1992 – 1996
In the years between 1992 and 1996, there was a neo-Nazi presence at Queen’s. Leaflets with the logo of the Heritage Front, notorious Toronto based hate group, began appearing on campus as early as the fall of 1993. Students reported, among other occurrences, discovering that an unknown individual or individuals had papered library bulletin boards with posters while they were in the library, and belatedly realizing that they had been in the same space at the same time as a Heritage Front member. “We had no idea how large scale this was,” Ravi Jain, chair of the AMS Committee against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination (CARED) remembers, “Hundreds, maybe, we thought.” [1] These leaflets in the fall of 1993 turned out to be only the beginning of a two year fight, one which no-one on Queen’s campus would be able to ignore. “Everyone’s intention as a student is to be a student, not to address issues that are fundamental,” remembers Junipero Lagtapon, an editor of a campus paper. “But you also have to deal with some things that are more fundamental. And I found out that you weren’t able to balance the two.” [2] Battling the Heritage Front’s presence became a full-time occupation for some students.
Though the leaflets had been present on campus for some time, the Heritage Front presence increased through the academic year, and broke thoroughly into the public eye in February of 1994. A poster decrying the lack of white pride, and touting the “great accomplishments of the white race” [3] was found on a well-used public poster pole on campus on February 3rd, 1994. The poster was completed by an HF superimposed over the Nordic rune for life. The Heritage Front logo was accompanied by an address for a PO Box in Toronto and a phone number that, when called, presented a recorded weekly editorial on topics ranging from anti-immigration, to the purported evils of multiculturalism, to holocaust denial. Within hours of being put up on campus, the poster was torn down and presented to AMS Education Commissioner Claire Fielding.
In an interview about the poster with The Queen’s Journal, Fielding states she was “stunned and upset,” but unsurprised, citing Queen’s long history as a “bastion of systemic racism.” [4] She also notes that it was ironic that these posters appeared the same day that Surface, a controversial campus publication, published their anti-racism issue. Over the next few months, it would become clear that this timing was not an accident at all, but that the stories of Surface and that of the presence of the Heritage Front at Queen’s were inextricably tied together.
Surface was a student paper whose stated purpose was to highlight minority opinions and experiences on campus, and published submissions of all kinds from their readers. The controversial element of the paper came largely from the submissions section, which invited their readers to send in poetry, fiction, opinion pieces, letters to the editor, and art for publication. Articles over the years addressed topics such as the struggle to reconcile faith and sexuality, reports of incidents of racism and homophobia on campus, or radical rejections of standard, discriminatory hierarchies. If it was shocking or disturbing, it was by design and intent. Part of the mandate and mission of the paper was to provoke outrage and shock in non-marginalized populations, to disturb and disrupt unquestioned prejudices and privileges. Controversy had always followed the paper closely. Former editor-in-chief of Surface, Junipero Lagtapon, remembers the campus as “absolutely hostile” towards Surface. “There wasn’t a time when I was editor that there was a day I wasn’t confronted,” he recalls, “By students, by professors, by administrators and all. It was a very hostile environment.” [2]
Throughout the years, but especially in the months before the 1993-1994 academic year, Surface came increasingly under fire for the more radical opinions printed in the paper. There had been complaints against the paper, especially that the paper was not an accurate reflection of all Arts and Science students’ opinions and interests, as early as 1991, but the issue increasingly came to a head in the mid-90s.“It was always in trouble… Surface was always in trouble in terms of getting its funding cut, getting… hateful letters.” Lagtapon notes. “It was always an area where there was controversy, rightfully and wrongfully. My year was no different.” [2] In 1993, Surface lost its ASUS (Arts and Science Undergraduate Society) student fee. Undeterred, and in the middle of a campaign to regain an opt-out fee to ensure the continued existence of the paper, Surface published an anti-racism issue on February 3rd for Black History Month. This was the issue greeted with a Heritage Front poster on a prominent message post on campus. The Queen’s administration, via Vice Principal Tom Williams, called the poster “repugnant,” but claimed that since the poster contained no illegal content, the university could do nothing to prevent further posters being put up, nor take any legal action [5]. The poster, immediately presented to Claire Fielding and reported in the Journal, was only the first volley in a nearly two-year struggle between the two groups.
It may have actually been the ongoing controversy around Surface that made the Heritage Front believe they would have success recruiting on campus. The debate around Surface’s existence on campus raged so fiercely, for so long, that the Globe and Mail ran a front-page piece on the issue on Surface and its “insults and profanity” [6] on March 11th, 1994. On March 12th, Wolfgang Droege, Leader of the Heritage Front, filed charges against Surface for hate speech ‘against the white Race.’ The Kingston Police were now obligated to investigate Surface as well as the Heritage Front in Kingston. Lagtapon remembers the shock of discovering the paper was being investigated, which dissolved when they discovered where the charge was coming from. “ We knew exactly what the context came from. We knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere.” When asked about his personal perspective on the matter, he had this to say: “I wasn’t worried one ounce in terms of getting charged personally,” he recalls, “We didn’t do anything wrong.” [2]
Despite students’ protests and objections, David Smith, principal of Queen’s at the time, declared that the Heritage Front posters were legal, and reaffirmed Queens’ commitment to free speech on campus for both Surface and the Heritage Front in a letter to the editor not of a student paper, but to the Globe and Mail. Despite affirming his support of the students, Principal Williams was unwilling to commit the administration to any plan of action. He stated that he was certain that measured discourse and debate would defeat the message behind the posters, and that racism was not as large a problem on campus as it seemed — that most faculty and students would “empathetically not agree” with those who claimed racism was a serious issue at Queen’s. [7] He refused to take specific action against the existence of the Heritage Front on campus.
By the end of that March, there was a 300-person rally on campus to get the school administration to commit to a stronger stance on the issue, using the rallying cry “no free speech for Nazis.” Principal Smith was at a budget planning meeting during the protest, and wrote a statement for AMS Vice President Todd Minerson to read to the group. In it, he stated his support of the protest, as well as his support of their actions to remove Nazis from Queen’s campus. The protest then moved to the office of Vice-Principal Williams. “What we wanted to do,” Lagtapon said, “was to get the president of the University to acknowledge this is not a theoretical exercise for academics… that people could get hurt. This is not an academic group that wants to stimulate dialogue, this was a neo nazi group that has a history of violence, intimidation and intolerance.” [2] Williams re-affirmed that the Queen’s community should do its best to make sure that “Nazis, racism, and hatred are not welcome here,” but also that “[t]he university has to preserve rights of individuals, but also certain values such as freedom of speech,” [8] and that until the Heritage Front did something blatantly illegal, Queen’s could not ban their posters from campus.
The administration took nearly two weeks to respond to a letter from CARED with specific action that the university could take to address the presence of the Heritage Front on campus. “Lackluster,” Ravi Jain describes the administration response, “not very supportive, out of touch, really.” [1] Jain had more reason than most to be able to make that judgment. He had met with Principal Smith to discuss the presence of the Heritage Front on campus, and presented the principal with an Action Plan that CARED had drafted to combat the threat. He remembers the meeting clearly. “He knew a lot about me,” Jain recalls, “he knew me by name, he knew my dad was a professor, you know. I came in like, ‘this is what we’re advocating for,’ and they really didn’t seem supportive.” [1] Meanwhile, Surface continued to push for an opt-out student fee, as a means of obtaining funding for future years.
On May 31st, Two months after the rally nearly to the day, Kingston Police announced that they would not be pressing hate speech charges against either the Heritage Front nor Surface. Surface, after failing to secure an opt-out fee, sought independent advertisers and alternate sources of funding. Although no further Heritage Front activity was present on campus that year, the Queen’s Anti-Racism Coalition launched the Queen’s Against the Nazi’s campaign in June of 1994.
Though the summer of 1994 passed in relative peace, the Heritage Front presence on campus was clear even before classes resumed in the fall. Three posters were found on campus during Orientation Week in September 1994, warning students that their education was going to ‘indoctrinate’ them, and instructing the reader to “stop apologising for being white”. New Principal William Leggett released a written statement saying that the administration could not take direct legal action against the posters, but that he believed in the capability of the student body to deal with the issue, and that reasoned debate would see the non-neo-Nazis victorious. [9]
The student body, it should be noted, was trying to do so. Surface, in fact, created and published an issue addressing the Heritage Front presence in November of 1994. The papers vanished from campus the night they were distributed, turning up in bundles at the bottom of recycling bins and “‘blowing around’ Princess and University streets”. [10] A total of over 4000 issues of Surface disappeared from campus, a half of the total copies of the first issue that year, and roughly a quarter of the second issue. Despite Principal Leggett’s confidence that the reasoning student body would debate itself into resolution, the opposition to Surface seemed to have no intention of engaging with the rest of the student body.
Perhaps it did not occur to him that the student body was also the problem. It was eventually revealed, in fact, that the active member of the Heritage Front putting up posters on Queen’s Campus and disposing of copies of Surface was a student named Elizabeth Moore. She also ran a weekly ‘white separatist’ phone line out of her room in Victoria Hall, and wrote for the Up Front, the Heritage Front’s newspaper. She was featured in a documentary produced by Queen’s Alumni Bergeron, which was filmed under false pretenses of being a ‘day in the life’ documentary. The documentary revealed that not only was Moore the presence of the Heritage Front on Queen’s Campus, she was a prolific member of the Heritage Front at large. In the documentary, Moore boasts about having the support of the Toronto Heritage Front in her activities on campus, and the film even features Moore posting the “You are about to be indoctrinated” poster found on campus.
By the time the documentary aired, in March 1995, Moore had left the movement, and the Heritage Front writ large was collapsing following the discovery that one of their members was actually a CSIS agent. Despite Moore’s claim that there were three other active Heritage Front members on campus [11], Heritage Front activities ceased at Queen’s once she had left the group.
Surface continued to publish for several years.
1. Ravi Jain (former chair of AMS Committee Against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination) in interview with author, July 14, 2016
2. Junipero Lagtapon (Editor-in-Chief of Surface) in interview with author, August 4, 2016.
3. “White and Proud,” Poster. Posted on February 3rd, 1994. From Anti-Racist Collective online archives, https://web.archive.org/web/20071214150347/http://www.heritagefront.com/updates/graphics/flyer_white_and_proud.jpg (accessed June 11, 2016).
4. Ryan P. Chen, “White supremacist poster found on campus,” The Queen’s Journal, January 4th, 1994, 1.
5. Afan Qadir, “Heritage Front poster legal: administration,” The Queen’s Journal, February 15 1994, 1.
6. Jack Kapica, “Student tabloid fights hate with hate,” The Globe and Mail, March 11, 1994, A1.
7. David Smith, “Letter to the editor; Dual commitment,” The Globe and Mail, March 15, 1994, A20.
8. Lori Thorlakson, “Protestors target racism,” The Queen’s Journal, March 31, 1994, 1.
9. Queen’s Journal news staff, “Legget Responds to Heritage Front,” The Queen’s Journal, September 16, 1994, 8.
10. Katie Riggs, “Surface newspapers disappearing from campus,” The Queen’s Journal, November 25, 1994, 1.
11. Christopher Shulgan, “Coming back from the Front,” The Queen’s Journal, March 3, 1995, 5.