Back to the Future as Canada Now Fights for King and Country

When Louis St. Laurent was acting as secretary of state for external affairs, he held a dinner party in honour of Ernest Bevin, then Great Britain's foreign secretary. At the end of the meal, Bevin got up and made a speech, praising Canada for standing beside Britain in her hour of need.

'His compatriots, he said, would never forget the way their cousins across the Atlantic had come to their assistance during the darkest days of World War 11.'

St Laurent was not impressed by the implication that Canada had entered the war out of loyalty to the mother country, rather than for reasons of principle. In his reply to Bevin he went out of his way to emphasize that Canada's declaration of war had been an independent decision made by the country's elected representatives, that it was prompted by the nation's determination to fight Nazism and had nothing whatever to do with helping Britain. (The Making of a Peacemonger: The Memoirs of George Ignatieff, By Sonja Sinclairp. 108)

That was an important stand, because Canada's foreign policy was based on what we felt was right at the time. And that same independence kept us out of Vietnam and Iraq, despite the fact that they were wars waged by our powerful neighbours to the South.

St Laurent believed that most Canadians wanted their country to contribute to world peace and better understanding among nations. (Sinclair)

The big news yesterday was that Canada will now be going back decades to "correct an historic mistake", fighting under the Royal Standard. Back to the time before we thought that we were no longer a British colony.

Silly us.

Stephen Harper said "king me" and so it was done.

A year ago, Liberal Sen. William Rompkey, wanted to change the name of our navy from Maritime Command to the Canadian Navy. I've always called them the Canadian Navy.

The "monarchists" sprang into action, insisting instead that we go back to the Royal Canadian Navy, which sparked an immediate response.

While everyone agrees the name Maritime Command is terrible, senators and witnesses are squaring off over whether to call it Royal or not.

Numerous retired members of the navy have suggested the rank-and-file don't want Royal in the name, and some senators believe it conjures up a colonial past that doesn't reflect the modern Canadian navy as independent.

James Knox of the Times Colonist, writes that the name change will upset the United States, as Canada reclaims its independence.

Poor Jack. He doesn't get out much.

Since coming to power, Stephen Harper has slowly signed away our military sovereignty.

Operation "Shiprider" allows U.S. agents to patrol Canadian waters, and make arrests.

An agreement with their military, allows the U.S. to send troops across our border in the case of an emergency. One of those emergencies would be an indigenous protest over a joint venture like a pipeline or highway.

And the Border Security deal, locks us inside fortress North America. We can no longer refuse to go where the U.S. tells us to go.

If they want to invade Switzerland for their chocolate, we'll strap on the AK-47s and fondue pots, and keep Jenny Craig on standby.

We are no longer a sovereign nation, and invoking memories of our military past, only hides what is in store for our military future.

Former prime minister, Louis St. Laurent may have felt that "most Canadians wanted their country to contribute to world peace and better understanding among nations", but that is the polar opposite to what Stephen Harper believes.

The Reformers back in the day, hated the new Canadian flag, believing that we should bring back the Red Ensign. So is that the next step?

Or maybe a blue flag, with the image of King Steve?

Anything is possible.

The Health, Wealth and Stealth of Right-Wing Coalitions

I have read several times, a piece written in 2001 by David Lethbridge, a journalist, university professor and activist against mostly anti-Semitism, but indeed any racial intolerance. What Lethbridge uncovered in his article Prescription For Fascism: Alternative Medicine and Right-Wing Politics (1), was a connection between some of the new homeopathic, wellness groups and various 'hate' and fringe organizations, here and in the U.S.

He also links in several places, members of the Reform-Alliance-Conservative movement, and while I initially felt that some of the connections were pretty flimsy, there are two names that keep coming up, though they are certainly not the only ones: Stockwell Day and Craig Chandler.

So I took a closer look at Lethbridge's article and googled a few of the names, and there appears to be a disturbing trend.

Dr. John Stackhouse in his review (2) of Marci McDonald's book: The Armageddon Factor, which was mostly critical; admitted that he was a bit surprised by the number of these groups tied to several key cabinet ministers in Harper's government, in particular Stockwell Day. I, and many others, who have been sounding the alarm for some time, weren't.

Much of this goes back to the inception of the Reform Party, when they adopted a motion to allow right-wing fringe groups to join them, including Doug Christie's Western Canada Concept*, a separatist party. "In short the party leadership was trying to broaden it's right-wing support while not entirely surrendering it's attraction to fringe elements, at least some of whom were present at the Winnipeg Convention." (3)

In fact, some early members of the Reform Party created their own organization to act as a vanguard for these groups, called the Northern Foundation.

"... the Northern Foundation was the creation of a number of generally extreme right-wing conservatives, including Anne Hartmann (a director of REAL Women), Geoffrey Wasteneys (A long-standing member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada**), George Potter (also a member of the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada), author Peter Brimelow, Link Byfield (son of Ted Byfield and himself publisher/president of Alberta Report), and Stephen Harper." (4)

Harper would later claim that he was kicked out of the the NF for not being right-wing enough, and yet several of the original members, still play a prominent role in the movement, including Link Byfield (scroll down a bit) and REAL Women of Canada.

So I'm going to post a series of articles based on Lethbridge's Prescription for Fascism, since several of the names he mentions can also be found in McDonald's Armageddon Factor, bringing them into more contemporary context.

Continue to Health Coalitions

Footnotes:

*Stockwell Day's father was a friend of Doug Christie and a member of the Western Canada Concept Party. He often wrote articles for the party's newspaper.

"His father, Stockwell Day, Sr., was long associated with the Social Credit Party of Canada. In the 1972 federal election he was the Social Credit candidate running against New Democratic Party leader Tommy Douglas in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands. Day, Sr., supported Doug Christie and was a member of the Western Canada Concept." (Wikipedia)

**One of Harper's new patronage senate appointments, Bob Runciman, a former Mike Harris MLA, was supportive of APEC:

“Leeds MPP Bob Runciman wrote [APEC] a supportive letter last month ... Runciman will be the English preservation group's guest speaker at its April 27 monthly meeting, according to Garner.” (Kingston Whig-Standard, April 11, 1987)

“It is ‘extremely important’ that the various groups opposed to French-language services ‘pull together,’ said Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Robert Runciman.” (The Ottawa Citizen,
November 6, 1989)

Sources:

1. Prescription For Fascism: Alternative Medicine and Right-Wing Politics, By David Lethbridge, April 2001

2. Marci McDonald, “The Armageddon Factor”, By Prof. John Stackhouse, May 18, 2010

3. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada. Author: Trevor Harrison Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 115-116

4. Harrison, 1995, Pg. 121

The Patriot Game: Western Separation

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

In 1965, a student at Winnipeg College climbed to the roof of the school to hoist a nine-foot Red Ensign when the Canadian flag was first being raised. His name was Doug Christie and he would become a life long separatist, advocating for the Western provinces and territories to split with Canada and strike out on their own.

His movement would gain some support in 1980 when Quebec was holding a referendum and the government of Pierre Trudeau had announced the National Energy Policy. However, it wasn't the NEP that created the uproar but changes to the tax laws in Alan MacEachern's budget.

MacEachen's senior advisers soon focused his attention on how billions of dollars were being lost yearly to scores of dubious corporate tax breaks. Finance officials put together a tax reform package designed, among other things, to eliminate 165 of the most costly and counter-productive tax expenditure measures and in the process increase revenue by close to $3 billion.

When he introduced the legislation it caused a firestorm of protest from the corporate elite. Neil Brooks, now professor of tax law at Osgoode Hall Law School, was working for the finance department on the tax reform package and has recalled the tactics of the large corporations. "It's almost a classic example of what's called a capital strike. I mean, business simply said to the government that if you go ahead with these measures we will stop investing in Canada." The development industry reacted instantly. "Literally the next day they were closing jobs down and . . . pulling cranes off construction jobs."

Life insurance companies had their own strategy. The industry, which for years had paid income tax rates of close to zero, wrote to every one of its policyholders, telling them the new measures to tax investment revenue would greatly increase their premiums. "The government," says Brooks, "at one point was receiving thousands of letters a day from people across the country."(1)

But in the west, they couldn't sell it as the wealthy fighting against tax increases, so instead made it about Ottawa pandering to Quebec and Ontario, at the expense of the western provinces, especially Alberta. The National Energy Policy then became the enemy, despite the fact that many wealthy westerners liked the new policy, because it promoted 50% Canadian ownership and allowed further development of government lands.

Soon after the announcement of the NEP, [Alberta Premier Peter] Lougheed fired three effective salvos: a constitutional challenge to the natural gas tax; a staged reduction in shipments of oil to other provinces; and a freeze on the oil sands, whose development the NEP encouraged. Although the Petroleum Club and the radio talk-shows in Alberta cheered the premier, and bumper stickers declared "Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze," [energy minister Marc] Lalonde had included provisions in the NEP that attracted key Albertan players.

These entrepreneurs and their lawyers rightly saw the provision that there must be 5o percent Canadian ownership on the Canada Lands —those potentially rich areas under government control—as highly beneficial. Dome Petroleum, Nova, and Petro-Canada therefore complained about the new taxes on gas and oil but did not join Lougheed's general denunciation of the NEP. The influential Bob Blair of Nova, a major figure in the oil patch, openly declared his Liberal allegiance and remained in close touch with both Trudeau and Lalonde. "Smiling Jack" Gallagher of Dome most enthusiastically embarked on the acquisition of foreign oil companies, which were eager to abandon Canada in the wake of the NEP. (2)

Unfortunately, after the 1980 election that ended Joe Clark's brief governance, those fuelling the separatist campaign, went into action.

Highlighted against the rise and fall of the abbreviated Tory reign, the 1980 election aroused immediate anger and concern in the West. In Alberta, a sixty-year-old Edmonton millionaire and car dealer, Elmer Knutson, sent an angry letter to the Edmonton Journal the day after the election."' The letter, which has acquired an almost mythic stature in western separatist folklore, adumbrated a series of themes which were to be the staples of western separatists and other right-wing elements in subsequent years."' It especially complained of a French-dominated Ottawa, as exemplified in such policies as bilingualism, and the fear that Trudeau's majority Liberal government would now proceed with constitutional reforms which would reinforce French domination of the rest of Canada. Knutson's solution to this perceived threat was simple: Quebec must be made to leave Canada.

Knutson was not a stranger to political matters. In the late 1970s he had been co-chair of the One Canada Association, an organization 'committed to increasing police powers, ending bilingualism, and tightening immigration policies. Then, in December 1979, Knutson lost the Edmonton South Tory nomination to incumbent Douglas Roche, whom Knutson once described as 'a socialist masquerading as a conservative But the response to his Journal letter — 'One lousy little letter,' in Knutson's words — astonished even him. In one month, Knutson received 3800 replies, most of them positive.' As a result of this public response, Knutson formed the Western Canada Federation (West-Fed) in March 1980. At almost the same time, the results of the federal election breathed new life into the faltering political career of a thirty-four-year-old Victoria lawyer, Doug Christie. (3)

Peter Brimelow, author of The Patriot Game, the book that was a Bible for Stephen Harper's early political leanings, saw things a little differently. This was an attack on English Canada:

In the fall of 1980, after the federal Liberals' return to power and their imposition of the National Energy Program, reports began to filter back to Central Canada that the natives on the western frontier beyond the Ontario boundary were unusually restless. Several organizations had sprung up advocating that the West - the Prairie provinces, British Columbia and the federally administered Yukon and Northwest Territories - separate from Canada. The two most important were the Western Canada Concept Party, begun in British Columbia and headed by Doug Christie, a Victoria lawyer; and the Western Canada Federation Party, based in Alberta and led by Elmer Knutson, an Edmonton farm equipment millionaire.

Both these parties argued that, to adapt Joe Clark's Shawinigan comment during the Quebec referendum campaign, the Canada to which they had wished to belong no longer existed. The conditions of Confederation had been changed, and they wanted out. Less active but worth a footnote was the Unionist Party, which directly advocated joining the U.S.: it was founded by Dick Collver*, until 1979 leader of the Saskatchewan Progressive Conservatives, who shortly afterwards acted on his beliefs and moved to Arizona.

Suddenly, Christie and Knutson were attracting crowds of thousands to their meetings. Prominent Western figures were expressing sympathy, notably Carl
Nickle, a well-known oilman and former Tory federal MP, who had even been considered a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Alberta the previous year but who told a luncheon gathering of 700 Calgary businessmen in October that after the NEP he had "sorrowfully" become a separatist. At the same time, the Edmonton Journal ran a poll showing that a startling 2 3% of Albertans supported an "independent West." There were angry exchanges in the House of Commons in Ottawa when Tory leader Joe Clark drew attention to the phenomenon. He was immediately accused of thereby "aiding and abetting" it. Pierre Trudeau offered the helpful opinion that Western separatism was "nil and non-existent," being at, root "a fight about money" in no way comparable with Quebec's grievances. This naturally inspired redoubled efforts to prove him wrong. (4)

He was right of course. The uproar was over the closing up of the tax loopholes, but instead was channeled against the NEP. And Quebec's grievances were completely different. Many of the French-Canadians had been living like plantation slaves in their province.

The NEP wasn't perfect but it wasn't the disaster it was made out to be. But that didn't stop the Reform Party from reviving it for political gain.

Doug Christie's Western Canada Concept Party had one seat in the House of Commons, but only for a few months. He was joined by another disgruntled Anglophone, who had left Quebec during the Quiet Revolution. He would run as a WCC candidate against Tommy Douglas, but of course lost. His name was Stockwell Day Sr. and his son is now in the Harper government.

Footnotes:

Dick Collver moved to Arizona, coming back to testify during the trial of Colin Thatcher. According to Collver, Thatcher had visited him on his Arizona Ranch, asking him where he could hire a hitman.

Sources:

1. The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen: Canada and Democracy in the Age of Globalization, By Murray Dobbin, James Lorimer & Company, 2003, ISBN: 1-55028-785-0, Pg. 168

2. Just Watch me: The Life of Pierre Elliot Trudeau, By John English, Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-676-97523-9, Pg. 488

3. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995. ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6, Pg. 57-58

4. The Patriot Game: National Dreams and Political Realities, By Peter Brimelow, Key Porter Books, 1986, ISBN: 1-55013-001-3, Pg. 240-241

Stockwell Day: Fire, Brimstone and Neo-Nazis

There is a book written in 2001, about the life of Stockwell Day, a man I have long despised, called 'REQUIEM FOR A LIGHTWEIGHT, Stockwell Day and Image Politics' by Trevor W. Harrison, that goes into a bit of detail about Day's rise to the top.

How did someone with such little education, and absolutely narrow minded views, get to the position he has? He was almost Prime Minster of Canada, and while I filmy believe that Stephen Harper is the worst PM we've ever had, I think Day would have finished us off sooner than Harper is now trying to do.

The first chapter of Mr. Harrison's book is available online and can be read here. (Title page here) I've ordered it and look forward to reading the rest.

In the first chapter the author mentions the ties between Stockwell Day and James Keegstra, the man fired from his teaching position for suggesting that the holocaust was a hoax. Both were living in Bentley, Alberta; a town that would later become infamous as a haven for hate mongers.

"Sometime around 1983, after his dismissal from teaching, Keegstra moved to Bentley where he opened a garage. There, various other prominent members of the extreme right, such as Terry Long, leader of the Church of Aryan Nations, and Doug Christie, head of Western Canada Concept and a lawyer famous for defending individuals accused of hate crimes, are said sometimes to have visited Keegstra.

Day met Keegstra during this period and took his car to the garage for servicing on at least one occasion. However, according to Calgary lawyer Gerald Chipeur, hired by Day in the spring of 2000 when stories linking him to Keegstra resurfaced, Day never returned after the mechanic began a "hate-filled diatribe." (Mr. Keegstra tells it a little differently)

I've mentioned Doug Christie in a couple of posts, and while I don't agree with some of what he has to say, he also makes a lot of sense. Certainly not a burner of crosses. He is just a firm believer in the absolute freedom of speech, while I feel that hate mongering is a very dangerous thing, and that those who incite hatred should be punished.

But for Stockwell Day, his relationship to Doug Christie goes back a bit further. From Wikipedia:

His father, Stockwell Day, Sr., was long associated with the Social Credit Party of Canada. In the 1972 federal election he was the Social Credit candidate running against New Democratic Party leader Tommy Douglas in the riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan—The Islands. Day, Sr., supported Doug Christie and was a member of the Western Canada Concept.

From 1978 to 1985, Day (Junior) was assistant pastor and school administrator at the Bentley Christian Centre in Bentley, Alberta. His school taught the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which caused some controversy for its alleged anti-semitism.

Apparently Mr. Christie and several others actually joined the Alliance to support Stockwell Day's leadership bid, because they believed that they had finally found a voice for their neo-conservative view points. He would later be kicked out when the publicity became unfavourable, but this was the political environment where Stockwell cut his teeth.

There was an interesting article about Day's fundamentalism and links to neo-Nazi groups, that appeared in July of 2000. A decade earlier, the Reform Party was also being linked to some of the same people that Doug Christie was defending.

That's the trouble with a political party voicing extremist views. It attracts all sorts.

But back to Stockwell Day, fundamentalism and the neo-Nazis.

Bentley, Alberta: Hellfire, Neo-Nazis and Stockwell Day
A two-part look inside the little town that nurtured a would-be prime minister - and some of the most notorious hate-mongers in Canada

Part 1: Day's roots in the religious right
By: Gordon Laird

On the surface, Bentley looks a little like a set from an old western movie: a single main street rolls through the centre of town alongside old storefronts and residences. An old beer parlour and hotel sits downtown, and you can't turn a corner without finding a house of worship. It's a picturesque slice of central Alberta and the place where Stockwell Day, who made his name as leader of a renegade evangelical church, went from pastor to politician.

Until recently the treasurer of Alberta, Day is now a candidate for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party. But despite the bucolic setting, back when Day was becoming a public figure Bentley and nearby Red Deer and Eckville percolated with Christian fundamentalism - and a virulent, faith-driven brand of anti-Semitism. This ideological weave of old Social Credit conspiracy doctrines, religion and far-right politics explains why to this day, despite Day's prominence in Alberta's cabinet, there are still neo-Nazi sympathizers from back home who claim to be his friends.

Day made headlines for defending fundamentalist school curricula that a government commission later found to hold "a degree of insensitivity towards blacks, Jews and natives."

When anti-Semitic teacher Jim Keegstra got tossed from his classroom in Red Deer in the early 80s for teaching about the "Jewish conspiracy," he certainly didn't stop profligating his message. Rather, he headed to Bentley, where he set up the Christian Defence Fund (CDL) and ran a mechanic's garage. The garage was popular, despite Keegstra's public denial of the holocaust. Even Stockwell Day - the man who would be prime minister some day - took his car to get serviced there. Eventually, Keegstra - who calls Day by his nickname, "Stock," as does everyone in town, attracted a bevy of notorious characters.

Visiting him in the garage or at his Eckville home were Aryan Nation leader Terry Long, Douglas Christie, lawyer for almost every major Canadian holocaust denier who's ever ran foul of the law, neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel and various white supremacists from south of the border - all of whom lent their passions to the the already combustible area.

Indeed politics and religion in this central Alberta region have always been intense. It is Reform country and before that Social Credit country. The party ruled Alberta from 1935 to 72 and continually struggled with anti-Semitism within the party. In the Day family, Stock's father, Stockwell Day Sr., ran for the federal Socreds against the NDP's Tommy Douglas in Vancouver in 1972. Later, he hooked up with the separatist Western Concept Party, also dedicated to preserving "our" Christian and European heritage and founded by lawyer Doug Christie. ("Doug, it is time for you, the captain, to call "all aboard," wrote Stock Sr. in the organization's newsletter in 1996.)

Following the Socred tradition, Day found his political calling while at the controversial Bentley Christian Centre. From 1978 to 85, Day was assistant pastor and school administrator. And in 1984 he made headlines for defending fundamentalist school curricula that a government commission later found to hold "a degree of insensitivity towards blacks, Jews and natives."

The ACE material that Day defended included a reading lesson which asked junior high students: "The Jewish leaders were children of their father, the devil - true or false?"

Alberta senator Ron Ghitter headed the 18-month commission on schooling in the wake of the Keegstra affair. His report raised serious questions about the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), a curriculum imported by the Centre from the Texas-based School of Tomorrow and a rigid set of prescriptions for fundamentalist teaching on scripture and creation science.

"ACE schools were schools of dogma," says Ghitter, a former cabinet minister. "They didn't follow official curriculum and the kids who came out had sort of a twisted Christianity with anti-Semitic overtones." Ghitter recalls one telling incident in a Red Deer Christian school where he discovered an ACE book that argued "all kinds of Buddhists and Muslims are evil." He took the book to the principal, who promptly denied knowing anything about the literature, saying that it was an old book. Ghitter checked the cover: it was new.

"It's repulsive that people would be teaching this material," he explains. "But in certain pockets of central Alberta - Eckville, Bentley, Red Deer - they're good people but they sometimes take the position that their religion is right and others are inferior." At the time Day fervently defended the material - and the right of his school to teach whatever it wanted - saying he was willing to "go to jail, if need be."

"God's law is clear," said an angry Day to the Alberta Report in 1984. "Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school."

But there was more to the ACE material than just Bible teaching. Social studies lessons warned students that democratic governments "represent the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien to God's word." Science lessons taught pure creationism, noting that all evolutionists were guilty of "depravity and sinfulness." In other words, the ACE material that Day so passionately defended sometimes took an extreme and dismissive view on secular society - a position that was radical even for religious private schooling.

Religion was so high-strung that kids from the Bentley Christian Centre weren't allowed to play sports with children from outside the parish.

Moreover, there was the Jewish question. Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal, who interviewed Day at the time, recently reported that the ACE materials were peppered with some disturbing Keegstra-esque statements. In one reading lesson, junior high students were asked: "The Jewish leaders were children of their father, the devil - true or false?" Day was quick to insist that the teachings at the Bentley Christian Centre were never anti-Semitic or intolerant. "That is totally inaccurate and slanderous," he told a reporter in 1985. "We refer to the Jews as the chosen people - the materials are against anti-Semitism."

What Day has to say about this today cannot be known by NOW readers as the former treasurer did not respond to five calls over six days and a set of e-mail questions. Ghitter himself is careful about accusing the former pastor of being anti-Semitic.

"I would never make that allegation against Stockwell," says the senator who himself is Jewish. "But built in that (religious) ideology is the roots of anti-Semitism. It's there in the roots of Social Credit - and it is in today's Alliance, though not necessarily in the leaders."

The current pastor at Day's church, doesn't spare much sympathy for the former Alberta treasurer. Gregory Rathjen says that when Day left in 1985 to pursue a political career, the assistant pastor left behind a community that was deeply divided.

Rathjen arrived in 1986 to a disaster: a demoralized congregation had shrunk almost by half, allegations of fraud were afoot, and the church owed $12,000 to creditors. Factions were warring. It was a dark time in Bentley. "The church leaders had risen to unquestioned authority," explains Rathjen. "They had moved away from the congregational government with the assumption "You're here to serve and not ask questions."

Rathjen reports that, before its collapse, the former Bentley Christian Centre was a renegade Pentecostal church that instituted a divine mandate to replace grassroots congregational representation. Throughout this period, Stockwell Day was assistant pastor and school administrator.

"They changed their by-laws so that the people would have no say - leaders to be appointed by other leader, as determined by scripture," explains Rathjen. "It was a haughty, arrogant, pride-filled success story that led to disaster."

Fuelled by American-style revivalism, the church emphasized radical gospel practices - such as speaking-in-tongues - that whipped worshippers into a frenzy. "They have emotional experiences and then try to build a doctrine around it," explains Rathjen. The intensity of the church and constant stream of visiting American pastors gave Bentley an international profile within fundamentalist circles. But the church eventually succumbed to its own extremes.

"I would say that it was as close to a cult as you can get," says pastor Rathjen. "They were still holding on to the Christian teaching - but with manipulation and control. Very few people knew. It's not acceptable," says the pastor who outright rejected Stockwell Day's old ACE curriculum after a trip down to ACE's Texas headquarters. And Stockwell Day? "Stock wrote me a letter saying he had nothing to do with it - but he lived off of it and enjoyed it," says Rathjen, frankly. "That's what this church was - a bully. They bullied people and won."
*********
Bentley locals tell stories about Stockwell Day's church group going out to "push down" the Bentley beer parlour with prayer one evening: a group laid their hands on the building and prayed for it to fall like Babylon.

"They prayed by the Hotel, put their hands on the beer parlour to collapse it for being sinful," recalls one resident. "It was this charismatic preacher there - Stockwell had charisma, but followed this minister blindly."

It is impossible to avoid religion in Bentley. On a per capita basis, Alberta's self-described "model community" has more places of worship than most towns - six churches for 900 residents. Day's church comprised one-third of Bentley's population, with nearly 300 people. And just to keep things interesting, Bentley reportedly had a practicing witch - and a coven - for a number of years.

The intense religious dynamic sometimes exploded. Local doctor Bill McKendrich claims he was driven out of Bentley in 1978 by the Bentley Christian Centre because church leaders wanted their own doctor. "When I was there in Bentley, there was a very strong fundamentalist group trying to take over the village," he says. "If you don't belong to the church, you don't belong to the community." "People are helpful here," says longtime resident Doris Bargholz, "but when there's a controversy, people aren't afraid to take sides: the coffee shop, the barber shop, these are places where conflicts are resolved. People feel strongly."

(Gordon Laird is an award-winning journalist and author of Slumming it at the Rodeo: the Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-wing Revolution, Douglas and McIntyre. This feature originally appeared in Toronto's NOW magazine)

To Part Two

You Know You're Too Right Wing When the Right Wing Tell You You're Too Right Wing

The above video of Doug Christie defending British MP George Galloway, should give us pause. Mr. Christie is the leader of the Western Block Party, who support separation of the Western provinces, and was once kicked out of the Canadian Alliance Party because of what they determined to be his extremist views.

Mind you, they didn't actually expel him because of his views, but because the media shared those views with the public, so they had to do something to selvage their reputation. Douglas Christie and several others actually joined the Alliance to support Stockwell Day's leadership bid, because they believed that they had finally found a voice for their neo-conservative view points.

The other interesting thing about Mr. Christie, is that while it may be easy to dismiss his ideals as extremist, he comes across as very articulate, intelligent and reasonable. He has practiced law for several decades and earned a reputation for defending questionable clients, but in a democracy, everyone has a right to a fair trial, and everyone deserves to be heard.

I'm not from the West, so I can't really weigh in on their concerns, but as a Canadian take it very seriously when any group wants to leave us. So maybe instead of simply dismissing them we should listen, and if it means granting more autonomy to the provinces to handle things like the gun registry, then we should at least consider it.

If they hold a referendum that either overturns or endorses the need to have guns registered, it will be their decision, and they won't always see Ottawa (and Toronto and Quebec) as their enemy. Maybe that's simply the new federalism.

However, back to Jason Kenney and George Galloway. Below is a video of Mr. Galloway, whom I like very much. What is interesting in some of the footnotes, is that Jason Kenney himself has aligned himself with a group who are also on Canada's list as a Terrorist organization.

And he has also joined forces with an extremist group that may be the most dangerous of all, headed by John Hagee and Charles McVety. These people support Israel's use of nuclear weapons against Iran and see the annihilation of all Muslims in the Middle East a necessity before they can achieve their 'rapture'.

That's pretty crazy stuff.