The Ku Klux Klan in Canada

Name: The Ku Klux Klan in Canada
SKU: 9781459506138
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A Century of Promoting Racism and Hate in the Peaceable Kingdom

by Allan Bartley

The history of the racist terrorist KKK organization in Canada, from street violence, to media intimidation, to influencing elections and everything in-between.

The KKK was active in most Canadian provinces in the 1920s and '30s, using violence, intimidation and lobbying to promote a white supremacist, Protestant order. Klan members targeted and terrorized Black Canadians, Asian Canadians, Jews, Catholics and, increasingly when the Klan returned in the 1970s and ?80s, Indigenous peoples. While the Klan originated in the American South, leaders adapted their racist aims and tactics to the context north of the border and pledged loyalty to Canada and Britain. The Ku Klux Klan in Canada is the first book to tell the story of the Klan in Canada from its origins to the present. The Klan's kidnappings, festivals and cross burnings, street beatings, church bombings, election campaigns, media manipulation, meetings at secret compounds and a scheme to invade a Caribbean nation are pieces of Canadian history that need to be understood and confronted.

About the Author

ALLAN BARTLEY has researched the history of the KKK in Canada for over a decade. In 1995, he published the article "A Public Nuisance: The Ku Klux Klan in Ontario 1923-27" in the Journal of Canadian Studies. He is also the author of Alexander MacNeill: A Political Life and Heroes in Waiting: The 160th Battalion in the Great War. A former intelligence analyst for Canadian security agencies, he is an adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. Allan lives in Ottawa.

Reviews

"A thoroughly detailed and timely account of how the Klan capitalized on Canada's deeply entrenched racism to establish a decades-long legacy of terrorizing anyone the group deemed a threat to their white supremacist goals."

Canadian Dimension

"This book helps readers gain insight into the fundamental role racism has played in Canadian society and the cultural forces that can challenge it."

Spring Magazine

"An important value in Bartley's work is his nuanced look at the role of racist ideas and organizations within Canada, linked to but also independent of the KKK and other U.S. imports."

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: Monitor

"One of the strengths of Bartley's book lies in the pungent, incisive thumbnail descriptions he provides of the swindlers, grifters and con men who successfully monetized hatred in the Klan's many pyramid schemes."

The Vancouver Sun

"The book draws connections between Canada's past KKK activities and the contemporary hatred propagated online by and for Canadian audiences who are interested in the same sort of division, racism and bigotry. At the same time, Bartley describes the cultural forces that can challenge Canadian racism today."

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: Monitor

"Books like Bartley’s are important tools for helping us understand the history of racism and hate in Canada, and how it connects to contemporary incidents of violence and intolerance against some Canadians, merely for their skin colour or cultural background."

Atlantic Books Today

"The Ku Klux Klan in Canada is a fascinating and detailed Canadian history of a hate organization strongly associated with the United States of America, its long history of slavery and its ongoing tense race relations despite its melting-pot creed."

Atlantic Books Today