One of Canada’s most notorious trolls attempted to escape to the U.S. on foot and seemingly forgot to pack anything that would aid him in fleeing through the harsh Canadian wilderness, got lost, and had to have border patrol called in to rescue him.
Kevin J. Johnston, a Canadian livestreamer and conspiracy theorist who has become infamous for his racist and attention-seeking stunts, was supposed to turn himself in to police to serve multiple sentences, including a yet-to-begin 18-month prison sentence. Johnston received the sentence because he wouldn’t stop breaching a groundbreaking Canadian hate crime ruling in which he was ordered to pay a Muslim restaurateur $2.5 million and stop defaming him. To escape his time in the hosgow, Johnston attempted to go on the lam.
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It all ended with him needing rescuing and then his rescuers arresting him.
To learn what happened we have to turn to April LaJune, a sovereign citizen internet personality, who made a video while on the road Tuesday. From behind the wheel, the exasperated woman outlines just how poorly everything went.
LaJune’s tale starts on Friday when she says she left to travel north to the Canadian border from Missouri to “help somebody who is trying to get political asylum in the United States.” She had to help, she says, as she’s convinced the government is going to “kill him” but thought it was just going to be an asylum plea. That was not the case, as when she got up to the border from Kansas City, she learned of his plan to attempt to “trek” across.
The thing is, it doesn’t seem like Johnston, a squat man in his 50s, is all that adept at trekking.
All Monday night and Tuesday morning, LaJune said she and the people she was working with attempted to find a person who set out to cross from Canada into Montana. LaJune never outwardly says exactly who she is speaking of helping, instead referring to him as “that person,” but she talks about the exact circumstances of Johnston’s arrest yesterday and previously had him on her internet show in which she described him as a “political prisoner in Canada.”
“He got lost and I mean lost. I’m talking about, like, really lost and we couldn’t find him. We couldn’t find him at all,” she told her audience. “Fifteen hours maybe, lost in snow and -20 (Fahrenheit) weather. Nobody could find him, nobody. Tried locating his phone. We tried all kinds of things trying to find him.”
Eventually, fearing for Johnston’s safety and not trusting him to be able to get out of this one, LaJune said they “had to get the border patrol involved” with their friend trying to, well, hop the border. LaJune, clearly exasperated throughout her video, criticized Johnston— who has portrayed himself as a true Canadian man’s man up against an emasculated world—for his lack of outdoor skills.
“I do know one thing to say: Never go on some kind of a hike or whatever without a compass,” she said. ”One of the issues that we had is he didn’t know how to share his location. And he also took the wrong bag, I guess. He didn’t have a flashlight, he didn’t have a thermal blanket. I mean, these are things that you should have if you’re going to be going on a long trip.
“We’re talking about a life-and-death situation here. Especially in the winter. It’s just dangerous.”
The compass that Johnston apparently used to aid his trek was a phone app, in an area with limited cell service. The team Johnston put together to help him hop the border seemed just as savvy with the outdoors as he was: One even suggested he use the stars to navigate his way during a night that was, as LaJune said, “totally cloud-covered.”
Eventually, he was able to send her a picture of his location, she says, and she sent that to the border patrol, who found, rescued, and promptly arrested him. VICE reached out to LaJune with a series of questions regarding the claims she made about Johnston but did not receive a response.
In a statement released Wednesday, Johnston admits to trying to cross into Montana for “political asylum.” In it, he claims he’s been “marked for death” in Canada.
“That is when I knew I had to leave,” it reads. “I was hoping for safe haven in the United States where I can express my views.”
Calgary Police told VICE World News in an email that a warrant was issued for Johnston’s arrest Tuesday morning after he failed to turn himself in. A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection told VICE World News they were contacted “by the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office requesting assistance in searching for a subject who was lost near the Montana/North Dakota state line.”
“A Supervisory Border Patrol Agent encountered a subject fitting the description of the lost subject wandering on foot,” the spokesperson said in an email. “The subject was questioned and found to be Kevin Johnston; a Canadian Fugitive.”
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said that Johnston is being processed and will be turned over to Canada.
Over the past few years Johnston has become infamous in Canada for his stunts, which include offering money for his followers to film Muslim students, selling branded coffee explicitly bigoted against Indigenous Canadians, and lately, involvement in the anti-vaxxer community. He recently ran for mayor in Calgary and received less than 1 percent of the vote, despite significant media attention.
When he was sentenced to the 18-month sentence late last year, the judge said he wanted to make an example out of Johnston because of his “defiant unwillingness to comply; his refusal to acknowledge responsibility; his lack of any expression of remorse, repentance, or contrition; and his avid profit- and power-seeking motives.”
Johnston just finished up a prison sentence in Alberta (which he only served on weekends) and is scheduled to be sentenced for an assault charge he received after punching a store owner in the face during a stunt where he tried to buy things unmasked later in the month.
Johnston lasted far less time on the lam than Agent Margaritaville, the last personality in Canada’s burgeoning online far-right community to go on the run.
Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.
