In early 1971, white-collar professionals in Toronto and Victoria began receiving unsolicited packages of anti-communist literature in their mailboxes. The ultra-conservative John Birch Society in the United States, already synonymous with unhinged Cold War paranoia, was in the midst of sending 100,000 packages north as part of its “Save Canada From Communism” campaign.
The effort was spurred by reaction to an article titled “Canada — How the Communists Took Control” by Alan Stang that originally appeared in the JBS publication American Opinion. The article laid out the JBS’s official view that Canada was only slightly less communist than the Soviet Union or China. Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a “Moscow-Peking oriented Communist” who had conspired with the FLQ to precipitate the October Crisis, thus enabling his dictatorial seizure of power through the War Measures Act. Former prime minster Lester “Red Mike” Pearson was accused of being a Soviet asset, while Paul Martin was apparently guilty of “supporting socialized medicine” and working “to bring down the anti-Communist Rhodesia.” Targets of the JBS information packages received reprints of Stang’s article, which concluded that “Americans and Canadians must cooperate immediately” to combat the looming communist menace.
The John Birch Society’s “Save Canada From Communism” campaign would evolve into a mostly unsuccessful northern expansion that slowly petered out about a decade later. But the foray reveals much about the development of far-right thought in this country — and offers a cautionary tale about what could have taken hold.
Article from the April 27, 1972, issue of the Toronto Daily Star.
The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 by American candy magnate Robert W. Welch Jr., who was convinced that the American government was riddled with communist sympathisers, agents, and patsies. It took its name from John Birch, an American missionary and soldier who was killed by Chinese forces in Manchuria in 1945 — the society’s early members held him up as a martyr and saw his as the first American death of the Cold War. The issues that concerned the Birchers ran the gamut of far-right conspiratorial grievance: taxes and big government, civil rights and integration, feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, sex education in schools, water fluoridation, bunk medical cures — all articulated in apocalyptic, Manichean terms. Although the JBS never fulfilled Welch’s promise of raising a million-man army, it attracted a more educated, white-collar membership; by the early ’70s, it had between 60,000 and 100,000 members and an annual budget of $8 million. The organization was, however, in a slow decline from the mid 1960s on and increasingly attracted extremists seeking to utilize its infrastructure.
The 1971 “Save Canada” campaign wasn’t the first time the JBS had fretted about communist plots to the north. In 1964, Welch claimed that both Pearson and John Diefenbaker were part of the international communist conspiracy. In 1968, American Opinion published an article roping the Sir Adam Beck power plant at Niagara Falls into a conspiracy theory about alleged communist sabotage of the power grid. In 1968, the JBS claimed to be on the verge of organizing the first Canadian branch, a promise made good in 1972, when the Birchers announced their intent to “educate” Canadians about the merits of pulling out of the United Nations and ceasing trade with communist governments. Public-relations director Rex Westerfeld claimed the society had received a steady stream of inquiries from Canadians begging for help ever since the October Crisis in 1970. The JBS appointed its first full-time organizer in Canada, William Schreck, who claimed that “the United Nations is a major problem but Canadians just don’t understand it … they will after we get through.”
JBS advertisement mentioning Canada. (Mount Pleasant Pyramid, September 26. 1974)
The Canadian expansion was assisted by the Toronto-based Edmund Burke Society. EBS members were notorious for violently attacking the New Left, anti-Vietnam war protesters, and counterculture groups. However, as historian Asa McKercher points out, the group’s anti-communism served to mask its hate, as it had been spiralling into increasingly open racism and antisemitism.
Although the EBS and JBS had both believed in “New World Order”–style conspiracy theories and shared a fear of communist infiltration, the EBS was initially skeptical of the Birchers’ 1971 propaganda blitz. The EBS worried that the JBS would provoke an “overflow of indignation and disbelief” that would end up tarring “anyone suggesting that communism poses a threat to Canada.” Still, that didn’t stop it from lending a hand through access to EBS mailing lists and the sale of JBS literature through Straight Talk! — an EBS newspaper.
The JBS arrived during a complicated moment of transition for the Canadian far-right, which had been galvanized by the Liberal government’s 1970 hate speech bill and 1971 declaration of multiculturalism. Grand Wizard of the KKK David Duke made the first of several visits to Canada that same year, and, in February 1972, it was revealed that EBS members had infiltrated the Social Credit Association of Ontario.
It was far from the Social Credit movement’s first brush with the far-right, but its national executives
Headline from the July 1, 1972, issue of the Toronto Daily Star.
barred and expelled the EBS. In response to this (and apparently to avoid being continually confused with the JBS), the EBS changed its name to the Western Guard and adopted a Celtic cross as its logo. The rebrand wasn’t just for show — the WG was in the process of becoming a more strident and openly antisemitic white-supremacist organization, attracting the new membership of several infamous Canadian fascists, including John Ross Taylor and associates of John Beattie’s Canadian Nazi Party.
In May 1972, the WG held a convention to mark its five-year anniversary. It was attended by Michigan Grand Dragon of the KKK Robert Miles, who was under investigation and would later be convicted for conspiring to bomb school buses; neo-Nazi National Youth Alliance leader (and former Bircher) William Luther Pierce; and a disputed president of the Ontario Social Credit Party. The JBS did not attend, but little matter. In an interview with the Toronto Sun, Pierce emphasized that the JBS could serve as a gateway to more extreme forms of hate, arguing that members tired of theorizing “have only a short jump to make to the Nazis.” The efforts of the JBS could introduce Canadians to more extreme intellectual and political milieus.
The EBS had long been engaged in a campaign of violent suppression and hateful propagandizing when the JBS arrived. In April 1972, members attacked an anti-racism meeting at the Lord Simcoe Hotel. And, in May, a community forum titled “Homosexuality: Myth and Reality” at the St. Lawrence Centre was attacked by EBS members who sprayed what was reported to be mace into the crowd of 450 attendees. That same evening, a firebomb was thrown through the window of a building next door to the headquarters of one of the organizing groups. Leaflets, stickers, and posters with vicious anti-Black, antisemitic, and white-supremacist slogans appeared around Toronto. In an interview with the Toronto Citizen, Western Guard leader Don Andrews took credit for the resultant fearful climate on the left and in vulnerable communities, proclaiming that “violent, non-democratic things” were part and parcel of EBS/WG strategy.
Headline from the May 6, 1972, issue of the Toronto Daily Star.
The JBS held its first meetings in schools around the Greater Toronto Area just a few weeks later. US Army Colonel, Korean War veteran, and raving antisemite Jack Mohr harangued several modest audiences about the imminent communist threat. A Mississauga resident who attended a JBS program at Port Credit Secondary School wrote to the Toronto Star that Mohr had claimed that communists were “homosexuals, sexual deviants and perverts, immoral lunatics” who would, given the chance, “slit your children’s throats behind your back.”
The reaction to the JBS campaign ranged from bemused rejection to outrage and direct action. Greg Connelly commented for the Copley News Service that most Canadians, aware that “the liberals are no more Red than your Aunt Matilda,” were indifferent to the group’s overtures. The Birchers, he concluded, were wasting their time. Journalist John Gault, after describing the JBS as something “like a satire on itself,” warned against taking the Birchers lightly. The JBS had, according to Gault, “exerted sufficient behind the scenes pressure to cost people jobs. It has harassed and insulted and slandered people in the name of God and Country” in the United States. Even the conservative religious fundamentalist Reverend Leslie Tarr, no friend to communists, took to the CBC to urge Canadians to shun the Birchers.
Headline from June 17, 1971, Toronto Daily Star.
In a letter to the Toronto Star, Stephen LaCroix of Toronto described the Birch expansion as “distressing,” concluded that “if you’re paranoid you believe [the JBS], and if you don’t believe them you become paranoid because they’re so malignant. They scare the hell out of me.”
Jewish, Black, and left-wing communities took the Bircher threat more seriously than did the mainstream press. The Canadian Jewish News followed the JBS campaign closely, writing under the headline “A clear, jack-boot echo heard” that “the Birch society has consistently teetered on the brink of anti-Semitism” and that “people given to conspiracy theories, seeing enemies everywhere are prone to believing all of the anti-Semitic myths.” Black community leaders warned of “growing fascist activity in Canada” and pointed out that the Black-owned Third World bookstore had been defaced since the arrival of the JBS. Anti-Black vandalism repeatedly appeared around Toronto, and, that spring, the Universal Negro Improvement Association received a threatening letter signed “John Birch.” Reverend Harold Jackman eventually called on Premier Bill Davis to outlaw both the JBS and the KKK. (He did not.)
In early May, the JBS held a meeting at Kipling Collegiate in Etobicoke, where it was met by a diverse body of protesters that included communists, trade unionists, New Democratic Party members, the Canadian Liberation Movement, feminists, and members of Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese democratic associations and the newly formed Ad Hoc Committee Against Fascism. Roughly 60 protesters clashed with members of the EBS and JBS outside the school, while 100 Torontonians listened to Mohr rail conspiratorially against the United Nations. Similar scenes played out as the JBS held meetings at other local schools.
Article about Robert Welch from the May 14, 1961, issues of the New York Times.
Schreck claimed that it had founded five chapters around the Greater Toronto Area but refused to give any further details about their makeup, as per organizational policy. It was reported that there were JBS chapters in Mississauga, High Park, and Etobicoke. According to the Canadian Jewish News, Mississauga was a “stronghold” for the Birchers. Norman Gunn, a podiatrist based in Weston, became the head of the Canadian JBS and the only non-American on the JBS advisory council. The group also successfully opened a bookshop called American Opinion in Roncesvalles.
Bircher materials spread across the country in 1972. That August, British Columbia Rehabilitation Minister Philip Gaglardi made international headlines when it was revealed that JBS literature (including Stang’s article on Canada) and other conspiratorial materials were being distributed from his campaign headquarters. Gaglardi’s rival, David Anderson, described them as “despicable and a damn disgrace.”
The JBS remained active in Canada throughout the decade but couldn’t sustain the media attention of its initial foray and slowly faded into irrelevance. In 1975, the JBS claimed to have 300 Canadian members spread across 10 Toronto chapters, and chapters in Ottawa and Montreal. The 1977 Toronto city directory is the last to list the Roncesvalles store, and a 25th-anniversary brochure of the JBS, from 1983, lists Gunn as a council member. The group’s efforts through the ’70s occasionally made the news, but rarely in a positive way. In 1977, U.S. congressman and JBS member Lawrence McDonald evangelized about “One World Government” theories to a Bircher audience in Toronto. The same year, stories of a rogue American Bircher’s foiled plans to assassinate Trudeau reached international audiences.
The early collaboration between the EBS and JBS fell apart. While the EBS became more openly white supremacist as the Western Guard, JBS members continued to point to the presence of minorities in their organizational ranks as evidence that they weren’t racist. The WG faced continual legal battles, and membership plummeted. In 1974, it complained in Straight Talk! that the JBS had refused its request to hang campaign posters in the Roncesvalles store, noting that what it called a “controlled organization” have made “no progress at all since their much-publicized ‘big start’ two years ago.” The bookstore was vandalized with the Celtic-cross logo the following year.
Still, we shouldn’t give the Canadian JBS branches too much credit. The JBS was itself in the midst of an ugly radicalization spiral; according to historian Matthew Dallek in Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right, executives were having to play “whack-a-mole with Klansmen, Nazis, and a bevy of other antisemites and racists.” In Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network, Warren Kinsella points out that, in 1979, Holocaust denier Malcolm Ross claimed he’d sold copies of his infamous book Web of Deceit, which attacked Anne Frank’s diary as a forgery, to JBS members.
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Canadians were not immune to hateful conspiracism, and produced influential Cold War conspiracists of its own, but the JBS ultimately couldn’t find a sweet spot in Canada. It was too extreme for most Tories, and, at the very least, Canadian JBS branches were not fully comfortable aligning themselves with fascists and white supremacists. Although it was willing to accept help from organizations such as the EBS, the JBS eventually distanced itself from the more openly hateful WG. (That doesn’t mean that Canada was immune to Cold War conspiracy, as evidenced by the conspiratorial antisemitism of William Guy Carr’s National Federation of Christian Laymen and Ron Gostick’s Canadian League of Rights.)
The JBS entered Canada at an explosive time when minority and left-wing communities were organizing and pushing back against violence from the far-right, and the far-right was radicalizing and doing away with pretenses of respectability. While the EBS thought the JBS was a little crazy, it was willing to take the opportunity to work with a better-resourced and established organization. The JBS was willing to work with local contacts to try to put down roots. Canada is fortunate that the JBS and EBS/WG did not end up establishing a long-term collaborative relationship, as both organizations ended having an outsize influence on right-wing politics: The EBS/WG birthed components of the subsequent Canadian far-right. And, although the Birchers never grew beyond the fringes of American society, they played a significant role in the rise of the so-called moral majority, the Christian libertarian right, and the rampant conspiratorial thinking that continues to influence American politics.