DOUG CHRISTIE, DEFENDER OF CANADIAN FREE SPEECH, TERMINALLY ILL

ED Noor: I post these articles with a heavy heart.  They are the two articles on Doug Christie that I found in my mailbox this morning.  Mr. Christie  is one of our greatest Canadians and has spoken up for our basic rights with great passion and eloquence and some success in the past. Personally, I remember when his office was not much more than a toll booth in the parking lot across from the municipal courthouse on Blanshard Street here in Victoria. But that was many years ago. 

Doug is back home now ~ dying. All we can do is send him love and gratitude and perhaps an email or a letter. 

The first article is from one of Canada’s great Jewish mouth pieces, The National Post.  You will read of the “notorious” thought criminals that Doug has defended over the decades.  I only post it because of the quotes from Mr. Christie and also to show the world how we are propagandized here in Canada through such “subtleties” in media… more like a sledgehammer is like it but less that .0001% of Canadians will think other than they are taught.

Just the headline says it all, calling him a “defender of hate mongers”, What next? Will a cabal of rabbis come out and tell Mr. Christie he brought it on himself for his stance on free speech? (Just as some blamed Fukushima on the Japanese people, God’s wrath for finding 2 Hasidim guilty of high level drug charges.)

The second is a much more humane announcement of Mr. Christie’s situation. It also suggests a few things you might do to honour this great man in his last months. 

This is from the trial that truly brought Mr. Christie into the international spotlight ~ that of Ernst Zundel. Mr. Christie's defence was described as brilliant.

‘IT’S THE END OF EVERYTHING’:

DEFENDER OF HATEMONGERS,

FREE SPEECH 
FIGHTING TERMINAL LIVER CANCER

Joseph Brean 
National Post 
February 24, 2013 

Douglas H. Christie, the so-called Battling Barrister, counsel to almost every prominent Canadian hatemonger of the last thirty years, from John Ross Taylor to Ernst Zundel, has advanced liver cancer and is not expected to live more than six months. He is not being treated, and has withdrawn from the defense of Arthur Topham, a British Columbia man facing trial on a rare charge of willful promotion of hatred.

“If the doctors are right, it’s the end of everything,” Mr. Christie said yesterday from his bed at home in Victoria, B.C.

The illness marks the close of a remarkable legal career that has seen Mr. Christie stand up for freedom of speech, even in defense of the most vile propaganda and often illegal racist incitement, everywhere from human rights tribunals to the Supreme Court of Canada. 

As such, it leaves a gaping hole in Canada’s legal scene. 

“I don’t know anybody that’s willing to take these on with the type of commitment I think is necessary, because it certainly is a costly process, in time, in effort, and in reputation,” he said, and compared himself to Father Damien, a sainted 19th century Belgian priest who cared for people with leprosy in Hawaii. 

“You become associated with your clients and, as Father Damien found, eventually you become a leper,” he said.

Mr. Christie’s clients make up a rogues’ gallery of racism in Canada and their cases mark the limits of Canada’s uniquely compromising approach to the regulation of hate. They include John Ross Taylor, whose failed defense by Mr. Christie at the Supreme Court in 1990 remains the precedent on which hate speech cases are still argued, and Ernst Zundel, the Holocaust denier whose case saw the criminal law against “false news” struck down as unconstitutional.

As head of his Canadian Free Speech League, Mr. Christie also played an important intervenor role in the hate tribunal of FreedomSite webmaster Marc Lemire, in which the internet hate-speech section of the Canadian Human Rights Act was also judged to run afoul of the Charter right to free speech.

His first big hate case was against Jim Keegstra, a teacher and former mayor of Eckville, Alberta, who was charged in 1984 with promoting hatred by spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to high school students. The Alberta Court of Appeal overturned the conviction because pursuing a defense of truth placed too high a burden on the accused, but it was reinstated by the Supreme Court, in a 1990 analysis that remains the legal benchmark.

“At that time, it was a novel proposition to prosecute people for what they said,” Mr. Christie said. Criminal hate laws had been on the books since the 1960s, but were effectively dormant, and Keegstra “was the first case in which the state felt it was entitled to criminalize persons on the basis of what they sincerely believed.”

Since then, Mr. Christie has been spoiled for choice. He represented Michael Seifert, a Nazi SS guard whom Canada extradited to Italy in 2008 for gruesome concentration camp murders, and Imre Finta, acquitted in 1990 in Canada’s first war crimes prosecution.

He saw disgraced native leader David Ahenakew through to an acquittal for his anti-Semitic comments, which was a cause of embarrassment for the Saskatchewan Crown. “It’s quite a mixed bag when you charge a visible minority person with a hate crime, because the only people who are supposed to be haters are white people,” Mr. Christie said.

His most famous client of all was Zundel, a German who was barred from arguing the “truth” of his holocaust denial theories as a defense against a human rights complaint, and he later represented Zundel’s reactionary protégé, Wolfgang Droege of Heritage Front.

The roster also includes some quirks, such as the Ontario gentleman who does not believe the constitution permits the government to collect taxes from him.

Perhaps inevitably, Mr. Christie has been accused of being a fellow traveler with racists, and defending them because he shares their beliefs. As such, he stands as an extreme case study in whether it is fair to judge a lawyer by his clients.

In 1993, the Law Society of Ontario dropped misconduct charges over his defense of Zundel and Finta, but the chair of its discipline panel nevertheless issued a report saying Mr. Christie

“made common cause with a small, lunatic, anti-Semitic fringe element in our society.”

He also sued a B.C. broadcaster, Gary Bannerman, in 1990 for saying that he has “aligned himself so many times with these perverted monsters that he has to be viewed as one himself.” 

Mr. Christie lost on grounds of fair comment, at both trial and appeal. Another libel suit was successful, to the tune of $30,000 in 1984, against a journalist who described Mr. Christie’s failed separatist political venture, the Western Canada Concept, as an “Alberta version of the Ku Klux Klan.” 

“Anybody who knows me knows that I treat all people fairly and I don’t discriminate against individuals on the basis of any race, religion, etc.,” Mr. Christie said in the interview. “But to the vast majority who have only heard about me, they would definitely get that impression.”

In 2006, the Law Society of British Columbia found he committed professional misconduct by counseling a client to prepare subpoenas on his own, but the penalty was a modest fine and $20,000 in legal costs, as he had acted out of “stress and excessive zeal to help his client, rather than from desire for personal gain.”

Zeal has always been a mark of the Christie approach to hate defense.

He was literally the loudest person in the room on a fateful day in Ottawa in 2008 when revelations about investigatory practices at the Canadian Human Rights Commission blew the Section 13 hate speech debate wide open, and set the stage for its eventual repeal. 

Forced to deal with minor objections, Mr. Christie hollered that he had flown all the way from Victoria and he was not going to abide the CHRC’s “obstruction” of his cross-examination.

Otherwise, he has a soft and measured demeanour, eloquent to the point of verbosity on legal issues, and known for rhetorical flourishes. But for the trademark cowboy hat, he can seem almost professorial.

He pins much of the blame for Canada’s legal unease over hatred on multiculturalism, which forced judges into awkward balancing acts at the expense of fundamental values.

“I think it boils down to the fact that judges desire, in large measure, to be seen as tolerant and relatively popular, and the opinions of people like Mr. Zundel and Mr. Taylor are seen as intolerant and unpopular,” he said. 

“Therefore it becomes a difficult matter for a judge to hold in favour of someone who is publicly so perceived.”

Mr. Christie is married to Keltie Zubko and has two children, a son in law school and a daughter in engineering.

 

February 26, 2013 
Radical Press 

Dear Freedom of Speech Lovers & Supporters,

True to form, as soon as word leaked out that Douglas Christie was diagnosed with a virulent strain of liver cancer, the Jewish-controlled Zionist media monopoly immediately commenced its vilification of Canada’s foremost fighter for our basic human rights.

Pathetic enough were their endless lies and smears and misrepresentations regarding Doug while he was in good health and standing strong and firm but for them to carry on now like blood-thirsty buzzards perched atop their ivory and steel Orwellian mind-control towers while Doug lays prostrate, fighting to stay alive, has got to be the penultimate example of just how cold, cruel and heartless these so-called “mainstream media” moguls really are.

For those who are still in the dark as to Doug’s condition I am including a recent email that his good and dedicated wife Keltie Kubzo sent out concerning his condition. Please read it and if you can, send Doug some good loving, healing thoughts and good wishes.

Keltie:

I am writing to tell you about Doug’s recent diagnosis of metastatic liver cancer, and its implications.

Ironically, the hundreds of tiny, diffused foci of cancer that have spread to his liver, have apparently not come from the prostate cancer, which seems to be controlled, but from some unknown, new primary, that they are currently trying to locate. The doctors give an estimate of six months to live, but Doug and the kids and I realize this is only approximate and will rely on a number of factors. Consequently, we are dealing with an unknown time-frame. He is pretty weak and fragile, and the disease seems to have been moving extremely quickly, and continues to do so.

He’s been fighting hard in a jury trial for about three weeks, getting progressively sicker each day with pain and nausea until on Thursday he just couldn’t continue. There’s only about two days left in the trial and of course Doug wanted to finish it for the client because that’s Doug’s way. He would always fight to the very last inch for his clients and his principles, and that’s why he’s been both reviled and loved.

Anyway, he just couldn’t do it and the case was adjourned for me to take him to emergency and that’s where this pervasive cancer was discovered. Despite the pain and nausea and weakness, up till yesterday afternoon he was still determined that he would go back to court on Tuesday for his very last jury address. That is not going to happen, as he just is not able. It’s very hard to believe that he is at this state in his life, so suddenly.

Our children and I are reeling in shock, but somehow we are not surprised because he’s had such battle fatigue for a very long time. Many of you have realized that, I know, seeing him fight so hard for so many years, being under the pressures of taking on unpopular cases and always being misunderstood for it. That has taken its toll. Despite that, you and I will always remember his humour and his loving generosity and his great joy in music, beauty, and human courage.

I am infinitely grateful for the people who have seen who he really is, and cared enough to communicate this to him, reminding him that he has not been alone in these terrible struggles. I hope that those of you who feel inclined to do so, will send him a little message of what is in your heart and mind for him.

You can email me in reply to this letter, or send messages to:

Box 101,

255 Menzies Street,

Victoria, BC,

V8V 3G6.

Emails would be better as they will get here faster. His email address is dougchristie@shaw.ca and he can get them on his cellphone, which he has with him in the hospital while they do more tests and try to get his pain and nausea under control before he can, we hope, come home. He does not have the stamina right now for visitors or many phone calls.

For quite a few years now, I’ve been trying to get him to at least start on his memoirs, and I want to tell you that he’s left a body of writing that I will be able to work with so that his courageous story will be told.

Thanks again for the loving kindness of you, our friends near and far. You have supported the principles of freedom for many years, through all these struggles and we are deeply grateful for you.

Keltie Zubko

I would also like to thank Marc Lemire, another giant in the battle to retain our fundamental, God-given rights to freedom of speech, for sending his article which is posted below. To watch and listen to Doug’s YouTube’s and to read some of his words is to gain a true account of the man’s principles and integrity rather than listening to the litany of lies and epithets that are spewed forth from the mouths of Zionist hacks working for Zionist rags and tv stations across our once free nation.

Doug is down but he’s not out yet. Please pray for his recovery and for his family so that they can continue to support him over the next while. It’s never over until it’s over.
Also, please pass this post to everyone you can.

Sincerely

Arthur Topham
Publisher & Editor
The Radical Press

Barbara Kulaszka, Douglas Christie and Marc Lemire

http://blog.freedomsite.org/2013/02/doug-christie-in-his-own-words-immortal.html 

http://canadianhumanrightscommission.blogspot.ca/2013/02/doug-christie-in-his-own-words-immortal.html 
Forget about the media invective that is currently being hurled at Douglas Christie by the whores in the controlled media party.  Doug Christie is a decent, honourable and true fighter for individual liberty and freedom of speech in Canada.  You can count on a single hand the number of decent lawyers in Canada, and Doug Christie is one of them!

Find out who Douglas Christie really is ~ from his own words, in this YouTube video:

Doug Christie had a long and memorable legal practice.  While the media gets in a lather about Doug’s more controversial so-called “racist” and “anti-Semitic” clients (because Doug dared to represent them), they actually only made up a small portion of his legal practice.  According to the video above, Doug has represented clients on about 8,000 cases over 37 years as a defence lawyer ~ generally representing the rights of the individual against the state. His cases range from child custody cases where the state persecuted parents to tax freedom cases.

Douglas Christie is a hero and dedicated fighter for freedom of speech.  In my youth, I recollect attend a meeting where he was the guest speaker. I was struck not only by his superior oratory skills, but even more so by both his passion and love for freedom. He brilliantly conveyed the significance of what freedom is all about and how vital it is to resist artificially induced state control over it.

Over the past couple of decades I have become closely acquainted with Doug. The respect that spawned the evening I saw him speak for the first time only deepened with every case and submission that he made on behalf of freedom. His defences consisted of a rare combination of sound logic and reason combined with compelling emotion.

In my case before the Kangaroo court also known as the Canadian “Human Rights” Tribunal, Doug flew all the way from Victoria in order to participate. Typically, he had a major impact but none more poignant than when he raised questions about the “mental serenity issues” surrounding CHRC lawyer Giacomo Vigna. It was vintage Doug Christie! 

Here are some of the transcript references of Doug Christie’s submissions to the Tribunal:

The closing submissions Doug gave in my case was a sight to behold.  The entire courtroom was mesmerized as Doug hammered away at the pillars of censorship for close to two hours!  Doug has a commanding voice and delivery that would make Clarence Darrow jealous. 
Doug Christie wrapped up his comments with these very insightful critiques of censorship:

We’re here because this legislation is no joke. It has created a monstrous threat to freedom of speech. The passage of time has changed the nature of the communication, increased its volume, and made it rebuttable from the time of Taylor. If Sec. 13 had attacked the activities of drug user, lawyers would be lined up for their defence of narcotics users, but as it attacks free speech, there are few to defend it. Apparently, drug users are more popular than free speech.

The enemies of free speech don’t want to debate their opponents; they want to silence them. I don’t hesitate to say hate is right in some cases; hate for evil and hate where the lives of innocent people are at stake. We’re not allowed to argue the truth of what we say that might prove the validity of strong opinions.

The Commission wants a cease and desist order against Marc Lemire for a website he neither owns nor controls. This legislation allows this absurdity.

Apparently, to have an honest opinion that people don’t like is to violate the law. It is implicit that truth is no defence, honest belief is no defence, intent is no defence.

Hatred and contempt without reference to truth – which is not a Sec. 13 defence – is an invitation to hypocrisy.  If we keep this legislation, we will undermine democracy and promote hypocrisy.

Doug Christie, you are my hero, and I wish you well.  For 40 years, Doug has stood (often alone) as the beacon for freedom against state control, censorship and bullying.

You’re in my thoughts and prayers, and so is your entire family.

~ Marc Lemire,

February 26, 2013

http://www.StopSection13.com
http://www.Freedomsite.org

UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH 
Free Speech lawyer Douglas Christie discusses the concept of universal principles in freedom of speech cases. Is free speech for everyone or just your friends? 
http://youtu.be/f93BUkI9RQo

LIVING FREE IN AN UNFREE WORLD

Western Canadian Separatist and free speech lawyer Douglas Christie talks about freedom, purpose and self-fulfillment, in an unfree world. 
http://youtu.be/oZgQiJh8qNc

DOUG CHRISTIE ON BBC

Douglas Christie, defense lawyer for Imre Finta in Canada’s only war crimes trial, appears on the BBC 
http://youtu.be/WGLO-bJPswg