengamme concentration camp. Schumacher also persuaded Brenner to become active in local and "national" politics in (and possibly beyond) what was administered between 1945 and 1949 as the .
Rebuilding trades unionism.
Early on Brenner decided to devote himself to recreating the trades unions, which had been destroyed under the Hitler government. In May 1945 he was a co-founder of the General Trades Union in the territory which by the end of 1946 had been relaunched as the state of Lower Saxony ("Allgemeinen Gewerkschaft Niedersachsen"). In 1947 he became chairman of the union's Metals Division ("Wirtschaftsgruppe Metall"), and thereby a paid trades union official. The structure of the General Trades Union reflected a compromise for the creation of a single unified trades union, free from political and religious, but also free of professional/vocational distinctions. Brenner however, like most trades unionists, advocated a structure involving individual industry-sector based trades unions organised under the aegis of a single trades union confederation: that is the structure that was subsequently adopted and which operates to this day.
The first industrial strike in postwar Germany took place in December 1946 at the Hanover plant of . It lasted 23 days. Brenner was the most prominent of the strike leaders, and his name appeared in news reports far beyond the Hanover city limits. The dispute, taking place when Germany was still under the "dictatorship of military occupation", was in support of "the socialisation of production and economic democracy". Brenner demanded "full co-decision rights for factory and office employees in the enterprise and in the economy". After a hard-fought struggle Brenner succeeded in concluding a benchmark agreement, which gave the works council a comprehensive package of co-determination rights covering recruitment, remuneration, production planning and working methods. In most cases other businesses in the area, when threatened with strike action, chose to head off the threat by adopting equivalent agreements in respect of their own factories. His reputation buoyed by these successes, in 1947 Brenner became district head of what would become IG Metall Hanover.
Trades unions as an engine for social reform.
For Otto Brenner political and social democracy were indivisible. Therefore, his principal twin-track objective for the postwar order was for economic democracy and co-determination. Even if the top priority for a negotiation was wage rates, his approach to trades union strategy was always a far wider one, grounded in a social philosophical vision. For him the unions had a comprehensive political, social and cultural mandate to fulfill: that involved achieving social change through democratic methods. That meant that for Brenner, capitalism, which after 1949 West Germans experienced as the "social market economy" ("soziale Marktwirtschaft"), also incorporated private ownnership of the means of production, giving rise to an unequal balance of power and control/ownership in the political sphere. From this clearly followed, for him, that the cream of sustained German postwar prosperity would fade relatively quickly. He therefore hoped for an overcoming of capitalism or, failing that, a far reaching taming of it. He summarized his underlying conviction in the following way: "The economy is not there simply to serve its own ends. It has to serve human needs and society's objectives". This also corresponded with the "Economic Policy Ground-rules" - generally referred to subsequently as the "Munich Ground-rules Programme" ("Münchener Grundsatzprogramm") - adopted by the German Trades Union Confederation ("Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund" / DGB) at its (re)founding congress in Munich in October 1949. A particular case in point is the programme's demand for "the transfer of key industries to common ownership, especially the mining, iron and steel industries, as well as the major chemicals firms, the energy sector, major transport providers and credit institutes".
During the early 1950s Otto Brenner was a member of the "Circle of Ten" ("Zehnerkreis"). This was an informal group of leading decision makers from IG Metall and the DGB. The fact that their regular meetings were "secret" seems, over time, to have intensified interest in the "Circle" among commentators and journalists. Other members included Brenner's former ISK friends and Werner Hansen. There were also three former communists: Eduard Wald, and . Behind the scenes the "Circle of Ten" exercised a powerful influence over key personnel selections and strategic decisions taken by the trades union movement. During the later 1950s the circle disintegrated as the members' socio-political ambitions diverged.
The West German election result of 1949 saw Konrad Adenauer's CDU-FDP coalition narrowly winning power, which was both a disappointment for SPD supporters (such as Otto Brenner) and a surprise for commentators and others from across the political spectrum. For Brenner and the trades union movement more widely the result represented a temporary deferral but not an abolition for their shared objective of a rapid and fundamental transformation of social relationships in the newly launched German Federal Republic (West Germany). Between 1952 and 1956 Otto Brenner served as vice-chairman of IG Metall, with as senior chairman. A second general election defeat for the SPD in 1953 was deeply disappointing. There would be no rapid end to "capitalism". Brenner refused to see that as a reason to compromise on the basic tenets of the "Munich Programme" agreed within the DGB in 1949. Indeed, he saw it as all the more reason to intensify pressure to address the most extreme social inequalities, even if in the short term the best - or only - route available to the unions in pursuit of that objective might be ratcheting up pressure in respect of wages negotiations. Eloquent testimony to this was commitment was the commitment he showed to the developing and implementing the DGB action plan which he himself co-initiated in May 1954. By means of significant wage and salary increases, the introduction of holiday pay and the gradual move to a 40-hour working week. IG Metall under his influence - and subsequently under his leadership - made a crucial contribution to improving the quality of life for both workers and employers, in a country where rapid economic recovery and growth were by this time opening the way to increased levels of general prosperity. Because of the extent to which Brenner set the course for IG Metall as vice-chairman, there was no major change of direction when he assumed sole leadership of the union in 1956. Brenner was feared as a tough negotiator, but capable of compromise, his demands were not simply for parity between negotiating partners, but also that employers and employees should receive a fair share of the wealth they jointly generated. The reduction in the working week was also, in part, an excursion into emancipatory social policy, giving as it did more free time both to workers and to employers. By 1965, step by step, the point had been reached where the union and the metals industry employers signed off on the core 40-hour week, running from Monday to Friday. But there was, again, a consciously social element in all this, which is expressed in the slogan "Dad belongs to me on Saturdays" ("Samstag gehört Vati mir!"). There was also an understanding that reducing the standard working week could be a way to secure more jobs, thereby doing something to counteract the steady march of "workplace rationalisation".
Politics.
Alongside the business of wage negotiations and promoting a social-political strategy, there was necessarily always a more directly party-political dimension to trades union leadership during Otto Brenner's time at the top. From beyond the no longer so porous internal border, reports seeping through from friends and relatives of the short-lived and brutally suppressed 1953 East German uprising did nothing to refute the growing belief that the postwar Communist Party of Germany should best be understood as a proxy for Soviet imperialist aspirations. Nevertheless, the Communist party's rebranded sister party east of the "iron Curtain" had become the ruling party in a new kind of one-party dictatorship. Despite the fact that in West Germany the Communist Party never came close to receiving the levels of electoral support it had enjoyed before 1933, the power underlying Soviet-backed communism was a reality in West Germany from 1945 till long after Brenner left the stage. In the inter-union conflicts that were a feature of the West German industrial scene during the 1950s he was uncompromising in his hostility to communist activism, which he saw as a serious threat to trades union solidarity. Within IG Metall Brenner rigorously excluded from positions of power any trades unionists who refused to distance themselves from the goals of the KPD and SED. Just as resolutely - if a little less brutally - he rejected aspirations to positions of power of any "Christian-Socialist" unionists who, even while they complained that the DGB's close links to the Social Democratic Party undermined party-political neutraility, were themselves closely associated with the centre-right CDU and (Bavarian) CSU whose influence within the DGB they were happy (if without much success) to try and promote.
Under Brenner's leadership IG Metall saw itself explicitly as a "political trades union", with not just the right, but the duty to "take a position on political questions that affect the welfare of millions of working people", and not to restrict itself to the narrow fields of wages and social policy. Brenner claimed this duty of intervene most especially if he saw that the democratic principles of the Federal Republic were threatened, because he recognised that preserving the rule of law in as democratic state governed by laws was the indispensable precondition for the successful operation of trades unions. His own experiences led him to doubt the democratic substance of postwar West German democracy. The Spiegel affair in 1962 confirmed him in his assessment that "the democratic order, and above all those called upon to serve as its guardians, are still not immune from the temptations of authoritarian undemocratic operations". A few years later he unhesitatingly lined up the union alongside the "Extra parliamentary opposition" during the run-up to the contentious "Emergency Acts" constitutional amendments eventually imposed on the country in 1968 by the Allied Control Council. His distrust of a resurgent authoritarian militarism caused him to reject West German re-armament and, in particular to oppose nuclear rearmament or the stationing of nuclear forces in German soil. His opposition to the arms build-up was reinforced by his conviction that militarisation on the ground made it even harder to envisage any future peaceful reunification of the two Germanies on either side of the iron curtain. That was also why he opposed the Paris conventions ratified in 1955, which he saw as a move to integrate West Germany into the west. He contended that if the two German states were integrated into competing international power blocs, a rapid peaceful reunification would become unthinkable.
The real problem for Brenner and IG Metall was that during the postwar decades there was, in West Germany, no appetite for the politics of the left. At home the economic and socio-political fruits of the so-called Wirtschaftswunder ("economic miracle") years did little to engender political protest. Internationally the use of Soviet military muscle in 1956 to crush reform movements in Hungary and Poland, the Suez Crisis of the same year, the sealing off of the internal German border during the 1950s, culminating in with the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and the overall intensification of cold war tensions which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war combined to determine that during the 1950s and most of the 1960s insufficient West Germany voters were willing to vote against the centre-right CDU/CSU coalition under the reassuring leaderships of Adenauer, Erhard and Kiesinger.
A succession of disappointing results in national elections persuaded the SPD to take a fundamentally new direction in the later 1950s, transforming itself from a "socialist workers' party" to a "people's party". The new strategy was embodied in the Godesberg Program, ratified at a party convention on 15 November 1959. Overtly Marxist terms such as "class struggle", "socialisation of key industrial sectors" and "planned economy" were consigned to history. There was to be no more talk of a new socialist order. In its place, the party committed to further developments, improvements and refinements of existing economic and social structures. This "course correction" to the party programme went decisively beyond what might have been acceptable to Otto Brenner, who argued consistently for the retention of the earlier party objectives, the most pressing of which was, for him and his union comrades, "socialisation of key industrial sectors". He campaigned with characteristic energy against the changes, both in the discussions that took place between 1954 and 1958 with the "programme commission" drawing up what became the Godesberg Program and, especially, in parallel discussions for a new Godesberg-compatible Trades Union Confederation (DGB) programme. Within the DGB this set him at odds with the so-called modernisers, such as Georg Leber, the long-standing leader of the , who was advocating a departure from the "Munich programme" of 1949 and a new conception of trades unionism based on social partnership. For Brenner that was totally unacceptable. Specifically, if the need to obtain political power with a democratic parliamentary majority meant converting the SPD from a "class-party" to a "people's party", the result would be to blur the inherent conflict of interests between labour and capital, and involve transforming the two sides in a wages negotiation into "social partners". Brenner rejected such a model, as did his colleagues on the union executive. With equal vigour they rejected Leber's attempts to redefine the role of trades unions in the state and in society. Brenner also rejected repeated demands that trades unions must take a share in responsibility for the wider economy. He was challenged with the metaphor that the unions were in the same boat as other members of society. The destiny of the nation was a shared destiny for good and ill. Brenner would reply that everyone was indeed in the same boat and all could look forward to a shared destiny. But that was no reason to feign indifference as to the identity of the pilot, the composition of the ship's crew and the small matter of how decisions were made as to the direction of travel. It must be acknowledged that despite the vehemence with which he opposed the Godesberg changes and the differences of opinion involved, Brenner refused to infer any conflict of interest between the SPD and the trades unions. Between Social Democracy and the free trades union movement in West Germany there existed an "organic solidarity" firmly entrenched in shared underlying interests.
City council and regional parliament.
Between 1946 and 1953 Brenner served as an SPD City councillor ("Ratsherr") in Hannover. Between 6 May 1951 and his exclusion from it 15 February 1954 he was of the Landtag of Lower Saxony, representing the . During that period he served, between 14 June 1951 and 9 February 1953 as chairman of the assembly's Social Affairs committee.
Fundamental beliefs.
Brenner never compromised his conviction that the "strike weapon" was inalienable as a means to enforce workers' rights in any bourgeois democracy. The absence of any "right to strike" was one of his core criticisms of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany): a party and a government that denied workers the fundamental right to strike had no right to hold itself out as representing the interests of the workers, nor any right to solicit favours from the trades union movement in West Germany or to impart "good advices" ("gute Ratschläge") to them.
For almost ten years Brenner was among those opposing the "Emergency Acts" constitutional amendments (which eventually came into force, as the 17th amendment, in 1968). In his judgement, consciously or unconsciously, they were a means whereby the political class put West Germany's young democracy on the line. It mattered. When they passed the so-called "Basic Law" (provisional constitution) in 1949, the legislators had left out any comprehensive regulation in respect of a potential emergency situation concerning the reservation of rights to the allied occupying powers. In the event of a domestic emergency (such as a natural catastrophe) or an international emergency (such as a war) there were simply a set of "laws in the cupboard" ("Schubladengesetze") which, if implemented, would impose severe constraints on citizens' rights. It was only on 5 May 1955 that West Germany was declared to enjoy "the full authority of a sovereign state", following the Paris agreements the previous year: this opened up the possibility for "completion" of the constitutional settlement, and the point was one which West Germany's allies had been insistent. A succession of West German governments set to work to make good the earlier omission, but every draft proposal for incorporating provision of "emergency acts" in the constitution involved drastic curtailments of fundamental human rights. Brenner was able to bring a keen historical perspective to the matter, having himself lived through the curtailment of basic rights during the Hitler years. The National Socialist government had invoked "emergency" conditions to introduce "emergency legislation" which had put an end to democracy for twelve years, and it was hard to find anyone who would assert that the government of that time had used its enhanced powers to benefit the people. The "emergency acts" constitutional amendments threatened to the constitutional legality of trades unions. Taking the matter back to first principles, Brenner was convinced that the constitutional rules imposed in 1919 and again in 1949 had left the way open for a "legally sanctioned" reversal of history, taking the country back to a pre-democratic condition (which, many believed, was already happening in East Germany). West Germany remained a "capitalist class-based society": the role of the trades unions in defending the positions of working people was an important one. Just as he compared the proposed "emergency acts" with the infamous Article 48 of the Weimar constitution, he recalled the greatest general strike in German history, which the unions had organised in 1920 (as requested by "some" government ministers) to defend the young republic against the Kapp Putsch.
Otto Brenner always believed that there was a residual latent danger of Fascism in the German Federal Republic (West Germany), not because he feared a National Socialist revival in the state formed under Adenauer during the 1950s. The risk he saw was rather the progressive distortion of the democracy through a combination of mistakes by politicians, economic crises and socio-psychological insecurities. Within the DGB and the SPD only a minority of the memberships shared Brenner's views over this. Eventually, during the course of coalition negotiations in 1966, the SPD and the CDU agreed to a version of the "Emergency Acts" constitutional amendments which passed into law in 1968. Brenner respected the Bundestag decision, much to the disappointment of various younger union colleagues who had hoped that he would call a general strike over the issue. Brenner was adamant that as a democrat he had to respect a parliamentary majority decision even when he believed it to wrong. At the 9th IG Metall congress in 1968 he spelled out his position: "Calling a general strike against a decision by parliament, as some trades unionists had demanded, was quite impossible. It would have meant opposing the existing constitutional order, and in any case, there was no way that a call for a general strike would have been obeyed by a majority of the people". Expecting that Otto Brenner might call a general strike against a government in which his own party was a coalition partner would have involved expecting a long-standing champion of social-democracy to become a revolutionary. Brenner was no revolutionary and never wished to become one.
Otto Brenner died of Cardiovascular disease in April 1972, aged just 64. Werner Thönnessen, his former presschief, contributed an obituary to Der Spiegel: "achieving Civil democracy 'by democratising the economy became Brenner's greatest objective. He found his failure to achieve it a painful thing. Acutely aware of the inherent contradiction in which trades unions become enmeshed if they try to enforce improvements to the economic order from the bottom up, which nevertheless become necessary both to improve the condition of the workers and to extend the life expectancy of capitalism".


An Act to amend the Copyright Act (39th Canadian Parliament, 2nd Session)

An Act to amend the Copyright Act (Bill C-61) was a bill tabled in 2008 during the second session of the 39th Canadian Parliament by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. The bill died on the Order Paper when the 39th Parliament was dissolved prematurely and an election was called on September 7, 2008. The Conservative Party of Canada promised in its 2008 election platform to re-introduce a bill containing the content of C-61 if re-elected.
The bill was the successor to the previously proposed Bill C-60. Specifically, the Conservative government claimed that the bill was intended to meet Canada's WIPO treaty obligations. Bill C-61 attracted widespread criticism from critics who claimed that it did not strike a fair balance between the rights of copyright holders and consumers. There was also confusion between C-61 and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement which also had significant copyright implications for Canada.
Jim Prentice claimed that it would "expressly allow you to record TV shows for later viewing; copy legally purchased music onto other devices, such as MP3 players or cell phones; make back-up copies of legally purchased books, newspapers, videocassettes and photographs onto devices you own". However, the bill would have made it illegal to circumvent DRM technologies effectively rendering the rights granted useless for DRM protected digital media.
This bill was superseded by Bill C-32 introduced on June 2, 2010.
Content.
The proposed bill contained the following changes on what constituted copyright infringement and what did not for personal use.
Time shifting, limited format shifting, copying for personal use, and device transferring of media were permitted but with significant limitations. Copies of shows and videocassettes could be made but were not allowed to involve DVDs, shows with a "no recording flag" or any other format encumbered by "digital locks". Additionally, a transfer of media was allowed only once per device owned by the purchaser of the original copy. The bill also gave rightsholders the autonomy of imposing additional clauses on the consumer (e.g. Amazon's non-transferability clause, promotional use only, do not sell/transfer, etc.). Format shifting was required to comply with an additional twelve processes (pdf).
Hosts, such as ISPs, were to be absolved of legal responsibility in the event of their services being unintentionally used to provide access to copyrighted material. Methods of protecting subscriber privacy would have become legal under the proposed bill, however, the distribution of software to do so would have been illegal, effectively cancelling out the right.
The bill would have made circumventing all digital locks illegal, including locks on the Internet. It would have modified what libraries can do in providing digital copies, such that they would have been allowed to create digital copies for patrons, but the copies would have had to self-destruct or be destroyed within five days of creation.
Bill C-61 modified the copyrights of performers and their performances giving the performer the sole right to:
The Bill proposed a fine of $500 for music downloads. Since this was not made to apply in other cases, fines of $20,000 per instance defined in previous bills were understood to apply to new offences criminalized by Bill C-61. These included: circumventing digital locks or DRM regardless of reason/intent, uploading copyrighted material regardless of awareness or "making available" copyrighted material regardless of whether it was actually uploaded. In the case of commercial circumvention of DRM, Clause 32 of the Bill specified penalties of $1,000,000 and/or five years imprisonment on conviction on indictment, or $25,000 and/or six months imprisonment on summary conviction.
Confusion with Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
There was confusion between Bill C-61 and ACTA, evident by letters sent by Jim Prentice detailing that no border checks were to occur. The proposed border checks are part of ACTA, not Bill C-61.
Reaction.
A poll using the following question resulted in 45% of the population against, and 45% of the population in favor of the question.
By age, 58% of those aged 18–34 were opposed as compared with 37% of those 35-54 and only 27% of those older. The poll was criticized for not mentioning any of the anti DRM circumvention provisions and using an inaccurate definition of "hacked".
Support.
Proponents of the bill, including some copyright holders in the entertainment industry, called it a much needed "assurance that [investors are] protected." They also called it a "win-win" balance between consumers and copyright holders with some pushing further asking for format shifting to be made illegal.
The MPAA and RIAA supported the proposal, as they saw it as finally bringing in Canada to WIPO standards, having lobbied/pressured hard for stricter copyright rules.
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists was supportive. According to Brad Keenan, Director, ACTRA Performers' Rights Society and Sound Recording Division, "the Bill not only introduces the new concept of format shifting, it is also [revises] existing rules on time-shifting. ACTRA believes that consumers should have flexibility, however, artists must be compensated for uses of their work and we don't see this part of the equation in the government releases. We would be deeply concerned if the Bill allows people to copy artists' work onto media devices like iPods without compensation for creators; and, also if existing levies and royalties are affected by this Bill." Stephen Waddell, ACTRA's National Executive Director, says it has been "more than a decade since Canada signed on to the WIPO copyright treaties," and that, "implementing these treaties as this Bill does, will bring our laws into the 21st Century." However, among the ranks, there is dissent by some ACTRA members despite the group's public stance. Jason Chesworth, a member of ACTRA on "Broadcast This" wrote that he, "questioned the union's position," and that he, "wholeheartedly disagree[s] with ACTRA...in fact...believe[s] that the proposed changes will become a major detriment to artists trying to create content while protecting only those at the top."
Criticism.
Among opposition parties, Liberal MP Scott Brison, called the bill a "US-made law" that would establish a "police state." Members of the New Democratic Party including NDP Leader Jack Layton and NDP Member Charlie Angus were strongly opposed and promised to fight the bill. A substantial majority of Canadians (76%) were found to agree with the statement that the bill was drafted in the US.
As of September 29, 2008, , more than 92,000 people had joined the Facebook group "Fair Copyright for Canada", started by law professor Michael Geist, to protest Bill C-61. Geist's blog became one of the leading sites for educational resources on copyright reform, and tools for constituents to contact their local Members of Parliament. Michael Geist ran a series on 61 possible reforms to Bill C-61 that would make it more palatable. In addition, the magazine "ComputerWorld Canada" ran its own petition drive, asking the government to amend the bill because it discourages experts and other coders from conducting innovative research.
The Canadian Software Innovation Alliance, an association of open source developers questioned the bill, because of its potentially harmful effects on open source software modification. Spokesman Bob Young, Lulu Inc's CEO (and the former CEO of Red Hat) said: "We're crafting these laws without having anyone from the technology industry engaged in the process." He contended that the bill catered too closely to the content industry and not to engineers and software developers.
Consumer groups including Option consommateurs, Consumers Council of Canada, Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC), the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and Online Rights Canada voiced opposition on not being consulted in the creation of the bill.
The Appropriation Art Coalition condemned the Bill saying, "copyright is meant to nurture the rights of creators, not suppress and criminalize artistic practice. It is not the responsibility of any government to legislate art."
The Canadian Association of University Teachers opposed the bill as "making it more difficult for university and college teachers and students to have access to learning and research materials". It noted that material that can be copied now in paper format would not be legally copyable in electronic format when it is digitally encrypted. James Turk, the executive director said, "This could be the effective end of fair-dealing, the right to copy and use works for purposes such as research and private study."
Some opponents, like the CIRPA and the CRIA said the bill should have focused more on commercial piracy instead, while others called into the question of the enforceability of the bill. Other copyright holders and artists, like the CMCC, spoke out against the bill in its entirety.
Others stated that the new bill would make criminals out of ordinary people who are, for example, using a multi-regional DVD player (popular for immigrants and tourists), transferring legitimate DVD media to iPods, or using various other devices. Backing up a computer that contains copyrighted material was also suspected be illegal under Bill C-61.
There was also criticism about the anti-circumvention aspect for making "technology trump whatever rights consumers or competitors might have otherwise had", in that people only have whatever rights the rights holders give them in superseding "agreements", for example, EULA, digital contracts shown when users install, download, etc.) In addition, there was criticism about the fact that purchasing songs as a gift and transferring the song onto a device owned by the gift's recipient under the new bill would have been illegal.
Editorial reviews of the bill were mostly negative or neutral. In a listing of editorials compiled by Michael Geist, there were no on-topic editorials expressing positive support for C-61. In addition, the Canadian Newspaper Association was critical of the bill, for having negative impacts on news gathering.
In late July 2008, Michael Geist criticized the bill on environmental grounds. Specific criticisms included:
The Canadian Library Association released an advocacy kit to oppose the new bill, citing concerns that the bill does not protect the public interest.


Kreisau Circle

The Kreisau Circle (German: "Kreisauer Kreis", ) (1940–1944) was a group of about twenty-five German dissidents led by Helmuth James von Moltke, who met at his estate in the rural town of Kreisau, Silesia. The circle was composed of men and a few women from a variety of backgrounds, including those of noble descent, devout Protestants and Catholics, professionals, socialists and conservatives. Despite their differences, the members of the Kreisau Circle found common interest in their opposition to Hitler's Nazi regime on both moral and religious grounds. At their meetings, the circle discussed how they would reorganize the German government after the end of the Third Reich.
Although the circle did not promote violent overthrow of the regime, their planning was considered by the Nazis to be treasonous as it rested on the assumption that Germany would lose the war. The group began to falter after Helmuth von Moltke was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1944 and eventually came to an end when most of its members were arrested following Claus von Stauffenberg's attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944.
Intellectual background.
The members of the Kreisau Circle were heavily influenced by popular movements in Germany that followed World War I, most notably the German Youth Movement and German religious socialism. Although motivated by differing ideologies (the German Youth Movement in a return to nature and religious socialism in a return to Christian values), each faction inspired resistance to the Nazi regime by encouraging their followers to reconsider traditionally rigid political, social, and religious distinctions and engage in discourse with those who disagreed with them. These fundamental similarities created an environment that allowed for persons of a variety of backgrounds to meet and participate in intellectual resistance to the Third Reich.
German Youth Movement.
The German Youth Movement was characterized by the creation of various youth organizations that emphasized a return to nature since 1896. For example, the "Wandervogel", a youth movement that arose in the early 20th century, encouraged youth to reject their middle-class upbringings that overemphasized materialism. The movement stressed the importance of the individual and emboldened them to pursue their interests rather than follow traditional class expectations.
Many members of the German youth groups were sent to war in 1914. Following great losses during the war, young men found themselves fascinated with Volkish ideology, the idea of reunification of the German people that transcended class distinctions. The preoccupation with the Volk made for an easy transition for some into Nazi ideology, but for others, such as Helmuth von Moltke, their roots in a youth movement that questioned the status quo led them to resist a regime that undermined the freedom which they sought through their youth organizations.
Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaften (Löwenberger Working Groups).
An extension of the German Youth Movement, the Löwenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaften was an organization of college professors, youth movement leaders, unemployed workers, students, and farmers who came together to work in work camps and discuss social and political issues and solve the problems Silesia faced (i.e. high unemployment) in the aftermath of WWI. Between the days of 14 March and 1 April 1928, approximately one-hundred people from a variety of backgrounds came together for the first Silesian work camp. In the mornings, participants would partake in physical labour. This was followed by lecture courses, discussion groups, and leisure time. Two additional camps followed in 1929 and 1930. One participant described his time at the camps, "Representatives of the three social groups in the nation were able to achieve a common language that had proved beyond the grasp of the older generation. A group such as this, which formed a cross-section of the community, was capable of rising above class and party interests". The camp allowed participants to cooperate with people of different upbringings and discuss how they could work together for the common good of their community. This lesson that people of differing social classes and political views could collaborate successfully would greatly influence Helmuth James von Moltke in his construction of the Kreisau Circle, who himself was an important contributor to the Löwenberger movement.
Religious Socialism in Germany.
Religious Socialism in 20th century Germany also influenced the members of the Kreisau Circle. This movement is most notably characterized by the work of Paul Tillich, who sought to fashion socialism into an ideology that was complementary with Christian faith. He looked to create “socialist political forms that were rooted in a religious substance”. Tillich called this socialism “theonomous”. Tillich emphasized the importance of social justice which he defined as "the demand for a society in which it is possible for every individual and for every group to live meaningfully and purposefully, a demand for a meaningful society". Similarly to the youth movements, religious socialism challenged conventional political divisions. The movement asked its followers not to focus on the differences between Christianity and socialism but rather see how the two could work together to create a better society. Harald Poelchau, a member of the Kreisau Circle, was a close follower of Tillich, and other members such as Horst von Einsiedel, Carl Dietrich von Trotha, Adolf Reichwein, and Adam von Trott zu Solz were also affiliated with religious socialism.
Origins of the Circle.
The Kreisau Circle was officially formed in 1940 with the merging of the intellectual circles of Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenberg. Moltke and Yorck were descendants of prominent Prussian nobility and therefore were initially favored by Hitler's regime. Helmuth von Moltke, for example, descended from Field Marshal von Moltke, who was a prominent military commander in the Bismarck era. The Nazis honored his family title by giving him a position in their High Command. Despite this special treatment, both men felt morally obliged to resist Hitler. In 1938, both men began to form separate social circles in which they discussed the problems of the Reich and their hopes for Germany's future. Moltke's circle, which included Einsiedel, was largely preoccupied with the sociological and economic problems that Germany would face after the Reich fell. Yorck's circle, which began to meet frequently at his home, focused mostly on the administrative questions of how the government should run after Hitler's regime had ended. In January 1940, Moltke was connected to Yorck through a mutual friend. They both agreed that the Third Reich's defeat was inevitable and that a new government would have to be prepared to take over in this event. The two valued their common desire to oppose the regime through intellectual means despite differences in political views. The circle was formed in November 1940, against the backdrop of Hitler's successes in France.
Members.
The membership of the Kreisau Circle was varied, with affiliates ranging from conservatives to socialists, religious and non-religious, and all of the above. Although Freya von Moltke, Helmuth von Moltke, Peter von Yorck and Marion von Yorck were at the center of the circle, the group was more of a network of friends than a formal organization. Freya von Moltke said her husband and Yorck searched for, “people who objected, who were opposed to National Socialism and were trying to envisage a better Germany beyond National Socialism, which at the time seemed completely impossible”. Their differences were valued as Moltke and Yorck believed that debate would assist them to accomplish their common goal for a better Germany following “X-day”, or the day after the end of the Reich.
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke.
The Kreisau Circle's most notable member was Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who was considered to be the leader of the organization. Moltke was born on 11 March 1907 in Kreisau, Silesia to one of Prussia's best known military families. The Moltke household encouraged discussion and debate. For instance, although both of Moltke's parents were Christian Scientists, he became an Evangelical Christian at the age of 14. He attended university from 1925 to 1929 and studied law and political science. During this time, he became an important leader of the Lowenberger Arbeitsgemeinschaften. He also found himself drawn to the Schwarzwald Circle in 1929, which was an intellectual discussion group led by Eugenie Schwarzwald, where he met his future wife, Freya Deichmann. Later that year, Helmuth was forced to return home from school to Kreisau to manage his family's estate. He married Freya on 18 October 1931. In 1932, the Kreisau Estate had been stabilized, allowing Helmuth to resume his career in law in Berlin. He eventually opened his own private firm along with his colleague Karl von Lewinski to practice international law. In this occupation, Moltke assisted Jewish émigrés to escape the Nazi regime despite the obvious threat that this presented to his own safety.
From 1935 to 1938, he spent time in England in hopes of joining the British bar. Although these plans were halted by the declaration of war in September 1939, it was during this time that Moltke gained many of his connections outside of Germany. He returned to Berlin and was drafted into the "Abwehr", where he attempted to ensure adherence to international law. During this time, Moltke kept in contact with his friends from the Silesian work camps, such as Horst von Einsendel. They largely discussed sociological and economic consequences of the Third Reich. In January 1940, Moltke met Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg. By November 1940, the circles of Moltke and Yorck had merged to create the Kreisau Circle.
Peter Graf Yorck von Wartenburg.
Peter Graf von Wartenburg was born on 13 November 1904 to a well-known family of Prussian nobles. The family emphasized the importance of scholarship and the arts and encouraged opposition to authority. Peter's father, Heinrich, called himself "His Majesty's most loyal opposition". Yorck studied law in Bonn and Breslau and during this time became critical of the failing republic. Following Kristallnacht in 1938 and a trip to Prague that made him realize the Nazis' imperialist intentions, Yorck became increasingly troubled with Hitler's regime and began to bring groups of dissenters to his home to discuss what was to be done after the fall of the Third Reich. Members of these initial groups would later become a part of the Kreisau Circle.
Women in the Kreisau Circle.
The participation of women in the Kreisau Circle discussion was often limited to the presence of their husbands. Freya von Moltke, a founding participant, was cut off from the circle's correspondence following her husband Helmuth von Moltke's arrest. There are also no known female members who were not married to a male member. However, despite these limitations, women played an integral role in the Kreisau Circle. Margrit von Trotha, for example, utilized her skills as an economist to partake in the plans for Germany's future economy. In addition, in Marion Yorck von Wartenburg's memoirs, she refers to the circle as "our group", indicating that she was a part of the circle's membership and discourse. A known list of female members of the circle includes: Freya von Moltke (lawyer), Marion Yorck von Wartenburg (lawyer), Margrit von Trotha (economist), Rosemarie Reichwein (physician/therapist), and Irene Yorck von Wartenburg.
Other Protestant members.
Additional Protestant members of the circle included Horst von Einsiedel, Carl Dietrich von Trotha, Adolf Reichwein, Otto von der Gablentz, Theodor Steltzer, Adam von Trott, Hans-Bernd von Haeften, Harald Poelchau, and Eugen Gerstenmaier.
Catholic members.
Catholic members included Hans Peters, Hans Lukaschek, Paulus van Husen, Augustin Rösch, Lothar Konig, and Alfred Delp.
Socialist members.
Socialists members included Carlo Mierendorff, Theo Hauback, and Julius Leber.
Proposals for the future.
The activities of the Kreisau Circle formed around the idea that the fall of the Third Reich was in the near future. The day after this day when the new government would need to take over was referred to as "Day X". This day would mark the beginning of a new Germany and the end of an historical era. Therefore, based on this assumption, the job of the Kreisau Circle was to prepare for this day. On 24 April 1941, the Kreisau Circle created a memorandum titled, "Starting-point, Objectives and Tasks". In this text, the Circle expresses their belief that with the end of the Third Reich would also come the end of nationalism, racism, and party politics.
Although a general consensus existed regarding the imminent fall of the Third Reich, the question of what this reformed Germany would look like remained up for debate. According to Freya von Moltke, some of the most pressing questions that the group sought to answer were, "How can I make democrats out of Germans who had not been able, really, to run a democracy properly?" and "How to build a new economy and whether it should be free or not free".
In 1943, Moltke began to prepare formal drafts for a new German constitution to answer these questions. In a constitutional draft made on 9 August 1943, Moltke outlined a new Reich structure which would be self-governing and rest upon the, “natural divisions of the nation: family, municipality, and land”. All eligible voters, which Moltke defined as all persons over the age of 21 or have served in the military, would elect municipal and county representative assemblies. These county assemblies would then elect the land legislature, which would have the responsibility of electing those in the Reichstag. In the realm of culture and education, Moltke emphasized the importance of a renewed relationship with the German Evangelical Church and the German Catholic Church. Moltke and other members in the circle wanted a restoration of Christian values that they felt had been lost and led to Hitler's regime. With the return of Christian values, the group believed that greater acceptance and cooperation between all peoples would occur and lead to the political unification of the European continent. However, this is not to be mistaken for intolerance of other religions, as Moltke emphasizes that in this new government, "The freedom of [religious] faith and conscience is guaranteed". Moltke hoped this government would create a unified Germany where freedom and personal responsibility would be complementary to order and leadership.
End of the Kreisau Circle.
Arrests in January 1944.
In the autumn of 1943, Helmuth von Moltke learned from an informant that a Gestapo spy had discovered an anti-Nazi salon in Berlin and that there would be a round-up of all participants. Moltke warned his friend who had been present at the salon, Otto Kiep, of the round-ups. Kiep, former German Consul General in New York and member of the counterintelligence department under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, failed to escape and was arrested in January 1944. The Gestapo later discovered that von Moltke had warned him of the arrests, and Helmuth himself was then arrested on 19 January 1944. This left the Kreisau Circle without one of its integral members. Freya von Moltke was also ousted from the group following Helmuth's arrest as the members were worried she would be interrogated. During this time, Yorck struggled to maintain cohesion of the group. However, this was not the death knell of the circle as the Gestapo was not yet aware of the resistance. Prior to the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler, Helmuth von Moltke was treated fairly in prison and allowed to correspond with his wife Freya.
20 July 1944 attempt and executions.
On 20 July 1944 a group of dissidents attempted to assassinate Hitler with a bomb and failed. Claus von Stauffenberg, cousin of Peter Yorck, was among the leading figures in this attempt to create "Day-X". However, the bombing only injured Hitler and led to a series of apprehensions. Peter Yorck was arrested and executed on 8 August 1944 for his involvement. Although Moltke himself was not involved, his close association with Yorck proved fatal as he was also executed on 23 January 1945. These arrests and executions signaled the formal end of the activities of the Kreisau Circle.
Legacy.
When "X-day" finally came in May 1945, none of the Kreisau Circle's proposals for Germany's future were implemented. Although their plans never came to fruition, the legacy of resistance established by the Kreisau Circle still remains important. The members of Kreisau came together, despite their individual differences, to fashion a Germany which was democratic, anti-racist, and internationalist. Those at the Kreisau Circle committed treason and sacrificed their lives for their belief of a fairer society where opposition was heard, and that if heard together these voices could fashion a better world. They were idealists in a totalitarian regime which threatened to extinguish any trace of resistance.
Many of the surviving members of the circle continued to remain active after the war. For example, Marion Yorck received a judgeship in Berlin and Rosemarie Reichwein began her own physical therapy clinic. In addition, Freya von Moltke transformed the Kreisau estate into the Krzyzowa Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe on 10 July 1990. This foundation bases its work on the principles of the Kreisau Circle, and continues to look towards developing understanding between persons from different social, political, and cultural backgrounds.


Zoya Fyodorova

Zoya Alekseyevna Fyodorova (; 11 December 1981) was a Russian film star who had an affair with American Navy captain Jackson Tate in 1945 and bore a child, Victoria Fyodorova in January 1946. Having rejected the advances of NKVD police head Lavrentiy Beria, the affair was exposed resulting, initially, in a death sentence later reprieved to work camp imprisonment in Siberia; she was released after eight years. She was murdered in her Moscow apartment in 1981.
Career.
Fyodorova was a well-known Russian film star starting in the 1930s, and some of the movies she appeared in were also seen in the United States, including "Girl Friends" in 1936. During her imprisonment she continued to perform in the Gulag theatres.
The year before Fyodorova was murdered, she appeared in "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears", which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.
Reunion.
University of Connecticut professor Irene Kirk learned of Victoria's story in 1959 and spent years trying to find Tate in the United States. Tate was unaware of having a daughter and of his former lover's arrest and imprisonment. When Kirk found Tate in 1973, she carried correspondence between the two back and forth to Moscow. In 1974, Tate began a campaign to convince the Soviet government to allow his daughter to travel to see him in the United States. Victoria was granted permission and arrived in the United States in March 1975 on a three-month travel visa, and spent several weeks in seclusion in Florida with Tate.
Fyodorova traveled to the United States to be with her daughter, Victoria, when her grandson, Christopher, was born in 1976. Victoria had married an American and stayed in the United States when she was reunited with her father in 1975. On that trip, Zoya Fyodorova was also reunited with her wartime lover, Jackson Tate.
In early 1981, Fyodorova was denied an exit visa by the Soviet government to leave the country and visit her daughter. The reason they gave was that her daughter had "behaved badly", referring to her book describing her parents' affair, "The Admiral's Daughter", published in 1979.
Later life and death.
Fyodorova lived in the Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow. She died from a gunshot through her eye. No one was seen entering or exiting the apartment and the case remains unsolved. Her death was first reported in the American press as being an apparent heart attack.


Coffin affair

The Coffin affair was an event in Canadian history in which a man named Wilbert Coffin was hanged for the murder of three men. The affair started in June 1953 in Gaspésie when three men from Pennsylvania were reported missing. Their bodies were found a month later deep in the woods sixty kilometres from the nearest town.
Trial and execution.
The main suspect in the case was Wilbert Coffin, who was found to have many items belonging to the men in his possession. Coffin was sent to trial in July 1954 and though the evidence against him was mostly circumstantial, he was convicted with one count of murder (as the penal code prohibited multiple convictions of murder in the same trial). On August 5 he was sentenced to hang.
An appeal to the Quebec Court of Queen's Bench was dismissed. Coffin's application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was turned down but the federal Cabinet submitted a reference question to that Court asking: "If the application made by Wilbert Coffin for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada had been granted on any of the grounds alleged on the said application, what disposition of the appeal would now be made by the court?"
The federal government's decision to take the question to the Supreme Court of Canada caused tension with the government of the province of Quebec. The Supreme Court answered that it would have upheld the conviction of Coffin: "Reference re Regina v. Coffin", [1956] S.C.R. 191.
Coffin was hanged at Montreal's Bordeaux Prison on February 10, 1956 at 12:01 AM.
But the story did not end with Coffin's death. Jacques Hébert, a reporter during the trial and later a senator, published two books on the matter: (1958) and "J'accuse les assassins de Coffin" (1963). Hébert's 1963 book caused such controversy that the provincial government established a Commission of Inquiry into the case. Headed by judge Roger Brossard with Jules Deschênes as Counsel to the Commission, over 200 witnesses were interviewed. The commission found that Coffin did receive a fair trial.
In 1979, filmmaker Jean-Claude Labrecque made a feature film on the matter entitled . It was released on September 10, 1980. Other documents inspired by the Coffin case include Dale Boyle's song "The Wilbert Coffin Story" and the Alton Price book, "To Build A Noose", which reflects Price's intensive research on the case.
Recent interest and debate.
In 2006, 50 years after Coffin's hanging, four generations of his family commemorated his death at his graveside. That week, the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted announced it was studying the case. The director of client services for the association called Coffin's case "a blot on the criminal justice system."
The coroner at the time, Lionel Rioux, recently told the news media that he believes Coffin was innocent. Rioux accused Maurice Duplessis, premier of Quebec at the time, of making Coffin into a scapegoat for the killings of foreign tourists. Rioux held a coroner's inquest at which Coffin testified. Rioux says that the provincial government destroyed the transcript of Coffin's testimony. Coffin did not testify at his trial. Speaking in 2006, prominent Canadian criminal lawyer Edward Greenspan blamed Coffin's trial lawyer, Raymond Maher who suffered from alcoholism and was drunk for the majority of the trial, for keeping Coffin out of the witness box: "It was incompetence with a capital I," Greenspan said of Maher. "It's the worst case of lawyering I've ever seen." Investigators also had a picture of Coffin with a noose drawn onto his neck on the wall.
At the time Coffin was hanged, he had an 8-year-old son. The child's mother wanted to marry Coffin before the execution, but Duplessis denied permission and said it would not be "decent."
In a 384-page book titled "" (translation: "The Coffin Affair: A Hoax?") published by Wilson & Lafleur in Montreal, Clément Fortin, a retired attorney and law professor, proceeded to re-establish the facts. Given the evidence presented to the Percé jurors in 1954, Fortin concluded that they were justified to render a verdict of guilty as charged. In 1964, the Royal Commission of Enquiry on the Coffin Affair reached the same conclusion.


Council of Assizes

The Council of Assizes, also referred to as the Court of Assize, was given power of making, altering and abolishing any laws of New York. The Court had yearly meetings. The Governor and Council attended and had complete power of the proceedings. They were joined by the High Sheriff and the Justices of the lower courts who were subservient to the Governor.
The Council of Assizes in New York was unique. New York had no charter at the time nor was it a royal province. This was due to the fact it was located on conquered territory, taken from the Dutch.


Young Offenders Act

The Young Offenders Act (YOA; ) (the "Act") was an act of the Parliament of Canada, granted Royal Assent in 1982 and proclaimed in force on April 2, 1984, that regulated the criminal prosecution of Canadian youths. The act was repealed in 2003 with the passing of the "Youth Criminal Justice Act".
The "Act" established the national age of criminal responsibility at 12 years old, and said that youths can only be prosecuted if they break a law of the Criminal Code (previously, youths could be prosecuted or punished solely on the grounds that it was in the youth's best interests).
The "Act" also indicated that the rights established in the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" apply to youths as well.
Controversy dogged the act for many years. Many felt that the "Act"'s limit on a three-year detention sentence for youths was overly lax, and allowed youths to get unreasonably light sentences for murder or sexual assault. This maximum was repeatedly increased until in 1996 it was extended to a maximum of ten years. That same year, a provision was also made to allow 16-year-olds to be tried as adults in certain cases. Critics contended that this was too harsh, as it made youths possible victims of life sentences.
The "Act" also drew much criticism from the public for not charging young offenders under the age of 12 years, and for banning publication of the identities of youths who commit criminal acts, contending that the number of violent crimes committed by youths has dramatically increased, as has the number of repeat young offenders, since the act was passed. The demands by the Canadian public for changes for the better in dealing with youth crime, particularly in the wake of the beating and attempted murder in 1999 of then-15-year-old Jonathan Wambach in Newmarket, Ontario by a gang of teenagers, led to the introduction of the "Youth Criminal Justice Act" to replace the "Young Offenders Act".
The "Act" replaced the earlier "Juvenile Delinquents Act" enacted in 1908.