Douglas Hewson Christie, Jr. | |
|---|---|
 Douglas Hewson Christie, Jr. - 10 Courtney St. Victoria, B.C. V8W 1C4 Canada | |
| Born | April, 1946 |
| Died | March 11, 2013 (aged 66–67) Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital, B.C., Canada. |
Douglas Hewson Christie Jr. had been a fixture on the Canadian right for well over two decades. As a lawyer, Christie has taken on the defence of some of Canada’s most notorious racists and Holocaust deniers. While he cannot necessarily be faulted for defending his clients, as everyone is certainly entitled to a fair trail, his own deeds and words place him squarely in the camp of those he defends in court.
Christie was born on April 1946 in Winnipeg, MB. The eldest of three children, Christie graduated from the University of British Columbia?s law school in 1970. Opinions about his legal skills vary depending upon who one speaks to. Some journalists describe him as disorganized and often not prepared for his cases. However some of his counterparts in the legal profession, including those who do not consider him to be a friend, describe him as a skilled attorney. (Kinsella, 86)
By the early 1980s, Christie had become involved with politics, founding a party he named the Western Canada Concept Party (WCC) which opposed bilingualism, the metric system, “Big Brotherism,” and was in favour of restoring the British Union Jack as the national flag of Canada. This party eventually became a separatist party that favoured separation of the four western provinces (BC, AB, SK, and MB) from the rest of Canada. The early 80s, because of disputes between Alberta and Ottawa, was the high point for the WCC. On November 20, 1980, Christie and his ally Elmer Knutson (leader of the Western Federation Association) drew 3000 Edmonton, AB residents to a rally which demanded a referendum on separation. The Christie/Knutson alliance eventually collapsed, and the two parties lost ground primarily because they drew into their midst anti-Semites, fascists, and white supremacists. Among the early members and/or supporters of the WCC were Jim Keegstra, Aryan Nations associate Jim Harding, and Terry Long (president of the Christian Defence League and eventual leader of the Canadian Aryan Nations). Long ran as a WCC candidate in the riding of Lacombe, AB in 1983.
Although the WCC quickly lost any support amongst mainstream voters, it remained a vehicle for the racist right for several years. In 1990, for instance, Terry Long had members of the Final Solution Skinheads provide security at a WCC meeting where Christie was scheduled to speak. One of these, Daryl Rivest, admitted that “The WCC was a political front for the Ku Klux Klan here in Canada.”
Christie’s first high profile case came when he became the attorney for Jim Keegstra. In January 1983, Keegstra, who as a Social Studies teacher (and former Eckville, AB mayor), taught his students that the Holocaust was a hoax and that there was a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity, was formally charged with wilfully promoting hatred towards an identifiable group. Christie was paid for his services using monies donated for his defence through Terry Long’s Christian Defence League.
One of the early court room spectators during the Keegstra preliminary hearings was Ernst Zundel. Though Christie was considered rude, sarcastic, and often interrupted witnesses (the judge ordered him to cease his theatrics), Zundel was impressed by Christie whom he described as a “tough, principled, and learned attorney.” In September of 1984, Zundel retained Christie as his own lawyer to defend him against charges of spreading false news about the Holocaust; on his flight to Toronto to defend Zundel, Keegstra was accompanied by his “bodyguard” Edgar Foth, a former member of Bob Matthews? Silent Brotherhood (i.e. The Order). (Kinsella, 92)
While Christie lost both the Keegstra and Zundel trial (he was more successful in Zundel’s case where he won his appeal to the Supreme Court), Doug Christie became a fixture in the far-right movement. His clients included:
– Jim Keegstra.
– Ernst Zundel (1984-present).
– John Ross Taylor (Western Guard).
– Bill Harcus and Theron Skryba of the Manitoba KKK.
– Malcolm Ross (another teacher, this one in New Brunswick, who was fired for his anti-Semitic writings).
– Imre Finta (charged under Canada’s crimes against humanity laws for his actions during World War II).
– The Canadian Free Speech League.
– Edgar Foth (former Silent Brotherhood [“The Order”] member).
– Tony McAleer (operator of the Canadian Liberty Net, a white supremacist telephone hate line).
– Lady Jane Birdwood of England (a woman who has run for the fascist British Nationalist Party and who was convicted of distributing and possessing thousands of antisemitic leaflets).
– Eileen Pressler (Founder and leader of the Council On Public Affairs: for more on this case click on http://www.uv.es/~pla/alteritat/sacar.html).
– Murray Gauvreau, an associate of the racist Canadian League of Rights.
– Rudy Stanko of the Church of the Creator.
– British Holocaust denier David Irving.
– Paul Fromm.
– The Northern Alliance (Not the US-sponsored Afghan rebels, but a racist group led by Jason Ouwendyk out of London, Ontario).
– Michael Seifert (Accused Nazi war criminal facing extradition to Italy where he was convicted in abstentia two years ago for the murder and torture of 11 people in a fascist prison camp in Bolzano, Italy.
It is clear that Christie, by his deeds and words, also shares the ideology of his clients. He’s a contributor to Paul Fromm’s anti-immigration, anti-Semitic, C-FAR and the Heritage Front’s “UpFront”. Christie is the founder of the Canadian Free Speech League, a front for an anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi agenda. This group has given an annual reward to those that it claims are courageous supporters of freedom. Past recipients of the award include Lady Jane Birdwood, Ron Gostick (Canadian League of Rights leader), Paul Fromm, Malcolm Ross, and David Irving.
During the Imre Finta trial, Christie made a distinction between Jewish eyewitnesses, “most of whom affirmed before giving evidence, and jurors who swore on the Bible [his client and witnesses] upon taking their oath.” The judge criticized Christie for “appealing to religious prejudice.” (Kinsella, 99)
On March 29, 1990 during a fundraiser for Finta, Christie was tapped saying:
This is war. A war without violence, but a war even more insidious than a violent war. With a violent war you can see the enemy. You can hear their guns. You can see their injuries. In this war, we don?t see the enemy. They shoot their silent media bullets into the heart of the matter, and they willingly turn on those like us who speak out. (Kinsella, 100)
Later in the same speech, Christie relates to his audience how Jewish children would come to the trial:
“If you want to notice what is really going on, you have got to be there courtroom 403. You see, we have Jewish classes coming in for theatre or entertainment, but I haven?t seen too many people I could recognize as non-Jewish? They are all there, it seems to me, to see vengeance. That?s really what it’s about.”
From the WCC website, Christie penned an article in which he goes on to make the following statement:
“Recently we have seen the emergence of a strange new phenomenon. East Indian young men gathered together as a sort of ethnic tribe, have beaten to death a young Filipino man. The media, the Vancouver city police, Mary Wu Sims, the former human rights commissioner of British Columbia, and all the politically correct elected officials are very quick to deny that there is such a thing as an East Indian gang. This would imply that racism is not just a white phenomenon.
The only people who are ever considered racists have to be by definition white. The term “white supremacist? was designed to silence the majority of people who question Canada’s immigration policy. This term of course would be applied to any Western separatists who talked about our culture.”
Christie also made frequent trips to the United States to meet with prominent holocaust deniers. OPP members ran into him when he attended the Real History, USA conference at a Mariott just over the Kentucky border in Cincinnati on August 31 – September 3 2001. It included British revisionist David Irving, Institute for Historical Review head Mark Weber, Paul Fromm, Joseph Sobran, and Tony Martin as other speakers.
Christie initially took on Ernst Zundel’s deportation case currently before the Canadian courts. At last report, Zundel had dropped the case due to the pressures related to traveling, however he was till supportive of Zundel and offers assistance whenever possible. Doug Christie remained a fixture on the right until that great day when he was diagnosed with with prostate cancer in 2011 and died of metastatic liver disease in Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital two years later.
RELATED ITEMS: Sources Used and Cited: Kinsella, Warren. Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network. Harper Collins. Toronto. 1994. (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. owns Harper Collins, by the way)
Christie Sues Martlett http://www.uv.es