Adrien Arcand (October 3, 1899 – August 1, 1967) was a Montreal journalist who led a series of “fascist” political movements between 1929 and his death in 1967. During his political career he proclaimed himself the “Canadian Führer.”
He was detained by the federal government for the duration of the Second World War under the Defence of Canada Regulations.[1]
Arcand published and edited several allegedly anti-Semitic newspapers during this period, most notably Le Goglu, Le Miroir, Le Chameau, Le Patriote, Le Fasciste Canadien and Le Combat National. It is alleged [2] that he received covert funds from the Conservative Party, to operate his newspapers and campaign for Bennet in the 1930 Dominion general election.[3] Relations became increasingly strained afterwards as R. B. Bennett had little use for Arcand following the election. Despite desperate pleas from Arcand and his comrades to get more money to make up for their expenses, the subsidy they were receiving from the Tories was both sporadic and insufficient.[4]
(R.B. Bennett, Canadian Prime Minister 1930-1935)
In 1935 the desperate Bennett ministry again turned to Arcand, who was appointed at the urging of Senator Rainville to the post of Tory publicity director in Quebec. However, many of Arcand’s friends were more sympathetic to the Reconstruction Party, so Le Patriote supported H. H. Stevens while its editor was campaigning for Bennett.[5]
In 1934, Arcand established the Parti National Social Chrétien (Christian National Social Party), which advocated anti-communism and the deportation of Canadian Jews to Hudson Bay. The latter idea was inspired by his friend, noted British Rhodesian fascist Henry Hamilton Beamish, who suggested sending the Jews to Madagascar. Bennett secretly hired Arcand as his chief electoral organizer in Quebec for the 1935 federal election.[citation needed]
In 1938, Arcand was chosen leader of the fascist National Unity Party of Canada, born of the fusion of his Parti National Social Chrétien with the Prairie provinces’ Canadian Nationalist Party and Ontario’s Nationalist Party, which had grown out of the Toronto Swastika Clubs of the early 1930s.
Postcard used by Arcand’s movement
NOT A QUEBEC NATIONALIST
Arcand was always a staunch federalist and an anglophile. He received secret funds from Lord Sydenham of Combe, former governor of Bombay and a prominent fascist sympathizer in the British Conservative Party.[citation needed] He also maintained correspondence with Arnold Spencer Leese, chief of the Imperial Fascist League.
Arcand always was steadfastly opposed to Quebec nationalism. He wanted to build a powerful centralized Canadian Fascist state within the British Empire.
“… Arcand insists that his organization has no sympathy with the extreme French nationalist movement represented by the group which split from Premier Duplessis after he was returned to power because he would not go all the way they wished. “We were the first in Quebec to fight Separatism,” Arcand declared, “and we are carrying on that fight very satisfactorily, swallowing many ex-members of that failing movement.” Frankly, the National Social Christian Party was aiming for Dominion power, Arcand admitted, describing Dominion power as the real key to the vital problems of this country.”[6]
On May 30, 1940, he was arrested in Montreal for “plotting to overthrow the state” and interned for the duration of the war as a security threat. His party, then called the National Unity Party, was banned. In the internment camp, he sat on a throne built by other prisoners and spoke of how he would rule Canada when Hitler conquered it. [7]
Arcand ran for the Canadian House of Commons on two occasions. Despite being shunned by mainstream Quebecers in the post-war years, he managed to come second with 29 per cent of the vote when he ran as a National Unity candidate in the riding of Richelieu–Verchères in the 1949 federal election [1]. He came second again with 39 per cent of the vote when he ran as a “Nationalist” in Berthier–Maskinongé–delanaudière in the 1953 election.[8]
In 1957, he campaigned for Progressive Conservative candidate and future Quebec cabinet minister Remi Paul.
(Zundel, left, with Arcand in 1963)
Arcand never wavered in his belief in Adolf Hitler, and, in the 1960s, was a mentor to Ernst Zündel, who became a prominent Holocaust minimizier and neo-Nazi propagandist in the latter part of the 20th century.
On November 14, 1965, he gave a speech before a crowd of 650 partisans from all over Canada at the Centre Paul-Sauvé in Montreal which was draped in the blue banners and insignia of the National Unity Party. As reported in La Presse and Le Devoir, he took the occasion to thank the newly elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Mount Royal, Pierre Trudeau, and former Conservative leader George Drew, for speaking in his defence when he was interned. However, Trudeau and Drew denied that they had ever defended Arcand, or his views, and insisted that they had in fact been defending the principle of free speech even for fascists.
Among those present at the rally were Jean Jodoin, a Progressive Conservative candidate in the 1965 federal election and Gilles Caouette, future Social Credit Party of Canada Member of Parliament.[9]
