An
Uneasy Peace:
At
56, controversial lawyer Douglas Christie now worries for his children
Times
Colonist (Victoria) Sunday, March 3, 2002 Monitor D1 / FRONT
Jody Paterson
They're
dying off, the men who Douglas Christie loved the most. His heroes
are dead men and the list is growing every day. It hasn't been easy being the
lawyer to the stars of Canada's white-supremacist movement these last two
decades, but at least there used
to be a few more people who he looked up to, some friends who didn't think he
was such a bad guy.
Now, they're either dead or gone. Dead: Paul Arsens, the Victoria businessman
who first rented Christie this funny little box of an office 23 years ago on the
parking lot beside the Royal Theatre. Barney Russ, the "wonderful man"
who let Christie finish out his articling with him after Christie got ditched by
another law firm. E. Davie Fulton, former Tory justice minister. John
Diefenbaker, still mourned by Christie as a great loss.
He's sitting here talking about his life and suddenly realizing that they're all
dead. Even his infamous clients are fading away. Anti-Semitic columnist Doug
Collins has died. So has white supremacist John Ross Taylor and accused war
criminal Imre Finta. Jim Keegstra stays off the public radar as much as
possible. Ernst Zundel, whose anti-Semitic Web site was found in violation last
month of federal human-rights laws, has moved to Tennessee and married the woman
who runs the site for him.
And hate-rock musician George Burdi isn't even in the movement any more.
Christie's no youngster himself, 56 now and surprised to find himself enjoying
fatherhood. His children are nine and 11, and a key factor in how he ended up
president of the Saanich Water Polo Club. He's had a long, hard run at this life
of his, and nearly 20 years of being publicly denounced for some of the company
he has
kept. It's got Christie wondering if it's time for a change. He hadn't expected
to have children. But now that he does, it makes a difference.
"I worry for the kids," Christie says. "I remember coming down to
my office a few years back with my son, then age four, and finding the window
smashed in. He couldn't understand why someone would do that to his Daddy."
Christie is top villain among those who fight against hate propaganda in Canada;
his skill as a lawyer has helped a number of his controversial clients win their
fights before courts and human rights tribunals. He differentiates himself from
his racist clients -- he's merely a libertarian and an ardent proponent of free
speech, he contends.
But there are many who don't believe him. "Doug Christie has aligned
himself so many times with these perverted monsters that he has to be viewed as
one himself," Vancouver radio talk-show
host Gary Bannerman said back in 1985. Christie sued him and lost. The judge
ruled it was fair
comment. Three years ago, Christie became the first lawyer in Canadian history
to be banned from Ottawa's parliamentary precinct because the government didn't
like his client, Zundel. And when the Law Society of Upper Canada went looking
for evidence in 1993 that Christie was aligning himself too closely with his
clients' causes, it ruled only grudgingly that he was off the hook.
"He has made common cause with a small, lunatic anti-Semitic fringe
element in our society," wrote Windsor lawyer Harvey Strosberg. "[But]
suffering Mr. Christie's words and opinions is part of the price one pays for
upholding and cherishing freedom of speech in a free and democratic
society." Even the politicians run from him. While his politics certainly
lean to the right, the Canadian Alliance nearly tied itself in knots trying to
distance itself from Christie when he joined the party two years ago.
It's all a bit much, says Christie. "I'm in a debate with myself
whether there's anything to salvage in Canada," he says. "There's
definitely no hope in Ottawa. All I can see is slow decline." Christie was
born in Winnipeg, the oldest child of a federal tax collector and a homemaker.
He has an arts degree from the University of Winnipeg and a law degree from UBC,
having put himself through school with jobs in the oil fields, as a lifeguard
and making sandwiches in his university dorm to sell to other students. He
remembers the conversation with his father that led to him choosing law.
"I liked working outside, but I also liked reading through documents and
that sort of thing," Christie recalls. "My dad said, 'Well, you could
be a farmer or a lawyer.' I figured I could be a lawyer AND a farmer, but not
the other way around." Christie became fascinated with religion during
university, and converted to Catholicism when he was 21. It came as something of
a surprise to his Presbyterian family. In his early days as a Catholic in
Victoria, Christie founded St. Andrew's Refugee Association to aid newly arrived
Vietnamese refugees. His faith remains an important part of his life.
The only two images hanging on the walls of his Courtney Street office are Jesus
and Civil War leader
Robert E. Lee. Christie's first venture into the public eye was as a Western
separatist, a concept that gained him a bit of an audience in the late 1970s and
early '80s. It was at one of those rallies that he met the woman he would
eventually marry, Keltie Zubko, on-line publisher of the Freedom Papers and a
kindred spirit. Zundel called her "an unsung fighter of freedom of speech
in Canada" in one of his Internet "Z-grams" last year.
She and Christie celebrated their 20th anniversary on Valentine's Day.
Christie's Western Canada Concept is still a registered political party,
although he won only 62 votes when he last ran as the WCC candidate for Saanich
South in the 1996 provincial election. And its founder remains committed to his
belief that the West should separate, arguing that every new party and attempt
at political
reform rises out of the West, only to be crushed by the East. The vision for the
West under the WCC is of an English-speaking "genuine national culture true
to our existing European heritage and values."
Aboriginals would take individual cash settlements and be done with it.
Abortions would be restricted, as would immigration. "Capacity to
voluntarily assimilate is a prerequisite to all new immigration," notes the
party's Web site. They're not the most popular views to hold, nor were they when
the party
started. So perhaps it's not surprising that Christie felt the urge in 1984 to
call up the Alberta teacher he'd been reading about who held some pretty
controversial views as well. Jim Keegstra was mayor of Eckville, Alta., and a
teacher at the local high school. He'd been warned six years earlier to tone it
down in the classroom with his criticism of Catholics, but this time he'd been
talking about the Jews in Germany.
His students lined up to testify that Keegstra's teaching had left them hating
Jews and doubting the Holocaust, and hehad been fired and charged with promoting
hatred. "I felt sympathy for the guy," says Christie. "I'd been
kind of big news for a while in Alberta, and I felt that the media tends to pick
on people sometimes. So I phoned him up. I just wanted to say 'Hey, don't be
down-hearted.' " Keegstra recognized Christie's name from his Western
Canada Concept connections and asked if Christie would represent him. "I
said OK very slowly, because I knew this would change my life forever." It
did.
Keegstra's views on the Holocaust and Jews were so outrageous that many people
suspected that no one but a fellow believer would take on such a case. The Ernst
Zundel case was that same year. As Canadian distributor of an ugly little
pamphlet out of Britain titled Did Six Million Really Die?, Zundel
had been charged with spreading false news. Christie set up his Canadian Free
Speech League around
that time as a defence fund for Zundel and Keegstra. There have been many others
since Christie was launched down this path.
Some have belonged to the Ku Klux Klan or the white-supremacist Church of the
Creator. Some were accused of recording hateful phone messages or writing
hateful essays, still others with running Internet and telephone hotlines deemed
racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or hateful by human rights tribunals and courts
across the country. "Except for Joan of Arc, it's rarely the case that the
people a lawyer defends are seen as savoury by others," says Christie about
his client list.
"I think their views are interesting, that's all, and important because
they're different." As for his own views, Christie considers himself
"authentic" for standing up for what he believes in, which for the
most part has not yet aligned him with his clients but has certainly placed him
close to the pack. He says he's not anti-Semitic. "I don't mind Jews and
they don't usually mind me," contends Christie
(although he does recall a long-ago morning in the Y change-room when he stood
stunned in his three-piece pinstripe suit as local businessman Howie Siegel,
Jewish and stark naked, tore a strip off him for taking on the Keegstra case).
"I get along well with people in general. I treat them like
individuals."
It was around the time of Keegstra, the spring of 1985, that Red Deer College
English professor Gary Botting stumbled into Christie's life. Botting was a
Jehovah's Witness, a religion whose followers went through a period in the 1950s
of being criminally prosecuted for spreading false news.
As a result, he felt strongly about protecting freedom of expression. So when he
heard about an Alberta library banning a Holocaust-denial book, Botting spoke
out. Christie was on the phone soon after, and Botting soon found himself
bundled onto a plane to Toronto to be an "expert witness" at Zundel's
trial. Botting seems quite baffled today at how it all happened, and how
completely his relationship with Christie subsequently unravelled a few years
later.
He was a friend and fellow traveller -- even articling with Christie during
Botting's transition into a lawyer after the two men met. Botting, now living in
Bowser and no longer practising law, says the friendship deteriorated as he grew
more worried about the people he found himself keeping company with. When
Botting received the debut George Orwell free speech award in 1986, a Christie
invention, he was horrified to see the TV news juxtapose his image with that of
an ex-Klansman standing beside a burning cross. The moment that ultimately
severed the relationship was at a party 11 years ago at Zundel's Toronto home,
says Botting.
He'd wandered into Zundel's basement and come upon"a large-screen TV
with half a dozen really elderly Nazi types weeping away as Hitler rallied the
masses for the 1936 Berlin Games." He began to
question whether freedom ofexpression was the issue at hand. "I'm all in
favour of a free marketplace of ideas," Botting says now. "But
Christie always seemed to go that one step farther." In 1996, humiliated by
reports that Zundel was still pointing to Botting's trial testimony as support,
Botting wrote a letter to Christie saying his free speech league was in fact a
front for an "anti-Semitic agenda."
He renounced all ties with Christie and returned his Orwell award. Does Christie
share the views of his clients? He will say only that his clients' opinions are
"interesting," and shouldn't be silenced just because people don't
want to hear what they have to say. He has been quoted in the past questioning
theories about the Holocaust, telling reporters in 1985, "I can say I've
come to have some grave doubts about the exterminationist side."
He definitely rubbed federal Citizenship Minister Elinor Caplan the wrong way a
couple of months ago with a comment about her "Jewish animosity"
toward one of his clients. Botting recalls driving with Christie while he sang
along gustily in German to a tape of war-era German marching music, played at
deafening volume for the benefit of an alarmed hitchhiker in the back seat.
"I think the shock appeal is part of it," says Botting. "But
there's something very distasteful about using Nazism for its shock value."
George Burdi, the reformed founder of a white-power music distribution company
(he now describes himself as "a born-again liberal" and plays in a
multi-race band), says it's simplistic to think that there's a single viewpoint
shared by everyone on the extreme right. "It's a bit like Christianity
inside the movement in that you hardly find two with the same view," says
Burdi, who spent two weeks with Christie in adjoining hotel rooms during a hate
trial three years ago. "You'd be surprised. I remember hearing Ernst Zundel
arguing for more immigration from Asia. "But what's important to understand
is that none of them are Dr. Evil, wringing their hands and planning to destroy
people. They believe what
they're saying."
Christie was Burdi's lawyer in 1999 when the Toronto musician pleaded guilty to
spreading racial hatred, having been caught in a sting selling racist CDs to
police. Burdi remembers Christie urging him to let the matter proceed to trial,
even offering to take the case for free rather than see Burdi plead guilty.
"He was ready to give up three months of his time away from home, and do it
pro bono," says Burdi. "I have to call that honour. I think it's a
real shame a man like that has spent his life trapped in this bitter
battle."
Christie remembers the time when he was sitting in his car outside his office
and a truck drove into the side of the building. Had he been inside, the truck
would have hit him while he sat at his desk. He doubts it was an accident. He's
since boarded up his office windows in the old Broughton Street jewelry kiosk he
leases from the city, the better to avoid the hassle of cleaning up broken
glass. He hesitated for two weeks before agreeing to be interviewed, fearful of
another wave of media-generated hassles. "I'm starting to think I'm running
out of friends," he says jokingly.
His name alone is trouble enough. A Toronto lawyer with the same name suffered
through 11 death threats in the 1990s before he finally took out a newspaper ad
noting that he wasn't that Doug Christie. Life hasn't been any smoother for
Victoria's Doug Christie. "Ultimately, you have to be what you are,"
he says. "There's never been an easy time to say these things. When people
really take time to live
authentic lives, it far exceeds in value the compromises made for short-term
gains." Christie has chosen to fight back by suing people, a practice that
has raised eyebrows among those who find it strange behaviour for a man who
considers himself a champion of free speech.
He has sued newspapers, politicians and various individuals over the years, with
varying degrees of success. Financially, Christie says he's done all right for
himself, although no one would know it by the look of his office. The carpet is
worn, the furniture minimalist and tatty. The lighting is dim. The walls are
nearly bare but for Jesus, Robert E. Lee and a handmade poster declaring
"Justice is My Hope."
Christie says he likes to save on overhead. There have been lower-profile
clients over the years supplementing his freedom-of-expression cases: A Victoria
grandmother fighting to have her
granddaughter come visit her at her escort agency; the local film festival
battling to show a documentary about porn star John Holmes inside St. Ann's
Academy; marine engineer Bob
Ward in his libel lawsuit against former premier Glen Clark. But it's never long
before the next controversial case emerges. And they invariably have something
to do with contentious opinions around Nazis and the Holocaust.
The most recent in that long line is the case of Michael Seifert, the
convicted war criminal from Vancouver who Ottawa is trying to strip of Canadian
citizenship and deport. The issues Christie has raised around free speech don't
sit comfortably with many. It's difficult to support Christie's wide-open
version of freedom of expression without appearing to endorse the appalling
views of some of his clients. One who handled the challenge well was Conrad
Black. Exhorted by former employee Doug Collins to support his fight to overturn
a B.C. Human Rights ruling that found his writing hateful, the newspaper baron
replied: "Some of your editorial reflections are such that, while we don't
contest your right to your opinions, we are not prepared to publish or
underwrite them ourselves."
Warren Kinsella, a Toronto lawyer whose 1994 book Web of Hate includes a chapter
on Christie, says Christie is a good lawyer, routinely underestimated by those
who come up against him. He is also in demand as a public speaker, travelling
around the world at the request of those who like what he has to say. He'll be
in Borneo this month on one such engagement, and is popular in Australia.
"He's very dogged, very determined to represent these people," says
Kinsella of Christie's standard clientele. "It's just a shame that many of
them possess such loathsome opinions." Burdi says the white-power movement
in Canada that Christie has figured so prominently in is "moribund"
these days.
The old guard has moved on, and the new wave of young and vicious white
supremacists that Burdi was briefly part of is languishing. He figures it was
the Internet that did in the movement, the opposite of what everyone predicted.
Hate literature is now so readily available that it has lost its thrill. As for
Christie, he isn't likely to abandon his cause, or run out of clients. It's been
more than half a century since the Holocaust, but there seems to be no shortage
of people still eager to argue over it. "If you and I disagree, why should
one of us have to be silent?" asks Christie.
"Every group should be open to criticism if criticism is true, and the way
that's determined is through public debate and analysis." But he's tired
these days, and troubled by a bout of asthma that landed him in the hospital
recently. He's thinking about new directions, musing over how nice it would be
to work in a plant nursery. "Thirty years. There've been some stressful
times in there," says Christie.
"I've got to think about slowing down. I think I'll just try to do what I
can with whatever is left to me."
[end of article]