I spent Saturday in Mossbank at the Rural History and Culture Association‘s historical re-enactments. I don’t have a photo of me being John G. Diefenbaker, alas, but I got this one of…well, let the plug from the RHCA’s website explain:
In 1926, after successfully organizing Ku Klux Klan chapters in Ontario, a group of American Klansmen travelled to Saskatchewan and started organizing in the province. The KKK appealed to elements of the Anglo-Saxon population that disliked the presence of Roman Catholics and non-English speaking immigrants in the province and recruited members by making wild, unsubstantiated claims about the power and intentions of these groups. In little over a year, the Klan grew to an estimated 10,000 members in Saskatchewan and were infiltrating influential political and civil organizations. Alarmed by their growth, Premier James Gardiner began speaking out against the Klan, which earned him their ire and virulent opposition. In 1928, in an effort to discredit the KKK, Gardiner agreed to debate J. H. Hawkins, one of the Klan’s American organizers. Gardiner’s arguments are largely a defense of ideas that today would be loosely described as multiculturalism and show that the development of many current ideas about cultural diversity owe their origin to concepts much older than the so-called counter-culture revolution of the 1960s.
Starring Bill Gardiner (the great-nephew of James Gardiner) as James Gardiner and Patrick French as J. H. Hawkins.
That’s Bill Gardiner at the podum in the photo.
