5) The Short Story of the “Canadian Whites,” and “CanPulps”

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During World War II, the Canadian government introduced the War Exchange Conservation Act (WECA), restricting trade in non-essential goods in order that, as much as possible, Canadian dollars be held in reserve within Canada to support the war effort. Among the products barred from importation were the popular American comic books and pulp magazines of the day, prompting Canadian publishers to seize an opportunity and fill suddenly empty newsstand shelves with homegrown alternatives.

Birthed during this period were a cavalcade of Canadian comic book crime-fighting adventurers and superheroes like Canada Jack, Nelvana of the Northern Lights (pre-dating Wonder Woman), Iron Man (pre-dating by more than two decades the Marvel Comics character of the same name), Captain Wonder, Cosmo, and many others.

Most notable of the science fiction and fantasy pulps resulting from this unique Canadian publishing phenomenon was Uncanny Tales, boasting not merely the reprinted stories of American and British writers, but fresh fiction penned by Canadians.

A colourful, Toronto-based middleweight-boxer-turned-scribe named Thomas P. Kelley, who fashioned himself “King of the Canadian Pulp Writers,” was the most prolific of these authors. Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, he would, aided by his wife, Ethel, regularly pen a couple or more stories per day, some 100,000 words a week! He provided almost all of the content featured in the early issues of Uncanny Tales, but as quickly as he could turn out a story, such was the want of material that even the industrious Kelley could not meet demand.

Uncanny Tales and its contemporaries flourished but their success was short-lived, most of the magazines folding when the trade embargo was lifted after the war ended and American titles returned to newsstands. History has been kind to the Canadian superhero comic books that the WECA era spawned, not so much the pulp magazines, which were not as well regarded. Today, surviving copies of these so-called “CanPulps” are rare and greatly valued among collectors.