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R the of RDS This polemic has alternately simmered and boiled for more than three decades and no two lawyers in Canada exemplify this debate more precisely than hate propaganda sleuth Richard Warman and free speech libertarian Douglas Christie: crusaders, court- room foes, and fellow vegetarians. And though they'd cringe at being compared further, they do share one thing more: strangers want them dead. Someone drove a truck through lawyer Doug Christie's street- level office once. He wasn't there at the time. Christie's been threatened and his property has been vandalized. People have thrown rocks at him, clenched fists, and a veritable thesaurus of insults: "perverted monster" was one of his favourites. He sued for defamation in that case and lost. "They called it fair comment. I mean, where do you go from there?" asks Christie, munching bean salad in the Ottawa courthouse cafeteria during a break in a defamation suit he's pursing against Warren Kinsella and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on behalf of his client, Ian Verner Macdonald, a retired foreign service diplomat. "I believe a person should be judged as an individual. But I realize some people can't do that and they've judged me according to what they think is the company I keep," says the 62-year-old Christie, whose client roster of Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists has come to define the Victoria lawyer as much as his signature cowboy hat and boots. "If the government or the courts decide to regulate what we think and what we speak, they will be inherently corrupted by their own biases and bring the administration of justice into disrepute. . . . It's an area they should stay out of." — Doug Christie www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com M ARCH 2009 29