https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/yuri-bezmenov-soviet-defector-canada

Bezmenov quit the newspaper to lecture across the U.S. for the John Birch Society, until he decided he could do better on his own, said Lucena. But he lacked organization and business sense, and his venture failed.

It was during this period that Bezmenov published a book titled A Love Letter to America, and recorded an extended, documentary-style interview with G. Edward Griffin, a prominent U.S. conspiracy theorist who later founded the online Red Pill University, which hosts documentaries on topics such as mass hypnosis and COVID-19.

Bezmenov continued to freelance and lecture wherever and however he could, even travelling to South Africa at one point. But his options continued to dwindle and by the late 1980s, he was living in the garage of a friend in Denver, Colo.

[ FYI: Apartheid in South Africa officially ended in 1994 ]

Bezmenov found his way back to Canada in 1990, checking into a rehab centre in Windsor, Ont.. The following year, he landed a job teaching a public relations course at the University of Windsor.

“I worked with him diligently and he was getting back into the mainstream of life. He had a job and was seeing his children,” said Jim Whelan, a Windsor resident and Bezmenov’s sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous. “And finally, at one Christmas, he relapsed.”

At the hospital, they found Bezmenov in a coma, hooked to a respirator, brain dead from methanol poisoning.

“I remember feeling terrified and guilty that I had done this to him and also terrified that if he had woken from his coma, he would be very angry with me,” said Steinbach. “I prayed in the hospital he would die.”

The coroner said his death was the result of “misadventure,” said Lucena. An empty windshield washer container was found in his apartment, along with a half-empty glass on his kitchen table, she said.