Ku Klux Klan in Canada
Based on Wikipedia: Ku Klux Klan in Canada
In 1922, a Black man named Matthew Bullock crossed the border into Canada, fleeing for his life. The Ku Klux Klan had murdered his brother in North Carolina and declared Matthew himself a wanted man, accusing him of inciting riots. Toronto newspapers reported that Klansmen had "threatened to send robed riders to fetch Bullock and whisk him back to the American south."
He had come to Canada seeking safety. But the Klan would follow.
The Klan Goes North
When most people think of the Ku Klux Klan, they picture the American South—burning crosses in Alabama, hooded riders terrorizing Black communities in Mississippi, the violent enforcement of Jim Crow segregation. What's less known is that the Klan established a significant presence in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s, adapting its hateful ideology to target different groups while claiming to be more "civilized" than its American parent organization.
The Canadian Klan emerged from what historians call the "second Klan"—a resurrection of the original post-Civil War terrorist organization. The first Klan had been effectively destroyed by the 1870s through federal prosecution, but in 1915, a man named William Joseph Simmons gathered fifteen friends atop Stone Mountain in Georgia and ceremonially burned a cross to mark the founding of a new movement.
What inspired this revival? A movie.
D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation had just been released, depicting the original Klan as heroic defenders of white civilization against supposedly dangerous freed slaves. The film was a technical masterpiece and a moral catastrophe—it rewrote history to glorify terrorism, and it worked. Audiences flocked to theaters, and in cities across America, the film sparked both riots and recruitment.
Arrival in the Dominion
On December 1, 1924, three men signed an agreement in Toronto to bring this organization to Canada. Two were Americans—C. Lewis Fowler from New York City and John H. Hawkins from Newport, Virginia. The third was a Canadian named Richard L. Cowan. They called their new organization the Knights of Ku Klux Klan of Canada, and they structured it like a business franchise, splitting funding responsibilities and income equally among the three founders.
The organization borrowed heavily from its American parent, including the elaborate hierarchy with its absurd titles. Cowan became the "Imperial Wizard" (president), Hawkins the "Imperial Klaliff" (vice-president), and Fowler the "Imperial Kligrapp" (secretary). The governing body was called the "Provincial Kloncilium." These invented words—part pseudo-mystical, part fraternal lodge theater—were meant to create an aura of secret power and ancient tradition around what was essentially a hate group with membership fees.
But the Canadian Klan knew it couldn't simply transplant the American model wholesale. The American Klan's primary target was Black Americans, enforcing white supremacy through spectacular violence—lynchings, beatings, and the burning of Black churches and homes. Canada's Black population was much smaller, concentrated in specific communities in Nova Scotia, Ontario, and the prairies. The Canadian Klan needed different enemies.
It found them.
Defending "Britishness"
According to historian James Pitsula, the Canadian Klan observed the same underlying racial ideology as its American counterpart but narrowed its focus to preserving the "Britishness" of Canada. This meant targeting Catholics, French Canadians, and immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe—groups that threatened the cultural and political dominance of Protestant Anglo-Saxons.
The Klan made explicit efforts to distinguish itself from American violence. At a rally in London, Ontario, Hawkins declared that the Canadian Klan was "not lawless" and would abide by the nation's laws while working to change those laws it opposed. A 1925 photograph in the London Advertiser showed Canadian Klansmen in robes that differed from the American version by including a maple leaf alongside the traditional cross insignia.
This was, of course, largely a public relations exercise. The Canadian Klan was responsible for significant violence and property destruction, even if it was somewhat less overtly murderous than its American parent.
One of the most devastating acts attributed to the Klan was the burning of Saint-Boniface College in Winnipeg, which killed ten people and destroyed the building along with all its records and library. Before the Klan was even officially established in Canada, Catholic churches had been targets of arson across the country, including the Cathedral-Basilica of Notre-Dame de Québec in Quebec City in 1922.
In 1926, someone detonated dynamite at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Barrie, Ontario. The perpetrator was caught and admitted he had acted on orders from the Ku Klux Klan. The explosion prompted Ontario media, politicians, and religious leaders to speak out against both the violence and the organization itself. By winter of that year, Klan membership in Ontario was declining.
The Saskatchewan Stronghold
While the Klan struggled in Ontario, it found its most fertile ground in Saskatchewan. By the late 1920s, the provincial organization claimed over 25,000 members—an astonishing number for a province with a relatively small population.
Why Saskatchewan?
Historian Allan Bartley argues that the Klan's success there stemmed from opposition to the provincial Liberal government, which had held power since Saskatchewan became a province in 1905. The Liberals had cultivated support among Catholic and immigrant communities, and Protestant Anglo-Saxons who felt politically marginalized found the Klan's message appealing.
The Saskatchewan Klan was organized by two American hustlers from Indiana—Hugh Finlay Emmons and Lewis A. Scott—who arrived in 1926 and spent early 1927 traveling throughout the province, establishing local branches and selling memberships for thirteen Canadian dollars per person. They also spread propaganda and burned crosses.
Then they did something entirely predictable: they fled Saskatchewan with all the money they had raised, leaving the organization in chaos.
Into this vacuum stepped John Hawkins and a seminarian from Hamilton named John James Maloney, who had made a name for himself denouncing "Romanism"—a pejorative term for Roman Catholicism. Under their leadership, the Saskatchewan Klan claimed to register over 70,000 members and raised more than 50,000 dollars in fees. Memberships cost fifteen dollars annually—a significant sum at the time, roughly equivalent to several hundred dollars today.
One Nation, One Flag, One Language, One School
The Saskatchewan Klan's primary campaign targeted the separate school system with a slogan that encapsulated their vision: "one nation, one flag, one language, one school." They opposed crucifixes on public school walls, nuns teaching in public schools, and the teaching of French. They blamed Quebec for these supposed outrages.
This was particularly ironic given Canadian constitutional law. The Constitution Act of 1867—the founding document of the Canadian federation—explicitly guaranteed provincial rights to education and language, protecting minority rights including those of Catholics and French-speaking citizens. The Klan was campaigning against rights enshrined in Canada's constitution while wrapping itself in the Canadian flag.
At a Klan meeting in Saskatoon in January 1929, a reverend named S.P. Rondeau claimed that Quebec was attempting to establish Saskatchewan as a second French-speaking province. Newly founded local chapters announced their presence to communities with ritual cross burnings—the Klan's signature act of intimidation.
This agitation influenced the 1929 provincial election. The Klan appeared at rallies, burning crosses. Liberal Premier James Garfield Gardiner accused the Conservatives and their leader James Thomas Milton Anderson of being associated with the Klan, though he never provided proof. The accusation wasn't entirely fair—Klan membership included people from all major parties, including Liberals and Progressives.
But one detail was striking: the provincial treasurer of the Saskatchewan Klan, holding the title "Klabee," was Walter Davy Cowan, who served as a Conservative Member of Parliament for the riding of Long Lake from 1930 to 1935. A sitting federal legislator held an officer position in a hate group.
A Brief Taste of Power
The Liberals failed to form a minority government after the 1929 election, and a coalition led by Anderson's Conservatives took power. Once in government, the Conservatives publicly condemned the Ku Klux Klan, but their opponents continued linking them to the organization until the 1934 election.
The Conservative government did implement policies that aligned with Klan priorities. They amended the School Act to ban religious insignia in educational settings. They changed provincial immigration policy. And they terminated recognition of teaching certificates granted by Quebec, effectively preventing the recruitment of teachers from that province.
Maloney, the firebrand organizer, felt betrayed. In his book Rome in Canada, he complained that the Anderson government "forgot him" and "in their pride and conceit" took credit for his efforts. Politicians had used the Klan's energy for their own purposes and then discarded the organization once it became inconvenient.
Bitter at the rejection, Maloney moved to Alberta.
The Alberta Campaign
The Alberta Klan had been established in 1923 but was poorly organized. Maloney declared himself Imperial Wizard and sent for experienced organizers from British Columbia and Saskatchewan. He traveled to as many as five engagements a day in rural areas, establishing local chapters (called "Klaverns") and collecting membership fees.
But Alberta wasn't as welcoming as Saskatchewan. The Klan sometimes faced strong opposition, requiring police protection at Gibbons and Stony Plain. At Chauvin, they were pelted with rocks. At Wainwright, locals prevented them from even getting off the train.
The Klan was also competing for the same audience as William Aberhart—known as "Bible Bill"—who was building his own populist movement that would eventually become the Social Credit Party. Maloney called Edmonton "the Rome of the West" because of its many Catholic properties and focused his efforts there.
In Alberta, the Klan led boycotts of Catholic businesses, targeted French-speaking Canadians with intimidation, and worked to influence municipal elections against politicians they deemed "papist sympathizers." There was at least one tarring and feathering—at Lacombe—though the Klan denied involvement.
When Edmonton elected Dan Knott as mayor in 1931, the Klan celebrated by burning a cross. Knott granted the Klan permission on three separate occasions to hold "picnics" and erect burning crosses on the Edmonton Exhibition grounds, now known as Northlands. The Klan published a newspaper called The Liberator from downtown Edmonton and held meetings in the Memorial Hall of the Royal Canadian Legion.
The Fall of Maloney
The Klan received its official charter in September 1932, but questions about the organization's finances led to disputes about Maloney's leadership. On January 25, 1933, he was convicted of stealing legal documents from a lawyer who had opposed the Klan's incorporation. Just over a week later, he was convicted of insurance fraud.
Maloney's downfall effectively ended the Ku Klux Klan in Alberta. The organization had been built around charismatic leaders who turned out to be con men—first Emmons and Scott in Saskatchewan, then Maloney in Alberta. Without them, the movement collapsed.
What the Klan Really Believed
In May 1928, the Imperial Wizard for Saskatchewan, J.W.E. Rosborough, published a letter in the Manitoba Free Press outlining the Klan's creed. It included belief in Protestantism, separation of church and state, "one public school system," law and order, freedom from mob violence, freedom of speech and press, "higher moral standards," "gentile economic freedom," "racial purity," "restrictive and selective immigration," and "pure patriotism."
The list reveals the Klan's contradictions. They claimed to oppose mob violence while organizing campaigns of intimidation. They demanded freedom of speech while threatening those who disagreed with them. They wrapped bigotry in the language of civic virtue.
The phrase "gentile economic freedom" is particularly telling—the Klan opposed Jewish participation in the economy, promoting boycotts of Jewish businesses alongside Catholic ones. A Baptist reverend in Moose Jaw declared that one of the Klan's purposes was "the protection of the physical purity of current and future generations"—eugenics dressed up as moral concern.
Klansmen falsely claimed that Canada's immigration policy made it "the dumping ground of the world" and spread lies about immigration statistics—asserting, for example, that of Regina's 8,000 recent immigrants, only seven were Protestants. They promoted a "100 percent Canadian" policy, which in their formulation meant Protestant and Anglo-Saxon.
At a meeting in Regina City Hall in October 1927, Maloney claimed to have received a letter from Plutarco Elías Calles, the President of Mexico, in which Calles blamed the Catholic Church for Mexico's 80 percent illiteracy rate. Whether the letter was real or fabricated, it served the Klan's narrative. Maloney described Catholicism as "that dark system which has wrecked every country it got hold of."
A Longer Shadow
The organized Klan effectively disappeared from Canada by the mid-1930s, done in by financial scandals, leadership failures, and the onset of the Great Depression, which gave people more pressing concerns than ethnic grievances. But the underlying prejudices didn't vanish.
In 1991—nearly sixty years after the Klan's heyday—a man named Carney Nerland shot and killed Leo LaChance, a Cree man who had entered Nerland's pawn shop in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to sell furs he had trapped. Nerland was a professed white supremacist, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and leader of the Saskatchewan branch of the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian Aryan Nation.
He was convicted of manslaughter—not murder—and served three years of a four-year sentence.
The Klan's Canadian chapter is often treated as a historical curiosity, a minor footnote to the larger American story. But it reveals something important about how hate movements adapt to local conditions. The Canadian Klan couldn't sustain itself by targeting Black Canadians the way the American Klan terrorized Black Americans. So it shifted its focus to Catholics, French Canadians, Jews, and Eastern European immigrants—whoever could be portrayed as a threat to the dominant group's power and status.
The tactics were familiar: cross burnings, economic boycotts, intimidation, and violence, combined with the language of patriotism and moral virtue. The Klan wrapped itself in the Union Jack and the maple leaf, claiming to defend Canada while attacking Canadians.
And for a brief moment in Saskatchewan, it worked. Politicians courted its members, implemented its policies, and then tried to distance themselves once the association became embarrassing. The pattern—extremist movements being used and then discarded by mainstream politicians—would repeat itself many times in the decades to come.
Matthew Bullock, the man who fled North Carolina in 1922, eventually won his fight to stay in Canada. The courts refused to extradite him, recognizing that he faced certain death if returned to the American South. He had escaped one Klan only to find another organizing in his new home.
But he survived. The Canadian Klan did not.