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John Beck was a political candidate in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Beck was a Reform Party candidate in the 1993 federal election, but was forced to abandon his candidacy after making a series of racially insensitive remarks.
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the fastest growing city in North America, and is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
Ontario is one of the 13 provinces and territories of Canada and is located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province accounting for 38.3 percent of the country's population, and is the second-largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto, which is also Ontario's provincial capital.
The Reform Party of Canada was a right-wing populist federal political party in Canada that existed from 1987 to 2000. Reform was founded as a Western Canada-based protest movement and eventually became a populist conservative party, with strong social conservative elements. It was initially motivated by the perceived need for democratic reforms and by profound Western Canadian discontent with the Progressive Conservative (PC) federal government of Brian Mulroney.
Beck was an heir to the Beck Taxi family, but received only a grade 9 education. He worked with a taxi licence as a fleet and brokerage operator, "Toronto Taxi", but was barred from operating in Toronto by the Metro Licensing Commission. John Beck asserts he was a target as he would not let Sam Grossman buy Beck Taxi. He responded to an advertisement asking for Reform candidates, and won the nomination in York Centre, in North York. There was little support for the Reform Party in the area, and there were few candidates willing to run. Beck was given little scrutiny when he applied.
York Centre is a federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that has been represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1904 to 1917 and since 1953.
In an interview with the York University student newspaper, he expressed particularly strong views regarding immigrants and Natives. Among them:
York University is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's third-largest university, and it has approximately 52,300 students, 7,000 faculty and staff, and 295,000 alumni worldwide. It has eleven faculties, including the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, Faculty of Science, Lassonde School of Engineering, Schulich School of Business, Osgoode Hall Law School, Glendon College, Faculty of Education, Faculty of Health, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Graduate Studies, the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, and 28 research centres. The Keele campus is also home to a satellite location of Seneca College.
In Canada, the First Nations are the predominant indigenous peoples in Canada south of the Arctic Circle. Those in the Arctic area are distinct and known as Inuit. The Métis, another distinct ethnicity, developed after European contact and relations primarily between First Nations people and Europeans. There are 634 recognized First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia.
- "You have a $150,000 guy there coming to buy a citizenship into Canada to create a job, fine, he's bringing something to Canada. But what is he bringing? Death and destruction to the people." [1]
- "We came here and took their [Natives'] land from them. I feel that's what [immigrants] are doing to us ... they will overpower us."
- "Look at the Natives, they're messed up. That's what's happening to us. We're all being hooked on booze and drugs and we're going to end up just like the Indians." [2]
He later reiterated his comments in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, saying "I feel if an immigrant comes into Canada and gets a job for $150,000, he is taking jobs away from us, the gentile people." In another interview with the Financial Post , Beck said that "I feel it's time some white Anglo-Saxons get involved" in politics and told another paper that "it seems to be predominantly Jewish people who are running this country." [3]
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, branded as CBC/Radio-Canada, is a Canadian federal Crown corporation that serves as the national public broadcaster for both radio and television. The English- and French-language service units of the corporation are commonly known as CBC and Radio-Canada.
The Financial Post was an English Canadian business newspaper, which published from 1907 to 1998. In 1998, the publication was folded into the new National Post, although the name Financial Post has been retained as the banner for that paper's business section and also lives on in the Post’s monthly business magazine, Financial Post Business.
Angry York students confronted Reform leader Preston Manning at a campus speech and demanded a response. Manning was quick to distance himself from Beck, calling his statements inconsistent with Reform policy. The same day, however, word spread that the interview was taped. Within an hour, the party asked Beck to abandon his candidacy, which he did. "They think I'm nuts, but I've had no breakdown. They asked me to resign, so I resigned", Beck told reporters the next day. [4]
Ernest Preston Manning, is a Canadian politician. He was a founder and the only leader of the Reform Party of Canada, a Canadian federal political party that evolved into the Canadian Alliance which in turn merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. Manning represented the federal constituency of Calgary Southwest in the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 until his retirement in 2002. He served as Leader of the Official Opposition from 1997 to 2000. Upon his retirement he has founded the Manning Foundation for Democratic Education and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, not-for-profit organizations dedicated to strengthening Canadian democracy in accordance with conservative principles.
It was too late to remove Beck's name from the ballot, however, and he ended up placing fourth in the election, with 2,141 votes.
Beck was also in personal dispute contesting the authenticity of the last of his father James Beck's 8 wills made December 6, 1984. James Beck died February 8, 1985, after being in a coma for over 30 day's. One year later John Beck was escorted out of the family run office by police as majority ruled, and eventually forced out by his sisters and "stepmother Myra" and control transferred to his sister's Gail Beck-Souter, Denise Tuchow and his "stepmother". Denise Tuchow was eventually forced out of the family office leaving control to his "stepmother" and his sister Gail.
