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If Eric Brazau had any lingering doubt about how seriously Torontonians take the matter of their vaunted tolerance, it may have been dispelled Tuesday when a judge sentenced him to an extra year in jail for stepping into an apparent crucible of Canadian values — a subway train.

The 50-year-old Mr. Brazau is a convicted hate-monger and a bit of a crank who last July, with two acquaintances, decided to conduct a “social experiment” on the Toronto subway.

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At the time, as the situation in Gaza was deteriorating, there were heated protests for and against Israel in the city.

Mr. Brazau’s idea was allegedly to provoke debate among riders, and to that end he boarded the train with an acquaintance decked out in Israeli colours and carrying an Israeli flag and another acquaintance who was to video the proceedings, while Mr. Brazau began loudly denouncing Islam and its holy book, the Koran.

But the stunt backfired when an offended passenger pressed the emergency alarm, causing the train to halt at the next station and ultimately, with Mr. Brazau refusing to leave the car, resulting in a half-hour service delay on the busy Bloor-Danforth line as rush hour approached.