A Mendenhall man has been awarded more than $60,000 in his defamation suit against a Gwich’in man running cross-country to raise awareness about missing and murdered indigenous women.

The Yukon Supreme Court ordered Thursday that Brad Firth, also known as Caribou Legs, pay Raymond Gagnon a total of $60,483.28 in damages and costs resulting from a default judgment made in early March.

“I think it was an excellent judgment in much more than the quantity of damages but the victory that it provided to Mr. Gagnon,” James Tucker, the lawyer for Gagnon, told the Star this morning.

“It was a very clear judgment regarding how he had been wronged through all of this.”

Gagnon filed the suit after Firth, the brother of his late wife Irene Korte, made statements to several news outlets and on his Facebook page, that she had died as a result of domestic violence.

But in July 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.

Her report found that Korte died in February 2015 after repeatedly falling and hitting her head while on a prescription antidepressant medication and after having consumed alcohol.

“I have felt embarrassment, humiliation and irritability,” wrote Gagnon of Firth’s statements, in his affidavit.

“I have been anxious that people might confront me about the allegations that I murdered Irene and I can never be sure that members of the local community, others in Inuvik, where Irene grew up, or people across the country with whom the defendant is in contact, might secretly harbour a belief that I murdered my wife.”

Firth, an ultra-marathoner running coast to coast on the Trans-Canada Highway in full war paint, said that inspiration for his run came from his sister’s death.

And between July and August 2016, his claims that Korte had been a victim of domestic violence were published by 16 media sources.

But in his affidavit, Gagnon said Firth knew nothing about him nor his 20-year marriage.

He also said that neither he nor Korte had heard from her brother in many years.

Gagnon said he had only met Firth once briefly when he was in the Yukon raising awareness about the Peel Watershed’s future.

“Even after Irene died, I did not see the defendant at her funeral and he did not attend either of the two receptions we organized to honour her life, one in Whitehorse and one in Inuvik, where Irene grew up,” wrote Gagnon.

He added that he doesn’t know where Firth got the idea that his sister had been murdered.

“I do not understand where, why or how he came up with the monstrous idea that not only had I murdered someone but that I murdered my wife, whom I continue to love and miss everyday,” he wrote.

He speculated that Firth’s motivation may have been to add “political credibility” to his run.

But in a statement issued after the default judgment, Gagnon noted that the case is not a reflection of the cause of missing and murdered indigenous women.

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

While Firth was aware of the suit, he never formally responded. But he did make comments to the media that he had no intention of backing down.

“I don’t believe the coroner’s report,” he was quoted by the CBC on March 9.

“I don’t believe in the RCMP investigation. I’m not going to back down. I want a new investigation.”