If you discover hate in your neighbourhood, report it.
That’s the message Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath has for residents following a CBC News investigation which found members of white supremacist groups have been preparing for a “race war” in Hamilton-area gyms and parks.
“Hate has no home in Hamilton,” Horwath said. “Hamilton is a city that values inclusion, diversity, and safety for all.”
Her comments follow a CBC visual investigation, in collaboration with The Fifth Estate, that identified local spaces where white nationalists are getting together to train, including in Myrtle and Gage parks. Known within white nationalist communities as “active clubs,” these training sessions are also part of the groups’ recruitment and propaganda.
Although the clubs portray themselves as promoting community, fitness and Canada’s European heritage, some experts told CBC News they’re a growing extremist threat.
“The minute you peel back even the slightest layer of this onion, it becomes far more insidious. These are virulent white supremacists. These are people that in many cases are training for what they believe is to be an upcoming race war,” said Mack Lamoureux of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. That U.K.-based think-tank studies authoritarianism, hate and extremism.
“I think it’s a serious public safety concern,” Hamilton city councillor Nrinder Nann told CBC News after being notified about the group’s activities in Hamilton.
The Ward 3 councillor represents an area in which some club members were found to be training.
“Fundamentally, what it ends up doing is creating an air of intimidation, especially for those neighbours who understand who they are and what they’re doing,” she said. “Our public parks and spaces are supposed to be places of belonging and fostering a sense of inclusivity and welcoming of all folks.”
Nann said she’s heard “a lot” of residents share concerns about white supremacist organizing in Hamilton and noted a recent incident in which local shops were vandalized with racist graffiti.
“The rise of extremist organizing is a national security threat and it isn’t an issue to take lightly,” she said. She hopes anyone who learns these groups are operating in their community will inform police, she added.
CBC Hamilton asked Hamilton police if they are aware of and investigating any of the active clubs in the CBC News investigation, or any other such clubs they may be aware of. Police did not respond before deadline.
Active clubs and similar groups are linked to designated terror groups like the Canadian Proud Boys and Atomwaffen Division, the latter of which has been linked to five killings in recent years.
Despite group members’ efforts to hide who they are and where they train, CBC’s visual investigation unit found photos of active club Nationalist-13 training were taken in private Hamilton gym Amazing Fitness, in the city’s Gibson neighbourhood. Journalists were also able to identify one of the group’s most prominent members, Brandon Lapointe, in the photos.
Gym manager John Moran told CBC News he didn’t know an active club was training at his facility. In a statement, he later said, “we have no affiliation whatsoever with these individuals or their ideology, and we categorically reject any form of hate or discrimination.”
CBC also identified two Brazilian jiujitsu gyms used by Second Sons — “an active club in everything except name,” according to Lamoureux. In one photo, open white supremacist Alex Vriend, also a member of far-right group Diagolon, stands with club members at Hammer BJJ in the city’s McQuesten West area.
Rob Barham, the owner of Hammer BJJ, told CBC News, “I don’t affiliate myself with … any sort of white supremacy groups.”
“I have a firm policy that I don’t want those types of behaviours or those types of energies in this place,” he said. “I’m trying to protect that and trying to foster something good for the kids of the community that can come here and better their life.”
Vriend and Lapointe did not respond to requests for comment.
The investigation also identified Second Sons members training at Welland studio Niagara BJJ. Kevin Mans, the owner of Niagara BJJ, called CBC’s findings “f–king unacceptable,” adding: “I have built a team that is pluralistic… these guys are scum.”
As soon as he saw the photos CBC shared, Mans said he called his staff and told them those Second Sons members couldn’t come back.
According to CBC’s visual investigations unit, active clubs tend to be male-focused groups that proactively promote white supremacy in acts ranging from public protests to stickering campaigns to social media posts.
Lamoreaux told CBC these groups are “training for what they believe to be an upcoming race war.”
The clubs also use white nationalist symbolism. For example, when Nationalist-13 members post training photos, they hide their faces with the Totenkopf, a symbol used by the Nazi SS.
Nationalist-13, or NS13, has become more public, with masked members holding anti-immigration protests in Toronto, London and Hamilton, holding banners calling for “mass deportations.”
NS13 did not respond to CBC News’s request for comment.
In November, anti-immigrant demonstrators stood in the heart of downtown Hamilton. In response, community leaders called for solidarity and denounced what they say is a rise in hate against newcomers.
Second Sons alludes to the Great Replacement, the conspiracy theory that white people are being driven to extinction. That group spun out of Diagolon, which the RCMP has labelled an “extremist, militia-like organization.”
CBC News contacted Second Sons and received an email response from Morgan Guptill, partner of Diagolon founder Jeremy MacKenzie, who said she does not speak for Second Sons.
Guptill said she didn’t understand why men in Canada fail to support other men “gathering regularly to improve their physical and mental well-being, as Second Sons does,” and why anyone “with an IQ above 80,” would not support “at minimum, a full moratorium on immigration given the current economic trajectory.”
Economists have in fact noted that higher immigration has had economic benefits for Canada.
CBC News also determined active clubs were training in the John Wright Soccer Complex in Brantford, Ont., in addition to Hamilton’s Myrtle and Gage parks, based on videos they shared.
Nann said active clubs openly training in Gage Park — the site of violence involving people with ties to the Proud Boys during Pride festivities in 2019 — is a “very clear signal to my community.”
“They are claiming this space and that is absolutely unacceptable,” she said.
Chris Erl, a Hamilton-based politics researcher at Toronto Metropolitan University who has studied the violence at the 2019 Pride event, agrees with Nann, saying club members are likely trying to “assert their dominance.”
It’s “upsetting but not entirely unsurprising” to see active clubs out and about in the city, he said, because there’s been a lot of far-right organizing in Hamilton over the past few decades.
Citing an “old adage” that “if you let one Nazi into your bar then you have a Nazi bar,” Erl said this activity needs to be forcefully challenged by residents and the city’s institutions.
He said the mayor’s statement that hate has no place in Hamilton is “really entering into the territory of ‘thoughts and prayers'” comments following mass shootings, feeling like a “copy-and-paste response.”
Hamilton needs a program to address the reason why people join white nationalist groups, to address issues like economic insecurity and to combat propaganda that radicalizes people online, Erl said.
Kojo Damptey, a McMaster University sessional instructor and PhD student, said he wants the mayor to back up her words with actions such as funding a hate crimes task force.
“A number of us have been saying this for the last 10 years,” he said.
The former director of the Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion and co-chair of Hamilton’s community safety and wellbeing plan has experience organizing against hate. Damptey was also the target of hate during the 2022 municipal election when someone placed a sticker that said ‘white lives matter’ on one of his campaign ads while running for councillor.
Damptey said socio-economic issues such as the housing crisis have driven up anti-immigrant sentiment in recent years and that unless leaders act, these groups will continue to grow.
He added community members can also report hate to the community-run We Support Hamilton tool.
