Canada’s Top 5 Strangest Conspiracy Theories (in honour of Canada Day)

This is a tricky post because Canadians, in general, are not a paranoid people. Our conspiracizing is mostly limited to things like, “They must put extra caffeine in this Tim Horton’s coffee, eh?” (which has been thoroughly debunked, BTW). In fact, we have so few conspiracy theories that people have to invent them for us. There’s the “mysterious” disappearance of the famous Avro Arrow, and… uh… that’s pretty much it.
But every country has its rumours, myths, legends, and conspiracy theories, and odds are always excellent that a few of them will be completely insane. So here are a few of ours (eh?).

1. Hitler lives in Antarctica

In 1938-39, the Nazis’ New Swabian expedition set up secret bases in Antarctica and stashed some sacred relics like the Spear of Longinus in the Muhlig–Hofman Mountains. At the end of the war, Hitler and a few cronies were smuggled out of das bunker and ferried to one of these Antarcticic strongholds in a special submarine. They made their way to the South Pole, where a gigantic (but hidden) entrance leads into the paradisical depths of the hollow earth. While the rest of the Nazis were sobbing, wetting their pants, or chomping into their cyanide capsules, Hitler and the crew were sipping pina coladas and singing German drinking songs with aliens. Then, with the aliens’ help, they built a fleet of UFOs with which to conquer the world.

To be honest, this barely counts as a Canadian theory. The escape-to-the-South-Pole part of it was created by neo-Nazi f**cktards in other countries, who combined the bogus “secret diary”l of Admiral Byrd and other Hollow Earthiness with rumours of Hitler’s last-minute escape from Berlin and the weird rantings of Admiral Doenitz. Voila! The stupidest frickin‘ conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard. In Canada, it was adopted in all seriousness by Holocaust denier and all-around jackass Ernst Zundel, who threw in the ET/UFO stuff – because nothing says credibility like aliens living in the hollow earth with Martin Bormann, am I right?
Zundel has since been deported from Canada. Shame we couldn’t send him to the South Pole to hang with his buddies.

Is there any truth to this mess? Well, Hitler did send an expedition to the Antarctic in 1938 to claim a teensy chunk of the region for Germany. This expedition discovered the Muhlig–Hofmann Mountains, though whether they actually hid anything there is anyone’s guess. And the Nazis were fans of Horbiger’s World Ice Theory, which held that Aryan supermen evolved in the coldest climes. Then, after the war, Admiral Doenitz reportedly said something about a Nazi fortress in “the eternal ice”, though no one seems to know precisely where or when he said it. That’s about it for the “evidence”. No reports of aliens being fond of weinerschnitzel have come in yet.

2. Quebec was in on 9/11

This little gem comes to us from an online group of amateur sleuths called Hawks Cafe. As detailed in their documentary 9/11: The Criminal Enterprise and its Pattern (available on Google Video), they followed the money straight into their own asses and proved that 9/11 was the result of an international sabotage conspiracy involving the Clinton administration, the USAF, Boeing and Boeing Canada, NORAD, the Canadian aerospace company MacDonald Dettweiler, and many others. The manpower for this colossal undertaking was provided by the Rizutto crime family, a Montreal-based offshoot of the Bonnanno syndicate. The workforce included U.S. postal workers, U.S. truckers, U.S. air traffic controllers, and everybody else in the U.S. except maybe dental hygienists. They’re still looking into that.

This Boeing-Quebec theory never really caught on among Canadian Truthers. Huh.

3. The North American Union

When Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ushered in NAFTA in 1988, the first step toward Amerida was taken. Sure, we’re not there yet, but it’s going to happen any day now.
The theorists say another fateful step was taken in 2002, when the U.S. and Canada signed an agreement to utilize each other’s militaries in the event of national emergencies, civil unrest, or what-have-you. Some shrilly insisted that the H1N1 pandemic would provide the ideal pretense for U.S. soldiers to come in and take over the country’s natural resources and much-envied comedy troupes.
Canadian conspiranoids sidestepped the fact that Canada has no choice but to make reciprocity agreements with neighboring nations, because our military – well, here’s the deal. Canada has no military. That’s the biggest Canadian conspiracy and cover-up of all, ladies and gentlemen. We say we have a military, and we even pretend to use it from time to time, but it’s just a few volunteer improv comedians in uniforms their moms sewed for them.

In 2008 a CBC miniseries, Trojan Horse, borrowed some of these ideas. In the film, Canada merges with the U.S. and the country is divided up into five zones, fully under U.S. control. Then the U.S president (played by Tom Skerritt) tries to manipulate Amerida into invading Saudi Arabia. Some conspiranoids saw Trojan Horse not as just another crappy CBC thriller-filler designed for a slow primetime week, but as an actual blueprint for what the U.S. government and/or Tom Skerritt plans to do to Canada.

4. Satan is Alive and Well in Canada

According to Lawrence Pazder’s Michelle Remembers, the very first mass market book on Satanic ritual abuse, one of the two headquarters for the secret, worldwide “Satanic Church” is Victoria, British Columbia. It’s a lovely seaside city, as English as its name implies and very popular with tourists. New Agers seem to like it, too. But Satanists?
Well, according to the late Dr. Pazder, you won’t actually see them because they masquerade as wholly average, middle-class Victorians. Then, at night, they horrifically torture their own children, other people’s children, and kittens. Michelle Pazder, Dr. Pazder’s patient-cum-wife, claims her own mother offered her to this cult when she was a young girl. She was put through a seemingly endless string of bizarre rituals involving lots of psychodrama and snakes, then imprisoned in a mysterious chamber for a month-long ceremony called The Feast of the Beast.
Sounds plausible-ish so far, right? That’s because I haven’t mentioned the part where Michelle describes in great detail a staged car crash that never happened, or the murder and dismemberment of her imaginary friend, or the climactic moment when Satan himself showed up for the Feast and the Virgin Mary (speaking French, for some reason) also showed up to protect Michelle from his fiery tail. Add to this the fact that elementary school records show Michelle was not actually absent from school throughout this month of beast-feasting, and you have little more than the script for a B horror movie.

Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, other allegations of murderous, child-abusing Satanic cults popped up in far-flung parts of the country. In Hamilton, Ontario, two little sisters in foster care were prompted to tell stories about their mother and her boyfriend worshipping the devil, filming child pornography, and eating babies. Though no criminal charges were ever laid in the case, both parents lost custody due to the unproven allegations. Years later, the mother resurfaced in desperate need of a kidney transplant. She has not spoken to her daughters since they were taken away from her.

A far less severe, but equally weird, incident occurred in the little farm town of Manning, Alberta in 1991. Disgruntled parents entered the elementary school on the first day of classes and held the principal hostage, demanding that the reading textbook Impressions be removed from the curriculum at once because some of its fairytales and illustrations contained symbols they associated with the occult and witchcraft. They were particularly troubled by the story “Inside My Feet” by Richard Kennedy, about a boy who tricks a pair of magical boots into taking him to the giant who kidnapped his parents. ‘Cause we all know that real witches and occultists have magic boots, right?

5. Chemtrails.

I haven’t seen a chemtrail, even though I look for them every single day, but they’re everywhere. A jet flies by, and poof! Chemtrail. Another jet flies by at a different altitude and poof! Another chemtrail. Pretty soon there are five, six, maybe even seven hundred of the fluffy bastards polluting our pristine Canadian skies with… something or other. Beware!

Bonus Conspiracy: Alex Jones Talks to Russia Today about Canada. (Gawd, if that’s not a marriage made in Stupid…)

And to show you how *well-informed* Jones and crew are about Canada’s political scene, here’s a clip of Webster Tarpley and Jones repeatedly referring to our Governor General Michaelle Jean as “that guy”, and failing to understand that our senators are appointed, not elected. They express genuine amazement that Canada is a constitutional monarchy.

Other Sources:
1. The Nizkor Project‘s page on Zundel’s UFO theories
2. Hawks Cafe documentary 9/11: The Criminal Enterprise and its Pattern (2007)
3. Trojan Horse (2008)
4. – Michelle Remembers by Michelle Smith and Lawrence Pazder (1980, Pocket Books)
– Interpreting Censorship in Canada by Allan C. Hutchinson and Klaus Petersen (University of Toronto Press, 1999)