43 Facts About Adrien Arcand

Adrien Arcand was a Canadian fascist politician, writer, and journalist.

Adrien Arcand founded and led the far-right National Unity Party of Canada from 1934 until his death in 1967.

Adrien Arcand was the son of Narcisse-Joseph-Philias Adrien Arcand, who was a carpenter and trade union official, and Marie-Anne.

Adrien Arcand is the great uncle of the movie director, Denys Arcand.

Adrien Arcand was born into a family of 12 children and grew up in a house on Laurier street in Montreal.

Narcisse Adrien Arcand was active in the Labour Party that advocated free education, old age pensions, health insurance and universal suffrage.

Narcisse Adrien Arcand was very active in lobbying against Asian immigration, testifying in 1909 before the Royal Commission on Education, as long as Asian immigration continued, it would be impossible for the white working class to advance economically.

From advocating a ban of Asian immigration to advocating a ban of all immigration was not a great difference, and soon Adrien Arcand was arguing for the cessation of all immigration.

Adrien Arcand's son inherited his father's belief that immigration was a threat.

However, Montreal at the time had a large English-speaking minority, and Adrien Arcand recalled later that he "was raised in an atmosphere not conducive to separatist and Anglophobic sentiments" as he knew many English-speakers as he was growing up and came to speak English fluently.

Adrien Arcand was educated at the College de St Jean d'Iberville, College Saint-Stanislas and College de Montreal in Montreal.

Adrien Arcand received the standard 8-year college classique education emphasizing French, Latin, Greek, religion, mathematics, classic literature, and French history.

Adrien Arcand considered studying to be a priest, but changed his mind as "weakness" made a life of celibacy unappealing to him.

Adrien Arcand later recalled that his dismissal came as "a surprise, cruel and hard, with the result that my wife and my young babies suffered the effects of painful, abject poverty".

Adrien Arcand's dismissal gave a lifelong grudge against his former employer, Pamphile Real Du Tremblay, and caused him to found a new newspaper, Le Goglu, in August 1929.

Adrien Arcand was assisted in founding Le Goglu by a printer, Joseph Menard, who wanted to begin his own newspaper.

Le Goglu was a successful newspaper, and by 1929 for the Christmas special edition, Adrien Arcand could afford to print his paper in colour for 12 pages.

In December 1929, Adrien Arcand began a companion newspaper for Le Goglu, the Sunday weekly Le Miroir, which was more serious.

In March 1930, Adrien Arcand initiated a third newspaper Le Chameau that soon failed during 1931 as it was unprofitable.

Adrien Arcand published and edited several newspapers during this period, most notably Le Goglu, Le Miroir, Le Chameau, Le Patriote, Le Fasciste Canadien and Le Combat National.

Adrien Arcand used the pages of Le Goglu to attack the plans for Jewish schools, and in May 1930 he published his antisemitic editorial, "Why Semitism Is a Danger".

Adrien Arcand credited much of his antisemitism to be a result of reading the pamphlet The Jewish World Problem by Lord Sydenham of Combe.

Adrien Arcand shared the idea widely accepted in French-Canada that the Confederation of 1867 was a "pact" between two "nations" that agreed to work together for their common betterment.

Adrien Arcand's antisemitism was motivated at least partly by the fact that the majority of Ashkenazim immigrants from Eastern Europe usually arrived in Montreal, where a great many chose to settle.

Adrien Arcand saw the Jews as economic competitors, contrasting his idealized, rural French-Canadian Catholic small grocer who was honest and hard-working with the stereotype of the greedy and unscrupulous big city Jewish immigrant capitalist who only succeeded because of "his dishonesty, not his skill or ability".

Adrien Arcand profoundly disliked the egalitarianism of French republicanism, writing with disgust how Josephine Baker, the "richest and most famous Negress" in France, became a millionaire "after showing her derriere at the Folies Bergeres".

In May 1930, Arcand met with the millionaire Conservative leader R B Bennett to ask him for his financial assistance in exchange for which Arcand would campaign against the Liberals in the coming election.

Adrien Arcand received covert funds from the Conservative Party to operate his newspapers and campaign for Bennett in the 1930 federal election.

In October 1932, Adrien Arcand first made contact with the German Nazi Party when its representative, Kurt Ludecke, visited Montreal, and told Adrien Arcand that the two philosophies had much in common and should cooperate.

Adrien Arcand promised to schedule a meeting between Ludecke and Bennett, and though he did send a letter to Bennett requesting that he meet Ludecke, the proposed meeting never occurred.

Adrien Arcand received secret funds from Lord Sydenham of Combe, former governor of Bombay and a prominent fascist sympathizer in the British Conservative Party after he translated into French Sydenham's pamphlet "The Jewish World Problem".

Adrien Arcand maintained correspondence with Arnold Spencer Leese, chief of the Imperial Fascist League.

Adrien Arcand was influenced most strongly by British fascism as he maintained an active correspondence with various British fascists such as Lord Sydenham, Henry Hamilton Beamish and Admiral Sir Barry Domvile.

In 1934, Adrien Arcand established the Parti National Social Chretien, which advocated anti-communism and the banishment of Canadian Jews to the Hudson Bay area.

In 1935 the desperate Bennett ministry again turned to Adrien Arcand, who was appointed at the urging of Senator Rainville to the post of Tory publicity director in Quebec.

In November 1936, Adrien Arcand was returning from a rally when he got into a car accident.

Adrien Arcand was survived without any serious injuries, but a fellow fascist accompanying him, 25-year-old Emile Vallee, was killed.

In 1938, Adrien Arcand was chosen as the director of the fascist National Unity Party of Canada, resulting from the fusion of his Parti National Social Chretien with the Prairie provinces' Canadian Nationalist Party led by William Whittaker and the CNP's Ontario wing, led by Joseph Farr, which had grown out of the Toronto Swastika Clubs of the early 1930s.

Adrien Arcand wanted to build a powerful centralized Canadian Fascist state within the British Empire.

Adrien Arcand campaigned for the House of Commons of Canada on two occasions.

On 2 February 1952, the British fascist Peter Huxley-Blythe wrote to Adrien Arcand asking for permission to publish in German his anti-Semitic pamphlet "La Cle du mystere", writing: "I'm anxious to obtain two hundred copies of your excellent work, The Key to the Mystery as soon as possible to fulfill an order I have received from Germany".

Adrien Arcand never wavered in his endorsement of Adolf Hitler, and, during the 1960s, was a mentor to Ernst Zundel, who became a prominent Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi propagandist during the latter part of the 20th century.

Adrien Arcand often corresponded with Issa Nakhleh, a Palestinian Christian who served as the chief of the Palestine Arab Delegation.