Examination of Marc Lemire: Part XIII

Between 2008 and 2013, ARC published a series of articles detailing Mar Lemire's racist past and his involvement with the Heritage Front. I compiled all of the links on this single page:

Marc Lemire: Summary of Information

It has been more than six years since I've added to this series of article that highlighted the history of Marc Lemire's involvement with and eventual leadership of the Heritage Front. When I posted the last few articles I sort of felt like I was beating a dead horse so whenever I had heard of Lemire's name come up in my investigations, such as his participation in the memorials of lawyers Doug Christie and more recently Barbara Kulaszka I either briefly discussed his involvement or ignored it all together.

Chris Edmunds, Malcolm Ross, Michele Erstikaitis, Marc Lemire

I had assumed there was no further use in covering Lemire since I believed he was of no particular significance any longer.

That turned out to have been a mistake on my part, but it is a mistake that journalists such as Mack Lamoureux has rectified:

Marc Lemire is the last leader of the Heritage Front which has been described as one of the most impactful white supremacist groups in Canada since the Klan. A former member of the Heritage Front told us how he was a “very obliging foot-soldier” prior to being its leader.

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

His existence at the city was a quiet one with odd things like his outgoing message being his extension number not his name. Several days after I first contacted him on his work phone, his extension was taken out of service. The city would not confirm or deny that he worked there

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

A source told us that Lemire would have had back access to city employees data, something that worried @MatthewGreenNDP, Hamilton's first POC city councillor.

Green told us he was disgusted he didn’t know about this. pic.twitter.com/zyO03ZBeJG

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

For my American followers this would kinda be like uh... if Philadelphia had Don Black (of Stormfront fame) in their IT department. https://t.co/17FOqPMNJQ

— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) May 8, 2019

Those articles on Lemire that I thought of as overkill I'm happy to say helped Mr. Lamouroeux in his research so I sort of feel a bit vindicated in having written them, but full credit to Mack for his dogged work.

I know there was another journalist who had been working on this story as well but she appears to have been stymied by the City of Hamilton for some reason which no doubt will result in a great deal of interesting speculation:

I did an FOI recently asking for any email correspondence containing the words "Marc Lemire" combined the words "Heritage Front," "neo-Nazi" & other terms. I'm looking for the response I got right now. Needless to say, it didn't turn up what I was looking for

— Samantha Craggs 🦉 (@SamCraggsCBC) May 8, 2019

Lemire's extension was never available in the city's dial-by-name directory. It always required going directly to a human being, who would connect you

— Samantha Craggs 🦉 (@SamCraggsCBC) May 8, 2019

However, Ms. Craggs was able to get Lemire to speak about his involvement with the Heritage Front after the publication of the "Vice" article.
In news that will surprise no one who follow this blog, Lemire lied:

"The Heritage Front stuff dates back to when I was a teenager," Lemire said, linking to an article where he said he's not a Nazi or white supremacist. 

"I reject the Heritage Front for what it was, as I have stated consistently for over 11 years." 

But, as Vice reported, an archived web page from the Heritage Front's website from 2001 shows Lemire distributing flyers saying "immigration can kill" in Hamilton. A post on Lemire's own webpage from that same year also describes him as the "head honcho" of the organization.

ARC first published this a number of years ago:

Hmmmm, 152 Carlton Street....

When this was published on Lemire's website, he would have been 26 years old.

In fact Lemire hosted the Heritage Front on Freedom-Site from 1998 (age of 23) to roughly 2001 when he appears to have moved it to a separate server. Here is an example of one of those early Heritage Front websites (December 2000, I believe):

And here is the HF merchandise page where the hate group sold their magazine featuring former KKK leader David Duke and videos by the leader of White Aryan Resistance Tom Metzger:

Gee, 152 Carlton Street again?

Surely a coincidence.

And here is a request for donations to keep Freedom-Site alive:

There's that 152 Carlton Street again!

Curious isn't it? I mean, it would be amazing if one could link that address directly to Lemire, wouldn't it?

Oh! You mean he had a personal webpage?

Sigh....

And by the way, here is one of the images of the Canadian Patriot Network Lemire designed:

Subtle Marc. Real subtle.

And what did his other website look like when Marc would have been 23?

Tsk, tsk....

The reality is that Marc already tried to snow people regarding his past with the Heritage Front. In that case, he had a willing stooge in Ezra Levant who refused to challenge Lemire's claims because Levant also had an agenda:

Uh, the Heritage Front uh, was active back in, uh, the the 90s and I was a young kid at the time. I had some, uh, interest in some of the things that they were doing in particularly thing like uh opposition to employment equity, things like reducing immigration. So I uh, listened to some of what they were about, and uh, I went away from it. I mean I was involved with them peripherally in my teenage years.

Well, Lemire is right that he was involved with the Heritage Front as a teenager:

CANADA - FEBRUARY 23 Hearing Adjourned Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege and his white supremacist supporters leave University Ave. courthouse yesterday. (Toronto Star)

But he was also involved in his early 20s as he continued to count Wolfgang Droege as a friend:

February 2016 Bits and Bites

So PEGIDA Canada held another rally today without telling anyone. The results were as sad as the previous effort despite the spin they placed on it:

 

In related news, we're still following the aftermath of our recent article detailing the often violent anti-Muslim/anti-refugee and anti-government rhetoric found on a number of Facebook groups such as PEGIDA Canada. We will be doing a follow-up soon, but we thought we would provide a preview of the reaction from one of the groups we were monitoring until recently, "Trudeau is Malignant":

Oh you are just adorable!

We can't seem to find the group any longer which means they have either shut it down or have figured out which of the 50+ members was our dummy profile. Either way, what was posted there wasn't much different than the bigoted, hateful, and often violent posts found in other groups.

We'll save that all for a later article, but for future reference just because we haven't mentioned you, doesn't mean we aren't aware of you.

In the meantime, let's talk about Paulie's latest adventure:

Worst. Abbey Road. Reenactment. Ever.

SOS and Fromm Associate Arrested

We first heard the name Chris Edmunds in relation to the April 2013 march held in London by the Southern Ontario "Skinheads" as well as his attendance at a memorial for the late Doug Christie.

Chris Edmunds, Malcolm Ross, Michele Erstikaitis, Marc Lemire

It's been a while, but you had to know a guy walking around with SS on his shirt would cross our radar again:

Man charged with criminally harassing elderly couple

By Standard Staff

Thursday, June 19, 2014 4:50:05 EDT PM

An 18-year-old St. Catharines man has been arrested for allegedly harassing an elderly couple in what police are calling racially motivated conduct.

Niagara Regional Police said an elderly couple who are long-time residents of an east St. Catharines neighbourhood were being threatened and intimidated. Police said the conduct occurred recently over a period of one month.

Christian Edmunds, 18, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with criminal harassment.

Harassing old people. That's the courage we have come to expect from boneheads.

Michelle L. Erstikaitis Really IS a Super, Duper, Nazi! No Fool'n!

Last week we received a message from someone proporting to be Michell Erstikaitis. As the message is chock full of da krazy, we are going to assume that it is indeed her.

Suffice it to say she REALLY wants it to be known that she is a neo-Nazi. Really. She actually wrote that she is a neo-Nazi. A, "hardcore" neo-Nazi to boot.

The following was originally sent to a friend, but as it wasn't published there and because Michelle really wants the attention, she sent it to us as well, though slightly edited.

Southern Ontario "Skinheads": Who's Who?

It isn't a surprise that the boneheads read this blog. In fact, since we were the only media that even wrote anything about their little march in London last weekend, some have been paying close attention:

But then again they might not always be pleased with the coverage we provide:

While we didn't see any evidence that Winnicki attended the march, we thought that it was time to take a look at those individuals who are known to have attended (both SOS members and their supporters) as well as some of support that didn't make it to this event.

A History of Violence: 1960 - 2019

Well, here it is. We think that most will agree that this will be the best article posted on the blog, or at the very minimum the most informative and perhaps most useful.

The following is a living document. We will continue to add information as we continue our research and as new incidents occur. We encourage our readers to help us in this project. If you are aware of an incident that can be backed up with secondary sources, please share those incidents with us for inclusion in the timeline. These include any incidents that occurred before 1989 as well (we can, and have, change the title to fit the information). If you are unable to provide a secondary source for the incident you shared with us, we will try to do so ourselves.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *

Forward by Nosferatu200

We have Mark Fournier of Free Dominion to thank for this article. On June 28, 2010, Mark Fournier posted a lengthy piece concerning his take on the G20 fiasco in Toronto. While we have the entire missive saved, here is the relevant section that concerns us:

To keep this in context, 20 years prior to Mark Fournier having written this claim concerning ARC being responsible for, "almost every incident of serious political violence in the past twenty years," in Canada, the then eldest member of the Collective was 13 years old and living in a relatively isolated farming community two hours from the nearest big city. The author of this timeline was 7 years old. 

Since then Mark has continued to make this claim against ARC and the ARA, as well as continuing to claim that ARC and the ARA are the same organization:

 

 

We've gotten used to ARC and the ARA being claimed as being one and the same and while we have a good working relationship with ARA chapters, we are indeed different groups that have different methods. But even still, when Mark claims that ARC/ARA members are responsible for most of the political violence for the past 20 years, we began to wonder what that actually looked like.

If we exclude the histrionics (claims of forcible confinement, for example, which is laughable), Mark and the Free Dominion crowd have only three incidents that they keep talking about to prove that the ARA (and apparently ARC) are violent, organized, criminal terrorists:

1. An attack on Garry Schipper's rented home by some protesting the Heritage Front's propagandist. This is the one claim that at least has some basis in legitimacy.

2. The firebombing of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel's Toronto home. In fact, the only group that claimed responsibility was a small Jewish extremist group that had been linked to the Jewish Defence League.

3. A fight between young ARA members and a group of neo-Nazis that left one person fighting for his life. Even  Mark admits that it was the ARA member who was stabbed and almost killed and the bonehead charged with attempted murder, though he and others then claim he had it coming.

That's it. In 20 years, Mark was able to come up with three incidents, one of which resulted in no serious injuries to the boneheads but left an ARA member in critical condition and one in which the only people still claiming an ARA link (the firebombing) are those associated with the boneheads. If they are trying to be a violent group of Canadian terrorists, the ARA are really, really bad at it. 

Mark's statement did get us to thinking though while we sat around having a few beers. If we were to look back at the past 20 years, what would the level of bonehead violence look like? We figured that the numbers would be pretty high, but in all honesty most of us were too lazy to actually do the necessary research. Except for one of our members who did just that.

When "NomDeGuerre200" considered the question and suggested an article, the rest of the Collective had no idea how much research the author would engage in nor the level of information provided. 'NomDeGuerre200" made a point of only using information that could be verified by reliable secondary sources, mostly media based. We know there is more out there, but what has been created is, we believe, the most extensive timeline of neo-Nazi/racist violence in Canada covering more than 20 years (and as we will continue to add to the document, both before 1981 (we originally began at 1989) and after 2011, the list will no doubt become even more comprehensive).

And with that, we give you "History of Violence."