Marc Lemire - Early Career

Early Career

In 1997, Lemire ran for school trustee in Toronto Public School Ward P17, but lost after receiving only 2,503 votes (or 12% of the total). In the mid-1990s he was a Canadian Armed Forces reservist. In their 1997 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, B'nai Brith Canada wrote, "Marc Lemire, webmaster of the Freedom-Site that hosts the websites of several of Canada’s most virulent antisemitic organizations such as the Heritage Front, The Canadian Patriots Network and the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform". In 1998, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called The Canadian Patriots Network a "hate website".

Lemire's involvement with Wolfgang Droege and the neo-Nazi Heritage Front group began while he was a teenager in the early 1990s. When the Heritage Front fell into crisis around 1993, he attempted independent projects on the far right, such as his Canadian Patriots Network before embarking in his online activities. He resumed his activity with the Heritage Front within a few years, and according to the Heritage Front website, Lemire helped organize a Heritage Front flyer campaign in 2001. The flyers were titled in part Immigration can kill you, and claimed that there was a connection between immigration and an outbreak of tuberculosis.

Lemire was briefly a member of the Canadian Alliance, a mainstream conservative Canadian party — along with several other far-right figures, such as Paul Fromm, Doug Christie and Doug Collins — until late 2000 when, according to The Report newsmagazine, they were all expelled from the party.