A Calgary man is singlehandedly taking it upon himself to remove messages of intolerance from light poles and signs placed there by hate-based groups across the city since last year.
Using a paint scraper, Graeme says he’s been removing stickers with hate speech that have been affixed to city fixtures since March 2022.
Some of these stickers he says he’s removed read, “white lives matter” and “defend the white race,” and “white revolution is the only solution,” which he calls an “absolute disrespect to the community.”
“A lot of it is hate speech. Especially for the hate speech, it’s just, I don’t want it in my neighbourhood, I don’t want to see it and I know a lot of other people don’t want to see it,” says Graeme.
Graeme started noticing the stickers around Calgary following the 2022 trucker blockades along the Coutts border. Since then, he estimates that he’s removed more than a thousand of them.
Since he began removing the stickers over year ago, he says he’s been harassed and even followed by groups for removing the stickers and clearing messages from sidewalks written in chalk.
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Global News has agreed to keep his last name private due to worries about potential violence against him if anyone from the hate groups recognize him.
“There’s been a couple scary situations where I’ve had to call up police and there’s been real fears that they would assault me or enact violence,” he says.
On Wednesday, the Calgary Police Service hate crimes unit presented stats to the police commission which showed hate crimes in the city are on a concerning rise.
Between 2019 and 2022, hate-motivated incidents and crimes have more than doubled, going from 115 to 246, while investigations have also climbed during the same timeframe from 160 to 371.
Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek says the rise is a call for concern.
“For those of us who feel it every day, the level of hate is escalating in ways that I haven’t seen before,” she says.
“When the RCMP issues a report and Calgary Police Service also issued a similar report that hate is becoming deeper and more embedded in our society.”
She calls the rise a sign that people need to rally together against hate, but adds that laws need to be enforced as well.
“We need the Crown on board. Without the Crown exercising its authority to make sure that we are pressing charges and those charges stick, all of the enforcement measures in the world will not work,” she says.
Until there are more consequences, Graeme says he will continue his daily chore of finding ways to erase the messages.
“This kind of stuff is not tolerated, and I think that’s an important message to send,” he concluded.
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