Your Ward News is back, but community group still fighting to ban 'explosive hate rag'

A group called Standing Together Against Mailing Prejudice (STAMP) says it will do everything it can to stop the publishers of a controversial newspaper, after it began appearing again this month in east-end Toronto mailboxes.

Your Ward News publishes once a season and bills itself as the "world's largest anti-Marxist publication." But it's been widely criticized as a purveyor of hate speech against women, as well as Jews, the LGBT community and other minorities. Its editor and publisher both face charges of wilfully promoting hatred.

• Canada Post ordered to stop delivering controversial Your Ward News

• Your Ward News editor, publisher charged with promoting hatred against women and Jews, police say

"[It's] this kind of explosive hate rag that's filled with anti-homophobic statements. It's anti-women, it's anti-Semitic," said Lisa Kinsella, managing partner of The Daisy Group and one of the founding members of STAMP.

"It's just this vile piece of hate that keeps showing up in our mailboxes every once in a while and we are going to do everything we can stop that from happening."

The newspaper is the brainchild of editor-in-chief James Sears, who has presented himself in the past as pick-up artist Dmitri The Lover and had his licence to practise medicine revoked after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting patients.

In an email to CBC Toronto Thursday, Sears seemed unperturbed by Kinsella's campaign.

"We have received about half a dozen email and voicemail complaints from Marxist parasites, but most of the
feedback from the Fall 2018 Edition of Your Ward News has been quite positive," Sears wrote.

Prohibitory order

"I have been involved in this since probably around March of 2015 when I first received an issue when we moved into a new neighbourhood," Kinsella said of her group's effort to get Canada Post to stop delivering Your Ward News.

In mid-2016, the then minister responsible for Canada Post, Judy Foote, issued what's known as a prohibitory order against the future delivery of the paper.

But the publishers appealed the decision and an independent board was set up to review the matter.

The board wrapped up late this summer and Kinsella said they are now waiting to hear the decision from the current minister Carla Qualtrough.

Sears, and publisher Leroy St. Germaine, 76, were arrested and charged in November 2017 with the wilful promotion of hatred against women and Jews.

It was the first time in Ontario's history a charge was laid alleging the wilful promotion of hatred against women, according to the Office of the Attorney General.

The matter will be heard in November.

'We are innocent until proven guilty'

Sears seems determined to fight the charges.

"We are innocent until proven guilty. We have committed no crime," his email to CBC Toronto reads.

"Why should we bend over and submit to these trumped-up charges? Until a judge slams down his mallet and declares us to be breaking the law, we are going to ignore the Marxist legal machinations."

But Kinsella is undeterred.

"Sears, St. Germaine and Your Ward News can run, but they can't hide," Kinsella said. 

"We will use every legal means at our disposal — civil, criminal and administrative — to shut them down, and get this disgusting hate out of our communities," she added. 

We want to assure everyone who is getting this garbage dumped in their mailbox, we are not going to stop fighting, we are not going to give up.  We will not rest until Your Ward News is no more."