Whitehorse Daily Star

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COMPLETING AN ODYSSEY – Brad Firth thanks the Creator on April 30, 2014 after having finished his Run for the Peel from Inuvik to Whitehorse.

Runner defamed local man, court rules

A Whitehorse man has won his defamation lawsuit against a runner raising awareness about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

By Emily Blake on March 9, 2017

A Whitehorse man has won his defamation lawsuit against a runner raising awareness about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

Last week, the Yukon Supreme Court made a default judgment in Raymond Gagnon’s suit against Brad Firth, better known as Caribou Legs, who failed to respond.

The judgment says that between July and August 2016, Firth made several defamatory statements about Gagnon to the media.

He claimed that his sister, Irene Korte, who is Gagnon’s late wife, died as a result of domestic violence.

“I want the world to know that I loved Irene,” Gagnon wrote in a statement responding to the judgment.

“Her death was a terrible accident, and if you have heard that she died of domestic abuse at my hand, it is not true.”

The judgment says Firth’s claims about his sister’s death were published by 16 media sources. Those included CTV, CBC, the Chronicle Herald, Metro News and Running Magazine.

In an article published Nov. 2, 2016 in Running Magazine, Firth was quoted as saying:

“I took a family loss last summer. My sister died as a result of domestic violence. Her husband beat her up, it caused a stroke and then she died of a sudden heart attack.”

But on July 28, 2016, the Yukon’s chief coroner classified Korte’s death as “accidental” and the result of an acute subdural hemorrhage or bleeding on the brain.

According to the statement of claim filed with the court, Korte died Feb. 22, 2015 after hitting her head while on a prescription antidepressant medication and after consuming alcohol.

“This was devastating to him for various reasons,” Gagnon’s lawyer, James Tucker, told the Star of the impact defamatory statements have had on his client.

“His family and friends and people he doesn’t even know think he caused his wife’s death, and that’s not something that he or anyone else should have to bear if it’s not true.”

“I also want the world to know that the judgment I have obtained against Brad Firth is not a reflection on the cause he was supporting,” reads Gagnon’s statement.

“If Irene were still alive, she would be a supporter of the cause of murdered and missing aboriginal women, and I am a supporter of that cause.”

Firth is a Gwich’in ice road ultra-marathon runner who is running coast-to-coast on the Trans-Canada Highway in full war paint, with a breast plate and drum painted with a medicine wheel.

He said his decision to raise awareness about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls was inspired by his sister’s death. This is not the first time Firth has run cross-country for a cause.

In 2015, he completed a three-month run from Vancouver to Ottawa to protest the-then Yukon Party government’s efforts to open the Peel watershed to development.

While Firth never responded to the suit in court, he made claims to the media that he intended to defend himself.

In an interview with the CBC published in December 2016 in response to the suit, he was quoted as saying, “Firth women don’t die by accident.”

The judgment orders that Firth pay general, punitive, aggravated and special damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interests, and costs to Gagnon.

The costs and damages have yet to be assessed.

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