Herbert Dyson Carter

Herbert Dyson Carter (February 2, 1910 – December 15, 1996 ), known as Dyson Carter, was a Canadian scientist, lecturer, writer, and Communist propagandist and organiser who served as president of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society from 1949 to 1960.

During his fifty-year writing career, Carter produced hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, dozens of short stories, and 17 books including five novels. Many of his non-fiction books and articles popularized scientific ideas and discoveries or reported on medical advances. In the 1930s and 1940s, many of his articles appeared in popular magazines in Canada and the United States and three of his books were published by large commercial publishers in the United States and widely reviewed.

He occasionally used the pseudonym Warren Desmond for popular fiction that he would otherwise would not have been able to sell in the United States due to McCarthyism.

He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 1941, but was essentially blacklisted by the popular media after 1945 when he made public his membership in the Labor-Progressive Party (as the Communist Party of Canada was known at the time). He had joined the Communist Party in 1931 but had kept his membership secret for over a decade.

Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society and Northern Neighbors As well as being president of the CSFSS from 1949 to 1960, with Dorise Nielsen as executive secretary, and engaging in national lecture tours to promote friendship with the Soviet Union, Carter was editor and publisher of the Canadian-Soviet Friendship Society's newsletter, News-Facts About the USSR from 1950 to 1956 and of the glossy pro-Soviet magazine Northern Neighbors from 1956 to 1989.

Carter added: "I publicized so many Soviet 'achievements' that were total falsifications, that I consider my 'work' an exercise in political pathology."

He was awarded several honours by the Soviet Union including the Centenary Medal (1970), the Order of Friendship of the Peoples (1980) and the Order of the Union of Friendship Societies (1985).