- This article is about Don Andrews, a far-right figure in Toronto. He is not related to Don Andrews, the Toronto radio broadcaster.
Don Andrews (born 1942 as Vilim Zlomslic) is leader of the Nationalist Party of Canada and a perennial candidate for Mayor of Toronto.
Vilim Zlomslic was born in Serbia during World War II. His father was killed when fighting for the partisans against Nazi occupation. He was brought to Canada in 1952 by a Red Cross worker and grew up in Toronto.
He took the name Don Andrews and became a fervent anti-Communist. In the 1960s Andrews was drawn to far right racist groups and cofounded the Edmund Burke Society with Paul Fromm in 1967.
Andrews eventually became the primary leader of the group and transformed it into the openly racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist Western Guard in 1972.
Andrews was the first person in Canada charged with wilfully promoting hatred. In 1975, he was charged with offences ranging from plotting arson, possession of weapons and explosives, and mischief. He was sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to bomb a visiting Israeli soccer team. Consequently, the leadership of the Western Guard fell to John Ross Taylor in 1976.
Upon release from jail in 1977 Andrews founded the Nationalist Party of Canada, in part because he was under a court order to not associate with his former group.
Andrews has fallen out with others on the far right over the years, particularly Wolfgang Droege who left the Nationalist Party in 1989 to form the Heritage Front, and Paul Fromm who split with Andrews shortly after the Western Guard was formed in 1972.
Don Andrews has run for Mayor of Toronto several times, including in 2003 when he won 0.17% of the vote. In that year, two other party members ran unsuccessfully for Toronto city council. On one occasion, Andrews placed a distant second in the mayoralty race as no serious candidate ran against popular incumbent, David Crombie. As a result, the municipal law was changed so that the runner-up in the mayoralty contest no longer had the right to succeed to the mayor's chair should the position become vacant between elections.
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