Light Locked

Jean Peron, a 6 ft. 4 in., 250-lb. Frenchman, broke his leg in a northern Ontario gold mine in 1930, was compelled to give up mining engineering, eventually became a journalist. One night last week the blue-eyed, 50-year-old M. Peron was busy in his little office on Ste. Catherine Street in Montreal preparing the next edition of his two-year-old weekly, La Clarte (The Light). Suddenly six provincial police barged in, seized all correspondence and files, evicted Editor Peron and his assistant, stoutly padlocked La Clarte's doors and windows. In M. Peron's modest quarters, Quebec's conservative Premier Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis had begun his war on Communists, "public enemy No. 1."

Montreal general organizer of the socialistic Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, Editor Peron is an avowed Communist but denies his paper is Communistic. Nonetheless, the Duplessis Government had an eye on La Clarte's 5,000 circulation last spring when the stiff "Pad- lock Bill" was passed, empowering the Attorney General (also M. Duplessis) to sequester any premises put to Communist use.

Determined to test the constitutionality of the "Padlock Law," the Civil Liberties Union will Seek an injunction forcing

Premier Duplessis to unlock La Clarte's front door, whereupon Editor Peron can repeat La Clarte's, jibe, "the Province of Quebec is a paradise for capitalists and a hell for workers."

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