Article content

When a controversial B.C. lawyer died last spring, the Western separatist movement he had built over nearly three decades was in “dire straits,” his successor wrote to a dwindling pool of supporters.

Doug Christie — the self-proclaimed defender of free speech known for representing Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Canadian courts — and his Western Block Party hadn’t managed to gain much momentum in the three federal elections since the separatist party’s inception.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Dream of ‘free and independent Western Canada’ ends as separatist party officially deregistered Back to video

Mr. Christie had managed, however, to keep membership high enough to be considered a legitimate political entity in the eyes of Elections Canada.

“We must keep this party alive,” read a letter from the party’s newly named interim leader, Paul St. Laurent, asking that supporters officially declare their support so the party could survive to see another federal election in 2015.

“If we lose our registration I fear we will be unable to regain our status as a national political party,” he wrote, shortly after Mr. Christie’s death on March 11, 2013.