Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Because a less brutal police isn’t the point whatsoever, here’s a poster that better reflects the intentions of many among us.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
We’re asking ourselves if we want to go to the March 15th climate demo. We tried to go to a reformist demo for the planet a couple months ago. It felt like crap. We’ve been in demos before where we weren’t feeling it, where we didn’t feel in our place (like in a union demo). But there it was really of an entirely different order. Like total incommunicability between our bodies and theirs (or something like that). Like, we didn’t even feel like we were on the same side of the barricade.
The thing is, we came to realize, in that struggle there is no barricade whatsoever.
It’s a struggle without conflict, without antagonism (moreover, it isn’t a struggle). These citizens see themselves as all in agreement and all guilty (as is proper to citizenship, we might add). So we don’t hold it against this movement that it isn’t going far enough, as we reproach so regularly syndicalism’s remaining elements of class struggle. We hold against it what it prevents, by mobilizing people as interior to the system, therefore amputating the negativity of their struggles. We take issue with it for spreading so widely the myth of entirely positive action, where “initiatives” are not corollaries of the destruction of that to which they claim to be alternatives.
That said, as weak as these foundations appear to us, one really gets the impression that people seem to be doing shit. They’re becoming zero-waste, they’re refusing to eat pork roast in their family dinners, they’re dropping out of social sciences to go study agriculture in VICTORIAVILLE (?!?)
Maybe it doesn’t only suck.
We ought to think through the fact that anxious anticipation in the face of the present environmental disaster is an affect widely shared by our generation. And ask ourselves why a certain atemporal anti-capitalism doesn’t succeed in resonating with this affect. We should maybe consider our contemporaries’ obsession with modifying their behaviors and individual lives not only as a variant of their obsession with the construction of their own personal identities, but also as the neoliberal disarming of a rage of which they’ve been dispossessed. To see the compulsive agitation around environmental concerns as not just another fashion, but as the system’s last chance for channeling a panic that traverses our generation. A panic that we feel too, even if, when we think about it for more than 15 seconds, we deal with it by telling ourselves that capitalism is the problem.
In any case, this panic doesn’t start the first time we learn whatever catastrophic statistics on climate change: it is felt, it circulates, it exists between us. The endless awareness campaigns targeting us don’t set it off: they pacify it. Because it’s indeed an unprecedented achievement in pacification that a generation that has been told since a very young age of the coming collapse of the world it inhabits is not already in armed struggle.
Their March 15th and ours shouldn’t prudently ignore one another. Because, you know, our infinite capacity for disinterest in what’s going on outside of our milieus maybe isn’t among our best qualities. Maybe, in fact, it’s interesting that mainstream environmentalism is seeing the possibility for a certain offensivity opened up (offensivity that of course exists already in land defense struggles and among radical environmentalists).
Guys! We really don’t want to be the 50 dumbasses just doing their annual March 15th demo, believing we’re experimenting with the actions of their civil war, and not even able to feel concerned by the fact that people who have never gone on strike have begun saying that the climate is a structural question. How about we admit that environmental concerns are one of the rare things right now that are pushing people to make changes in their lives. Perhaps we shouldn’t let this momentum pass us by completely, even if sometimes it seems driven solely by the winds of neoliberalism. We could work to return to it the conflictual dimension that should in all logic be its foundation.
The night of March 15th, we’ll be happy to find ourselves amongst one another. But we’ve got to remember that when something really goes down, we’re always the first to be surprised, so let’s keep on the lookout for what could surpass us.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
The Canadian government is attempting to construct a new migrant prison in Laval, QC. The building, set to be built by 2021, would hold 158 people, including children, increasing the government’s capacity to control and deport migrants in a context of rising xenophobia and racism across Canada and in Quebec specifically. Though the prison is being billed as “more humane” than the current detention centre, it’s clear that aesthetic improvements will not stop this from being a prison: it will still rip people from their families and communities and be an integral part of the deportation machine.
The land at the site of the proposed new migrant prison has been readied for construction, and the bidding process for the General Contractor has begun. On February 20th, a group of people shut down a planned visit to the construction site for interested companies. They talked to company representatives about the nature of the project and why they should not participate in building this prison. Many companies are unfortunately still bidding for the contract.
Let’s show these companies that there is widespread disapproval for this project, and that there will be resistance if construction begins! WE HAVE UNTIL MARCH 20TH, the deadline for bids, to get these companies to pull out of the process.
Individuals
Join the campaign to let these companies know that what they’re doing is reprehensible! Get together with friends and family, send some emails, make some calls, or send some faxes between now and MARCH 20TH.
Free faxes can be sent using any of the following websites:
When you get in touch with these companies, here’s a sample script you can draw on if you want:
Hello,
I’m [calling/e-mailing] you today to tell you that you should drop your bid for the Laval immigrant detention centre. It’s a morally reprehensible project, and it faces widespread opposition – being involved with it will reflect badly on your company. It’s designed to imprison and deport people who are trying to immigrate here, and it will rip apart families and violently take people out of their communities. That’s part of a racist approach to migration on the part of Canada that we need to challenge rather than support. It’s not something I stand for, and I’m far from alone in that position. Make the right choice and drop your bid for this project.
Groups
If you’re a community organization or activist group, sign up to host a call-in day!
We encourage you to ask your members to call/e-mail/fax on a day that you choose. Invite people to your space to make calls & send e-mails and faxes together!
With many groups signing up, we can have continued engagement with these companies over the month.
Your organization or group can sign up for a particular day using this calendar, and we’ll get in touch over email to see how we can help spread the word: https://framadate.org/rxAzKaJGOlXJkGzx
These companies want to build a new migrant prison in Laval. Contact them to tell them to drop out of the bidding process!
1.
COMPANY: Corporation de construction Germano
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Richard A. Germano
TITLE: Président
EMAIL: info@germanoconstruction.com
PHONE: 450 668-7807
FAX: 450 668-5002
2.
COMPANY: Construction SOCAM ltée
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Richard Paradis
TITLE: Estimateur Senior
EMAIL: r.paradis@socam.ca
PHONE: 450 662-9000 #223 or 450 662-9000
FAX: 450 662-9838
3.
COMPANY: Groupe Geyser
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Lina Tremblay
TITLE: Estimateur
EMAIL: ltremblay@groupegeyser.com
PHONE: 450 625-2003
FAX: 450 625-2883
4.
COMPANY: Tisseur Inc.
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Jacques Hosson
TITLE: Estimateur
EMAIL: estimation@constructiontisseur.ca
PHONE: 819 322-1523 #258
FAX: 819 322-6766
5.
COMPANY: Construction CYBCO
EMAIL: info@cybco.ca
PHONE: 514 284-2228
6.
COMPANY: VCI Contrôles inc.
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Joseph Jacob
TITLE: Chargé de projet
EMAIL: jjacob@vcicontrols.ca, pcraig@vcicontrols
PHONE: 450 442-3555 poste 101
FAX: 450 442-3337
7.
COMPANY: Bruneau électrique Inc.
EMAIL: info@bruneauelectrique.com
PHONE: 514 353-4343, 450 759-6606
Fax: 450 759-2653
8.
COMPANY: Standard Building Contractors
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Shane Ross
TITLE: President
EMAIL: shane@standard.builders
PHONE: 613 847-7258
9.
COMPANY: Securassure
REPRESENTATIVE NAME: Matthew Poplaw
TITLE: Sales
EMAIL: matthew@securassure.ca
PHONE: 514 373-3131
FAX: 1 855 439-9500
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
Much of the ground may be covered in a thick sheet of ice right now, and piles of snow have been growing around the construction site for the new migrant prison in Laval for weeks, but that doesn’t mean the Canadian government isn’t hard at work preparing the next stages of construction for this monstrosity, nor that we should turn our attention away until after the spring thaw.
Early in February, it became public that the bidding period for the General Contractor contract had opened for the project, and that there would be a site visit held on February 20th at 10am for all interested bidders. So, early in the morning on February 20th, a group of people gathered to take a bus out to the construction site in Laval.
The group quickly made their way to the road leading to the security check-in for the bidders, and set up a picket, blocking the bidders’ vehicles from getting to the site. People there to pick up loved ones from the neighbouring prisons were welcomed through, and responded in kind with cheers and honks of support for the demo. Those present loudly communicated the deplorable nature of the prison project, and registered to all those considering working on it that there would be people standing in the way of the project at every stage.
People shouted, banged pots and pans, and blew on horns for over an hour, and had banners and signs against prisons and borders, as well as silhouette posters with the names of people deported in recent years. Company representatives present were personally called out, to let them know opponents of the project are aware of who they are. Some of the company representatives, sent by their bosses to attend the visit, expressed support for the demo following conversations with those in attendance. Over the course of an hour, most of the bidders had turned their cars around and left, accepting that they would not be allowed through. By 11am, an hour after the visit had been scheduled to begin, the group packed up their banners and left the area, leaving behind only a couple of cars – mostly Laval police.
With a month of bidding left, it’s time to assess what we know and what we can do next to disrupt the project. Read on for important updates on the state of the prison project, and newly public information about other companies involved.
Since the summer of 2017, Montreal based Lemay and Quebec City based Groupe A have been working on the architectural plans for the prison. In December 2018, Englobe Corporation and Excavation Loiselle completed their environmental remediation work on the sprawling CSC grounds that may become home to an additional prison on Montee St-Francois, already host to the current migrant prison, the minimum and medium federal men’s prisons, and the provincial Leclerc institution. For quite some time, the timeline for construction to begin in earnest on the project has been unclear.
On January 31, 2019, however, Public Works and Government Services Canada posted their call for tenders for who will be in charge of the largest chunk of work on the prison – the General Contractor. The documents provided to interested bidders provide important information about the next phases of work, and offer ideas about where to intervene.
January 31st marked day one of the six-week bidding period for the General Contractor position. Bidding will be open until March 20th, at which time the company with the lowest bid will get the contract.
During the bidding period, companies interested in bidding on the project are invited to post their information on the publicly available “List of interested suppliers”. On this list, accessible on the government buy and sell website, one can find the company name, contact person, email, and phone number for each company who publicly discloses their interest in the project, though some companies do not publicly state their interest using this list. Many more tried to attend the site visit on February 20th.
As of February 20th, the following information is available for six interested bidders. :
1. Contact Shane Ross, President
Company Standard Building Contractors
Email shane@standard.builders
Phone 6138477258
2. Contact Richard Paradis, Estimateur Senior
Company Construction SOCAM ltée
Email r.paradis@socam.ca
Phone 450-662-9000 #223
3. Contact Matthew Poplaw, Sales
Company Securassure
Email matthew@securassure.ca
Phone 5143733131
4. Contact Lina Tremblay, Estimateur
Company Groupe Geyser
Email ltremblay@groupegeyser.com
Phone 4506252003
5. Contact Richard A. Germano, Président
Company Corporation de construction Germano
Email info@germanoconstruction.com
Phone 450-668-7807
6. Contact Jacques Hosson, Estimateur
Company Tisseur Inc.
Email estimation@constructiontisseur.ca
Phone 8193221523 #258
Also present for the site visit were representatives of the following companies:
Company Bruneau électrique Inc.
Email info@bruneauelectrique.com
Phone 514 353-4343, 450 759-6606
Company Construction CYBCO
Email info@cybco.ca
Phone 514 284-2228
Whoever gets this contract, they will be involved in the project until the projected end of construction (the end of March, 2021). They will be responsible for subcontracting out smaller parts of the construction work – these contracts will likely not be made public.
Included in the documents released with the call for tenders is a list of other companies with contracts related to the prison, as well as the person responsible for the contract at each company. Some, like Lemay and Groupe A, are names we’ve seen before, as their contracts have been public for a long time already.
Lemay and Groupe A are jointly listed as in charge of architecture for the project, with architect Pierre Larouche representing Lemay and architect Patrice Beauchemin representing Groupe A.
Mylène Carreau, a landscape architect with Lemay, represents her firm on the documents for their additional role in charge of the landscape architecture for the project.
LEMAY
3500, rue Saint-Jacques
Montréal (QC) h4c 1h2
t. (514) 932-5101
f. (514) 935-8137
Groupe A
819, avenue Moreau
Québec (QC) g1v 3b5
t. (418) 653-8341
f. (418) 653-1989
Other companies listed are new names – possibly members of a collection of firms with whom the government has what’s called a “standing offer” to work.
Engineer Louis Beauchemin, from the Montreal office of KJA Consultants Inc., features on the documents representing his elevator and escalator design company in their work on conveyor systems for the prison.
KJA CONSULTANTS INC .
1410, rue Stanley, bur. 1003
Montréal (QC) h3a 1p8
t. (514) 284-3119
The engineering consulting firm BPA, otherwise known as Bouthillette Parizeau, will be involved in food services and commissioning for the prison. For food services, engineer Sylvie Savoie is representing the company, and for commissioning engineer Dalia Ramy appears to be in charge.
BPA
6655, boul. Pierre-Bertrand
Bureau 250
Québec (QC) g2k 1m1
t. (514) 383-3747
Stantec, a huge design, consulting and engineering firm with an office in Longueuil, appears to be heavily involved in many aspects of the project.
For their roles related to electrical and fire alarm work, and fire protection, engineers Alexandre Manseau-Nguyen and Bruno Lehoux are in charge, respectively.
For their telecommunication work, engineer Jonathan Hallee is listed.
Stantec is also involved in many aspects of the engineering work, with the following representatives related to different subsections. Louis-Stephane Racicot’s role is as Engineering Project Manager. Engineer Alexandre Jean is in charge of mechanical, Michel Gendron in charge of electrical, Patrick Bourgeois is listed for structure, and for civil Martin Charron.
STANTEC
400-375, boul. Roland-Therrien
Longueuil (QC) j4h 4a6
t. (514) 281-1033
While it may not be clear what specific work will be happening when, the bid documents indicate that when the construction begins, work will be occurring until 9pm maximum from Monday to Saturday, with noise-generating work happening only 7am to 6pm these days, and no work at all occurring on Sundays or statutory holidays.
There will be offices on site to securely store documents, as well as two site cameras which will be constantly livestreaming work and the site to a private website accessible to a government representative at all times.
Fences obscuring the view into the site will be erected. The documents mention that all workers will have to pass security clearance and will be prohibited from speaking to any Leclerc Detention facility prisoners (who are held just beside the site).
It is reasonable to expect re-excavation and foundational work to begin very quickly following the awarding of the contract to the General Contractor at the end of March. This means that those opposed to the construction of yet another piece of infrastructure solely designed to bolster the government’s capacity to detain and deport migrants must be hard at work as well, as construction may start in earnest in the next month.
Companies considering involving themselves in this entirely unacceptable project, serving only to rip apart families and communities, would do well to stay far away from this project. They may risk their reputation, their clients, and their money by choosing to lend their expertise to this unambiguously racist and violent project in a moment where it is extremely important for everyone to pick a side: against white supremacy and xenophobia. Companies providing materials for the construction, or interested in being subcontracted to work in a more limited role should also think long and hard before making an unethical and indefensible choice.
For a world without prisons or borders.
For freedom of movement and freedom to live for all.
For more background information on the migrant prison project, and to download materials and research documents related to the struggle against it, visit stopponslaprison.info.
To read the documents summarized in this piece, you can download them directly from the government website using these links. We recommend using TorBrowser to avoid giving your IP address.
From From Embers
An interview with Craig Fortier, who is an organizer and academic based in Toronto. Among other things, Craig is involved with No One Is Illegal and helps coordinate the Field of Dreamers Cooperative Softball Association, which was featured on a recent episode of Talking Radical Radio. Craig is the author of the short book Unsettling The Commons: Social Movements Within, Against and Beyond Settler Colonialism which was published in 2017 by Arbeiter Ring. In it, Craig draws on more than 50 interviews with organizers within what he calls the “anti-authoritarian current” across Canada and the United States, and discusses what it means to “struggle for the commons” in the context of settler colonialism.
Craig’s book recommendations include Undoing Border Imperialism, Red Skin White Masks & Mohawk Interruptus.
Music is by LAL and Test Their Logik.
(Content warning: many of the links included in this article lead to extreme racist, anti-Semitic and misogynistic content. Proceed with care.)
In May of 2018, Montreal anti-fascists leaked the contents of a private neo-Nazi chat room called “Montreal Storm” (short for Montreal Stormer Book Club*), which was active from August 2016 to January 2018, and included 55 users.
The leak made it possible to identify several members of the chat room, including Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, Vincent Bélanger Mercure and Gabriel Sohier Chaput, alias Zeiger. The latter was revealed by the Montreal Gazette to be a prolific propagandist for the most radical wing of the Alt-Right and a frequent contributor to The Daily Stormer, arguably the most influential Alt-Right/neo-Nazi website in the world in the 2016-2017 period, and to this day.
Partly through their unfortunate (and unplanned) participation in a Vice report on the now infamous white supremacist “Unite The Right” rally, the three activists named above were also shown to have traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, to join forces with assorted fascists, Nazis and ultra-nationalists to protest the removal of a stupid fucking statue. Tragically, Anti-racist activist Heather Heyer was killed and several more people were gravely injured in the afternoon of August 12th when white supremacist James Alex Fields plowed his car into a group of counter-protestors.
> The full contents of the Montreal Storm Chat Room have been accessible on Unicorn Riot since May 2018.
(Content warning for extreme racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny.)
Several more members of the Montreal Storm chat room (and adjacent “Book Club”) have been identified by anti-fascists, including its likely initiator and main moderator, Date, aka DateOfLies, aka LateOfDies, real name Athanasse “Athan” Zafirov,
“Date” was featured prominently in a National Post article published on May 14th, 2018, where his role in the Montreal Storm chat room and local Stormer Book Club was detailed. Zafirov’s name, however, was never mentioned.
>> Zafirov, aka Date’s posts to the Montreal Storm chat room
(Content warning for extreme racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny.)
A few months later, in July 2018, as part of a larger callout to identify members of ID Canada (a European-style, neo-fascist, “identitarian” organization trying to get off the ground in Canada), the good folks at Anti-Racist Canada put together a more complete exposé on DateOfLies.
The ARC exposé first establishes that Date is a central figure of ID Canada (formerly Generation Identity Canada), since Date himself bragged about his role in episode #65 of now defunct Alt-Righ/neo-Nazi podcast “This Hour Has 88 Minutes”. ARC and their anonymous source go on to show, from some messages posted by Zeiger to the Montreal Storm chat room, that “Athan” (misspelled “Athen”) is the organizer of a secret Facebook group called “Alt-Right Montreal”.
A subsequent post by Date from July 2017 reveals that he helped organize a Canadian delegation to the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville:
Right after the post above, Date proceeds to list his various Alt-Right credentials and ongoing projects, including organizing an “Alt-Right Canada” event in Ontario with Alt-Right mentor Jared Taylor, and arranging for University of New-Brunswick ultra-conservative professor, Ricardo Duchesne, to speak at Ruby Foo’s, in Montréal, in June 2017 (a video of that talk was formerly available on Zeiger’s YouTube channel, which has been de-activated since his doxx). He also brags about running the “local bad goy group”.
ARC’s anonymous source goes on to provide detailed evidence, from Zafirov’s own online activity going back several years, that Athanasse Zafirov and Date (and various other aliases) are one and the same.
A key piece of this convincing demonstration is that Athan Zafirov was found to be one of the “manosphere” activists who had arranged a Montreal visit for Roosh V. Valizadeh, a notorious misogynistic scumbag, “pick up artist” guru and rape apologist, back in February 2016. (Amusingly, Zafirov was trapped by local feminists and showed up, befuddled, to a compromised meeting spot shortly before the Roosh V. event. The video below documents the ensuing farce.)
Additionally, Zafirov made the fatal mistake of coming out in real life on July 1st, 2017, to heckle an anti-colonial protest in Old Montréal, alongside other members of the Montreal Book club, including Shawn Beauvais MacDonald, Alex Boucher, Sergej Schmidt and other chuds.
We know from from various sources that Zafirov lived until fairly recently in an apartment building located on Saint-Urbain street, in Montréal, where he hosted at least one Book Club meeting. His whereabouts were unknown following the May 2018 Discord leak.
Until now.
Zafirov has recently re-emerged at the other end of the continent, no doubt hoping that his online presence would escape the gaze of anti-fascists. Quite to the contrary, we believe that his academic comeback is the perfect opportunity to give this little Nazi piece of shit the attention he fully deserves.
Meet the new avatar of Athanasse Zafirov, “Dimitri”:
Zafirov, proven white supremacist activist, is now enrolled as a PhD student at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, which is in line with his previous academic course at Montreal’s John Molson School of Business (Concordia University).
Evidently, his picture was recently removed from the students’ roster page on Anderson-UCLA’s website. Could it be that Athan is feeling the heat? Unfortunately for him, we made the screen capture above a little while ago, and his smug-ass face still pops up in the Google image search page, as well as UCLA’s internal search engine. He also seems to have recently shifted his area of study from Global Economics and Management to Accounting.
If you would like to drop a line at Zafirov’s supervisors and flag his (very) recent white supremacist activities, we’re sure they will be interested to learn about their clean-cut Canadian student’s dubious extracurricular activities. You will find a number of addresses by visiting the School’s directory, as well as the Faculty listing and the students’ roster page.
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/about/whos-who
ms.phd.admissions @ anderson.ucla.edu (PhD Program)
al.osborne @ anderson.ucla.edu (Interim Dean)
john.mamer @ anderson.ucla.edu (Faculty Chairman)
heather.caruso @ anderson.ucla.edu (Equity, Diversity and Inclusion)
Faculty:
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/accounting/meet-the-faculty
And fellow students in the Accounting Phd program:
https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/accounting/meet-the-students
* Stormer Book Clubs are regionally specific “in real life” meetings, sort of like “social clubs” for followers of the hard-line, neo-Nazi wing of the Alt-Right (white males only need apply…) The original idea for Book Clubs came from The Daily Stormer founder, Andrew Anglin, in 2016. You may also have heard about TRS Pool Parties, which are essentially the same thing, but sprung from The Right Stuff, another Alt-Right platform of the same general tendency.
Montréal Antifasciste recently published an in-depth report on the neo-fascist organization Atalante Québec. That article covers Atalante’s links to similar organizations worldwide, as well as the group’s fascist-inspired political project. It also reveals the identities of most of the group’s core members based in both Québec City and Montréal.
One part dedicated to the RAC band Légitime Violence revealed that this type of organization needs to cultivate a presence in very specific communities, namely counter-cultural musical scenes, in order to recruit new members. This is precisely the role played by Légitime Violence, whose members are also all members of Atalante and which was started by the fascist group’s leader, Raphaël Lévesque aka Raf Stomper. We have also seen that a large proportion of Atalante’s members and sympathizers are fans of Légitime Violence, as well as fans of so-called “extreme” music subgenres such as National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM).
Many other scenes and groups (musical scenes, particularly those related to heavy metal; tattoo artists and shops; political communities; universities; the LARP scene…) also have links to Atalante and/or its members, to various extents. This means that the work of identifying all of the organization’s members and associates is far from over.
In the coming weeks and months, we will publish a series of short articles entitled ‘Atalante and its sympathizers.’ The overarching goal of the series will be to present public figures, individual members, or group associates who participate, in one way or another, in normalizing and popularizing Atalante Québec as a political organization.
In this first installment, we will introduce you to Heïdy Prévost, aka Heïdy Valkyrie, an active member of Atalante who dreams of a career as a social media influencer.
Heïdy “Valkyrie” Prévost was born on December 14, 1990. She lives in the suburbs of Québec City and is a mother to three children. She works at the Québec City Centre des Services partagés du Québec (CSPQ) (Quebec Shared Services Centre) and is a member of the Syndicat de la fonction publique du Québec (SFPQ) (Quebec Public Servants Union). On weekends, she occasionally works at the ParadoXe tattoo and body piercing salon (2480 Chemin Ste-Foy, suite 025 G1V 1T6 Québec).
Heïdy works in public service, at the Département d’accompagnement et de la logistique du Centre des Services partagés du Québec (CSPQ).
On the weekends, she works at the ParadoXe shop (she wears their T-shirt in this photo).
Heïdy Prévost is a multidisciplinary artist (singing, drawing, photography …) who has recently been developing herself as an “alternative model”, with the objective of becoming professional. She also seeks to represent brands, bands, etc. Like any good influencer, she is very active on Facebook and Instagram, where she shares her daily life. On both social networks, she maintains separate personal and professional accounts. Even though her professional accounts do not have a very strong audience yet, having only started a few months ago, she already has several photography contracts to her credit and has just signed a contract with the Montreal agency Dress 2 Impress.
Heïdy would be just fine – if she wasn’t also an active member of the neo-fascist organization Atalante Québec. In fact, Heïdy has been close to the far-right for years. She probably entered the movement through her involvement with the Black Metal scene in Québec, many of these bands being openly racist and/or claiming to be National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM). To read more about the Black Metal scene, check out this article “Épidémie de peste noire dans la scène black métal”, written by French antifascist group La Horde.
Heïdy is pictured above with Burzum and Peste Noire patches, both NSBM (National-Socialist Black Metal) bands.
Heïdy’s tattoo of the band Peste Noire.
Heïdy wearing a La Messe des Morts shirt – La Messe des Morts is a metal festival that attempted to feature NSBM band Graveland in Montréal, in November 2016.
It’s likely that Heïdy developed her political identity through the NSBM musical scene, drifting further and further right before finally converting to hardline fascism.
We see her here wearing a shirt branded with the Black Sun symbol – this is a variant of the swastika, now recognized as having been created by Nazis.
On the above photo, we also note her Odal Rune tattoo (on her hand), a symbol taken from ancient Nordic imagery and widely used by neo-Nazis as an identifying sign. (See also our visual guide of the Far right.)
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It’s hard to say precisely when Heïdy began campaigning alongside Atalante. That said, the next series of photos constitute proof of her direct involvement with the organization and its activities. The following are photos of a food distribution activity conducted by Atalante in the summer of 2018, and shared on the organization’s website and official Facebook account. Furthermore, Heïdy Prévost proudly shared the same images on her personal Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Heïdy, pictured here with Jonathan Payeur, Sven Côté, Raphaël Lévesque, Simon Gaudreau and Renaud Lafontaine.
Heïdy Prévost in the middle of one of Atalante Quebec’s food distribution excursions.
She is therefore an active member of the organization, and recently announced her participation in an Atalante training, which took place over the weekend of November 24-25. On the program: ideological training and boxing. « Jeunesse au cœur rebelle » (Rebel-hearted youth) is an Atalante slogan.
A simple overview of Heïdy’s publications confirms that she is friends with Atalante’s overall membership, and particularly with the core of the organization: the Québec Stompers. Here is a screenshot of people who reacted to one of her Facebook publications:
Screenshot of the reactions to one of Heïdy Prévost’s Facebook posts. Jonathan Payeur, Benjamin Bastien, Yannick Vézina and Raf Lévesque are all prominent members of the Québec Stompers crew.
St-Jean Baptiste 2018 : Heïdy (right) with two other Atalante activists – “Evymay” Lacroix (center) and Laurie Beaudin (left). They are each wearing a bandana bearing the Atalante logo. Lacroix is also sporting the group’s « Jeunesse au cœur rebelle » (Rebel-hearted youth) T-shirt.
Very recently, we saw Heïdy posing with Jean Mecteau (Jhan Delabanniere), bassist of the group Légitime Violence. On another occasion, when unrepentent Nazi scumbag Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald (Hans Grosse) – a member of Atalante’s Montreal branch who was present at the deadly Charlottesville protests – posted an anti-Semitic reaction photo in response to the name of a party Heïdy and her friends were attending (a photo of him with a long nose, a typical racist caricature of Jewish people), Heïdy responded with an amused reaction emoji.
Heïdy shares a picture of Olivier Gadoury (left), of the Québec Stompers and Atalante. Note the “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free) tattoo, the infamous phrase posted at the entrance of the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz.
Undeniably, Heïdy Prévost is therefore an active member of Atalante; her immediate entourage includes fascist activists, and she supports anti-Semitic messages.
The other problem – and the reason we are devoting an article to her – is that she is one of the key people working to give Atalante a respectable, even glamorous, image. How is she doing this? She slips references to Atalante (stickers, clothing, chants, …) into more innocuous posts and updates on her photo shoots, her daily life, her professional life and her projects – just like product placement in a TV show.
A photo of one of Heïdy’s sons wearing an Atalante sticker, captioned «La relève» (the succession).
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Her guitar, decorated with an Atalante sticker. A few months later, we find the same guitar with multiple other Atalante and far-right stickers, including this one:
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Sporting the «Jeunesse au cœur rebelle» (rebel-hearted youth) T-shirt, she’s given Atalante free product placement on various occasions throughout the year.
Even more disturbing is the fact that Heïdy seems to be very successful in creating confusion even among anti-racists, since she is booked as a “one-night waitress” on February 21, 2019 for a special event at Scanner Bistro, a pillar of Québec City’s punk community – the same punk community which has a reputation for not tolerating the far-right.
Scanner Bistro announces a special evening with Heïdy Valkyrie as a “one-night waitress.”
[Update: the Waitress for Night event at Scanner with Heïdy Valkyrie was cancelled within two hours of publishing this article.]
We can conclude that Heïdy Prévost, aka Heïdy Valkyrie, is not an ideologue for the organization, nor is she its most active member. But, much like Légitime Violence, she represents Atalante in her own way.
We implore the punk and metal music scenes, the tattoo and piercing scenes, and photo artists – don’t be fooled, and firmly refuse the presence of fascism in whatever forms it may present itself.
Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info
According to this article in a local Salaberry-de-Valleyfield newspaper from January 29th, the building facade of the excavation company Loiselle, located at 280 Pie-XII Boulevard in Saint-Timothée, was redecorated. The words “NO TO THE MIGRANT PRISON” can be read.
The article indicates that this crime was committed with racist intentions, specifying that the company has no idea why it would have been targeted.
We do not know the intentions of the vandals, but we know that a new prison for migrants is supposed to be constructed in Laval, and that this company received the contract for decontamination and excavation for this project. Is it not the fact of imprisoning and deporting more migrants that is racist? It’s only logical that the companies involved in the construction of this prison would be targeted.
FUCK LOISELLE, FUCK THE CANADIAN BORDER SERVICES AGENCY, FUCK PRISONS.
SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANTS WITH OR WITHOUT PAPERS
From the Graphic History Collective
Poster by Lateef Martin
Essay by Funké Aladejebi
On 29 January 1969, roughly 200 university students barricaded themselves in the Computer Centre on the ninth floor of the Henry F. Hall Building at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal, Quebec. The standoff was part of a two-week occupation to protest racial discrimination that culminated in riot police forcibly removing and arresting protesters from the building on 11 February 1969. By the time the Sir George Williams protest—often referred to as an “affair” or “riot”—ended, police had arrested 97 people, including both white and black students, and the university had undergone $1 million dollars’ worth of damage. The protest and its aftermath shattered ideas of racial harmony in Canada, and the event remains the country’s largest student occupation.
Students originally organized the protest in response to allegations of racism and discrimination by biology professor Perry Anderson. In Spring 1968, six black Caribbean students accused Anderson of awarding them lower grades than their white colleagues for comparable work. At the time, university administrators had limited measures in place for dealing with allegations of racial discrimination. After a quick hearing and short deliberation, administrators rejected the complaints, and Anderson resumed his position. To demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the outcome, students held a peaceful sit-in inside the Hall Building. Things quickly turned violent, though. After someone set fire to the computer lab, the police sought to maintain control and end the student occupation.
After the protest, tensions remained high in Montreal. Residents were divided about the motivations and implications of student militancy in the city. On the one hand, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and city officials denounced the protest as the work of leftists and foreign student radicals. Though several of the student protesters arrested were white, many people viewed the protest as a result of black radicalism seeping into Canada from the United States. On the other hand, the protest galvanized Montreal’s diverse black Canadian population. They responded to the increased criticism and scrutiny of their communities by developing local and transnational organizations that advocated for educational reform and challenged systemic discrimination in various Canadian social institutions. In the wake of the occupation and arrests, black Canadians established such groups as the Coalition of Black People of Quebec and the National Coalition of Black Canada, and local black community newspapers like Uhuru, to combat racial discrimination and exclusion within Quebec and across Canada.
While the Sir George Williams protest was part of the growing student activist movements and critiques that occurred in 1960s Canada, it was unique in its demonstration of black militancy across the country. It indicated a particular kind of black student protest that disrupted the national narrative of racial equality and peace. Much of the discourse in Canada at the time around racial inequity was rooted in criticisms of the United States. The Sir George Williams protest ruptured the façade of Canadian innocence and became part of a longer radical shift in black Canadian organizing that occurred in the late 1960s and included such events as the Congress of Black Writers, a four-day conference held at McGill University in October 1968.
Emphasizing a growing international focus on black radical action, the Sir George Williams protest exposed the shared experience of racialization and racism across the African diaspora and included Canada in this global phenomenon. The students who participated in the protest demonstrated a shift in black radical activism and organizing and the urgent need for political, economic, and social equality for racial minorities in Canada.
Download – The Sir George Williams Protest (PDF)
Posters are free to download for personal, educational, and activist use. See how you can use and support these posters. If you want to exhibit or publish the posters please get in touch.
From Ottawa Against Fascism (Facebook)
Currently, pro-pipeline reactionaries are planning a truck convoy from Alberta to Ottawa. This intended show of force is meant to pressure the federal government into taking more forceful actions to get major new oil and gas pipelines built. At a time when Indigenous peoples are heroically resisting massive industrialization in the Pacific Northwest, we must fight back against this foray of far-right forces into pro-pipeline activism before it becomes a real threat.
We call for mass actions in support of Indigenous sovereignty to be organized in Ottawa and in all the cities along the planned route of the truck convoy, from February 14 to 19.
While it may turn out that moving hundreds of oil trucks across the continent will be too tricky and expensive for these inexperienced organizers to pull off, we believe it is important that such an initiative does not go unopposed.
We call for a counter show of force by all anti-colonialists and anti-fascists to push back this movement for further theft and destruction of Indigenous peoples’ territories, and to maintain the mobilization in support of the Wet’suwet’en people who are currently fighting a vital battle against Canadian armed forces and an energy company to preserve their territory.
The truck convoy, which was originally conceived by industry-sponsored institutes, was quickly taken over by far-right organizers, who intend to use this convoy to advance an agenda including anti-Muslim, anti-immigration and white supremacist elements. Their participation, along with the realization of the logistical difficulty of the initiative and the presence of notorious scam artists pushing their own fundraisers under its name, led the industry groups to officially disassociate themselves from the convoy, leaving all the room to the far-right elements. As such, the goal behind the truck convoy is no longer only about pipelines, but also the promotion of a racist, anti-immigrant agenda. Let us seize this occasion to unite the anti-colonial and anti-fascist forces in a mass deployment!
The itinerary of the convoy is as follows:
February 14 – Red Deer
February 15 – Regina
February 16 – Dryden
February 17 – Sault Ste. Marie
February 17-18 – Arnprior February 19 – Ottawa
Participants in this convoy will be looking to book hotels, truck stops and other accommodation facilities to make the journey possible. We anti-fascists will be doing our best to monitor these plans and intervene when necessary, and we encourage people along the convoy’s route to do so also, and to share information with us.
The far-right organizers intend to use the town of Arnprior as a staging ground before the arrival of their caravan to Ottawa. To this end, they have enlisted the support of the Greater Ottawa Trucking Association, with the support of that organization’s ultra-conservative president Ron Barr. The presence of a truck stop right by the Trans-Canadian highway makes Arnprior a strategic location for entering Ottawa from the West.
As we get closer to the date and continue to monitor the far-right planning, we encourage all anti-fascists to join actions in support of the Wet’suwet’en people, as well as other anti-colonial struggles. TransCanada’s recent decision to hire RBC to sell its stake in the Coastal GasLink pipeline strongly suggests that the Wet’suwet’en are winning. If pressure can be maintained and increased, CGL may be forced to abandon their plans. Colonialism is the main system breeding fascism on this land, and so any struggle to smash fascism must include a fight to destroy the colonial state and the capitalist corporations in its midst.
Sources on truck convoy organizing:
https://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2019/01/conflicting-ottawa-convoy-commitments.html
https://anti-racistcanada.blogspot.com/2019/01/guest-article-from-ottawa-yellow-vests.html
https://rdnewsnow.com/article/612246/pro-pipeline-convoy-ottawa-cancelled
https://edmonton.citynews.ca/video/2019/01/25/organizer-of-yellow-vest-convoy-leaves-group/
To contact Ottawa Against Fascism: ottawa.againstfascism@gmail.com
