Grant Bristow
Canadian spy
Grant Bristow (born February 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) was employed as an undercover spy, or mole, for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), who co-founded and successfully infiltrated the Heritage Front white supremacist group for six years. Several months after the assignment, Bristow was exposed by Toronto Sun reporter Bill Dunphy, in August 1994. His work inside the Heritage Front became highly controversial in Canada, when exposed, due to much of his activity being viewed as that of a contributory nature, reflected by an August 14, 1994 Toronto Sun headline, "Spy Unmasked: CSIS Informant 'Founding Father' of white racist group".
Career and initial CSIS work
Grant Bristow began his career as a private investigator, working with several Toronto-based investigation firms through the early and mid-1980s. Through this work, he developed both the personality and resources necessary to perform covert infiltrations and intelligence gathering. Bristow's CSIS involvement commenced in 1986 through an official at the South African embassy. He was hired to perform security work at their Ottawa embassy, which was the target of many demonstrations at the time due to the nation's continued Apartheid policy. According to an interview Bristow gave to The Walrus in September 2004, and as implied in the SIRC report of December 1995, one of two Embassy officials he had contact with at the time also requested he gather and provide intelligence on the Canadian anti-Apartheid demonstrators individually. He says he was opposed to this idea (gathering intelligence on Canadians for a foreign government), desiring only to provide security for the embassy. However, he feigned interest in the proposal and secretly arranged a meeting with a CSIS officer to report the Official's request.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grant Bristow” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.