Doug Christie
Douglas "Doug" Hewson Christie, Jr. (24 April 1946 – 11 March 2013) was a Canadian lawyer, known for his works involving free speech cases, such as Holocaust revisionists Doug Collins, Ernst Zündel, James Keegstra, Malcolm Ross and white nationalist Paul Fromm, among others. In some case he worked with the also Canadian lawyer Barbara Kulaszka, such as regarding Ernst Zündel and the alleged National Socialist war criminal Imre Finta, who was acquitted in 1990. Christie, fighting cancer, died in Victoria, British Columbia.
Life
Christie was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and graduated from the law school of the University of British Columbia in 1970.
Achievements
He was the founder and general counsel of the Canadian Free Speech League and is best known for defending individuals accused of German war crimes or racist, anti-Semitic or neo-National Socialist activity. He was also the founder and leader of the Western Canada Concept, a separatist party of British Columbia and The Western Block Party, a right-wing political party advocating the separation of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba from Canadian Confederation. He was the founding leader of the national Western Canada Concept, but was removed from the leadership in 1981. He was subsequently denied membership in the party's Alberta branch.
Career
He first came to national attention as a lawyer in 1983 when he became James Keegstra's attorney after the schoolteacher was fired from his job and criminally charged with promoting hatred by teaching his students that there was a Jewish conspiracy, along with allegedly spreading other anti-Semitic ideas. His defence of Keegstra brought him to the attention of Ernst Zündel, who retained Christie in September 1984, to defend him against criminal charges related to Holocaust denial with co-counsel Barbara Kulaszka. Christie would act as Zündel's attorney in several cases over the subsequent two decades, up to his deportation from Canada in 2005. Christie's advocacy on behalf of Keegstra and Zündel has led to him acting as legal counsel in a number of notable cases involving far-right figures including:
- Terry Long, former leader of the Aryan Nations in Canada;
- Malcolm Ross of New Brunswick who, like Keegstra, was a teacher fired for anti-Semitic activity;
- three alleged leaders of the Ku Klux Klan in Manitoba;
- Rudy Stanko of the World Church of the Creator;
- Tony McAleer after he was charged with broadcasting "hate" speech over the phone and online;
- John Ross Taylor of the Western Guard Party and Aryan Nations;
- Imre Finta who was alleged to be a war criminal and collaborator;
- Doug Collins, a late newspaper columnist brought before the British Columbia Human Rights Commission for anti-Semitic and "racist" comments;
- Paul Fromm, head of "Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform" and "Canadians for Freedom of Expression", who was fired from his job as a teacher for his political activity;
- Jane Birdwood, a British follower of Sir Oswald Mosley and distributor of Nationalist propaganda;
- Wolfgang Droege of the Heritage Front;
- David Ahenakew, who has acknowledged making anti-Semitic comments in a 2002 interview with the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix.
He later became leader of British Columbia's provincial WCC, and led it through provincial elections in that province through the 1980s and 1990s. Christie never won a seat at the provincial or federal level, nor did the BC WCC ever win any seats in the provincial elections it contested. Christie continued to run an organization with the "Western Canada Concept" name, but it is no longer a registered political party except at the provincial level in British Columbia, which has relatively lax party registration laws.
In 2005, Christie announced his intention to form a new federal political party to be called the Western Block Party which would be a Western Canadian version of the Bloc Québécois in that its role in the Canadian House of Commons would be to act as a regional separatist party.
The WCC and WBP are not affiliated with the Separation Party of Alberta or the Western Independence Party of Saskatchewan. Officials in these parties have distanced themselves from Christie - for example, they do not include links to the WCC or WBP on their websites even though the SPA and WIPS do link to one another.
The WBP was officially registered with Elections Canada prior to the 2006 federal election. Christie is ran in the riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca in British Columbia, finishing fifth in a field of six.
See also
External links
- Personal website
- Canada's Greatest Defender of Freedom of Speech Has Died: A Life of Sacrifice and Idealism
- Doug Christie and Bishop Tutu? It might have been
- The Death of a Distinguished Lawyer, Doug Christie, "the Battling Barrister"
- 'Did Six Million Really Die?' - Report of the Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel – 1988
- Doug Christie Soldiering On!
- A Documentary of the 1985 Zündel Trial
