Families of MMIWG face off with supporters of ‘comedy’ group behind Pickton shirt

Content warning: This story contains details about serial killer Robert Pickton and the MMIWG2S+ crisis. Please look after your spirit and read with care.

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A protest against a divisive “comedy” trio quickly escalated this week, as women whose loved ones’ remains were found on serial killer Robert Pickton’s farm faced off against supporters of the Danger Cats.

The performers went underground after several of their scheduled shows were cancelled following outrage over a t-shirt they released depicting a cartoon image of Pickton and one of the Danger Cats smiling and holding up strips of bacon — with a slogan that refers to the murderer’s victims as “50 flavours.”

The group has further been criticized after past clips of their “comedy” showcase jokes about rape, the graves of Indigenous children and similarly harmful topics. 

While the group proclaims they try to push the boundaries of freedom of speech through comedy, a prominent anti-hate organization is alleging a connection between the Danger Cats and a far-right political network that uses humour and “irony poisoning” as a way to normalize hate and white supremacy.

On March 24, the Danger Cats performed in “Vancouver” at a training gym called F45, located a stone’s throw away from the epicentre of the Downtown Eastside where Pickton once roamed the streets. 

About 40 people, mainly Indigenous women, rallied outside the venue for roughly an hour and a half as a few dozen ticket holders entered the building. 

One man, who wore camouflage hunting gear and a flag across his back that anti-hate researchers say is a symbol associated with the far-right network Diagolon, was one of the first supporters to arrive outside the venue.

After one woman yelled, “Shame on you,” to the few fans beginning to gather, the interaction devolved into an argument.

Raven Hall, whose late aunt Tanya Holyk went missing in 1997, was visibly shaken but spoke loudly and clearly into a microphone.

“This is a great picture, this is Canada, guys, this is Canada,” she said.

“Shame. This is what Canada upholds.”

“Because I want to laugh?” the man in camo replied. “Because I want to giggle?”

His comment sent Michele Pineault, whose 20-year-old daughter Stephanie Lane’s DNA was found on Pickton’s farm, into a rage.

“There’s nothing to laugh about,” she cried out, stepping forward. “My daughter was murdered. There’s nothing funny about that.”

Hall became so angry she stepped away momentarily in disbelief, exclaiming that the fans were “sick.”

The man then turned his back on the group to show off the flag tied around his back like a cape, which was black with a diagonal white stripe across it.

“What’s the flag about? You should probably look at what the flag’s about,” he said mockingly.

IndigiNews reached out to the Danger Cats for comment via both their website contact form and email but has not received a response.

‘This is what our government upholds’

Shortly after, about a dozen uniformed Vancouver Police Department (VPD) officers arrived at the scene, with a couple of them going inside and the rest forming a protective line outside the venue’s doors. 

Goose, a member of the Crazy Indians Brotherhood wearing a patched leather vest, attempted to block the man with the flag from stepping through the crowd of women and going inside, but the VPD pushed him aside and let the man and several others enter. About eight officers lined up, creating a barrier between the fans inside and the rally outside.

For a while, a group of fans stayed in the building’s entryway as they waited to be buzzed into the training gym. Several openly laughed and sneered at protestors from behind the glass doors.

“This is what our government upholds. They uphold this hate, that allows these things to happen, that allows people to show up and blatantly laugh at us,” Hall said as tears welled up in her eyes.

“There is no pride in genocide, and there will never be a pride in Canada until this ends. … And these people that stand here, they’re doing it to laugh at us. I pray for them.”

As more people entered the venue, the protestors began crying out “racist” and “shame,” calling the Danger Cats fans “losers.” One man attempted to hide his face with his ball cap while he entered the venue, resulting in women at the rally telling him to “show your face.”

“Own it, you bought the ticket,” one woman said as the man was let into the building by police.

The protestors also scolded the police, who stopped organizer Williams and Goose from putting posters up on the door of the venue with photos of Pickton’s victims and the words “not a joke.” Meanwhile, the Danger Cats had seemingly put a sign on the same door without incident.

Instead of complying, numerous people in the crowd began yelling at the VPD, telling them, “You have no jurisdiction,” and questioning why they couldn’t put the posters on the door. The officer did not provide an answer.

“You want to protect Danger Cats? Really?” said Jerilynn Webster, who wore a colourful ribbon skirt and spoke directly to the officers as they looked ahead, stone-faced.

“You want to defend them? Shame.”

The VPD said in a statement to IndigiNews that officers were on the scene Sunday “to keep the peace.”

“There were no arrests and no incidents of note,” the statement added.

Pickton, a pig farmer and one of the most notorious serial killers in “Canada’s” history, was convicted in 2007 for the murders of six women and charges in another 20 cases were stayed by the province, sparking a public inquiry. Many of the women were from the Downtown Eastside and Indigenous.

According to VPD, Pickton confessed to an undercover officer to killing a total of 49 women. He is currently serving a life sentence and recently became eligible to apply for day parole.

The VPD and RCMP have been widely criticized for their failures to properly investigate Pickton or search his farm in a timely fashion, allowing the murders to continue unchecked for many years.

At one point, Pineault attempted to enter the event, but the same officer also tried to deny her entry. Pineault bought a ticket to learn about the show’s location, which was not released to ticketholders until the day of the event, and she held her mobile ticket up to the officer.

As the officer was not allowing her access, people in the crowd began chanting, “Let her in, let her in.”

“You only let white males and white women in?” Webster said. “Is the VPD doing an apartheid right now? Whites only?”

Eventually, the VPD officer opened the door for Pineault, but she quickly re-emerged and said a ticket-taker inside denied her entry.

“So when they finally let me in, it was just to tell me that they were refusing my service and that I would get a refund,” Pineault said.

“I just wanted to see the guys doing this stuff so that I could put names and faces together.”

On March 25, the F45 training gym where the Danger Cats event was hosted released a statement on social media saying, “We are beside ourselves and sick that we let this happen in our studio,” calling it a “grave mistake.”

“We want to make it unequivocally clear that we are in no way affiliated with the Danger Cats, and we do not support or condone the content of the event that took place,” the statement said, in part.

F45’s statement added that, moving forward, their space would be used only for “health, wellness, and fitness purposes.”

“Our space was outsourced for private events, and we entrusted a third party to handle the bookings. Unfortunately, a mistake was made, and proper vetting of the event organizers did not occur.”

Another venue cancels

The Danger Cats, who hail from “Alberta,” consist of members Sam Walker, Brendan Blacquier (who goes by “Uncle Hack”) and Brett Forte.

Following mass outrage earlier this year about the Pickton shirts — which have since been removed from their website — tour dates the group had scheduled in several “Canadian” cities were cancelled. The group maintained that, with the exception of “Winnipeg,” it was their own decision to cancel the shows and later bring them underground because of alleged death threats.

“Cancelling the shows doesn’t solve anything, but at least it keeps the innocent staff and venues safe,” said their statement on social media, in part. “We all live to joke another day.”

The Danger Cats previously boasted on their Instagram that “bigger and better replacement venues in every city have stepped up.” The group has shows scheduled in “Toronto,” as well as various places around “Alberta” in upcoming weeks.

Meanwhile, a replacement venue in “Ottawa” that was booked for two Danger Cats shows this weekend, Cafe Dekcuf, has also cancelled, issuing a statement this week that it “does not tolerate fascism, racism or bigotry of any kind.” 

On Thursday, Blacquier posted a video on the Danger Cats YouTube channel responding to the protest that took place outside the show Sunday.

In the video, he seemed to imply that the protest was performative, saying it was “like production” but acknowledged people have the right to protest.

“It’s like a sporting event now, the media’s there, they’re covering it, you’ve got the different highlights on television, maybe that’s what that’s turning into is a spectacle.”

The group has also commented extensively about the Pickton shirts and public reaction in videos posted on that channel.

In one video posted Feb 22, after Forte brings up the flood of emails and social media posts the group had been receiving in reaction to the Pickton shirt, Walker goes on a rant about “government-appointed bullies” who are “known in communism as ‘useful idiots.’”

“Once the revolution happens, these are the first people to be executed, 100 per cent. This is how this goes,” he said.

Walker went on to say the Pickton shirt — on which he’s depicted alongside the serial killer with the words: “Pickton farms” and “50 flavours of hookery smoked bacon” — is “meant as a social statement and a fierce indictment against the current regime” and “meant to raise awareness of what’s happening to these women who were killed.”

He goes on to say the people going after the Danger Cats “just don’t understand the humour.”

In the same episode, Forte discussed how “there’s still an audience that’s looking for jokes that punch down.”

Along with the Pickton shirts, a past clip of a comedy roast battle surfaced where Blacquier makes a joke involving the graves of Indigenous children at residential “schools.”

In a video of one of their shows posted on YouTube in October of 2022, Forte and Blacquier can be seen backstage finding out that four women walked out early in Walker’s set, laughing and calling it “awesome.”

“He didn’t even get to the: ‘rape? Don’t flatter yourself,’” Blacquier said, laughing.

“It’s true, they won’t even get that privilege tonight,” Forte said.

In another video, members of the Danger Cats can be seen mocking audience members based on racial stereotypes, such as saying, “You’re not the smart Asian?” and talking about a “brown guy” and his “village.” In a video of a past “Vancouver” show posted in April 2023, Walker is seen standing in a playground.

“Hey, you want to have library drag hour? You gotta allow me at the public parks,” he said.

In a recent episode of his “Uncle Hack” podcast, Blacquier seemed baffled by the recent negative attention, saying, “The Pickton shirt really struck a nerve with some folks” and “It’s a slow news week” for people to talk about a t-shirt.

Blacquier said Walker worked with an artist to create the shirt, “and now, six months later, Robert Pickton is up for day parole.”

“So what are we going to be more outraged by?” he said.

“And then to weave race into it, it’s crazy.”

‘Irony poisoning’ and the far-right

However, according to Dan Collen, a freelance journalist and researcher of extremist and hate groups, the “comedy” being offensive isn’t the end of the issue. A recent post written by Collen on the Canadian Anti-Hate Network website alleges there is a more nefarious connection around the Danger Cats to the far-right.

In the article, Collen links the Danger Cats to Diagolon — a network formed out of an Internet streaming collective called the Plaid Army. One of its members, Jeremy MacKenzie, had spoken about COVID-19 restrictions and the states and provinces with more relaxed mandates forming a diagonal line across “North America.”

Based on humour stemming from the forum 4chan, MacKenzie made up a fake meme country called “Diagolon,” said Collen. 

“People in the meme country movement started mobilizing in real life,” Collen said. 

“And over time, it became more extreme white nationalism and kind of blanket neo-nazism.”

According to a separate post from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, “Diagolon and its leaders tell supporters that voting is pointless in a corrupt system infiltrated by foreign powers hell-bent on the destruction of traditional society, a race war is already underway against white people in the US, and that violence is increasingly inevitable.”

MacKenzie and others in the Diagolon network were involved in the 2022 “freedom convoy” protest and the Coutts, AB, blockade where RCMP charged four participants with conspiracy to murder police officers. 

Collen said people associated with Diagolon have used Danger Cats shows as a place to meet up, according to his research. IndigiNews could not independently verify that information.

“It’s a mostly online movement and spans coast to coast in Canada, and people do like to meet up when Danger Cats are coming nearby,” he said.

“Some of them, especially the Danger Cats roast battles, are especially big get-togethers and have a lot of big names in the Diagolon community.”

Collen also spoke about a concept known as “irony poisoning” that’s been utilized by far-right movements. This refers to the phenomenon of a joke becoming less humorous and more serious to someone the more they hear it — especially when the “joke” is shocking. People can gradually normalize concepts presented if they are disguised as humour.

“I was involved in a large study of Internet memes that concluded in 2023 with about 3,000 hate Internet memes that involve hate speech from Canadian sources,” he said. IndigiNews has not independently verified how many of the 3,000 memes are from Canadian sources.

“And so in observations from that I can say that irony poisoning is absolutely weaponized by hate movements, especially far-right movements.”

He added: “The only way to go around the country saying these kinds of things … and network people who are not online is to put it under the guise of humour.”

Blacquier made a video about Diagolon last year, calling MacKenzie “a friend,” saying “I’ve had numerous conversations on the phone with him” and telling other comics to “take notes of what Diagolon is doing.” IndigiNews could not otherwise independently verify a connection between Danger Cats and Diagolon.

Photos and videos posted online associate members of the comedy group with other prominent figures in the far-right political movement in “Canada.”

In one video on the Danger Cats YouTube channel of a recent performance, notorious far-right activist Pat King can be seen in the audience. Blacquier points this out and says, “We got a bit of a celebrity in the house,” as people applaud.

The group also posted two videos from the Coutts blockade, which took place in early 2022 at an international border crossing in protest of public health measures.

In one video, the Danger Cats sneak into the Coutts protest with a lie about having a show in town, having doctored a fake contract with a local pub. After getting into the blockade, they can be seen talking and laughing with Chris Lysak, who became one of four people who was accused of conspiring to murder RCMP officers during the border protest. Lysak was recently released from custody after pleading guilty to lesser charges.

“An RCMP search of property associated with the group uncovered weapons, ammunition, and tactical gear,” said a report from the U.S. Bureau of Counterterrorism following the Coutts blockade.

“Patches on seized body armour included a white supremacist symbol and the emblem of Diagolon, a Canadian far-right ‘extremist’ group.”

‘Exhausting work’

As the rally on Sunday concluded, people lit a vigil of candles on the sidewalk to honour and remember each woman believed to have been killed by Pickton.

Lorelei Williams, whose cousin Tanya Holyk’s remains were found on the Pickton farm, said she ultimately wants to see the Danger Cats get charged with a hate crime.

“The rest of the families, the ones who couldn’t be here, they’ve all been reaching out to me and telling me how this has been hurting them and harming them,” she said.

“This is really exhausting work. My stomach is hurting actually from the stress.”

The VPD did not respond to a question about whether the Pickton t-shirts could qualify as hate speech or a hate crime. But Collen pointed out that “there’s an extremely high bar” for getting charged with hate speech in “Canada,” and different provinces apply the laws differently.

“I wouldn’t be able to say if they could qualify without listening to a lot more of their materials, but I will say I’ve seen extremely similar messages for years in Canada not result in hate speech or hate crime charges.”