Content area
Full text
On the surface, the idea of Communist Party-run beauty pageants might seem odd. Yet the Communist Party of Canada (cp) and its affiliated unions often produced and promoted beauty contests during the 1940s and 1950s.1 One particular instance - a beauty pageant held in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, in early 1945 - shows the nature of cp "popular girl" contests. Vancouver-based Communist Party stalwart Tom McEwen was running for parliament in the Yukon riding. A group of Yukon-based, cp-affiliated trade unions sponsored a local carnival and the beauty pageant. The weekly newspaper for the British Columbia section of the Communist Party, the Pacific Advocate, asserted that the beauty contest had "done more to make the people union conscious than any other undertaking could have done."2 The article continued: the "girls" who participated "in the carnival queen contest have on several occasions appeared at theatres, and other packed public places" and "consistently gave their support to their union." The Advocate noted that the finale of the pageant would consist of a "colourful crowning ceremony."3
In her acceptance speech, winner Doris Lesanko, who was dressed in white furs, suggested that the carnival was "a splendid demonstration of what can be accomplished when a small community gets together." She argued that "the same can be accomplished to help bring our boys back and to make sure that when they get back, they have more to come to than when they left."4 In addition to their support for the war effort, cp members supported postwar help for veterans.5 Lesanko's comments could easily have been made in a mainstream beauty pageant. Comments surrounding local patriotism, support for the war effort, and expressions of gratitude for Allied war veterans were commonplace in Miss America pageants and in smaller local contests.
What came next, though, differed from mainstream pageants. Lesanko argued that the community should "get together and build, support and maintain our unions. Let us maintain the same spirit that we have displayed during the carnival in the months to come."6 The image of Lesanko dressed in white furs contrasted with her speech on the building and maintenance of trade unions. Lesanko's costume, along with the other iconography surrounding this pageant, suggests both that many cp members held to mainstream ideas surrounding...