ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some incidents to demonstrate that peaceful Canada is not immune to the viruses of racism and violence, but one must also have perspective and some context for evaluating their impact on this society. Canada is not pre-Hitler Germany; and its extreme right does not come close to rivaling the racist movements of today's Western Europe or even the United States. Nativism certainly played a strong role in Canadian society right up to World War II, and elements of it linger to this day. In British Columbia anti-Oriental sentiment flourished, as it did in the American Pacific states. The single most substantial study of Canada's right-wing extremists was carried out by Professor Stanley Barrett and published as Is God a Racist? The Right Wing in Canada in 1987. Neo-Nazi skinheads are undoubtedly the shock troops of right-wing extremism. These violence-prone youth are a relatively new phenomenon on the Canadian hate scene.
