Bill Waiser is the author of several books on Saskatchewan history, including A World We Have Lost, which won the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
As Donny White sorted through boxes in storage at the Jasper Cultural and Historical Centre in Maple Creek, Sask., the last thing he expected to find were Ku Klux Klan outfits.
Mr. White, a volunteer manager of the centre, was earlier this year looking through old donated material from the town and outlying ranching community, trying to get a sense of what had been sitting on basement shelves and other places throughout the building.
As he came across some regalia from a local fraternal organization, he hung them on clothing racks. He knew from his training and experience as a museum curator that some of the outfits were quite old, probably from the turn of the 20th century, and that it would be best to get the clothing out of the boxes.
But as he looked more closely at the stitched labels on several faded white gowns, with their soiled collars, he was stunned to find the words “white race” – and realized he had stumbled upon a cache of discarded Ku Klux Klan garb.
Immigration made Saskatchewan the third most populous province in Canada by the mid-1920s. Some Anglo-Canadian residents, though, were deeply troubled by the growing ethnic diversity. Many questioned whether the large numbers of settlers from Central and Eastern Europe, whom they derisively called “foreigners,” could be integrated into provincial society. Some wondered whether it was even desirable.
Anglican bishop George Exton Lloyd, based in Prince Albert, feared that the flood of “dirty, ignorant, garlic-smelling continentals” posed a real danger to Saskatchewan and its future as an Anglo-Protestant stronghold. He demanded a more restrictive immigration policy, claiming that the province was becoming a “mongrel nation.”
“The real question at stake,” a sanctimonious Lloyd declared, “is not whether these people can grow potatoes, but whether you would like your daughter or granddaughter to marry them.”
As a volunteer sorted through boxes in storage at the Jasper Cultural and Historical Centre in Maple Creek, Sask., the last thing he expected to find were Ku Klux Klan outfits. It’s a rare find–and a reminder of Saskatchewan’s ugly past.Jon Bowie/Supplied
This nativist sentiment was backstopped by a new organization in the province, the Ku Klux Klan. Reinventing itself as a British, Protestant patriotic organization, the infamous Klan entered Saskatchewan in 1926 just as the white, Anglo-Protestant majority was distressed by the changes that society was undergoing after the First World War.
The KKK, by giving voice to existing prejudices and anxieties, became a force in the province. By 1929, the Klan boasted 25,000 members in some 125 locals or “klaverns”; by comparison, the Saskatchewan Grain Growers’ Association never numbered more than 35,000. Members of all political parties in the province belonged to the Klan. So, too, did Protestant clergymen and civic officials.
Klaverns were generally restricted to the southern half of the province, in areas with an Anglo-Canadian majority. One of the hotbeds of Klan activity was Moose Jaw. On June 7, 1927, organizers of the Klan’s first major rally in Saskatchewan promised to clean up the city’s notorious River Street, and put an end to the gambling, prostitution, drinking and drug use that they blamed on the local Chinese community. The Moose Jaw rally culminated in the nighttime burning of a giant cross before a crowd of several thousand.
The Klan also found common ground with the anti-Catholicism of the Protestant Orange Order and often held meetings in local Orange lodges across Southern Saskatchewan. At these gatherings, crusading Klan speakers railed against the Roman Catholic “menace” and warned that Catholics could not be trusted because they owed their allegiance to Rome. As one Saskatchewan Klan organizer later admitted, he “fed the people ‘antis’ … whatever they could be taught to fear.”
In the 1929 election, the provincial Conservative party took advantage of the racial and religious animosity aroused by the Klan to end 24 years of consecutive Liberal rule. Premier-elect J.T.M. Anderson, the former provincial director of education, had once gravely warned, “They [foreigners] are endangering our national existence … making us the laughingstock of all enlightened peoples.”
But the new Anderson government was soon swamped by the Great Depression and did little more than try to stay afloat. The Saskatchewan Klan, for its part, slipped into irrelevance as people grappled with survival. But it took until 1986 for Saskatchewan to embrace its multicultural character and adopt the provincial motto “Multis e gentibus vires” – from many peoples strength.
Donny White knows this ugly side of Saskatchewan’s story. He has degrees in history and education from the University of Saskatchewan and worked in public history positions for nearly four decades, most recently as curator and then director for the Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre in Medicine Hat.
Mr. White retired to Maple Creek in 2011. It was a homecoming. The town, just north of the Cypress Hills, serves as southwestern Saskatchewan’s ranching headquarters and was once a divisional point on the Canadian Pacific Railway mainline. Mr. White’s great-grandparents had arrived in the region in the mid-1880s, and he was raised on the AX Ranch in a valley in the rolling hills near Eastend.
Mr. White was approached to take over the troubled Jasper Centre in 2017 as volunteer manager. The former school – and now an arts and heritage centre – was on shaky financial ground and needed a re-think, both in terms of funding sources and how it should interpret history. It also had way too much stuff to handle.
As a museum professional, Mr. White welcomed the challenge, especially because it was a way to give back to his home community. But to focus on restructuring the Jasper Centre, including programming, he imposed an immediate moratorium on any new acquisitions and left the collections in storage for another day.
It wasn’t until 2023 that he started to work his way through the donated material on the shelves. “People didn’t want to throw the stuff out,” Mr. White explained. “They didn’t know what to do with it, so they just brought it here. It was a dumping ground.” And there was a lot tucked away in the three-storey, 22,000-square-foot building.
The other problem was that there was no record of where the material came from. Mr. White happily talks about the “amazing and rich” collection at the Jasper Centre, but regrets that stories did not come with the materials.
When it comes to the “white race” gowns, that has made it difficult to figure out who would’ve worn them and how they got to the Jasper Centre. All that was immediately apparent was that they were supplied by the Dominion Regalia Co. Ltd. in Toronto.
Mr. White had been long aware of Maple Creek’s history of discrimination when he came across the gowns. Through his continuing research, he has encountered evidence of a strong anti-Asian sentiment in the town’s past. The former “White Lunch” diner once advertised “meals prepared and served by all-white help.”
As an openly gay man living with a partner, Mr. White has also experienced his share of homophobia.
What was puzzling, though, was the apparent source of the “white race” donation: the local Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF). From his knowledge of the Odd Fellows, he understood that the fraternal organization was non-political and had no stated mandate against immigrants; rather it was dedicated to making members better people and doing good in the world. Mr. White’s father, a rancher, was one of several in the family who were members.
The more Mr. White probed what was in the Odd Fellow boxes, the more he learned that more than one organization was represented in the collection. He found “a big volume of stuff all mixed together. … It was rather a mess.”
There were Odd Fellows ceremonial black robes used in initiation rites and related activities. These gowns feature a skull and crossbones on the chest, and a black hood with eye holes.
Then there was a series of decorative aprons likely used by the Orange Order. There were also several well-worn white gowns, where the “white race” label had been removed and IOOF written across the back.
Although he can’t know for certain, Mr. White has speculated on how the KKK gowns survived and ended up at the Jasper Centre.
There was once a business on Maple Creek’s main street that housed a community hall on the second floor where organizations, such as the Odd Fellows and Orange Lodge, could have held meetings. In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan likely met there as well, when not hosting larger gatherings in the Grand Theatre. Newspaper reports confirm the Klan’s presence and activities in town.
Mr. White believes that when the Odd Fellows built their own lodge in 1960, they took everything from the old meeting place, including regalia from defunct groups. And when the Odd Fellows ceased meeting and decided to give their material to the Jasper Centre, they brought everything they had on hand, including the “white race” gowns.
In retrospect, Mr. White wonders why the Odd Fellows saved the Klan material. But he’s “glad they did, because it opens a number of doors to the past, however uncomfortable.”
The “white race” gowns serve as a reminder of how far Saskatchewan has come in accepting and embracing diversity as part of its history and identity. Mr. White knows, though, that there is still some distance to go.