Our trip from a Canadian strip club via US neo-Nazis, South Africa to Rhodesia

David Hughes in the 1980s…

This all started, three blogs ago, as a piece about David Hughes, who worked as a doorman/cashier/DJ at the Le Strip club in Toronto from 1982 to 1994. 

It then began to divert via undercover work for the CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service), neo-Nazis, a massive counterfeiting scheme, planned terrorism in the 1980s, a far right Christian Identity religious group, a Ku Klux Klan gathering and a South African apartheid regime connection to, at the end of the last blog, membership of the Rhodesian Army.

“Hold on!” I said to David Hughes. “The Rhodesian Army”?

So, I think not unreasonably, I asked him for more background…

He responded…

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David serving in the York Regional Police, in the 1970s…

As far as the Rhodesian Army was concerned, I became aware of the conflict ongoing in that country while attending Police College in Alymer, Ontario as a member of York Regional Police Force in 1976. 

One of my classmates, Ken, was a member of Peel Regional Police Force and had recently immigrated to Canada after spending several years in the BSAP (British South Africa Police) who were the equivalent to our RCMP in the then-country of Rhodesia.

He was about ten years older than me and I looked up to him as a mentor with his worldly experience – not only as a police officer in Rhodesia but also because of his prior service as a ‘bobby’ in the Birmingham police force in Great Britain.

Ken told me I was too young to be policeman and that I should travel the world and join either the BSAP in South Africa or the Rhodesian Army.

So, in December 1978, I took him up on his advice and quit York Regional police.

By January 1979 I had flown to Rhodesia and joined the Rhodesian Army. 

David Hughes says: “The Rhodesian Army was 85% African during that era and these are some of the African soldiers served with at the time – tough, disciplined soldiers…” (Photo taken April 1979)

May 1979: David Hughes in the Rhodesian Army “in my ‘blackface’ – We called it “black is beautiful camo creme”.

Initially, I was posted as a recruit to the Rhodesian SAS regiment where I underwent three months of their recruit training and selection – but I ultimately dropped off the course and transferred into the Rhodesian Armoured Car Regiment where I served under American Major Darryl Winkler (a former US Army Vietnam veteran who had received a battlefield commission during that war).

I served in that unit throughout the remainder of the Bush War until Rhodesia ultimately became Zimbabwe in 1980.

Obtaining an early discharge from the Zimbabwe Army, I traveled to South Africa and went to the SADF (South African Defence Force) recruiting office in Pretoria and was given an offer of employment. 

I was all set to join the SADF and engage in the war that was beginning in earnest in that country when I got homesick and returned to Canada.

I tried to get hired by 13 different police forces in Canada when I returned but no police force would touch me because of the ‘racist’ connotations associated with the Rhodesian conflict.

I spent the next five years working three jobs (one of which was at Le Strip) in order to make a living before I was hired by Canadian Pacific Rail in 1986 and my fortunes began to change for the better. Even then I still hung on to the the part-time job at Le Strip until 1994 because my level of seniority at the railway was such that I still needed part-time work to make ends meet.

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… and that sort-of takes us back to the start of the first of these four blogs.

The Canadian spies, white supremacists and South African secret agents affair…

This all started three days ago with a blog about a Canadian striptease club called Le Strip.

Life seemed so simple then.

Yesterday’s follow-up blog was titled: THE NOT-SO SIMPLE TALE OF A CANADIAN STRIP CLUB AND TERRORISM IN THE 1980s.

It was about David Hughes, who worked as a doorman/cashier/DJ at Le Strip 1982-1994… and as a trainman on the Canadian Pacific Railway system 1986-2019…  and as a ‘Confidential Informant’ for the Ontario Provincial Police… and for CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) around that time.

Now take a big breath…

BOSS, (the apartheid South African government’s Bureau of State Security 1969-1980) enters the story…

In yesterday’s blog about David Hughes’ undercover work in Canada, he said:

“Grant Bristow’s meeting with Max French at Le Strip was arranged by me… At the time, Grant was a Confidential Informant for CSIS (which I also had a indirect role in creating).”

So, obviously, I asked about this role.

He replied:

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The role I am referring to is how Grant Bristow came to the attention of CSIS and ended up becoming a CI for them.  It was as a result of his recruitment by the South African embassy in Toronto (around 1984?) to provide intelligence on ANC (African National Congress) personnel in the city who were organizing protests against the apartheid regime in South Africa at the time.

Grant had met a couple of the South African embassy’s “diplomatic staff” (BOSS agents, no doubt) and parlayed his friendship and knowledge of my serving in the Rhodesian Army in 1979/80 into a job offer from them to provide information that would assist the South Africans in their battle against the ANC.

At the time Grant was working for Kuehne+Nagel in Toronto… One of the services they offered back in the 1980s/1990s was private investigators (who were required to be licensed under Provincial legislation) to ferret out employee theft and fraud.

They had contracts with Canada Post to provide security services at the Gateway Postal sorting facility and Grant spent a lot of time there doing undercover work for the security company in addition to his part time work as a DJ at Le Strip. 

Kuehne+Nagel was where (I think?) he got his first taste of undercover work which was to stand him in good stead when he began to act as a CI for CSIS. He had a unique personality trait that I think helped ingratiate him into whatever role was required of him at the time. His personality could be demure as a sheepdog or as brash and bombastic as a WWE wrestler calling out his opponent in the ring combined with a chameleon like ability to instantly blend into whatever social environment he was enmeshed in at the moment. 

He managed to gather a handful of  would-be security staff into his plan and out of the blue one day called me up and asked if I would give his ‘recruits’ a lecture on the ANC.

I agreed and about a half dozen of ‘Grant’s Gaggle’ showed up at my apartment one weekend. I spent the next hour or so giving them the benefit of what I knew about the ANC as a result of my experiences in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1979/80… which, honestly, wasn’t really much.

Grant was a little vague about exactly what he was up to… I could not figure out whether what he was telling me about the South Africans was legitimate or not.

Through all of this, though, Grant attracted the attention of CSIS and they managed to turn him into a CI and he began working against the interests of the South African Embassy in Toronto and gave CSIS information which ultimately led to the expulsion of a number of the South African diplomatic staff for “activities inconsistent with their diplomatic status”.

All of this occurred before his recruitment into the white supremacist neo-Nazi Heritage Front (see previous blog) and activities as a CSIS spy in that group for several years in what was called by CSIS, “OP Governor”.

When Grant’s role was exposed by the Toronto Sun in the mid-1990s, a public outcry led the Conservative Government of the time to convene an inquiry by the Security Intelligence Review Committee into the matter.

I gave in-camera testimony at the committee and their report, titled The Heritage Front Affair, under the Chairmanship of the Right Honorable Val Meredith ultimately determined that CSIS (while testing the limits of what was appropriate for the agency) acted within the limits of their mandate under the law and that Grant Bristow had performed an act of great benefit to his country and its citizens.

A conclusion that, in my opinion, was entirely correct.

Of course, Grant was given a new identity by CSIS and spirited to an unknown location somewhere in Canada where he was paid for the services he had rendered to the Government of Canada as a CSIS spy.

For me, life went on as normal and I worked often with Max French at CP Rail until I transferred to the London Division in 1998 and spent the remainder of my career working out of that terminal. Oftentimes I would run a train to Toronto and see Max in passing. In all of that time he never indicated that he suspected me during our association.

To this day, unless he reads this blog, I wonder if he ever did…

PS – I attach a photo of me back in those days…much better than the AI pic you created yesterday.

…and also one of me in the Rhodesian Army. 

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HOLD ON! HOLD ON!… “One of me in the Rhodesian Army”… ???

(…AND THE ANSWER IS HERE…)

The not-so simple tale of a Canadian strip club and terrorism in the 1980s

Yesterday’s blog involved reaction to a Comment on an October 2014 blog I posted about a Toronto striptease club called Le Strip.

Le Strip during its heyday in the 1980s…

The person who reacted to the Comment – David Hughes – had worked as doorman/cashier/DJ at Le Strip from 1982 to 1994.

In the reaction he posted, he mentioned an exotic dancer with the stage name ‘Black Magic’, a spy story, neo-Nazis and the largest counterfeit money scheme in Canadian history. He finished with “There is a lot more to the backstory that I won’t get into here but I have been giving some thought to writing a memoir about it in the future.”

So, obviously, I contacted him and said: “If you want to give the bare outline of the story/stories, without undermining any future memoir of yours, obviously I and my blog readers would be fascinated to know more…”

As I had no period photographs of David nor of ‘Black Magic’ for yesterday’s blog, I had asked Gencraft AI to come up with an imagined illustration. This was what I got:

I reckoned I would get no reply from David, but an email came back, starting: “Can I just say that Gencraft’s AI has made a remarkably accurate rendition of ‘Black Magic’ except it has made her a little heavier and doesn’t portray the black leather gear she wore that gave her the stage name ‘Black Magic’ – She wore a simple black leather outfit with motorcycle chaps and cat-of-nine tails.”

So, for this follow-up blog, I asked Gencraft to create an image of “a thin female dancer wearing a black leather outfit with motorcycle chaps and carrying a cat-of-nine tails”. 

Clearly, the phrase “cat-of-nine tails” is not one that has permeated the mind of current AIs. This was the image created:

Be that as it may, David did expand a bit on the backstory he had mentioned in yesterday’s blog. Yesterday, he said that there was a “spy story” involving one of Le Strip’s DJs named Grant Bristow. 

Bristow became a vital undercover CI (Confidential Informant) for CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) during a lengthy investigation into the neo-Nazi/extremist far right in the mid-1980s/mid 1990s as a result of a meeting between Bristow and Heritage Front member Max French which occurred at the Le Strip club.

The Heritage Front was a Canadian white supremacist neo-Nazi organization founded in 1989 

David Hughes explained to me:

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Grant Bristow’s meeting with Max French at Le Strip was arranged by me… At the time, Grant was a Confidential Informant for CSIS (which I also had a indirect role in creating) after I had told Grant about a fellow employee (Max French) who had befriended me when I was hired on to the Canadian Pacific Railway in Toronto as a trainman in September 1986.

Max French was then a Conductor at CP Rail and, when he found out about my background (ex-cop/soldier and former armored car guard), he thought I would be a perfect member of the Heritage Front in which Max was thoroughly ensconced. He was a senior member of its hierarchy and leadership.

Max was very upfront with me. He told me about his role in the US in the early 1980s in a militia group called CSA – the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord. 

This was an extremist far right Christian Identity religious group that had a fortified compound in the Southern USA.

The CSA was a group which spawned the terrorist group led by Robert Mathews known as The Order or Silent Brotherhood.

CSA confusingly adopted the shoulder sleeve insignia of the United States Army Europe and Africa

Max also told me that he and his Canadian colleagues were going to emulate the The Order’s tactics in Canada and that he felt I would have the inside information to help conduct armored car holdups which would help to fund the Heritage Front’s efforts to stir up racial unrest in Canada and so further the groups aims.

What Max didn’t know was I was already a Confidential Informant for the Ontario Provincial Police as a result of my inside role in the counterfeit money scheme that had occurred in 1984 at Le Strip. 

I refer to that as “How Le Strip saved Christmas” for Toronto merchants by preventing the laundering of $20 million US dollars during the peak Christmas sales rush and the seizure of said monies and the arrests of all the perpetrators involved which, sadly, included my ex-girlfriend ‘Black Magic’ and her husband.

In 1986 all involved were convicted and sentenced to jail terms in federal prison except for my ex-girlfriend who was found not guilty… I was the Crown’s chief witness during the trial.

When Max French told me what he had in mind for me, I immediately contacted the people in the Ontario Provincial Police (the OPP) who had handled me during the counterfeit money scheme and they in turn turned me over to OPP Security Service member Detective Sergeant Hans BrocVogel and OPP Intelligence Squad Detective Daniel Maclean.

…and so began my plunge into the fringe world of neo-Nazi and far right extremist groups… a world that I found horrendously sad and tragic.

Robert Mathews of The Order/Silent Brotherhood

During a road trip with Max French to Howell, Michigan, where I attended one of Pastor Robert E. Miles‘ Klan gatherings, I met the widow of Robert Mathews and his newly-born daughter (who never met her father because Matthews was killed in a shootout with the FBI on Whidby Island in the Pacific northwest before she was born).

It was the only time I was ever paid by the OPP for any of my activities as a Confidential Informant – they reimbursed me for the gas money I paid to make the trip with Max to Howell, Michigan and back. 

When I signed for the money in BrocVogel’s notebook he and his Intelligence counterpart Daniel Maclean both wanted me to become further engaged with the Heritage Front. 

I balked at the idea after discussing the matter with my wife and so it was arranged that I would set up the meeting with Max French and Grant Bristow at Le Strip… which I did in the hope that Grant would ingratiate himself with Max and I could slowly exit, stage left.

If only things were to go according to the plan!

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Life for David Hughes is much quieter now – He retired from the Canadian Pacific Railway in 2019, after 33 years of service.

David Hughes in 2024, as imagined by the Gencraft AI…

Max French also retired from the Canadian Pacific Railway in 2016 or 2017. 

David says: “I have no idea what he is up to now.”

French was interviewed by Vice in 2017, for a piece sub-titled: When neo-Nazis are congregating at the public library without issue, something’s amiss…

Max French interviewed in 2017 for a piece about white supremacists… (Photo by Rachel Browne)

(MORE ON ALL THIS IN THE NEXT BLOG – “The Canadian spies, white supermacists and South African secret agents affair…” HERE…)