Keeping Canada British: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Saskatchewan by James M. Pitsula (review)

As the Ku Klux Klan swelled to behemoth proportions in the United States of the 1920s, so too did the scale of its expansionist ambition. Sensing the commercial possibilities of taking the “Invisible Empire” beyond America’s physical borders, Klan organizers with sufficient opportunity and expertise (if not always official sanction) struck out in search of profitable new terrain. Though almost all of these ventures – including efforts to export the kkk to England and to Germany – proved ultimately abortive affairs, the story was different in Canada, if relatively little-known. In a welcome reinvigoration of this underexplored field, James Pitsula focuses on kkk activity in the province of Saskatchewan. He dismisses the tendency to portray an aberrational “eruption of hatred and prejudice,” making the case instead for a Klan infused with a very mainstream pro-British nationalism, a vehicle for the expression of “a somewhat more extreme version of what most people thought.” (5) Imported by livewire organizers from Indiana (a key state for the US movement), the kkk peaked in Saskatchewan, he estimates, at around 25,000 members and some 150 individual lodges in the late 1920s. Driven by a particular interpretation of Canadian national identity, it campaigned against all forms of foreign encroachment upon both soil and culture, determined to preserve hard-won wartime victories and ultimately to maintain Canada’s heritage as predominantly white, Protestant, and British. Despite its undeniable xenophobia, the Saskatchewan Klan was apparently neither violent nor lawless, rejecting the trademark robes and hoods of its American cousin. Its constituents, though alarmed by a supposedly perilous tide of immigration, were by and large ordinary, unremarkable citizens, “from the lower middle class … or skilled working class … not the marginalized, unemployed, or down-and-out.” (105)

Many were attracted by the Klan’s crusading evangelism, enlivening social events, and vigorous public stands against political and moral corruption, championed all the while by reputable and charismatic Protestant ministers. Behind the veil of respectability, however, the kkk tapped into local ethnic and racial anxieties, warning against “unchecked” immigration. Chinese men, in particular, once essential to the economy’s large industry and railway building, were now singled out as opium-fuelled, culturally alien and sexually immoral: a dangerous breed of vice fiends and seducers of white women. Resisting assimilation, such new arrivals typified the confusing proliferation of languages and religions appearing in Canada after the war, their presence “an affront to Britishness.” (176) In the education system, too, controversy rumbled, with Protestant children in certain Saskatchewan districts “obliged to attend public schools that were to all intents and purposes Roman Catholic institutions.” (137) In Klan hands, this was clear evidence of a government controlled by sinister Papal conspiracy, and a grave moral threat to the province.

It was in the Saskatchewan political arena that the Klan made its greatest mark for Pitsula, who credits the Invisible Empire with a pivotal role in 1929’s provincial election turnaround, ultimately resulting in the downfall of the ruling Liberal establishment. Having “infiltrated the Conservative party in a serious way” the kkk apparently waged a “popular revolt against despotism” (207) in the form of a corrupt, controlling, Liberal political machine. By energizing public debate and making the twin dangers of foreign immigration and sectarian influence in the public schools the key issues of the election, the kkk found a broad and powerful base of public support. It was the Conservative party that reaped the considerable political benefits, and, says Pitsula, “owed its victory to the Klan.” (242) Also interesting are political overlaps with the Orange Order – the kkk made redundant in some regions by the Orangemen, but in Saskatchewan providing a grassroots alternative, offering the kind of drama and vulgar popularity that the Oranges did not. (109)

Keeping Canada British is accessibly written, though at times slips distract-ingly into the language of popular psychology, the rise of the kkk, for instance, explained in terms of “survivor guilt,” part...