Canadian Nazi Party leader John Beattie vowed today to make an appearance in Allan Gardens, a Toronto public park, “by hook or by crook,” after the Ontario Supreme Court rejected his application to speak at a rally he had scheduled there on September 11. Beattie was involved in an incident last year in the same park that led to violence and the arrest of a number of persons at a rally he had addressed. He appealed to the court when the Toronto city authorities denied him a speaking permit for the September 11 rally.
In rejecting Beattie’s request for a court order to speak in the park, Justice Donahue said that the Nazi leader was certain to cause a commotion in which police would have to risk physical harm to protect him. He said the “courts have to protect people from harm and have the power to do so.”
In the court hearing, M. E. Fram, counsel for the city, argued that granting Beattie’s application would force the city to break a by-law which denies park speaking privileges to anyone charged with stirring up racial or religious hatred. Replying to the Nazi leader’s complaint that his freedom was being restricted, Mr. Fram said that Beattie “can speak elsewhere than in a public park.”
After hearing the court decision, Beattie said that he planned to have another Nazi Party member take out a permit in his own name and that Beattie himself would stand on the speakers platform while the other Nazi addressed the gathering.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
