I literally did not know the Klan was active in Canada until this morning, when I saw a photo of a Klansman in full garb in Vancouver in the 1930s. We honestly don't hear much about anti-black racism in this country, though I can't say I'm wholly surprised. How active were they and where? Were they in both French and English Canada?
The Ku Klux Klan of Canada, or, as it was officially known, "Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Canada/Kanada,” were the northern offshoot of the popular American fraternal organization, the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan (commonly called the Second Klan). The mainstream American Invisible Empire started in 1915 and lasted until the 1930s, killed off by internal scandal, police action, and the Great Depression. Though the KKKK is an offshoot of an American organization, their presence was nothing extraordinary, as Canada already contained racial and religious extremist groups such as the Orange Order or Sons of England, groups incensed by the growing tide of immigrants and increasing diversity of Canada.
The Ku Klux Klan of Kanada, hereafter KKKK, was organized in 1924 by two Americans (a New Yorker and Virginian), and a Torontonian by the name of Richard L. Cowan. In January of 1925, they began recruiting in earnest across Canada, organizing chapters in Vancouver, Saskatchewan, Toronto, and Ontario.
Ideologically the KKKK were very similar to their American counterparts, espousing reduced immigration of Eastern Europeans, Jews, and Catholics. They were proponents of an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Canada, preaching anti-Catholic, anti-Black, and anti-Jewish sentiments. Much as the American Invisible Empire wanted “100% Americanism,” Canadian Klansmen often wished for a “100% Canadian” Canada based on the principles mentioned above.
A 1927 article in the Regina Morning Leader reported:
“On that account a Roman Catholic could not become a member. He owes his first allegiance to the Pope of Rome, we owe our first allegiance to Canada and the Union Jack, declared the speaker. The Ku Klux Klan was a Christian organization, consequently Jews could not join. There was only one way a negro could join--he would have to be painted white first. The Klan believed this was a great white man’s country.”
KKKK recruiters found great support in pre-existing anti-Catholic feeling in Ontario and, in 1926, after a Klan rally, a Catholic church was dynamited. Public support rallied against the hate group and they largely dropped out of view in Ontario, only to make their way into Saskatchewan in 1926-1927. According to Klan recruiters, Saskatchewan had nearly 45,000 Klan members (probably a severe overestimation/inflation, but numbers provided by recruiters are typically the only ones to be had). The KKKK in Saskatchewan held significant sway; it was there in the first province due to the issue of religiously separate schooling for Catholics and Protestants. In an earlier debate, one pro-unitary school spokesman wrote that “the only safety for our educational system lies in once and for all establishing it on an absolute national basis, with equal rights for all and special privileges to none.”
If Klansmen operated in French Canada, they were up to no good. The KKKK were openly anti-Catholic, as well as anti-French and anti-Quebec. They advocated against separate schooling for French speakers in Canada and upheld the primacy of English language in education. Many Canadians, Klansmen or otherwise, believed Catholics to be solely beholden to the Vatican and balked at the thought of Catholic schooling. One Klan leader, J.L. Mooney, wrote, “ All our troubles, all the sedition, plotting and plans against the school system are hatched in Quebec.”
The Klan in Canada died much the same death as the Invisible Empire in the United States, plagued by an increasingly negative public view and severe financial difficulties in the face of the Great Depression.
Sources
Laats, Adam, "Red Schoolhouse, Burning Cross: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and Educational Reform"
The School Question in the 1929 Saskatchewan Provincial Election
During the interwar period in Canada, there was a sustained backlash against immigration and its perceived threat to Anglo-Saxon values. The importation of the Klan to Canada was natural considering the host of other WASP-ish organizations, such as the Orange Order, that were popular at the time.
According to historian J.M. Bumsted in A History of the Canadian Peoples:
The Klan assumed a Canadian face, posing as the defender of Britishness against the alien hordes and calling itself the "Ku Klux Klan of the British Empire". Although the Klan had some success everywhere in Canada, it made particular headway in the late 1920s in Saskatchewan, where by 1929 there were over 125 chapters. In that province it found support from a number of Protestant ministers, who objected to the increasingly liberal leanings of the main-line Protestant churches.
While the main focus of Klan activity in Canada seemed to be directed towards immigrants, especially from Eastern Europe, it likely goes without saying that African-Americans and Catholics would also have been targeted. Bumsted does note that the lynchings that were associated with the KKK in the United States were infrequent in Canada.
In "Reluctant Hosts: Anglo-Canadian Views of Multiculturalism in the Twentieth Century", Howard Palmer likewise identifies Saskatchewan as a hotbed of nativist sentiment in Canada during the 1920s. He mentions that George Exton Lloyd, an Anglican bishop from Lloydminster, was particularly outspoken. Other organizations, like the aforementioned Orange Order or the Native Sons of Canada, were also active in promoting anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic (often one and the same) views.