Children don't learn about it in their history classes in Saskatchewan schools.
The history books that meticulously document the past of just about everySaskatchewan community manage to avoid mention of it altogether.
People who were around at the time don't want to talk about it.
But there was a time in Saskatchewan's history when the Ku Klux Klanrode high. When massive crosses were burned, thousands of people, mostlyin rural areas turned to the KKK to protect them from the perceived dangersof Roman Catholics, the French language, and immigrants from eastern Europe.
There was a time when the Klan wielded such influence that the Klan'sGrand Wizard in this province met the premier of the day in a public debate.
And when the Klan whipped up such hysteria that it claimed to have playeda role in defeating a government.
Hard to belive, but true.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Klan was one of the largest organizationsin the province. The Klan claimed more members than any political party,and had more members than any agricultural organization save the Wheat Pool.
No one is sure of the exact number, but historians estimate that theKlan had around 25,000 members. The Klan itself claimed a membership of50,000 in this province.
The files on the Klan at the provincial archives include a list of thelocal chapters, and lists of members.
The Klan was spread right across the province, with groups organizedin hundreds of towns.
The Klansmen were ordinary people, and many were, as they say, pillarsof the community. Some were business owners, others farmers, some were evenministers.
And they were everywhere. Even here.
Order of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Klan Number33 was organized at Kipling with 19 members.
Klan Number 36 was organized at Moosomin with Exalted Cyclops Lyon B.Sherwood and Kligraff M. V. Gilpur.
Klan Number 37 was formed at Whitewood.
Klan Number 74 was organized at Rocanville.
Klan Number 79 was formed at Langbank, under the leadership of KligraffRev. W.C. Challis, the minister of the local United Church at the time.
Klan Number 94 was organized at Wapella, and attracted 14 members initially.
The Klan was a minor organization in this area compared to some otherparts of the province.
The KKK ran a major organizing drive in Moose Jaw, vowing to clean upSaskat-chewan's wildest city. There, 1,200 members were signed up.
Other areas where Klan organizers did well were communities with largeRoman Catholic populations. The Klan was selling hatred, and Catholics madea convenient scapegoat.
Edith Hewson of Langbank remembers the years of the Klan. She was goingto high school in Moosomin during those years. "It was a politicalthing," she says. "They were trying to get (Premier James) Gardinerout of office."
She remembers that there was a cross burned just north of Langbank. "Idon't know who was behind that, but I remember hearing about it, and hearinga lot about the Klan in those days."
But she suggests the Klan's success may have just been a case of naivePrairie people being hoodwinked by the fast-talking Americans selling Klanmem-berships.
"A lot of people were carried away by it, but they really didn'tknow what the KKK stood for," she says. "There wasn't a lot ofcontact with the outside world at that time. There was no radio. All wehad was the newspaper."
She adds, "Birth of a Nation was one of the first real action movies,and it showed the Klan in a very good light. So people might have had adifferent idea of what the Klan stood for."
She said the arrival of the Klan led friends and neighbors to argue andfight. "My brother and one of our best Catholic friends got into afight about it. Everyone got carried away."
University of Regina history professor Bill Brennan says the people whoparted with $13 each to join the Klan weren't just naive.
"The Klan was very active in the States at the time, and the paperswere full of stories of lynchings and everything else the Klan was involvedin," says Brennan.
"There is no way that people could not know what the Klan was allabout."
But people did get caught up in the emotion, and may have joined theKlan for any number of reasons.
"It didn't necessarily follow that most Klan members were bigots,"says Brennan. "There may be 25,000 different reasons why people joinedthe Klan. We just don't know."
Klan organizers had come to Sask-atchewan from the United States, seeingimmigrants from Eastern Europe, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Frenchlanguage as issues they could build a hateful organization around, justas hatred of blacks had been the rallying point for the Klan in the southernU.S. since it was formed there following the Civil War.
The Klan had been outlawed by the U.S. government during reconstructionin the South following the war, but it resurfaced in 1913 and became a largemovement.
At its peak, it claimed two million members across the United States.
The Klan became known for acts of intimidation, terror and hatred whereverit spread. Lynchings, arson, cross burnings - these were the tools of thetrade for the Klan wherever it went in the United States.
It changed as it moved into new states - picking up on local biases andfears and incorporating them into its agenda of hatred.
In Saskatchewan, Klan organizers quickly picked up on anti-Catholic andanti-French sentiments. In Moose Jaw, with its reputation for lawlessness,the Klan promoted itself as a law-and-order organ-ization, and also spreadhatred against Moose Jaw's large Chinese population, who came to be blamedfor some of Moose Jaw's wild reputation.
While it may have appeared that the Klan organizers who moved into Sask-atchewanwere motivated by a twisted ideology, they may have been motivated moreby money. Klan memberships sold for $13 each, which wasn't just pocket changein the 1920s.
The organizers pocketed a lot of the money they took for memberships,however, which led police to investigate some of the organizers.
The story of one early Klan organizer ends with a twist worthy of O.Henry. One of the main forces behind the Klan in Saskatchewan, an Americannamed Dr. J. H. Hawkins, who had spent many hours speaking out against immigration,was found to be in Canada illegally.
He was promptly deported back to the United States.
The Klan in Saskatchewan was a political organization which, in the earlyyears, saw the Liberal government of James Gardiner as a mortal enemy.
Gardiner was referred to as Pope Gardiner the First in Klan publicationsand he was accused of favoring Catholic communities in road construction.
"Rome votes 100 per cent Liberal in this province and Rome doesn'tvote without her price," anti-Catholic crusader J.J. Maloney charged.
Gardiner charged that the Klan was a Conservative front, or at the veryleast was closely allied to the Conservatives.
He charged that both the Grand Wizard of the Saskatchewan KKK and thesecretary had been delegates to the Conservative convention in Saskatoonin 1928.
The Conservative leader, Dr. J. T. M. An-derson, was accused of workingclosely with the Klan.
A defector from the Saskatchewan Klan who had once been a top leaderin the United States, Pat Emmons, claimed there had been meetings betweenAnderson and key Klan organizers.
Anderson denied that, but the Klan strongly supported him in the electionand during the Conservatives' brief reign in the early 1930s, they enactedanti-Catholic and anti-French legislation. French was abolished as a languageof instruction in Saskatchewan schools and religious symbols were outlawedin public schools.
How much did the Klan have to do with the Conservative victory in the1929 election? Probably not as much as it claimed, says Brennan. "TheLiberals had been in power for 25 years," he notes. "They wouldhave been defeated sooner or later. What the Klan did was provide a sharperfocus for opponents of the Liberals."
Reading through newspapers from the Klan era, it quickly becomes clearthat there were a variety of opinions on the Klan. Some articles attackit, some support it, and some simply report on the Klan's goings on in amatter-of fact manner that makes Klan rallies sound like church picnics.
The Lashburn Comet commented in June, 1928 that Saskatchewan "certainlyneed no lessons . . . from an organization with as unsavory a record andreputation as the Klan."
The Rocanville Record attacked the one person who defected from the Klanand shed light on its unsavory activities. Pat Emmons or Emoury was a Klanorganizer charged with stealing money from the organization. He was acquitted,after the court found he was entitled to a large take from each membershiphe sold.
In an editorial, the Record attacked Emmons as a turncoat and suggestedhe was being used to discredit the Klan.
"Personally, we believe Emmons to be only a cheap grafter, apparentlywilling to sell out his friends to the highest bidder," the Recordsaid of the man who shed light on the "Invisible Empire. "At thathe is very little lower than the gang who have obviously bought him."
The Esterhazy Observer reported on a Klan rally held in that town, andcommented that it was hard to understand the criticism of the Klan. Afterall, the organization simply stood for "a better control of immigrationon such lines that the newcomers would not predominate and graft onto Canadianprinciples and ideals the objectionable features of the countries from whichthey come."
The Observer suggested that Premier Gardiner's attacks on the Klan "mustbe taken with a quantity of salt."
In the late 1920s, the Klan seemed unstoppable in Saskatchewan. It wasa huge organization with political con-nections in the ascendant ConservativeParty. But a few short years later, it had disappeared.
Brennan said there are two likely reasons for the Klan's demise.
"For one thing, it was the 1930s, and people had better things todo with their $13 than renewing their Klan member-ships, and they had moreimportant things to worry about than a Catholic conspiracy," says Brennan.
"As well, they were a victim of their own success. They had campaignedagainst Jim Gardiner, and now he was gone. The Conservatives brought ina lot of legislation that met their concerns. There was no longer anythingto fight against."
The Conservatives may have sold their soul to the KKK to win the 1930election, but it didn't do them much good in the long run.
Voters turfed the Conservatives out of office at their next opportunity,and the party wandered in the political wilderness for the next 50 years.
"What's interesting is that the next time the Conservatives cameto power in Saskatchewan, they were led by Grant Devine - a Catholic,"says Brennan. "It shows you how much the Conservative party changedover the course of 50 years."
A lot of people are surprised to find that the Ku Klux Klan was evera force in Saskatchewan.
People in this province pride themselves on being progressive, open-minded,and tolerant.
But Saskatchewan people had a lot of fears the Klan could exploit. Fearof the unknown, fear of change in the form of immigration, fear of peopledifferent than themselves.
One thing that can be said for the Klan in Saskatchewan is that it didn'tsink to the depths of their brethren south of the border.
There were no lynchings. No beatings. No angry mobs intimidating theirvictims. No houses burned to the ground.
Cross burnings were usually held in public areas, and sometimes turnedinto social events, with free hot chocolate passed out. There were a coupleof cross-burnings in Moose Jaw, at least one in Regina, and others scatteredthroughout rural Saskatchewan.
Although the Saskatchewan Klan didn't spark a great deal of violence,the fact remains that people here joined up in greater numbers than in anyother province.
Historians aren't sure why a group promoting hatred found such fertileground in this province, other than fear of the unknown, of people differentthan themselves.
"There has always been some degree of Protestant-Catholic tensionin Saskatchewan," says Brennan. "And I don't think it has goneaway. You have people today saying that separate schools should be abolished.There's still some tension there."
Churches had a role to play | Standing against the tide |