Don Andrews
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- This article is about Don Andrews, a far right figure in Toronto — not Don Andrews, the Toronto radio broadcaster.
Don Andrews (born 1942 as Vilim Zlomislic) is leader of the Nationalist Party of Canada and a perennial candidate for mayor of Toronto, Canada.
Vilim Zlomslic was born in Serbia during World War II. His father was killed when fighting for the partisans against Nazi occupation. He was brought to Canada in 1952 by a Red Cross worker and grew up in Toronto. He took the name Don Andrews (reputedly the name of the Red Cross worker who rescued him) and became a fervent anti-Communist.
In the 1960s, Andrews was drawn to far right racist groups and cofounded the Edmund Burke Society with Paul Fromm in 1967. Andrews became the primary leader of the group and transformed it into the openly racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist Western Guard in 1972. Paul Fromm split with Andrews shortly after the Western Guard was formed in 1972.
Andrews was the first person in Canada charged with wilfully promoting hatred, and in 1975 he was charged with offences ranging from plotting arson, possession of weapons and explosives, and mischief. He was sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to bomb a visiting Israeli soccer team. Consequently, the leadership of the Western Guard fell to John Ross Taylor in 1976.[1]
Upon release from jail in 1977, Andrews founded the Nationalist Party of Canada, in part because he was under a court order to not associate with his former group. In the 1990s, his party led a campaign to persuade various municipalities to declare "European Heritage Day" or "European Heritage Week". Former Nationalist Party member Wolfgang Droege left the organization in 1989 to form the Heritage Front.
Don Andrews has run for Mayor of Toronto several times, including in 2003 when he won 0.17% of the vote. In that year, two other party members ran unsuccessfully for Toronto city council. On one occasion, Andrews placed a distant second in the mayoralty race, because no serious candidate ran against popular incumbent, David Crombie. Municipal law was then changed so that the runner-up in a mayoralty contest no longer had the right to succeed to the mayor's chair should the position become vacant between elections. Andrews has only run on occasions when his name appears first on the ballot. He sat out the 2000 municipal election in which fringe candidate Enza "Supermodel" Anderson was a candidate.
[edit] References
- ^ Candidate beyond the fringe, eye weekly, October 30 1997
