Under Scrutiny Part 7: From Charlottesville to Second Sons

Under Scrutiny | Investigation 001 | Part 07

Some people arrive in an organization with very little public history behind them.

Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald is not one of those people. He is a man who publically has spewed his hate.

His involvement in far-right politics predates Second Sons Canada by nearly a decade, and much of that history played out publicly. He was involved with Quebec nationalist group La Meute, travelled from Quebec to the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, later became associated with the Frontenac Active Club, publicly described himself as a Nazi, and has now emerged as a recruiter and public representative of Second Sons Canada. TVA Nouvelles

That history matters.

Not because one controversial member automatically defines every person in an organization.

It matters because Beauvais-MacDonald does not appear to be an anonymous rank-and-file member standing quietly at the edge of a photograph. Recent reporting and Second Sons’ own material place him in recruitment, divisional leadership and high-profile public actions.

If Second Sons wants to be understood as a new nationalist men’s organization distinct from older white-supremacist movements, Beauvais-MacDonald’s trajectory presents an obvious question:

How new is the movement, really?

Before Second Sons, There Was La Meute

Beauvais-MacDonald’s name first attracted significant mainstream attention in 2017.

At the time, he was involved with La Meute, a Quebec organization that described itself in nationalist terms and became particularly associated with opposition to immigration and Islam.

TVA reported that Beauvais-MacDonald had served as a recruiter for La Meute. VICE described him as one of the group’s main recruiters and reported that he administered its English-language Facebook presence. TVA Nouvelles

Then came Charlottesville.

In August 2017, Beauvais-MacDonald travelled from Quebec to Virginia to attend the Unite the Right rally.

That gathering brought together white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other far-right groups and ended in violence after James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car into counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer.

Beauvais-MacDonald appeared in VICE News footage from the event and was photographed among participants. La Meute responded by suspending and then expelling him, publicly saying it rejected white supremacy and racism. VICE

In an interview afterward, Beauvais-MacDonald defended his decision to attend. He told VICE he had gone to protest what he described as the erasure of Western history and to defend freedom of expression. At that time, his public language was considerably more guarded than some of what would follow years later. VICE

That contrast is worth remembering.

Political radicalization does not always reveal itself through one dramatic declaration.

Sometimes the language becomes clearer over time.

Charlottesville Was Not the End of His Political Activity

Being expelled by La Meute did not end Beauvais-MacDonald’s involvement in Quebec’s far-right scene.

Later in 2017 he appeared at anti-immigration demonstrations associated with groups such as Storm Alliance. VICE reported him attending a border protest wearing protective equipment and speaking about globalization and immigration while insisting he was not seeking confrontation. VICE

Independent antifascist researchers subsequently documented his involvement around Atalante Québec and other far-right networks. Those sources should be identified for what they are — activist research rather than neutral institutional reporting — but parts of their documentation, including photographs and publicly archived posts, have helped establish the continuity of individuals across organizations. Montréal-Antifasciste

The important point is not simply that Beauvais-MacDonald belonged to multiple groups.

It is that his involvement illustrates how organizations can change names, merge, fracture or disappear while many of the same individuals, relationships and ideas survive.

That becomes particularly relevant once the Active Club movement enters the picture.

Enter the Frontenac Active Club

By 2024, Beauvais-MacDonald had become increasingly prominent in Montreal’s Frontenac Active Club.

Active Clubs combine physical training, combat sports, male camaraderie and political ideology. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue describes this model as part of a newer form of white-nationalist mobilization that deliberately packages political extremism alongside fitness and community. Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Research published by Montréal Antifasciste in 2024 documented Beauvais-MacDonald participating with Frontenac members, representing the club at boxing events and providing contact information for prospective members. Again, Montréal Antifasciste is an advocacy organization and its characterization should be understood in that context, but its underlying photographs and archived social-media material provide useful primary-source leads. Montréal-Antifasciste

By March 2026, The Tyee was reporting on Beauvais-MacDonald as a member of Frontenac Active Club.

Journalist Rachel Gilmore wrote that Beauvais-MacDonald had openly called himself a Nazi in social-media posts and regularly appeared publicly in clothing featuring Hitler and Nazi-era imagery. Photographs Gilmore took during an encounter with him also showed him wearing a Totenkopf skull pin, a symbol used historically by Nazi SS units and subsequently adopted in neo-Nazi imagery. The Tyee

The terminology here does not require inference.

When someone publicly writes “I am a Nazi,” describing him as a self-described Nazi is not an ideological label being imposed by a journalist.

It is reporting what he says about himself. The Tyee

When a Reporter Became Part of the Story

Beauvais-MacDonald’s history also intersects with another issue that matters to this investigation: attempts to discourage scrutiny.

In March 2026, Gilmore published an investigation into Frontenac Active Club and its access to a Montreal-area gym.

The following evening, she encountered Beauvais-MacDonald and another Frontenac member at a music venue.

Gilmore wrote that the two men stood between her and the exit and confronted her about her reporting. She interpreted the encounter as intimidation. Her subsequent account described online harassment and threats surrounding her coverage of the Active Club network. The Tyee

That incident does not prove that every interaction between Second Sons members and journalists is intended to intimidate.

But it belongs in the record.

An organization engaged in political activism is entitled to dispute reporting about itself.

Journalists are equally entitled to investigate it without being confronted in ways reasonably perceived as attempts to discourage that work.

That becomes particularly important when secrecy and control over information are already recurring themes in the organization.

Frontenac Becomes Second Sons

The next development is crucial.

According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Frontenac Active Club merged with Second Sons Canada in October 2025. Institute for Strategic Dialogue

That means Beauvais-MacDonald’s appearance inside Second Sons cannot simply be explained as an unrelated extremist wandering into a new movement.

The organization with which he had become closely associated was absorbed into Second Sons.

Frontenac’s Telegram channel subsequently carried Second Sons material, while Second Sons’ own messaging referred to a Quebec division. Current archived posts from the Frontenac channel describe a Second Sons Montreal division lead discussing the group’s “Je me souviens d’un Québec blanc” operation. Telegram

This is where organizational continuity becomes difficult to ignore.

The name changes.

The branding changes.

The network becomes larger.

But some of the people remain.

“Je me souviens d’un Québec blanc”

In May 2026, masked demonstrators in Shawinigan displayed a banner declaring:

Je me souviens d’un Québec blanc.

“I remember a white Quebec.”

The demonstration became one of the clearest examples yet of explicitly racial messaging associated with Second Sons.

Beauvais-MacDonald was publicly linked to the action, and Quebec reporting identified him as a well-known Montreal far-right activist associated with it. 98.5 Montréal

The Frontenac/Second Sons Telegram material is particularly useful because it shows how the organization itself presented the event.

Its Quebec messaging described the demonstration as exposing what it called an “anti-White agenda” seeking to replace people on lands their ancestors built. Telegram

That language strongly resembles themes we have already examined throughout this investigation:

ancestry, replacement, inheritance, demographic threat and the idea that national belonging has an ethnic component.

Beauvais-MacDonald’s presence connects those themes to a political history extending well before Second Sons existed.

Then He Appears in Recruitment

Our last installment examined Second Sons’ recruitment process.

Beauvais-MacDonald appears there too.

Two La Presse journalists applied to Second Sons under a false identity during an undercover investigation. CBC later reported on the same recruitment process.

After the journalists completed an initial questionnaire asking about matters including their political beliefs and family history in Canada, the person who contacted them on Telegram was Beauvais-MacDonald.

According to the journalists, he wanted additional information about why they wished to join and quickly attempted to arrange an in-person meeting. Internationly

This is significant because recruitment is not passive membership.

A recruiter helps decide who gets inside.

A recruiter communicates expectations.

A recruiter becomes one of the first human representatives of the organization that an applicant encounters after leaving the public website behind.

That gives Beauvais-MacDonald’s ideological history much greater relevance.

If Second Sons were attempting to establish a hard boundary between its nationalism and openly Nazi politics, the choice of someone who publicly identifies himself as a Nazi to participate in screening prospective members would require explanation.

From Montreal to Kamloops

Then Beauvais-MacDonald appears again — this time across the country.

On September 27, 2026, more than a dozen masked Second Sons members gathered on Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc lands near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and later appeared on a Kamloops overpass displaying the provocative “Got Bones?” banner.

Unlike most of the masked participants, Beauvais-MacDonald was publicly identifiable.

iNFOnews reported that he led the Second Sons group, spoke for it during the action and appeared prominently in promotional material subsequently distributed by the organization.

He later wrote that it had been an honour to represent the group’s western divisions. iNFOnews.ca

That is a remarkable geographic and organizational leap.

A man whose political history stretches from La Meute and Charlottesville through Frontenac Active Club in Montreal is now publicly representing Second Sons during one of its most controversial actions in British Columbia.

That is no longer merely association.

It is participation at the centre of the event.

One Person Does Not Define an Entire Organization

There is an important caution here.

Organizations contain different people.

One member’s beliefs cannot automatically be assigned to everyone else.

Even the presence of a highly visible extremist does not prove that every Second Sons member identifies as a Nazi or agrees with everything Beauvais-MacDonald has said over the years.

That would be intellectually lazy.

But the opposite position would be equally difficult to defend.

There is a substantial difference between an organization accidentally discovering that one obscure member has an extremist past and an organization allowing a person with a long, public and well-documented ideological history to recruit applicants, hold a divisional leadership role and publicly represent the organization at a major demonstration.

That is why Beauvais-MacDonald matters.

The issue is not simply what he believes.

It is what his continuing role tells us about what Second Sons is prepared to accommodate.

The Question of Ideological Boundaries

Organizations define themselves partly by the boundaries they enforce.

Who gets rejected?

Who gets removed?

What behaviour causes leadership to say, That is not who we are?

Interestingly, Beauvais-MacDonald provides us with an historical comparison.

In 2017, after his attendance at Charlottesville became public, La Meute expelled him.

Whatever else can be said about La Meute, its leadership publicly decided that association with the white-supremacist rally crossed a boundary it did not want attached to the organization. VICE

Nine years later, Beauvais-MacDonald has publicly described himself as a Nazi.

He has been documented in Nazi imagery.

He became a prominent figure within Frontenac Active Club.

Frontenac was absorbed into Second Sons.

He participated in Second Sons recruitment.

He publicly represented the organization during the Kamloops action.

That presents a very simple investigative question:

Where is Second Sons’ boundary?

If openly identifying as a Nazi does not exclude someone from recruiting prospective members or representing the organization publicly, what precisely would?

That is not guilt by association.

It is a question about organizational standards.

This Is Why History Matters

Second Sons Canada describes itself as an organization established in 2024.

Technically, that may be true.

But organizations do not always begin when their websites say they were founded.

Political movements inherit people.

They inherit relationships.

They inherit language.

They inherit tactics.

And sometimes they absorb organizations that existed before them.

The history of Shawn Beauvais-MacDonald demonstrates why tracing those connections matters.

His path did not begin with Second Sons.

It runs through nearly a decade of Canada’s far-right political landscape: from La Meute to Charlottesville, through Quebec’s identitarian movement and Active Club network, into Frontenac and eventually Second Sons.

That does not mean Second Sons is simply La Meute under another name.

It means the organization’s emergence cannot be understood properly if we pretend everyone involved arrived without a past.

A Familiar Face in a New Movement

There is something almost symbolic about Beauvais-MacDonald’s role in Kamloops.

Most of the men standing behind him were masked.

He was not.

In a movement that places extraordinary emphasis on anonymity, one of the men willing to stand visibly at the front already had years of public history attached to his face.

And that history tells us something.

It tells us that Second Sons did not emerge in isolation.

It has absorbed at least one existing Active Club.

It has recruited individuals whose involvement in far-right movements predates the organization itself.

And it has given visible roles to a man whose own public statements leave little ambiguity about how he describes his ideology.

That does not answer every question about Second Sons Canada.

But it gives us a much better idea of where to look next.

Because sometimes the most useful way to understand a new organization is to follow the people who were there long before the name existed.

Stay curious. Look closer. Keep the conversation going.

— Laurie