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Despite a co-ordinated effort by anti-racist activists to stop it, the Toronto Public Library is standing by its decision to rent out space for a memorial Wednesday night for Barbara Kulaszka, a controversial lawyer who defended some of Canada’s most notorious accused hatemongers, propagandists, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

Kulaszka, who died last month aged 64 but whose death was not publicized until Tuesday, is famous among the Canadian far right for winning acquittals under the law for people charged with hate crimes, or even undoing the laws used to charge them.

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She was largely responsible, for example, for the fact that Canada has no law against false news and no human-rights ban on internet hate speech, and for the fact that no Nazi has been convicted in Canada of war crimes.

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Her licensing information with the Law Society of Upper Canada indicated she was not practising law in Ontario at the time of her death. A notice from Henry Makow, a prominent anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist in Winnipeg, said the cause was lung cancer, and that her funeral has already taken place, last month. She lived in Brighton, Ont.