Adrien Arcand

Arcand, Adrien

Adrien Arcand, journalist, demagogue and fascist (b at Québec City 1899; d at Montréal 1 Aug 1967). A fanatical and shrill-voiced follower of Adolf Hitler, Arcand edited several newspapers and founded and led a series of far-right Québec-based political parties. The Ordre patriotique des Goglus (founded 1929) actively promoted Anti-Semitism. The Parti national social chrétien (established 1934) had as its emblem a swastika surrounded by maple leaves with a Canadian beaver appearing at the crown. This party advocated anti-communism and French Canadian nationalism and it also continued Arcand's campaign against Canadian Jews, demanding that they be resettled near Hudson Bay.

At the start of WWII Arcand, the self-proclaimed Canadian Führer, boasted that he and his recently founded National Unity Party would soon take over the country. Instead, he was interned in New Brunswick by the federal government for the duration and his party was declared illegal. Arcand returned in 1945 to a Québec that was largely uninterested in either him or his views. An unrepentant Nazi, however, he never stopped promoting anti-semitism, fighting real and imagined communists and plotting a fascist future for Canada.

See also Fascism.