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Hounded, fined and made practically unemployable by his strident and hateful views on homosexuality, activist Bill Whatcott has abandoned Canada.

“There’s a certain level of sadness,” he told the Post from his new home in Lipa in the Philippines, located about 185 km south of the capital, Manila. “I don’t know if I am gone forever, and I reserve the right to come back when I see fit. But right now, I’m healing and resting.”

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Mr. Whatcott and his wife, Joni, don’t have much money, he concedes. But the 47-year-old said he’s taking mechanic courses and hopes to start his own business.

“I don’t have any guarantee that’s going to happen, but we’re going to try. I’m going to a mechanics school, and that’s interesting. The schools here are far happier with the types of views I express than the universities in Canada, obviously.”

I don’t know if I am gone forever, and I reserve the right to come back when I see fit. But right now, I’m healing and resting

The former nurse has spent the past decade engaged in vocal, aggressive activism on a range of topics, from abortion to homosexuality, in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. He’s hosted Heterosexual Pride Parades. He’s run for mayor. He’s evangelized under the ersatz banner of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a bid to hand out anti-gay condoms. But it was his graphic anti-gay flyers that put him in the national spotlight.