Howard Galganov

Howard Galganov (born February 12, 1950 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) was briefly a political activist and radio personality in Montreal during the late 1990s. He made headlines in Quebec for being a vocal and confrontational opponent of the Charter of the French Language and Quebec nationalism as one of the most prominent leaders of the “angryphone” movement, before moving to Ontario and criticising official bilingualism in Canada.

Galganov reportedly had an activist history. His grandfather, a Russian Jew, came to Canada to escape communism. In the 1960s, as a member of the Jewish Defense League, Galganov threw coffins on the Soviet embassy lawn in Ottawa to protest the treatment of Jewish "refuseniks".

By the 1990s, Howard Galganov had become an outspoken critic of the Quebec sovereignty movement and of the Canadian government for not defending the rights of English-speaking citizens living in the Canadian province of Quebec, stating that banning the use of English entirely is a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. His goals were defending the equality of all languages, laws defending bilingual equality in Canada, defence against the local unlawful banning of all English in print, as well as the freedom of the individual to choose freely for themselves. He worked to bring awareness to those outside of Quebec on the human rights abuses being enacted in Quebec against anglophones, as noted by both the United Nations and the Supreme Court of Canada.

After a 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty for the province of Quebec, Galganov founded the Quebec Political Action Committee (QPAC), serving as its president (and only member) until 2000. One of Galganov’s first prominent QPAC activities was to organize a protest at Fairview Pointe-Claire, a shopping mall, in 1996 in the predominantly anglophone West Island of Montreal to protest that retail stores were not placing any English on their commercial signs despite being allowed under the Charter of the French Language. Estimated attendance at the protest varied from 500 to 5,000. Galganov followed up this protest with threatened boycotts of prominent retail stores. He also protested the actions of the Office québécois de la langue française on numerous issues including when language inspectors ordered stores to remove kosher products from their shelves just before Passover because they weren't labelled in the French language. These activities caused a reaction among fringe Quebec nationalist groups, garnering publicity for Galganov.

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