'WAKE UP CANADA': Frances Widdowson claims fake interview operation linked to taxpayer-funded production, possible CBC ties

CALGARY — Former Mount Royal University professor Dr. Frances Widdowson was recently the target of an elaborate hoax interview orchestrated by left-wing activists after being flown from Calgary to Vancouver under the guise that she would be participating in a legitimate documentary project.Widdowson, who has courted controversy from the mainstream media and been arrested at numerous university campuses for her attempts to hold conversations related to claims of alleged unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Residential School site, said the hoax interview — which happened on May 4 — was designed to publicly discredit her.According to her, she was contacted in March by a woman identifying herself as Pam Gibson, who claimed to represent a documentary company called Forge Media..“[Gibson] said that it was a docu-series that was trying to push back against the revisionism of Canadian history and was interested in the free speech problems in universities,” Widdowson told the Western Standard.“The email was kind of tailored to all my interests. So it was obviously kind of trying to appeal to what I would wanna talk about, and that's how I was kind of entrapped into the whole thing.”Widdowson said she found a website online that appeared to show a number of documentaries done by Forge Media that looked legitimate and agreed to do the interview.The production company then paid for her airfare and hotel stay in Vancouver, providing a $1,000 honorarium.Once at the studio in Vancouver, Widdowson said the interview initially appeared “a bit strange.”.She described the interviewer — whom she alleged to the Western Standard was Dakota Ray Hebert, an indigenous comedian — as wearing excessive makeup and asking “very softball” questions.“She didn’t know anything about the subject,” Widdowson said, adding there was another actor there dressed up as former Prime Minister John A. Macdonald.Widdowson described how things became more surreal when two men entered the studio carrying a box of children’s shoes, which they proceeded to dump onto a table in front of her.The shoes were meant to symbolize tributes left at former residential school sites following announcements in 2021 by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc that ground-penetrating radar had identified what were described as “alleged” graves of 215 children at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site.Widdowson initially believed the men were protesters interrupting the interview after learning she was in the studio. However, she said that when she saw Hebert — who refers to herself on her website as a "wagon burner" — looking at her with “absolute hatred in her eyes,” she knew it was a big setup and decided to turn the tables on the pranksters by taking out her smartphone and live-streaming the situation.She later found out the entire production had been staged as part of a prank operation by the American-based activist group The Yes Men..One of the men who is seen in the footage Widdowson recorded has been identified as Igor Vamos — one of the group’s co-founders and a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York — who was going by the alias “Mike Bonanno” during the interview.In the footage, Widdowson can be seen questioning Vamos about the purpose of the purported program, which was entitled “Wake Up Canada,” while pointing out the apparent scale and expense of the operation.“So they’re pretending it’s a woke exposé and it’s not,” Widdowson said in the recording.“This seems to be trying to expose me. I’m quite amazed. I have nothing to hide... I'm an honest academic who is trying to understand aboriginal and non-aboriginal relations.”According to her, Vamos said the ruse was part of a “social experiment” and that “I had been given my opportunity to state my piece.”She said after the incident she took a car provided by the production company to the airport and then flew back to Calgary.“I see this as just absolutely outrageous,” Widdowson said, adding she thinks the prank genre has “its place,” but currently is being used to shut down dissident voices on indigenous issues.Widdowson said she now believes the incident raises broader questions about whether publicly funded institutions or government-supported organizations were connected to the operation..She alleges that Vamos and The Yes Men were “brought in” by a Saskatchewan-based production company called NLT1 Productions Inc.That production company received funding support from the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO) for a project called Counting Coup (Northland Tales) in 2025.On the ISO’s website, NLT1’s project is referred to as an “unscripted, half-hour comedy series where an indigenous activist trio uses pranks as a form of social action.”.It also states the program offers “a fresh, timely perspective on the prank genre, akin to shows like Borat and The Yes Men.”The ISO has previously received funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage — $65 million over five years starting in 2024-25 and $13 million per year ongoing..Hebert, as well as the two men Widdowson has since identified to be the individuals who dumped the pile of shoes in front of her — Gitz Crazyboy and Ryan Moccasin — are all listed as “key creatives” with NLT1.“This deception is very elaborate,” Widdowson said.“There's a lot of different people involved, a lot of different agencies involved. It is quite striking the lengths to which they went to try to set me up.”Widdowson is not the only person who appears to have been targeted by the same group.Author Lindsay Shepherd, author Jerry Amernic, and Dallas Brodie, have reportedly all been targeted by the company.Shepherd recently alleged she was subjected to a similar operation dating back to January.“I found out recently that I was deceived by social activists in an elaborate scheme dating back to January,” Shepherd wrote on social media platform X..“A production group with what I now know is a fake name and fake identities gave me a friendly interview about my book, A Day with Sir John A, and about Sir John A. Macdonald, back in February. They connected me with a fake company called Heritage Figures Canada with a fake website and ‘hired’ me to perform consulting work for them.”Shepherd said the operation involved what she now believes were “fake meetings, fake documents, a fake commercial shoot, [and a] fake prototype of a Sir John A collectible.”“Then, in a second filmed interview last week, they turned on me, and it was revealed to have all been a setup in order to demonize Sir John A and smear me,” she said.Shepherd added that this project was part of a “taxpayer-funded CBC and APTN project,” and that “there is so much more.”The free speech advocate attached a screenshot of an email from Katherine Wolfgang that confirms that “this project is in early production for CBC Entertainment and APTN.”“No details pertaining to exhibition are confirmed at this time,” Wolfgang stated.Widdowson told the Western Standard the connection to the CBC still remains unclear.“The [pranksters] had two dates set up — March 26 and May 4 [for the interview]. We don't know whether [CBC] knew actually what was going to be transpiring in their studio," she said. “I don't know how many members of the CBC were involved in the actual events themselves or whether they just rented space to this group. It was the same group that had booked the space for both shoots, though ours got changed for some reason. We were supposed to be doing it at the CBC studios initially, and then it got changed to Franklin Studios, and we don't know why it got changed.”The Western Standard has reached out to Vamos, the NLT1 members, and the CBC for comment.

'WAKE UP CANADA': Frances Widdowson claims fake interview operation linked to taxpayer-funded production, possible CBC ties

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