WHY WHITE RACIST CELLS FAIL IN CANADA

Hamilton Spectator (Ontario, Canada)
October 14, 1999 Thursday Final Edition
WHY WHITE RACIST CELLS FAIL IN CANADA;
FIRST U.S.-STYLE CLAN QUICKLY BROUGHT TO EARTH

BYLINE: BILL DUNPHY, CRIME REPORTER, THE SPECTATOR

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 2105 words

“The last thing any federal snoops want, if they had any choice in the matter, is a thousand different small phantom cells opposing them … such a situation is an intelligence nightmare.”

From Leaderless Resistance, an essay by ex-Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam

It was in the dead dark hours of a Monday morning six years ago — in Oshawa of all places — that Canada’s first white racist phantom cell was fledged.

They didn’t fly high and they certainly didn’t fly far before being brought to earth by police. And truth be told, they weren’t very terrifying.

But with racists repeatedly turning to terror cell tactics in the United States, this group’s birth and brief life — largely unmarked by the media and most antiracists — should be seen as something of a warning.

Small cells of white racists or misnamed “lone wolves” in the U.S. have been responsible for everything from the 1995 Oklahoma City tragedy to dozens upon dozens of murders, bombings, arsons and armed robberies. Most recently Buford Furrow Jr., a member of the Aryan Nations, killed a nonwhite postman and shot five people, including three young children, in a midday rampage at a Jewish community centre in Los Angeles in August.

For a long time, Canada’s cooler racial climate and a tradition of tolerance led many to believe we had somehow been inoculated against this American sickness.

Manuel Prutschi of the Canadian Jewish Congress says there are several reasons for the lack of terror attacks by the racist right in Canada.

‘One of the big differences is that in the U.S. there is this very strong anti-government senti-ment. The government is seen as an identifiable enemy, which is not something most Canadians feel.”

Prutschi also points to America’s gun culture as another strong difference.

John Thompson, executive director of the Mackenzie Institute, monitors all manner of political extremists for his think-tank clients. He says there are likely subtle social reasons for the difference.

“The point of terrorism is to overthrow the government, at least eventually. And that doesn’t seem to be the goal of most of the (Canadian) extremists.”

“Maybe we’re less tolerant of splinter groups. We really are a largely middle-class, law-abiding society, although that may be changing,” he adds.

Thompson says one disturbing feature of the leaderless-resistance organizational structure advocated by Louis Beam is that “there’s no brake on you. The strategy is broadly discussed, but the specifics are whatever you think will work.”

It would be a nightmare for intelligence and policing agencies if leaderless resistance were widely adopted, he says.

“It’s almost impossible to keep on top of them. The intelligence effort is just about titanic and beyond the scope of any agency,” Thompson says.

The nightmare almost became reality in Canada in 1993. The summer of ’93 was a busy time for the mixed bag of white supremacists, religious zealots, skinheads and neo-Nazis that make up the racist right in Canada.

At the absolute peak of its powers that year, the Toronto-based Heritage Front had chapters across the country, a telephone hotline offering hundreds of listeners daily commentary, a magazine with a mailing list in the thousand range, and meetings that would regularly attract 200 or more stalwarts.

Security for the meetings was provided by an unarmed paramilitary group under the direction of a former member of the now-disbanded Canadian Airborne Regiment.

Openly racist rock bands held several concerts in Montreal, Toronto, London and Vancouver.

It was the most powerful the racist right had been since the days of the Swastika Clubs back in the Dirty Thirties. Perhaps because the Front was so “successful” for several years, no one seemed interested in adopting the American model of phantom cells or leaderless resistance.

And for all the noise and rhetoric, the legal clashes with the human rights commissions and the street fights with anti-racist brawlers, the movement was essentially above ground and strove to be largely legal in their goals and activities.

Some members of the anarchist left had been employing terror cell tactics for more than a decade; witness the Squamish Five and Direct Action’s attacks on targets as diverse as B.C. Hydro, pornographic video stores, and Litton Industries, makers of the cruise missile guidance system.

Members of the Animal Liberation Front also employed the phantom cell technique in organizing attacks in the ’80s on university labs and fast food outlets, resurfacing in the ’90s as the Anti-Fascist Militia to send pipe bombs to conservatives, hate group leaders and animal researchers. They also attacked hunting and wilderness guides and outfitters, as well as mink ranchers.

Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege — who’d spent most of the ’80s in American prisons because of his involvement in terror cell tactics — kept the racist right on what passed for the straight and narrow.

But a small group of disaffected Heritage Front associates began developing other ideas.

At about 2.45 a.m. on Sept. 27, 1993, they acted upon them.

Shaking almost as much as their targets would soon be, two young men pulled down their balaclavas and burst through the doors of the Gem coffee shop on Oshawa’s Bloor Street East. One of the young men brandished a sawed-off shotgun and screamed at the sleepy customers and the lone baker who doubled as counter help.

One of the gunmen, a deeply troubled young man with a fanatical allegiance to the racist Christian Identity sect, was in desperate straits.

“I was either going to blow my head off, commit suicide, or go out and get some money,” Leslie Jasinski explained in court later.

So he had the .12-gauge in one hand for all the world to see and a spare shell hidden deep in the pocket of his trench coat — his steel shot an insurance policy against capture by the cops. It was over in minutes, and the two young men raced out into the darkness clutching $257 they’d grabbed from the terrified baker.

As acts of terror go, it was pretty minor, but it was a beginning.

Jasinski was an unemployed 25-year-old from Etobicoke whose emotional instability and penchant for pipe bombs got him kicked out of a small Toronto-based Ku Klux Klan cell in ’92.

Hanging out with the Heritage Front in ’93, Jasinski had met Ken Barker, 31, of Oshawa, and Phil Grech, 21, and Marc Lemire, 18, both of Toronto. All of them became disillusioned by Droege’s emphasis on talk over action and they began to socialize and pool ideas and resources.

Lemire and Grech and a few others shared a Toronto home. And when Barker moved back to Oshawa, they let him run his Equal Rights For Whites telephone hotline out of their home.

The four men spent increasing amounts of time together, taking part in Heritage Front actions, promoting Barker’s hotline, and dreaming of bigger things.

In September, Jasinski tilted those dreams towards the nightmare end of the spectrum, buying the .12-gauge shotgun and cutting down the barrel and stock. Suddenly they were armed. And as Thompson says, the small, leaderless group was tough to spot.

Even though Canadian intelligence agencies and police had wiretaps running and several informants in the Heritage Front — including Grant Bristow, a mole for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Front co-founder — they largely misread the threat this group posed.

Police knew who the members were and knew they hung out together but missed Jasinski and his friends’ potential for violent crime and perhaps even terrorism. As a measure of how far off their analysis was, the CSIS mole Bristow only learned of their criminal activities as Oshawa’s robbery squad was closing in on them. And even then Bristow, fond of acidic nicknames, dubbed them the French Cruller Gang as though they were a joke.

They came close to being a deadly joke. After the late-night coffee shop heist, Jasinski bought another shotgun, this one a .16-gauge, and a couple of boxes of ammunition and stashed them in Barker’s Oshawa apartment. With some other racists, he took the guns to a conservation area north of Oshawa for a little live shooting practice, returning them to Barker’s apartment when he was done.

On Oct. 21, Grech donned a clown mask, a fright wig and a pair of gloves and pulled off his first bank job. Without showing a weapon, he was still able to rip off the Oshawa bank for a couple of thousand dollars and terrorize a pair of tellers whom he screamed at while wrestling with a cash drawer.

Unfortunately for Grech, a bank employee ran after him as he left the bank and watched him climb into his battered Chevette a mere block away. Armed with a partial plate number, patrol officers found Grech’s car that night sitting in Barker’s parking spot in a lot just a few blocks away on Bloor Street.

Heavily armed members of the robbery squad moved in on Barker’s apartment. They found both shotguns, ammunition, a crossbow, a sword, a police scanner, neo-Nazi literature, and a wad of cash. They also found 10 batteries wired together with a timer in a realistic imitation of a bomb.

Simultaneous raids in Oshawa and Toronto the next morning picked up Barker and Grech. Jasinski was arrested when he made a surprise appearance at Barker’s bail hearing and confessed to the doughnut store robbery in an attempt to clear Barker.

Lemire was neither arrested nor charged with any criminal offence. And there’s no evidence to suggest he knew in advance of the robbery plans. But once he did know, he still stuck by his buddies.

A month later he opened his own telephone hotline and then a computerized bulletin board service for white racists. He has since been taken in hand by two deans of the racist right — Nazi apologist Ernst Zundel and a racist anti-immigrant activist, Paul Fromm. With their financial assistance, Lemire now operates the largest racist Internet site in Canada.

Grech pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 18 months in jail for the bank robbery.

Jasinski, who confessed to the coffee shop stickup during his friend’s bail hearing, was released without further criminal charges because police were unable to use his confession against him and had insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

They did, however, succeed in winning a court order barring him from owning or possessing firearms and explosives for the rest of his life.

He surfaced again in 1995 after a western counterpart in the group Aryan Nations identified Jasinski as his Toronto representative in an about-to-be-formed militia. It never formed.

The court threw out robbery charges against Barker, saying the police didn’t have enough evidence to connect him to the robbery. He was jailed briefly on weapons possession charges.

Barker has since left the racist movement and built a new life for himself and his family. Attempts to interview Barker and Lemire for this story were fruitless. Barker’s wife said he’d been out of “that stuff” for five years, and Lemire also refused an interview request. The Spectator was unable to locate Grech, and a source in the racist right wing said Jasinski is ill.

As terrorists go, the group was a pretty pathetic bunch. They put out a little propaganda, robbed one coffee shop and one bank, and dreamed of bigger things.

But they formed and began to act out in a classic terror cell fashion. And documents obtained from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service reveal that in 1993 and 1994, police were worried that one member of the group had talked about walking into the headquarters of the Canadian Jewish Congress with a gun and “taking out some people,” a chilling echo of the murderous rampage Buford Furrow Jr. would embark on six years later.

Since then, Canada’s white racist movement has collapsed with the demise of the Heritage Front. Those still active in it — including Zundel, Fromm and Lemire — are either producing propaganda or meeting in largely ineffectual groups that rarely rise above the street gang level.

Last month, Droege sat in an upscale coffee shop in Toronto’s Beaches and lamented the lack of real leaders in the movement. He said the people he’d worked with are too busy with families and accumulating wealth to risk them on a fringe movement.

It will take an economic collapse to rebuild the movement, Droege said, and leaderless resistance won’t bring that about. “Leaderless resistance makes people inactive or they do crazy things that bring the movement into disrepute,” the ex-con offered.

“Movements depend on leaders. And if the leaders aren’t there, it’s not going to go.”

SUBJECT:  RACE & RACISM (90%); TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS (89%); TERRORISM (88%); COUPS (78%); CHILDREN (69%); ROBBERY (66%); JEWS & JUDAISM (65%); ARSON (52%); 

CITY:  TORONTO, ON, CANADA (77%); 

STATE:  ONTARIO, CANADA (88%); CALIFORNIA, USA (79%); 

COUNTRY:  CANADA (96%); UNITED STATES (95%); 

LOAD-DATE: October 17, 2002

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 2 photos by CP/Toronto Sun; 1. Leslie Jasinski parades with Heritage Front signs in a file photo. He admitted to an armed robbery to free a friend, but police could not use his statement against him.; 2. Marc Lemire found support for his activities from well-known racists, and now operates the largest racist Internet Web site in Canada.

TYPE: Special Report
Copyright 1999 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.

Toronto Sun: New face of hate

The Toronto Sun
September 23, 2007 Sunday 
FINAL EDITION
The new face of hate; 
The swaggering skinheads and marching jackboots have all but vanished, but make no mistake: The poisonous ideology of white supremacy is alive and well in Canada. Sun Media’s Laura Czekaj probes the suave new look that belies an ancient animosity

BYLINE: BY LAURA CZEKAJ

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 1443 words

A meaty security guard blocks the entrance and waves a beeping metal-detecting wand over the suit-and-tie-clad spectators.

Beyond the frosted glass doors in the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal hearing room stands another security guard, arms crossed, eyes trained on the spacious room, its mass is exaggerated by the few people occupying it.

A tribunal member is running the show and lawyers are taking their turns spouting protocol.

All the while, a man sits in the audience, his cleanly shaved head gleaming as brightly as his freshly polished jack boots, which stick out from under the cuffs of his black dress pants.

This man is a visible reminder of what the neo-Nazi movement in Canada once looked like. A daunting demeanour paired with an almost uniform attire worn by shiny-domed males giving the Nazi salute and yelling “Seig Heil.”

But this man and the images he conjures are far removed from the white supremacist movement today.

Marc Lemire is well-groomed, with a full head of hair, a sky-blue dress shirt and neatly pressed beige pants. His presence is non-threatening and appears much closer akin to a school teacher or computer programmer than a “white nationalist.”

It’s his typing that has him in trouble with the Human Rights Commission, which accused Lemire of promoting hate in his postings on the Freedomsite.

The tribunal has since halted the case against Lemire pending the outcome of his appeal to the Federal Court of Canada.

The Internet has become both a social gathering place and a pulpit for the current generation of neo-Nazis. There’s no longer a need to hold rallies or pull media attention-seeking stunts to recruit members. All it takes is a couple of key strokes.

There are “white nationalist” forums, blogs and even a European-American online community for whites that bears an uncanny resemblance to the popular networking site Facebook.

The grand-daddy of sites is the Florida-based Stormfront, run by a former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, which offers ideological refuge for white supremacists. It largely caters to white supremacists from North America, but also features discussion threads for other countries.

APATHETIC

While the site’s forums are predominantly filled with people identifying themselves as American, an entire thread on the site is dedicated to Canada.

The web page can be described as benign in design, touting White Pride World Wide. There are no burning crosses, no immediately visible swastikas. Closer inspection, however, reveals the hate buried in the words of those who post on the forums.

The Canadian public has, in large part, grown apathetic to the actions of neo-Nazis due to their move away from in-your-face rallies to the more sedate, but just as powerful, presence on the Internet, says Dr. Karen Mock, former executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and past chair of the Ontario Hate Crimes Community Working Group.

“There isn’t enough attention being paid to the everyday hatred, the everyday forms of racist or hateful incidents that occur,” she says. “We need far more education so that the public can be inoculated against this kind of thing.”

That way, when people come across hatred on the Internet, they won’t just click to another web page, but be able to recognize racist propaganda for what it is, says Mock.

It’s difficult to tell what’s more dangerous — the postings where outright bigotry is poured onto the electronic page, or the well-thought-out, eloquently phrased and researched points of view on immigration and the need to “protect” the purity of the white race.

RATIONAL

In a December 2005 posting on Stormfront, a writer calling himself Unconditioned Canuck, and listing his location as Ottawa, explained his reasoning for starting a thread on race and immigration in Canada.

“To stop White people from becoming a minority in Canada, the USA, Europe, Russia, and Australia, as well as protect our numbers in regions where we hold small minorities ie. South Africa,” he writes.

“Because our identity is a part of our ethnicity (I am a White person) and I don’t want my ethnic group to become a minority where we’re currently a majority; in addition, I feel that the identity of a people plays a part in defining the culture of a nation — for this reason, Whitism is also worthy of preservation.” (sic throughout)

It’s this type of seemingly rational, thought-provoking argument that makes those who call themselves “white nationalist” so appealing to some Canadians who are concerned about the government’s handling of immigration policies, or whose views on crime are stoked by reports of gang shootings in Toronto.

“When there’s an incident where there’s the potential for people of colour or racialized minorities to be targeted, you find the white supremacist groups or individuals use it as an excuse to perpetrate even more hatred,” says Mock.

It used to be that those involved in neo-Naziism could be typecast as young, white men in their teens and 20s. In order to reach out to a wider demographic, white supremacist web sites have changed tactics in recent years.

“(They’re) transforming their views from the poisonous ‘We want to expel minorities and imprison or exterminate Jews,’ to something like ‘We’re just concerned about non-traditional immigration sources,’ which usually means non-white,” says Richard Warman, an Ottawa-based human rights lawyer. “They try to throw sugar in with their poison just to give it a more palatable taste.”

“It’s there and it’s active whether it’s seen on the surface or not and it has to be treated as a credible threat,” says Warman, who has spent much of his adult life hunting down white supremacists online to bring them before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

“It’s incumbent on everyone in society not to close their eyes and pretend it’s not there,” he says. “You have to take action to ensure that it never becomes more prevalent than it already is. There has never been a genocide that hasn’t been preceded by dehumanization of the target community.”

Paul Fromm is considered one of the most recognizable members of the extreme right in Canada. On the Internet, he operates several sites of his own and is a common fixture on Stormfront and other similar sites.

Fromm also speaks at rallies held by those who support white supremacist and racist views. He says those in the white pride movement recognize that in order to attract new recruits they must “tone down” existing members, whose method of expressing themselves is to belittle minorities with profanity.

FREE SPEECH

“We want to make everyday Canadians and Americans comfortable with these ideas,” he says. “The way to do it is not to dress up in funny uniforms and scream at people.”

A self-professed proponent of free speech, Fromm says commentators on such web sites as Stormfront don’t lace their presentations with nasty words for minorities.

“There is, in some areas, an effort to try to be our best instead of just emoting and acting as if you’ve had two drinks too many,” he says. “Behave the way you would like to behave with a neighbour who shares a lot of the views you do.”

Not everyone posting on these sites or attending the rare meeting agrees with resorting to violent measures to deal with what they believe are the country’s ills.

“Not everyone who is a white supremacist is a neo-Nazi, and not everyone who is a white supremacist is a skinhead,” says Edmonton police Const. Dave Huggins, who is recognized as one of the pre-eminent hate crime investigators in Canada. “There is a wide spectrum of being a white supremacist.”

Some are drawn to it because they like National Socialism, while others might be more white nationalist while at the same time saying they are part of the Christian Identity movement, he says.

An element of their shared concern is a fear within the movement that European-centric countries, such as Canada, will be irrevocably altered culturally by an influx of immigrants from non-European countries.

“If you can appreciate that mindset when you’re dealing with extremists then you can understand how easy it is to recruit others because they touch into fears that are naturally there,” says Huggins.

White supremacists must be exposed and brought to justice, but they must also be marginalized and the public inoculated — particularly young people — against their hatred, says Mock.

“Beneath the surface, there will always be those who hate, those who are virulently anti-Semitic, anti-black, homophobic, Islamophobic,” she says. “All it takes is an incident or a political opportunity to try to exacerbate this kind of hatred and fear. They may not be as visible at certain times, but they are always there.”

Globe and Mail 1997: Zundel website

The Globe and Mail (Canada)
October 18, 1997 Saturday
Zundel ran Web site, paid costs, panel told Sent $3,000 a month to U.S., ex-wife says

BYLINE: BY THOMAS CLARIDGE The Globe and Mail

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A6

LENGTH: 361 words

DATELINE: TORONTO 

The estranged wife of neo-Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel testified yesterday that her husband effectively controlled the operation of an Internet Web site based in California.

Irene Zundel told a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that although the site is owned by an Ingrid Rimland of Carlsbad, Calif., during their marriage Mr. Zundel, 58, sent the woman $3,000 (U.S.) a month to cover its costs, including between $400 and $500 a month to the local Internet server.

Advising the three-member tribunal that she separated from Mr. Zundel last July and is currently seeking a divorce, the witness said that during the 16-month relationship she helped her husband by typing “English Power” letters and other items that ultimately appeared on the Web site.

She said a part-time employee, Marc Lemire, also took handwritten material submitted by Mr. Zundel, keyed it into computers and “posted” it to the Web site. “Ingrid didn’t have the knowledge to do it.”

However, she conceded that she could not tell which material on the Web site had originated in Toronto.

Mrs. Zundel told the tribunal that her husband and the site owner often disagreed on what should appear and Mr. Zundel wanted to exercise editorial control. “In my opinion, he didn’t trust her political judgment.”

The hearing was ordered after the commission received complaints from Sabina Citron and Toronto’s committee on community and race relations, who say the site denies that millions of Jews were killed by Nazis during the Second World War.

The tribunal has been asked to rule whether Mr. Zundel is responsible for disseminating hate material on the Web site and to consider whether the Internet is a “telephonic communication” that can be regulated by Parliament. If both questions are answered affirmatively, the tribunal could issue a cease-and-desist order enforceable by the Federal Court of Canada.

Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, under which the complaints were made, was designed to prevent hate messages from being transmitted by telephone-answering machines.

Mr. Zundel’s lawyer, Douglas Christie, is expected to cross-examine the witness when the hearing resumes on Dec. 11.

Toronto Star

The Toronto Star
July 19, 1996, Friday, METRO EDITION
Hate groups using B.C. Internet site

BYLINE: FROM SOUTHAMSTAR NETWORK (Vancouver Sun)

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A5

LENGTH: 355 words

DATELINE: VANCOUVER

   VANCOUVER – An international human rights group says a small Internet provider in British Columbia’s Okanagan region has become the largest site in Canada for white supremacist and Holocaust-denial material.

At least 12 groups promoting white supremacy and hate against minorities are using the Fairview Technology Centre in Oliver, B.C., to promote their views, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said yesterday.

Fairview’s site includes two host Web pages called Freedom Site and Skin-Net, which provide access to the pages of a dozen other similar groups. The main page of Skin-Net contains a large image of a Nazi brown-shirt.

The organizers of some of the Web pages are connected to Ernst Zundel, the Toronto Holocaust-denier, said Sol Littman, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Canadian representative.

Littman said his group is alarmed that so many white-supremacist groups are lodged under one roof on the Internet.

“It has got more of these guys on it than we’ve seen anywhere else in Canada,” Littman said. “It is offensive. It is crude, it is fascist.”

Littman wrote to Bernard Klatt, owner of Fairview, to tell him he didn’t have to provide service to such groups and that he may not be aware they are using his site.

But Klatt said in an interview that he knows about the groups. Asked if he was concerned, he said: “Not yet, should I (be)?”

“I am aware they are there. I probably should go look at them.”

Six groups, including the Heritage Front, the Euro-Canadian Defence League and the Canadian Patriot’s Network are hosted at the Freedom Site, which is run by Marc Lemire.

The others, under Skin-Net, include such groups as White Power Skinheads, Berserk, New Order and Nordland. A preface page to the site warns the “racially weak-at-heart” not to go any further if they are offended.

Last month, Lemire was removed from a Toronto Internet service after the owner received complaints about offending material.

Ashok Calle, the owner of Toronto’s Pathway Communications, said he didn’t know Lemire had loaded Freedom Site on to his service until other clients started complaining.

PERSON:  SIMON WIESENTHAL  (72%); 

ORGANIZATION:  FAIRVIEW TECHNOLOGY CENTRE (87%); SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE (66%); 

COUNTRY:  CANADA (95%); 

STATE:  BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA (93%); ONTARIO, CANADA (92%); 

CITY:  VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA (93%); TORONTO, ON, CANADA (92%); 

COMPANY:  TORONTO HOLOCAUST (84%);   FAIRVIEW TECHNOLOGY CENTRE (87%); SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE (66%); 

SUBJECT: discrimination; Internet  INTERNET & WWW (90%); HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS (78%); INTERVIEWS (73%); COMPUTER NETWORKS (73%); HUMAN RIGHTS (73%); 

LOAD-DATE: March 4, 1999

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Toronto Sun, 1994: Dial-up hate

The Toronto Sun
March 19, 1994, Saturday, Final EDITION
DAILING HATE;
PLAYERS ON THE SCENE

BYLINE: BILL DUNPHY

SECTION: NEWS, Pg. 7

LENGTH: 291 words

Since the Heritage Front set up its ”Anti-Immigration Hotline” in February 1991, no less than 11 telephone hotlines dedicated to promoting white racist views have been set up. Four are currently in operation. Here’s a look at the major players on the Hateline scene.

EURO-CANADIAN ACTION LINE – (Nov. 14, 1993 -) Set up by Les Jasinski and Marc LeMire, it sprang into existence the week before Equal Rights For Whites Hotline hosts Gary Schipper and Ken Barker were due to appear in court on contempt charges. LeMire, a high school dropout and Heritage Front recruiter and spokesman, was also a close political ally of Ken Barker.

EURO-CANADIAN FREEDOM FRONT – (Jan. 17, 1994 -) After fighting with Ken Barker and losing a spot for his daily racist rants, Gary Schipper miraculously re-appeared on a new hotline. Schipper claimed the hotline was set up by Joe Danny Hawkins, a former Klansman living in Florence, Mississippi.

RACIST ROCK INFO LINE – (March 4, 1994 -) Featuring the voice of construction worker and Reform Party supporter George Harbottle, the newest addition to the city’s racist propaganda line is also the most extreme. In its short life it has targetted Jews almost exclusively. It is expected to act as a promotion tool for a group of loosely affiliated racist rock bands here and in the United States. Harbottle has been a regular at Heritage Front events since October 1992.

WHITE ADVANCE – (March, 1994 -) The only current hotline not set up by an active Heritage Front supporter or member. White Advance is, sources confirm, operated by an Etobicoke resident who uses the name Grant Alexander MacGregor. MacGregor, 44, has been a member of both of Toronto’s most recent short-lived Ku Klux Klan cells.

COUNTRY:  CANADA (92%); UNITED STATES (79%); 

STATE:  ONTARIO, CANADA (90%); MISSISSIPPI, USA (79%); 

CITY:  TORONTO, ON, CANADA (88%); 

LOAD-DATE: July 23, 1996

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

GRAPHIC: 1. photo of Marc LeMire 2. photo of Gary Schipper 3. photo of George Harbottle
Copyright 1994 Toronto Sun Publishing Corporation

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