In the summer of 2017, signs that seemed engineered to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment first appeared in a city park in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia.

“Many Muslims live in this area and dogs are considered filthy in Islam,” said the signs, which included the city’s logo. “Please keep your dogs on a leash and away from the Muslims who live in this community.”

After a spate of media coverage questioning their authenticity — and a statement from John Becker, then the mayor of Pitt Meadows, that the city didn’t make them — the signs were discredited and largely forgotten.

But almost two years later, a mix of right-wing American websites, Russian state media, and Canadian Facebook groups have made them go viral again, unleashing hateful comments and claims that Muslims are trying to “colonize” Western society.

The revival of this story shows how false, even discredited claims about Muslims in Canada find an eager audience in Facebook groups and on websites originating on both sides of the border, and how easily they can be recirculated as the federal election approaches.

“Many people who harbor (or have been encouraged to hold) anti-Muslim feelings are looking for information to confirm their view that these people aren't like them. This story plays into this,” Danah Boyd, a principal researcher at Microsoft and the founder of Data & Society, a nonprofit research institute that studies disinformation and media manipulation, wrote in an email.



Boyd said a dubious story like this keeps recirculating “because the underlying fear and hate-oriented sentiment hasn't faded.”

Daniel Funke, a reporter covering misinformation for the International Fact-Checking Network, said old stories with anti-Muslim aspects also recirculated after the recent fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

“Social media users took real newspaper articles out of their original context, often years after they were first published, to falsely claim that the culprits behind the fire were Muslims,” he said. “The same thing has happened with health misinformation, when real news stories about product recalls or disease outbreaks go viral years after they were originally published.”

The signs about dogs first appeared in Hoffman Park in September 2017, and were designed to look official. They carried the logo of the city of Pitt Meadows and that of the Council on American–Islamic Relations, a US Muslim advocacy organization.

Media outlets reported on them after an image of one sign was shared online. Many noted that the city logo was falsely used and that there was no evidence actual Muslims were behind the messages.

A representative for CAIR told CBC News in 2017 that his organization had no involvement in the BC signs, but he did have an idea about why they were created.

“We see this on occasion where people try to be kind of an agent provocateur and use these kinds of messages to promote hostility towards Muslims and Islam,” Ibrahim Hooper said in an interview with CBC. “Sometimes people use the direct bigoted approach — we see that all too often in America and Canada, unfortunately — but other times they try and be a little more sophisticated or subtle.”

The "Muslims of Vancouver" Facebook page had a similar view, labeling it a case of “Bigots attempting to incite resentment and hatred towards Muslims.”