Webinar: Canada’s Cold War

Date: Saturday, Oct. 9, 2021
Time: 12 Noon CDT
Admission: Free. Register at Eventbrite.

Richard Sanders, founder of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, explains why the Canadian government needs to stop financing ethno-nationalist East European lobby groups that still exalt the memory of their Nazi-collaborating founders, leaders, activists and war heroes. Sanders discusses the history of Ottawa’s support for these groups and argues that taxpayers must call the government to account for continuing to fund organizations that whitewash their communities’ historic complicity in the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity. Nor should Canadians be funding monuments, publications, events and meeting centres used by these groups to memorialize their fascist forebears as if they were noble “freedom fighters.”

This talk is based on this research by Richard Sanders: “Defunding the Myths and Cults of Cold War Canada.”

Please sign his online petition to “Stop Canadian government funding of groups that glorify Nazi collaborators.”

Bio

Richard Sanders has engaged full-time in the antiwar movement since 1984 when he escaped academia with an MA in cultural anthropology. In 1989, in an effort to expose Canadian complicity in warmongering, he founded the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) and its magazine, Press for Conversion! Over the decades, COAT organized many public campaigns including peace rallies, marches, vigils and conferences. The magazine, while initially focusing on the conversion of military industries, has broadened since 1999 to include other themes that challenge the official national mythology that Canada is a global force for peace, human rights and democracy.