Disgraced Native Leader Dies of Cancer
SASKATOON — David Ahenakew, the former national native leader who once called Jews “a disease,” died March 12 after a long battle with cancer. He was 76.
Ahenakew, former head of the Assembly of First Nations, was charged after a speech and subsequent interview with a reporter in 2002 in which he called Jews a “disease… that’s going to take over.”
He added: “The Jews damn near owned all of Germany prior to the war. That’s how Hitler came in. He was going to make damn sure that the Jews didn’t take over Germany or Europe.” He was found guilty in 2005 of wilfully promoting hatred and fined $1,000. The conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was acquitted in February 2009 after a second trial, on the grounds he didn’t set out to promote hatred against Jews.
Ahenakew, who died in hospital in Shellbrook, Sask., found out he had cancer shortly before his second trial began in November 2008, his lawyer, Doug Christie, told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
He was stripped of his Order of Canada, and at his retrial, he repeated his view that Jews caused World War II.
Actor Haim Dies
LOS ANGELES — Toronto-born Jewish actor Corey Haim died last week in Los Angeles of what police called an accidental drug overdose. He was 38. Haim, who admitted to past drug addiction, was best known for his teen roles in the 1980s films Lucas and The Lost Boys. Starting in 2007, he starred for two seasons on the A&E reality show The Two Coreys with fellow former teen star Corey Feldman.
Play Posters Removed
KINGSTON, Ont. — The directors of a student theatre group at Queen’s University have apologized for a poster with Nazi colours and a Star of David in place of a swastika that was used to advertise a production of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. In an e-mail to the Queen’s Journal newspaper, the artistic directors of Vagabond Theatre, Nathaniel Fried, who is Jewish, and Ryan LaPlante, said that “in acknowledgment of the unintended response… we have withdrawn the images” and taken down the posters, the Toronto Star reported. Fried told the Journal he meant no offence, but wanted to use the production, which opened March 11, to compare anti-Semitism in Shakespeare’s time to its 20th-century manifestations. Hillel and other campus Jewish groups had complained to Vagabond about the posters.
