Chapter Thirty-Eight Continued: Wolfgang Droege and "Militant Conservative Activism"

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

After spending four years in Canada, and now a teenager, Wolfgang Droege was getting restless. His mother had remarried and started a new family, and maybe he felt that he didn't fit in:

Wolfie continues the story in his thick German accent: "I came to Canada when I was about 13 years old, in 1963. After living here for about four years, I went back to Germany. I thought I could maybe make a go of it there. I got a trade, working in a hotel, but I had a difficult time adjusting. I had become used to the Canadian way of life and Canadian values. In Germany, you know, there is much more discipline. Much more is expected of you. As a result I was kind of rebellious. Because of my rebellious attitude, I refused to cower before the people who were supposed to be my bosses. I had a difficult time." He sips at a Coke. "Then I tried to join the army. But they told me it would take about half a year for me to get in. There is a certain period you have to wait. I had no support from my family in Germany because they all felt my place was in Canada. For that reason, I came back to Toronto at the end of 1967 and lived with my mother and my stepfather." (1)

While in Germany Droege's neo-Nazi leanings became more obvious, and under the influence of his father and grandfather, his views on Jews and non-whites had grown even more extreme. At the time the far-right party of Adolf van Thadden, was making headlines, and Droege offered his services. He must have felt like one of Hitler's aids.

Virtually everywhere they campaign, the scene is the same: Helmeted police, chanting, angry demonstrators, occasional scuffles, the din of derisive "Sieg Hell" and "Nazis out!" Not since the 1920s, when the Nazis were reaching for power, has a German political party provoked so much tumult and violence as the far-right, ultranationalist National Democratic Party. Chancellor Kiesinger, admitting that the N.P.D. is not purely neo-Nazi, describes it as "extremely harmful." Judging from the intensity of the oratory directed against the N.P.D., there are times when it sounds as if it were the party in power.

There is, of course, no danger that Adolf ("Bubi") von Thadden, 48, the party's aristocratic, articulate leader, will sweep into power—or anywhere near it —in next Sunday's general elections; after all, there are but 30,000 card-carrying members. (2)

It's probably safe to assume that at least some member's of Wolfgang's family were among those 30,000.

Back home in Canada he drifted a bit, working at the International Nickel Company in Sudbury, until a lay-off brought him back to Toronto.

"Of course, by that time, my family was pressuring me, telling me I had to get a trade. They told me I had to do something with my life. So, as a result, I got involved with the printing trade." (1)

He found work as an offset press apprentice at Ready-Set Business Forms in Don Mills, while still living at home with his mother, brother, stepfather and three stepsiblings. Not an ideal situation for a rebellious young man.

But fuelled by his experiences in Germany and an interview on a Canadian station with George Lincoln Rockwell, then leader of the American Nazi Party, he was ready to jump into the neo-Nazi movement with both feet.

Rockwell had laid it all out there. The white race was the "master race", the Holocaust was a hoax and homosexuals should be gassed. He also stated that the real enemy was Communism, and that many Jews were traitors to that cause.

All of the things Wolfie would have heard as a boy, being read the stories of Julius Streicher and the 'Poisonous Mushroom'. He was now on a mission.




About the time of Droege's transformation, there existed a Nazi movement in Canada. Adrien Arcand, a Montreal journalist who called himself the Canadian Fuhrer, published many anti-Semitic articles and established a party that was anti-Communist and promoted the deportation of Jews. On November 14, 1965, he gave a speech in Montreal, which was attended by Gilles Caouette, future Social Credit Party of Canada Member of Parliament, and son of David Réal Caouette, who would later become the federal leader of the Socreds.

Arcand died in 1967, when in Toronto the movement was just getting started, under the leadership of William John Beattie. He created the National Socialist Party, formerly the Canadian Nazi Party, marking a re-emergence of organized neo-Nazi activity in Canada. Beattie held rallies that often turned violent, but he also enticed many to join the cause, including Wolfgang Droege.

In the mid-sixties, William John Beattie made headlines as the noisy leader of the Canadian Nazi Party. A six-foot-tall man who wore his dark, straight hair across his forehead in imitation of Hitler, Beattie maintained that the Nazi dictator was the best thing to come along in the world since Jesus Christ." His party caused a riot in 1965 at Toronto's Allan Gardens when about 5,000 people came out to protest a Nazi rally. Beattie was later arrested and convicted of public mischief for his attempt to paint swastikas on selected homes and sites in the Toronto area. Beattie was "constantly getting material from the American Klan," according to Max Chikofsky, an Ontario private investigator who followed the fascist movement closely at the time. A lot of Beattie's money came from European Nazis and fascists now living in Canada and from right-wing emigre Hungarians, Latvians, Serbians and others. "Some of these people have been fascists for 25 to 30 years; why should they stop now?" (3)

Vilim Zlomislic and the Western Guard

In the fall of 1974, while having a few beers at a bar called Maloney's in downtown Toronto, Droege met a man he had heard a lot about: Donald Clarke Andrews.

Born with the name Vilim Zlomislic in 1942 in the Serbian region of what was then Yugoslavia, Andrews came to Canada at the age of ten. As a youth, he was an excellent student who liked to read. He attended Ryerson Polytechnical Institute under a scholarship and, in his spare time, volunteered with various social democrat groups.

Certainly doesn't sound like a man who would become involved in far-right causes, but Andrews became a victim of the Baby Boomer revolution, that demanded societal changes. This culminated in the Civil Rights movement in the United States and our own rights revolution in Canada.

The Conservative Party were in the process of ousting their leader, John Diefenbaker, and replacing him with the more progressive thinking Robert Stanfield, while the Liberals chose a young "radical" named Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

Times were changing and not everyone wanted to change with them. In February 1967, Donald Clarke Andrews, and two others, school teacher Paul Fromm and University of Toronto student Leigh Smith, formed the Edmund Burke Society, named after an arch-conservative British parliamentarian.

Along with communism, which it loathed with a vengeance, the Edmund Burke Society opposed immigration, sex education, welfare, homosexuality, abortion, big government and Pierre Trudeau.

The Burkers infiltrated left-wing groups and they organized dozens of counter-demonstrations whenever leftists were gathering to protest something. Often, brawls ensued, such as one bloody encounter between the Edmund Burke Society and Viet Cong supporters in April 1968, and another with anti-war protestors in May 1970. Andrews, who delighted in such conflicts, called the violence "militant conservative activism." Some members of the group were convicted of bomb threats, break-ins, thefts, arson, vandalism and countless assaults. At the start, the Burkers were singularly devoted to the anti-Communist cause. By 1968 or so, however, the group's official organ, Straight Talk, was describing the African people as "completely primitive" and describing the Holocaust as an "allegation." (3)

In February 1972, the group decided to change their name to the Western Guard and expanded its list of enemies to include Jews and non-whites. This new direction caused Paul Fromm and Leigh Smith to resign, and while Fromm got back in, Leigh Smith moved on to join Preston Manning's Reform Party.

"It's been a painful thing in my life. I should be proud of what I did, but I have a hard time feeling good about it.... I was and am a conservative and a right-winger. But I wasn't a racist." (3)

But the group's new direction, brought in new members, men who had been associated with John Beattie's Canadian Nazi Party, like John Ross Taylor, Jacob Prins and Martin Weiche. And their publication, Straight Talk, began calling for a "a white Canada" and featuring articles like: "Race is the Real Issue," "White Power," "Mongrelization of Toronto," "Negroes Massacre Whites," "Race Pollution," and "Canada—A White Man's Country." They also grew more anti-Semitic with references to "the jewdicial system" and referring to Jews as the instigators of international communism. (3)

It was at this time that Wolfgang Droege, encouraged by what he had heard about the Western Guard, decided to learn more about them.

Droege recalls his 1974 meeting with Andrews at Maloney's Bar: "I came up to him and said: 'Are you Don Andrews?' And basically we engaged in a conversation. And then we became friends. We talked a lot about politics, but we became more social friends. Shortly thereafter, he was trying to get me involved in the Western Guard, which I did. I was an activist, and I was promoting the cause. My whole life, from that point on, was devoted to promoting the cause. I was always racially conscious, but I just hadn't made any contacts. But that night I contacted someone who I realized was very conscious racially and that was Andrews."

Andrews laughs at the memory. "He probably heard me pontificating at the bar. His views were similar to mine. He seemed like an intelligent, middle-class guy. He went on to be an integral part of our operation. He did have the intellect, plus the bully factor—he was one of our strong-arm guys at the time." (4)

And Droege Would soon meet someone who would move him even deeper inside the far-right.

Continued: Sunshine Boys and a Flash in the Pan

Sources:

1. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg. 205-206

2. Echoes from an Unhappy Past, Time Magazine, September 26, 1969

3. White Hoods, By Julian Sher, New Star Books, 1983, ISBN 0-919573-13-4, Pg. 78

4. Kinsella, 1994, Pg. 207-209

Chapter Thirty-Eight Continued: Sunshine Boys and a Flash in the Pan

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

The Toronto Sun became famous for their 'Sunshine Girls', and in 1972, under pressure from female readers, they introduced their first ever 'Sunshine Boy'.

Over the years, the daily Boy has featured the likes of Mark Messier, Rod Stewart, Ravishing Rick Rude and Mike Tyson. Besides, of course, the best Toronto has to offer. (1)

In 1980 one of those Sunshine Boys was James Alexander McQuirter, whose picture was published under the name Jim. "He'd like to find himself a seat on Parliament Hill," read the caption under his photograph. (2)

According to former colleague Robert Smith: "I worked with Jim McQuirter, the only Canadian Klansman to become a Toronto Sun "Sunshine Boy" We nicknamed him "Media Man," after a song by the 1980's band Flash in the Pan*". (3)

McQuirter would go on to lead the Canadian chapter of the KKK but it was a long journey.

Wolfgang and Jim

James Alexander "Jim" McQuirter was born in May of 1958, the eldest of five children, to a middle-class family in North York. At the age of 14, he began reading hate literature, that he tried to share with fellow students at York Mills Collegiate, hoping to convert his peers. His parents were less than impressed and forbid his discussing racial issues at home, so he took to streets to find kindred souls.

In 1975, when just 16, he met Wolfgang Droege and the two became instant friends.

Recalls Droege: "McQuirter was a very smart fellow. He was young, articulate and intelligent. Very capable, with a lot of ideas. We met, and we started to form a close friendship. (4)

McQuirter joined the Western Guard while still in his teens and describes his decision to get involved in far-right causes:

James Alexander McQuirter was attracted to Don Andrews's organization while still in his teens. His background was different from that of his fellow Guard members, many of whom seemed to have inherited their fascist leanings from their European families or experiences ... [and claimed to have come from a "liberal, middle class" home in the Toronto borough of North York. At "about 14 or 15" years of age McQuirter, through his own readings, became convinced of the inferiority of blacks and Jews and started to try and win his friends at York Mills Collegiate over to his beliefs: "I was always a conservationist. When I was going to high school, I was interested in the whales and seals. Then I started reading about some of the population statistics of the white race. We're a dying species. I used to talk to other conversationists about this, but they weren't interested — it was all racist stuff to them. But at the time, I wasn't a racist. I just thought, well, gee, everything should be protected.**

So I was forced to look at different groups, so-called right-wing fanatical groups. I was interested in what they had to offer, what their solutions were." McQuirter's parents apparently did not take too kindly to their son's new ideological bent, and he was told by his parents not to talk about the race question at home. "Today, I don't see any of [my parents] very much," he said in one newspaper interview. "Let's say they don't agree with me." After he graduated from high school, McQuirter spent four years in the Canadian militia [then] joined up with Don Andrews "... the Western Guard was the only game in town," McQuirter explains. Andrews was instrumental in fleshing out the style and substance of the young McQuirter's right-wing politics. 1 remember McQuirter coming to my house in the early days when he was about 18," recalls Andrews. "He used to come into my back yard and we would discuss organizational and political things. McQuirter didn't really know how to speak to the press all that much because he didn't have much background knowledge on political, international and other racial matters. So we would chit-chat and I would give him some pointers on how to answer some questions."" (4)

But McQuirter and Droege would eventually become disillusioned with Don Andrews.

We had the same feelings about Andrews. We felt he was trying to play this role of dictator and that he was not interested in working for our race or the advancement of our race. He just wanted a group so he could be the boss of it. He just wanted to be a mafia don." Andrews, not surprisingly, rejects this criticism: "A lot of Germans have an attitude problem when it comes to the right wing. They want to be in charge of everything—and, if they were, they would just go and lose it a third time." He pauses. "He got to be buddies with McQuirter, who wanted to do all sorts of wild things. Wolf assisted him in that." (5)

McQuirter certainly did want to do all sorts of "wild things".

In September 1976, Wolfgang Droege, John Ross Taylor and McQuirter attended David Duke's International Patriotic Congress of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in New Orleans, and the plan was hatched to start their own Klan.

Continued: From Partisans to Pioneers

Footnotes:

*The band also became a flash in the pan




**Sher believes that McQuirter may have fabriacated the conservationist story since it
is a favorite argument of the American Klan

Sources:

1. THE FIRST BOY AND MORE, Toronto Sun 25th Anniversay, August 27, 2008
Nationalist Party of Canada

2. White Hoods, By Julian Sher, New Star Books, 1983, ISBN 0-919573-13-4, Pg. 13

3. Bayou of Pigs: Not Your Average Caribbean Cruise, Bob's Beat, Nationalist Party of Canada

4. Sher, 1983, Pg. 83-84

5. Web of Hate: Inside Canada's Far Right Network, By Warren Kinsella, 1994, Harper Collins, pg. 211

Canadian Constitution Foundation: Follow the Money to Racism?

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 1971 a student newspaper, the Ubyssey, ran a story about a university professor who had made some seemingly racist comments to a local paper, resulting in calls for his dismissal.

A stormy controversy involving charges of racism against a history professor has erupted at the usually placid University of Western Ontario. Things came to a head Wednesday night when professor Kenneth Hilborn invaded a students meeting discussing demands for his dismissal and was involved in a scuffle with one of his denouncers .

The demands for the firing of the tenured professor arose from an article he had written, which appeared in the London Free Press. In this article Hilborn attacked those who support what he termed "terrorists" in South Africa . He said that the best way to end the apartheid system in that country was by a process of "erosion" . This could best be accomplished, the article went on, by increasing the prosperity of the white ruling class in South Africa . (1)

One of the first rules when covering a story is to follow the money, and in following the money to the Canadian Constitution Foundation*, one of their financial backers is Professor Kenneth Hillborn, an early Reform Party member who was (is?) on the president's counsel of the National Citizens Coalition**. He was also involved with a group called the Canadian South-African Society.

"The 300 members of CSAS (Canadian South-African Society) were mainly from large corporations, but there were also academics, churchmen and a Quebec Superior Court judge. One of these is Professor K.H.W. Hilborn of the University of Western Ontario on London. He was on the board of directors and is a regular contributor to the right-wing foreign affairs magazine 'International Conservative Insight.' He is one of the people honoured in the Northern Foundation's Northerner magazine, and is on the president's council of the National Citizens Coalition. A recent member of the Reform Party, Hilborn hopes Reform foreign policy will be fleshed out with all this orientation towards the likes of the ANC (Nelson Mandela's party) with it's strong Communist component ... foreign aid should go only to countries not practicing socialism ..' (2)

The Northern Foundation was a vanguard group set up to establish a network of far-right organizations, born out of Reform's decision to allow extremists to join their party.(3)

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (4)

What the Canadian South-African Society, of which Hillborn was a member, did, was defend apartheid in South Africa:

"(CSAS) was founded to bring together Canadian and American subsidiary business interests in South Africa ...Their profit levels are high - often twice their returns in companies ventures in Canada - due to their ability to pay low wages and almost no benefits to black labour.' (that's what this was really about)
"Most of the thirty member board are from Ontario ... a few were from the west ... one of these was Norman Wallace of Saskatoon ... a founding member of the Reform party ... He set up Eagle Staff Import Export Ltd. to further business ties with South Africa.

"Wallace created considerable controversy in 1987 when he and others involved in a group called the Indian Business Development Association put up money for a South African tour for five Saskatchewan Indian leaders ... intended to give the Pretoria regime a public relations weapon - using aboriginal conditions in Canada to demonstrate the Canadian government's hypocrisy. (5)

Besides being a staunch defender of South African apartheid, and defender of whites to make money, Hillborn has also, like the CCF, been an advocate for "free speech." He has had a long association with people like Paul Fromm***, and his book; The Cult of the Victim: Leftist Ideology in the '90s, can still be purchased on Fromm's C-Far website. In fact Paul Fromm wrote the preface.

Hillborn has also fought diligently against the rights of First Nations, which has earned him a spot on the Nizkor list of those associated with hate groups.

In 1997 when there was a move to make the title of "Masters' more gender neutral, Hillborn spoke out against it.

A second motion was also passed which, if accepted by Senate, would allow current Western masters degree holders the option to change their degree to a magisteriate. "It's a non-existent word for a non-existent problem," said Kenneth Hilborn, Western history professor and Senator. "[Magisteriate] is not in any established dictionary. It's feminist clap-trap." (6)

"Feminist clap-trap". I like him already

I do support the right to free speech and academic freedom on campus, but it's important to expose the money and power behind many of these organizations, like the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who back up the Reform-Alliance Conservative movement.

Is their fight for freedom of speech part of an advocacy group that would allow organizations like C-Far to attack our immigrant communities? Many of the groups that fell under the Northern Foundation umbrella were actually neo-nazi. Will this open the door to overt anti-semitism?

There was a reason for the adoption of human rights commissions, and people like John Carpay, Ezra Levant, John Weston and even Dr. Hillborn, need to understand what they were. These ridiculous lawsuits and constitutional challenges threaten to change who we are as Canadians.

It's time to start fighting back against groups like the CCF.

Footnotes:

*The Canadian Constitution Foundation was the brainchild of Reform-Conservative MP John Weston. He stepped down as the head of CCF to run as an MP, and Reform-Alliance-Conservative insider, John Carpay has taken over the reins. "The Ontario Health Coalition described the CCF as an “extremely right-wing” legal advocacy group that uses the Charter of Rights to promote a conservative agenda, including the end of medicare. "In 2005 Weston talked to the Calgary Herald about his counter intuitive approach to the Charter, which has typically been praised by the liberal-left and attacked by the political right. “It’s here, there’s not much point in wishing it weren’t. Now, we need to make it mean what it is supposed to mean,” Weston told the Herald. “Conservatives must reclaim it for conservative values.” "To that end, the CCF and Weston fought the federal Liberal government in the courts, challenging the Nisga’a Treaty ... The CCF is also funding a class action legal challenge to medicare in Alberta and an individual action in Ontario."" (7)

**The National Citizens Coalition is a rather secretive right-wing advocacy organization, heavily financed by corporations. They were initially established to put an end to Canada's medicare system. Stephen Harper has been a member for three decades and has served as both it's president and vice-president.

***Paul Fromm was a Toronto high school teacher who was fired when a video surfaced of him at a Hitler's birthday celebration giving a Nazi salute to a Confederate flag. He was allowed to sell memberships to C-Far at Reform Party assemblies.

Sources:

1. UWO Prof Attacked as Racist, The Ubyssey, University of British Columbia, November 23, 1971

2. Preston Manning and the Reform Party. Author: Murray Dobbin Goodread Biographies/Formac Publishing 1992 ISBN: 0-88780-161-7, pg. 104

3. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 115

4. Harrison, 1995, Pg. 121

5. Dobbin. 1992. Pg. 100-107

6. Fighting for an option to be no one's master, By Kevin Gale, University of Western Ontario Gazette, March 21, 1997

7. New MP profile: West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky's John Weston. Vancouver Sun. October 18, 2008