Ku Klux Klan in Canada
The organization was most successful in Saskatchewan, where it briefly influenced political activity and where its membership included a member of Parliament, Walter Davy Cowan.
The conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865 resulted in the termination of the secessionist movement of the Confederate States of America and the abolition of slavery.
[4] In July 1868, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, addressing citizenship rights and granting equal protection under the law.
[7] This was followed by three Enforcement Acts, criminal codes protecting African Americans and primarily targeting the Ku Klux Klan.
[8] The release of the film The Birth of a Nation by D. W. Griffith in 1915, glorifying the original Ku Klux Klan using historical revisionism, stoked resentment among some citizens and riots in cities where it screened.
[9] The day before Thanksgiving in 1915, William Joseph Simmons and 15 of his friends established the second Ku Klux Klan atop Stone Mountain in Georgia, ceremonially burning a cross to mark the occasion.
[11] His brother had been killed by Klansmen, who the Toronto Star reported at the time had "threatened to send robed riders to fetch Bullock and whisk him back to the American south".
[11] On 1 December 1924, C. Lewis Fowler of New York City, John H. Hawkins of Newport, Virginia, and Richard L. Cowan of Toronto signed an agreement to establish the Knights of Ku Klux Klan of Canada.
According to historian James Pitsula, these groups observed the same racial ideology but had a narrower focus than those in the United States, primarily to preserve the "Britishness" of Canada with respect to ethnicity and religious affiliation.
[13] A 1925 photograph of garbed Canadian Klansmen published by the London Advertiser demonstrated that the Klan robes in Canada differed from those in the United States by including a maple leaf opposite the cross insignia.
[11] In 1991, Carney Nerland, a professed white supremacist, member of the Ku Klux Klan and leader of the Saskatchewan branch of the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian Aryan Nation killed a Cree man, Leo LaChance, with an assault rifle.
Although there is little proof,[16] the Klan was blamed for the razing of Saint-Boniface College in Saint Boniface, Winnipeg, which resulted in 10 deaths,[13] destruction of the building, and loss of all of its records and its library.
[28] Once they formed the government, the Conservatives condemned the Ku Klux Klan, but their opponents persisted in linking them to the organization until the 1934 provincial election.
[30] Bitter at the rejection, he made visits to Ontario then moved to Alberta in 1930, and spoke at 20 engagements that spring at the request of Orange Lodge Grand Master A.E.
[30] Finding competition against William Aberhart ("Bible Bill") in Calgary difficult, he moved to Edmonton, which he stated was the "Rome of the West" because of its many Roman Catholic properties.
[30] Travelling to as many as five engagements a day in rural areas to establish Klaverns and collect CA$13 membership fees, the Klan sometimes encountered strong opposition, requiring police protection at Gibbons and Stony Plain, facing a volley of thrown rocks at Chauvin, and prevented from disembarking a train at Wainwright.
On three separate occasions, Knott granted the Klan permission to hold "picnics" and erect burning crosses on the Edmonton Exhibition grounds, now known as Northlands.
[34] T.J. Hind, the reverend of First Baptist Church in Moose Jaw, stated that one of the purposes of the establishment of the Ku Klux Klan was for the protection of the physical purity of current and future generations.
[35] Allan Bartley notes that despite the decline of the Klan in Canada in the 1930s, a number of members turned to the emerging Nazi movement before it fell out of favour during World War II.
Klan Grand Wizard David Duke made recruitment attempts in Canada, with followers setting up a new Toronto chapter in 1981 led by James Alexander McQuirter.
