Montreal gym cancels client’s membership after admitting he wore Nazi symbol

A gym in Montreal has permanently banned a member who they admitted wore a T-shirt bearing Nazi propaganda and was confronted over it by another member.

A gym in Montreal’s Plateau neighbourhood said it has now permanently banned a member who they admitted wore a T-shirt bearing Nazi propaganda — after initially announcing publicly that it had only asked the man to not wear such symbols at the facility.

It’s the outcome Brandon, who reported the incident and says had a tense confrontation with the man in question, had been asking for all along.

“The outcome today is ideal, but the process that I had to take to get to this outcome is not ideal,” said Brandon, who asked that only his first name be used out of fear of retaliation for speaking out, in an interview.

The controversy came to light after he said he confronted the man who wore the shirt and then wrote in a post on Reddit how he was disappointed with how the gym handled the situation. He said that there was a Totenkopf on top of the phrase “Never Lose Your Smile” — a neo-Nazi dog whistle — on the back of the man’s t-shirt during a workout on Jan. 19.

When he confronted the man, he said he asked if he was a Nazi, to which the man allegedly said, “Yes. What are you going to do about it?”

In an email sent Thursday and obtained by CTV News, the Gym du Plateau told Brandon that it had hired an “outside consultant” to investigate the incident at the gym on Mont-Royal Avenue.

The email outlines the steps the gym says it took to address the issue, including reviewing camera footage inside the gym and contacting the member who wore the shirt. On Wednesday, the email says, the consultant “reported back his conclusions, confirming the member subject of your complaint was indeed wearing a t-shirt referring to a Nazi symbol. Consequently we decided to make his suspension permanent and we terminated his membership.”

“We are very sorry for this troubling situation. The Gym policy on the matter is clear, we do not accept any form of hate speech,” reads part of the email, which also apologized for technical problems that resulted in “delays” in emails being received over the course of the last several days.

The email was sent minutes after a CTV News crew visited the gym Thursday morning in order to speak to the owner, who was not present. No one else was available for an interview during the visit.

The email comes after pushback from Brandon and others on social media who accused the gym of taking a soft stance toward the public display of a hateful symbol that they say should not be tolerated.

“It took me making a Reddit post that had [2,500 upvotes] and it was seen 700,000 times for this gym to feel like they actually need to do something,” Brandon said.

“I think that businesses need to be proactive with this … if you want to illustrate that you’re not a place where hate is accepted, then you need to nip it in the bud. You can’t let it grow.”

The communication from the gym surrounding the controversy has been convoluted — in its Facebook post on Tuesday, Gym du Plateau had said the member who wore the shirt was told immediately not to wear Nazi symbols, while the email says the man was in fact suspended the day after the confrontation.

A rise in antisemitic attacks

The case follows a rise in antisemitic attacks in Montreal over the past few years that included physical assaults, and shootings and arson attacks on Jewish institutions.

The public display of Nazi symbols is driving the rise of antisemitic incidents in Quebec, according to the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA).

“This reminds us that no one wants hatred to take root in Quebec and undermine the fabric of our society. Displaying slogans with neo-Nazi connotations is completely contrary to Quebec’s values. It has no place in our society,” wrote Eta Yudin, the CIJA’s senior vice-president for Quebec, in an email.

In an interview on Wednesday, the head of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network said the Montreal case does not come as a surprise given the rise of neo-Nazi and white supremacist movement.

Evan Balgord said the movement “is the largest it’s ever been in this nation’s history” and that people associated with it are feeling “more emboldened and showing it more in public.”

“And all of us have a kind of community responsibility to make sure that those kinds of actions have consequences,” he said.