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John Beattie - 7 Jul. 1983
- Name
- John Beattie
- Material Format
- sound recording
- Interview Date
- 7 Jul. 1983
- Source
- Oral Histories
- Name
- John Beattie
- Number
- OH 253
- Interview Date
- 7 Jul. 1983
- Quantity
- 1
- Conservation
- Copied August 2003
- Notes
- Antisemitic telephone message featuring the voice of John Beattie, coordinator of the British People's League, a white nationalist organization based in Minden, Ontario.
- Biography
- William John Beattie (known as John Beattie) was the founder and former leader of the Canadian Nazi Party. The establishment of the Canadian Nazi Party, re-named the National Socialist Party in 1967, marked a re-emergence of organized neo-Nazi activity in Canada.
- Beattie organized a number of rallies in Toronto in the mid-1960s and used the Allan Gardens in Toronto to spread hate propaganda. One of these rallies on 30 May 1965 resulted in a violent encounter with Jewish activists who disrupted Beattie’s rally at Allan Gardens. A legal case was made against Beattie for antisemitic and racist comments, and an expose article was written in Canadian newsmagazine Maclean's by private investigator John Garrity, who had been hired by the Canadian Jewish Congress to infiltrate Beattie's movement. As a result of a daubing swastikas on the gateposts of prominent Jewish leaders in Toronto, Beattie was sent to prison for six months, having been convicted of public mischief.
- After changing the group’s name to the National Socialist Party, Beattie created a recorded telephone message line. Among the messages recorded was one that claimed that "Blacks were being manipulated by Jew-communists." Beattie disbanded the National Socialist Party in 1978. Soon after, he and John Ross Taylor co-founded the short-lived British People's League, a white nationalist orgnization based in Minden, Ontario. In 1988 and 1989, Beattie organized "Aryan Fest" parties on his property in Minden, Ontario.
- Material Format
- sound recording
- Original Format
- Audio cassette
- Copy Format
- Audio cassette
- Source
- Oral Histories