Mass Mobilization Drives Residential School Denial Fascists Out of UBC in Vancouver

Mass Mobilization Drives Residential School Denial Fascists Out of UBC in Vancouver by Jeff Shantz

On January 22, Indigenous workers, students, community members and allies mobilized to shut down a planned gathering of residential school denialists and fascists at the University of British Columbia main campus in so-called Vancouver (unceded, traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations). Reaching over 500 people at its largest the antifascist mobilization drummed, danced, confronted, and drove the fascists out. As is typical of cops and klan going hand in hand the fascists and genocide denialist slinked away under shelter of police and campus security.

The denialist gathering was planned by the official political party OneBC, a new openly racist, xenophobic, anti-Indigenous party which actually has a sitting member in the BC Legislature, Dallas Brodie. Brodie has tried to make a name for herself by peddling residential school denialism and other standard fascist fare such as anti-immigrant hate. On December 2, the OneBC party released its denialist “documentary” Making a Killing: Reconciliation, Genocide and Plunder in Canada. They purposely chose to have their event outside the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at UBC to directly harm Indigenous people, including residential school survivors.

This crew brought their usual rogues gallery of local fascists and hate mongers to UBC, among them disgraced Mount Royal University (Calgary) professor Frances Widdowson, and BC teacher Jim McMurtry, both fired for peddling their hate. Brodie, Widdowson, and McMurtry have taken this shitshow on the road to other universities in BC. In November 2025 they were confronted by Indigenous community members at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops.

The UBC event brought out a range of local fascist agitators, including Drewcouver, racist weed celebrity Marc Emery (“The Prince of Pot”), and anti-trans provocateurs “Billboard Chris” and crank-about-town Errol Povah (someone we have faced off against in Surrey, BC, over several years). Far right media, including Rebel News and Western Standard showed up to run their grifts.

The large numbers who showed up to oppose them simply overwhelmed the fascists who were made to flee, with cop shield, after a short time ranting for their media operations. The antifascist mobilization included folks who have been active doing Palestine solidarity at UBC and brought together a range of anarchist and abolitionist allies.

This was a model of quick organizing and action, done on short notice and across sectors and communities. The usual suspect fascists continue to plan, buoyed by the public money and resources derived from OneBC’s status as a political party. Efforts against them need to ram up on a continuing basis.

One point to make from a green syndicalist perspective needs to be made. Povah showed up in his Sea Shepherds Crew jacket. I have written, decades ago, about the anti-working-class and proto-fascist character of Sea Shepherds and other fundamentalist ecologists, so this was not surprising.

Neither is the fact that Povah has been arrested doing anti-pipeline actions “for the orcas.” Radical ecology must mean class struggle, Indigenous solidarity, and land back. Otherwise it can take up anti-Indigenous and anti-migrant eco-fascist, eugenicist, and Malthusian nonsense about degenerate populations or “overpopulation.” These intersections of contemporary fascism must be confronted openly as occurred at UBC.