By January 2017, threats were nothing new to the members of the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre. For months, the centre (also known as the Grande Mosquée de Québec) had been targeted with hate-filled rhetoric. For example, in June 2016, a pig’s head was left during Ramadan with a note that read “bon appétit.” A few weeks later, pamphlets circulated in the neighbourhood, claiming the mosque was linked to terrorism. In response, centre members installed security cameras inside and outside the building. Seven months later, the cameras provided a detailed record of one of the worst mass murders in Canadian history.
At 7:53 p.m. on January 29, more than thirty worshippers began to leave the mosque after evening prayers. As Ibrahima Barry and Mamadou Tanou Barry joined them, a gunman opened a guitar case from which he pulled a .223-calibre semi-automatic rifle that jammed before he was able to shoot. He dropped the rifle, drew a pistol from under his coat, and shot and killed both men at point-blank range.
The gunman then walked into the mosque and began shooting. As he ran out of ammunition, he retreated and reloaded in the entrance of the mosque four times. The killer fired a total of forty-eight shots in three minutes, at one point firing thirty rounds in thirty seconds. In a desperate attempt to save their fellow worshippers, including four children, several men ran across the prayer room to try to draw fire. Azzeddine Soufiane rushed at the killer, pushing him into a shoe rack. The gunman pushed Soufiane away, shot him several times, and killed him.
The first call to 911 was logged at 7:55 p.m. Police arrived within minutes. But by this point, the gunman had already fled, leaving behind a scene of carnage. He had killed six men and injured a further eighteen—five of them critically. The video taken by the cameras installed to protect the mosque is two minutes and fifty-nine seconds long.
As police began to respond to the scene before them, another 911 call was received at 8:10 p.m. from an unidentified caller who claimed to have been involved in the shooting. He told police he would wait at an access road near the Île d’Orleáns bridge, which he had driven to in his car, and that he was armed and ready to surrender. While police set up a perimeter, the shooter remained on the phone with the 911 operator, crying and insisting that he “would never hurt a fly.” Several minutes later, Alexandre Bissonnette was in custody.
During Bissonnette’s trial, his attack was described as highly premeditated and directed specifically at Muslims, and Muslim immigrants in particular. But why? A native of a Quebec City suburb, Bissonnette was twenty-seven at the time, studying politics and anthropology at Laval University. He lived on the top floor of a four-storey apartment complex one kilometre away from the cultural centre. Other than traffic tickets, Bissonnette had no other involvement with police, and law enforcement say he was not on their radar before the shooting.
But all was not well. Former classmates describe Bissonnette as socially awkward, unassuming, and frequently bullied. Psychological assessments after the shooting found he had developed a drinking problem in his late teenage years, as well as suicidal thoughts and dreams of seeking revenge. Lying about his mental state, Bissonnette legally acquired guns and became fascinated with mass shootings such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
Bissonnette may have found community online. Journalists who found his social media profiles discovered minimal interest in extremist politics until March 2016, when Marine Le Pen visited Quebec City. A vocal supporter of Donald Trump, Le Pen frequently posted anti-refugee and anti-feminist comments on the Facebook pages of refugee organizations. While Bissonnette did not have a formal relationship with any far-right groups, he had earned a reputation as an online troll.
By late 2016, Bissonnette had a call centre job with Quebec’s blood donation agency, Héma-Québec, but he was on medical leave for stress. It was around this time that he reportedly contemplated conducting a mass shooting, going so far as to put two handguns in his backpack and travel to a mall in Quebec City. He stopped only when he thought he was caught on camera.
Video footage of Bissonnette’s police interrogation shown in court offers further insight into his motives. He describes how he became obsessed with the 2014 Ottawa attack in which a gunman killed a soldier at the National War Memorial and the 2016 truck attack that killed eighty-six people in Nice.
But the turning point for him was Trudeau’s “message of welcome to refugees following Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries.” At this point, Bissonnette explained, he learned that the “Canadian government was going to take more refugees who couldn’t go to the United States” and “lost [his] mind.” He said he became convinced that Canada would “become like Europe” and Muslim immigrants would kill his parents and family. He decided to mobilize and researched the cultural centre and its prayer schedule.
Bissonnette’s trial began in March 2018. Initially, he pleaded not guilty to the six counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder but, two days later, changed his plea to guilty. While the Crown sought six consecutive life sentences—equivalent to 150 years without parole—the justice deemed this unconstitutional and sentenced him to life in prison with no chance of parole for forty years. Following a series of appeals to Quebec’s court of appeals and later the Supreme Court, Bissonnette’s prison term was reduced to a life sentence of twenty-five years, after the longer sentence was also deemed unconstitutional.
Given the amount of evidence, Bissonnette’s conviction was never in doubt. But despite the strong indications that he was motivated by far-right ideology, he was never charged with terrorism offences. Moreover, although the trial judge described his actions as deliberate, he cited Bissonnette’s mental health as a mitigating factor in his sentencing.
This outcome caused a grieving Muslim community to raise questions of hypocrisy and bias: individuals believed to be influenced by al-Qaeda– or Islamic State–inspired extremism who exhibit strong signs of mental illness are routinely given lengthy prison sentences. As they saw it, a violent extremist, and one of Canada’s worst mass murderers, got off very lightly.
Tragically, only a few years later, another Canadian far-right attack added to their trauma.
On Sunday evening, June 6, 2021, emergency crews responded to reports of a pickup truck hitting pedestrians in London, Ontario. Citing witnesses, police later described how the vehicle mounted the curb and struck five members of a Muslim family before fleeing the scene at high speeds. Of the five members of the Afzaal family—who ranged in age from nine to seventy-four and included a grandmother, two parents, and two children—four died from their injuries, leaving nine-year-old Fayez Afzaal as the only survivor. It was the worst attack against Canadian Muslims since the Quebec City mosque shooting and the worst mass murder the city had ever seen.
Wearing what appeared to be body armour and a military-style helmet, the perpetrator sped away. Stopping in a parking lot six kilometres away, he told a taxi driver to call the police, saying he had just killed someone. While on the phone with a police dispatcher, the taxi driver flagged down a passing cruiser, who called in reinforcements. Police arrested the killer, twenty-year-old Nathaniel Veltman.
Like Bissonnette, Veltman did not have any criminal convictions prior to his attack. He was also a student, studying architectural design at Fanshawe College and working part time at an egg farm in Strathroy. His friends and colleagues described him as a calm Christian who “has a great relationship with God.” Another friend, who hailed from the Middle East, said Veltman was not an Islamophobe and had never heard him say anything negative about Muslims.
The evidence suggested otherwise. Veltman was homeschooled until grade ten and had few friends. Documents relating to his parents’ 2016 divorce proceedings describe him as “frighteningly angry” and disrespectful toward his mother, who locked herself in rooms to avoid him. For his anger issues, he was taking medication and was in therapy. In their divorce agreement, his parents agreed to not leave him unsupervised with his younger siblings. Records also cite his involvement in an incident where he reportedly shoved a female peer into a locker and was threatened with assault charges. In January 2017, he moved out of his mother’s home in Strathroy and legally withdrew from parental control before getting his own apartment. He had just turned sixteen.
Evidence collected on Veltman’s digital devices showed he consumed hate-related material on the dark web. Shortly before the attack, and copying other notorious far-right violent extremists, he penned a manifesto in May 2021 to explain his actions. Titled “A White Awakening,” the document outlined his hatred of Islam and opposition to multiculturalism and mass immigration. “I am a white nationalist,” he wrote. “White nationalist is simply wanting to preserve European existence, nothing more, nothing less.” Speaking to the media, London police chief Steve Williams said there was no known connection between Veltman and the Afzaal family, that police believed this was an intentional attack, and that the victims “were targeted because of their Islamic faith.”
There are clear similarities between the actions of Bissonnette and Veltman, particularly their motivations. Yet authorities and Crown prosecutors in London acted differently from those in the Bissonnette case, bringing forth terrorism charges under section 231 (6.01) of the Criminal Code. While a conviction on this first-degree murder charge cannot augment a jail sentence, it is significant for two reasons. First, the finding affects decisions surrounding parole once a sentence is complete. Second, the charge holds symbolic importance, recognizing that the act was not only deliberate but committed to send an intimidating message to Muslims and Canadian society.
Veltman was found guilty in November 2023 and sentenced the following February. His case was the first in which terrorism charges were upheld and an individual inspired by far-right extremism was convicted in a jury trial.
Although a terrorism conviction in a family’s tragic and senseless murder can hardly be described as a success, it nonetheless marks a significant change in how officials are understanding violent extremist activity from ideologically motivated individuals. In 2018, it became public knowledge that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had shut down its investigations into ideologically motivated (including far-right) violent extremism in 2016, just a few months before the attack in Quebec City. Even in the wake of the attack, some within the Security Service pushed back on the idea that far-right extremism was a serious threat in drafting their annual report. By 2023, the service indicated it was now dedicating 50 percent of its counterterrorism resources to such cases.
Four key political developments have had a galvanizing effect on the evolution of the far right as a whole in Canada: the candidacy and presidency of Donald Trump, the election of Justin Trudeau, the arrival of Syrian refugees into Canada, and the anti-Islamophobia parliamentary motion M-103.
Trump began his candidacy for president by demonizing Mexican and Central American migrants. Using his platform and the media coverage he received, Trump encouraged the emerging, permissive environment for hate, impacting communities well beyond the United States. Researchers in Canada observe that his candidacy was a significant event for hate movements in this country as well. For example, a 2021 study found that Canadian far-right extremist accounts mention the US more than Canada, and in 2020, they discussed Canadian politics only 3.1 percent more than American politics.
The election of Trudeau’s Liberal government in 2015 was also the subject of panic on the far right in Canada. Much of the backlash was in relation to his portrayal of himself as a feminist and social progressive. The new government’s decision to allow 35,000 Syrian refugees into Canada appeared to confirm conspiracy theories related to the “Great Replacement.” By early 2016, fear-mongering efforts pushed by the far-right media ecosystem resulted in a series of attacks on Syrian refugees and Canadian Muslims, the emergence of “street patrols,” attacks on mosques, and anti-immigration rallies.
The moment that truly seems to have brought many of the disparate aspects of the Canadian far right together is the introduction of a non-binding parliamentary motion by member of Parliament Iqra Khalid. The motion, designated by the House of Commons as M-103, called on the Canadian government to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of religious discrimination, particularly in light of the 2017 attack on the Quebec City mosque. In addition, it called on the government to study Islamophobia to find ways to counter it in Canadian society. M-103 unleashed a series of conspiracy theories claiming that the motion was an attack on free speech and that it promoted radical, militant Islam. In turn, this electrified online far-right networks, setting off a wave of demonstrations that often turned into monthly protests outside provincial legislatures and city halls throughout 2017.
While the fury over M-103 eventually faded, it left in its wake an energetic network that began to look for inspiration in new places. It consisted of overlapping groups of anti-immigrant/xenophobic groups, anti-government movements, militia-style cells, and neo-Nazis.
On a cold night at the end of January 2022, hundreds of trucks, tractor-trailers, and other vehicles made their way to downtown Ottawa, with plans to stay there until the government lifted its pandemic restrictions. During the first weekend of a protest that became known as the self-titled “Freedom Convoy,” the truckers were joined by thousands of protesters, many of whom just wanted life to get back to normal, despite the well-known risks of COVID-19.
Within a few days, the crowds shrank, leaving a few hundred holdouts whose ambitions went well beyond removing vaccination mandates. Echoing the pseudo-legal arguments of convoy organizers, they demanded the dissolution of Parliament and its replacement with a self-appointed citizens’ committee. They also invoked the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act and the Nuremberg Code to demand the trial (and likely the execution) of individuals involved in Canada’s pandemic response. In the third week of February, it took two days of a heavy police response to finally remove the convoy from the capital and the various border crossings they had blockaded.
To those who participated, the convoy was an outburst of patriotism, led by Canadians who said they were attempting to restore lost freedoms. By contrast, those who watched in disbelief speculated that the convoy was influenced by a foreign interference campaign. The convoy was neither. But it can be linked to a surge in diverse forms of far-right extremist ideology in Canada since at least 2014. Indeed, the protest was not even the first time such a convoy had been attempted—throughout the pandemic, activists had been calling for mass protests in Ottawa to protest a range of grievances, from the public health response to COVID-19 to more conspiratorial concerns such as the “globalist agenda” of the World Economic Forum.
The convoy represents two challenges that Canada continues to face when it comes to the far right. First, while a significant majority of protesters who showed up were not extremists, many were comfortable repeating the narratives, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories amplified by the far right. They did not support violent actions, but they found common cause in the mirror universe of fictions told, repeated, and repackaged by hundreds, if not thousands, of social media accounts. Slogans about “great resets,” “great replacements,” and overthrowing the government were seen as part of a movement that claimed to be inspired by freedom. Second, within the larger mix of Canadian society that showed up in Ottawa and at related protests across the country, there were violent extremists who saw an opportunity to network and actively recruit.
In recent years, some groups and individuals within the far right have continued to believe in the ideological elements that have always been at its core. Increasingly, however, many of the narratives are much more eclectic and difficult to pin down: individuals seamlessly weave elaborate conspiracies with ideas arising from the “manosphere,” Christian nationalist themes, Western cultural chauvinism, anti-government sentiment, accelerationism, nihilistic violence, and, of course, racism and xenophobia. Researchers have previously sought to explain this broad phenomenon with terminology such as “ideological convergence,” “fringe fluidity,” or “salad bar” extremism.
Even as many extremists began to adhere to more fringe and radical beliefs, the far right in Canada was able to use social media platforms and capitalize on several global political events of the mid-2010s to evolve into a much more accessible movement that is not only appealing to a larger number of people but also inspiring instances of lone-actor violence.
Years after the convoy was cleared from the streets of Ottawa, we are still evaluating its impact on the far right in Canada. In the convoy’s immediate aftermath, the movement appeared to be strong. Despite the arrest of much of its leadership, convoy-supporting groups demonstrated that they were well networked, they could raise millions of dollars very quickly, and, perhaps most importantly, they were energized. The movement that had previously decried immigrants, Islam, and the United Nations had successfully reframed its grievances in a way that appealed to tens of thousands of individuals across the country. Could they keep up the momentum? Could they do it again?
The answer is both no and yes. For one, the convoy movement has not been able to recapture the energy that emerged in 2022 and channel it into direct action. Attempts to organize convoys around a range of issues, including veterans’ rights, solidarity with Dutch farmers protesting environmental regulations, or even convoy anniversary events, have not been successful. Moreover, in the wake of the convoy, many groups, such as the Soldiers of Odin, Canadian Combat Coalition, Le Meute, etc., have largely disappeared or become dormant.
While these groups were already wracked with infighting by early 2022, it is possible the convoy suggested to a number of actors that a different model of organizing direct action is possible. Organized groups can be replaced with Facebook pages, podcasts, and livestreams. In this way, the convoy seems to have transformed much of the Canadian far right from a movement organized in small groups to a loosely structured network that, under the right (albeit difficult) circumstances, can mobilize quickly.
Adapted and excerpted, with permission, from For Blood and Soil: Far-Right Extremism in Canada by Amarnath Amarasingam and Stephanie Carvin, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2026.
Amarnath Amarasingam is associate professor in the School of Religion, cross-appointed to the Department of Political Studies, at Queen’s University.
Stephanie Carvin is associate professor of international relations at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
