In 1976 well-known Canadian journalist and author Walter Stewart published But Not in Canada, a controversial historical account of racism in Canada. It covered specific past events, such as the turning back of the Komagatu Naru and the M S St Louis, the use of Chinese quasi-slave labour to build the CNR and the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II, as well as documenting the prejudicial attitudes of federal government bureaucrats and politicians on a range of issues related to immigration and settlement. [i]
No one could dispute the veracity of Stewart’s account, but it was controversial because it went against the grain of contemporary Canadian culture and national identity. By the late 1970’s Canadians were convinced their society had long since rid itself of such unacceptable attitudes and behaviour. Canadians, everyone knew, were a role model of tolerance, diversity and accommodation. After all, provinces had human rights codes, affirmative action programs were sprouting everywhere and, just a few years later, a federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be entrenched in the constitution to protect everyone’s basic human rights and civil liberties. So what could possibly go wrong?
Human rights experts and political scientists who specialize in theories of democracy know there are at least two basic, and regressive, truisms that apply in even the most progressive liberal democracies. First, there will always be a very small percentage of the population that retains racial and other prejudices, despite educational efforts, government promotional materials, and so on. Put another way, civic education can only go so far in a liberal democracy, in which acceptance of minority views, and restraints on the majority, are essential to the healthy functioning of the system. As prominent political philosopher and Brookings Chair of Governance Studies William Galston puts it in his recent article, “Liberalism Without Illusions”, (an article which should be compulsory reading in all civics classes), democracy by its very nature has vulnerabilities.
“The … inherent difficulty of liberal democracy—the necessity of compromise—is no easier for many to accept. If what I want is good and true, why should I agree to incorporate competing views into public decisions? James Madison gives us the answer: In circumstances of liberty, diversity of views is inevitable, and unless those who agree with us form a majority so large as to be irresistible, the alternatives to compromise are either inaction, which is often more damaging, or oppression, which always is.” [ii]
Moreover, as Galston makes abundantly clear, the post-Cold War era has led liberal democracies, and their leaders, to ignore these vulnerabilities and assume that any progress made is permanent. This misconception was actually put into words by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in an interview discussing Russia’s 2024 invasion of Ukraine. “Fighting for territory, thinking in ethnic terms, using resources to wage war. I thought we had moved beyond that,” she said. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. We thought the linearity of human progress should have left all of this behind” [iii]
This, then, leads to the second truism, namely that history, and hence “progress”, is not linear. This is true in macro terms, for example with respect to the establishment of democratic regimes in place of tyrannical ones, but it is also true on a micro basis within a particular democracy. In real terms what this means is that every generation of liberals will need to defend existing core values, institutions and programs from inevitable challenges by vocal antidemocratic and biased minorities.
In Canada, for example, the Official Languages Act and the concept of multiculturalism were entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 with all party and popular support. Yet only a decade later the upstart Reform Party, a western fringe political party that emerged with the collapse of the Progressive Conservatives, published a platform for the 1993 election that proposed eliminating both of those measures. Happily, Reform party stalwarts appeared to be unaware that this could only be done by constitutional amendment, and so this plan could not have come to fruition even if they had formed a government. Nevertheless they did form the Official Opposition.
As a result the assault on various other progressive programs designed to promote equality of opportunity continued, first by Reform and then by that party’s successor, the new Conservative Party of Canada, which did eventually take power in 2006. During Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper’s decade in power government support for affirmative actions programs, access to information, women’s programs and immigrant settlement, among others, was dramatically reduced or eliminated, obliging the Trudeau Liberals that succeeded Harper to devote considerable effort to re-instituting and reinforcing the federal government’s commitment to the liberal values underpinning those programs.
With the advent of the global pandemic, international economic disruption and, most recently, the upheaval of the established world order by a deranged American president, it is hardly surprising, then, that there has been another reversal in historical “progress”. Illiberal and blatantly discriminatory views are once again becoming more commonplace in Canada as well as in other western democracies. Certainly the pre-existence of a small but persistently discriminatory segment of the population has served as the jumping off board from which these views have been expanded. In western Europe this has been manifest in populist right-wing extremists such as Le Pen in France and Farage in the UK. In Canada the Peoples’ Party of Canada founded by Maxime Bernier in 2018 took 5% of the popular vote in 2021 (some 850,000 votes), although this support declined to 1% in the 2025 election.[iv] Meanwhile a variety of right-wing fringe interest groups have emerged on the scene, of which the so-called Trucker’s Convoy of January 2021 is a classic example. [v]
However few Canadian observers were prepared for the virulent outbreak of blatant discrimination and acts of violence against Jewish Canadians that have occurred since the outbreak of the Gaza conflict.[vi] For most Canadians the shock of such widespread evidence of prejudice and racism has been not only unexpected but inexplicable in our supposedly progressive society. Yet, bad as this has been for Canadians’ virtuous sense of tolerant national identity, this has now been exacerbated by the appearance of a hitherto little-known extremist group that can only be described as the Canadian version of the Ku Klux Klan.
On the eve of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Canadians were treated to the horrifying spectacle of roughly two dozen of their fellow citizens dressed in black with white face coverings, marching around in Kamloops, B.C. near a former residential school and clearly attempting to intimidate members of the Tkemlups and Seewepemc First Nation. Evan Balgod, the executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, subsequently identified the men by their uniforms and the flags they were carrying as members of a white supremacist, neo-fascist group known as the Second Sons. According to Balgod, the group has been active since 2024 and has a well-developed website, 13 clubs across the country and at least 2000 known members.[vii] Meanwhile Stephen Rai, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who studies such right-wing fringe groups, noted that this group has solidified support by merging several earlier white nationalist fringe groups that emerged in Canada before and during the pandemic.[viii]
Although very few Canadians were aware of their existence before Kamloops, the Second Sons also held offensively racist anti-immigration rallies in London, Ontario (November 2025) [ix] and Niagara Falls (Labour Day, 2025).[x] Several experts have suggested the number of such protests is likely to increase without aggressive government action. Balgord, for example, believes the leaders could successfully be charged with hate speech, given existing court rulings on what language meets the high bar of the legislation.[xi] Perhaps most importantly, several observers have underlined the need for politicians to go beyond mere criticism of specific acts to address the underlying problem more broadly.
To that end, it is instructive to note that the similarities between the Second Sons and the KKK are not accidental. As Walter Stewart noted in 1976, the Klan has existed in Canada since the 1920’s. Although a branch was officially registered in Toronto in 1925, it enjoyed its greatest success during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It was most consequential in the province of Saskatchewan, where it once had more than 25,000 members and allegedly influenced the provincial election of 1929. [xii] Like its American counterpart, the Canadian Klan playbook targeted Catholics, Jewish people, Black Canadians, Asian Canadians, and immigrants. Like its American counterpart it also utilized cross burnings, rallies, and intimidation.
Although the Canadian Klan disappeared by the 1940’s it reappeared briefly in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, led by James Alexander McQuirter. This time it focused on official multiculturalism and the “threat” it posed to white Canadians. Unbelievably, burning crosses and other violent acts were once again utilized to make the point with immigrant communities that they were not welcome. But the Klan’s resurgence was short-lived as McQuirter and other members were frequently arrested and the organization was soon dismantled.
Which brings us to the present-day version of the Klan. Second Sons not only the have the advantage of democratic complacence but the incredibly useful and dangerous tool of social media. The ability to recruit, communicate and organize online has allowed them to achieve significant inroads with disparate minority viewpoints in record time. Ordinary Canadians and politicians alike may have been taken aback by the events in Kamloops, but they have no further excuse for ignoring this very real threat to liberal democracy. Vigilance and willingness to use legitimate democratic tools of restraint, such as hate legislation, are essential.
As William Galston puts it, in the face of the two truisms both politicians and citizens must constantly reinforce the values and institutions of liberal democracy. There will always be a small minority that poses a threat, especially in times of economic or other hardships. This reality must be recognized and opposed when it emerges, rather than allowing it to expand to dangerous proportions. “The only responsible course is to embrace the unending task of making liberal democracy the best it can be. This requires a rigorous, disciplined realism, free from the illusions that history is progressive and that human beings are perfectible. The dark side of our nature is here to stay, and liberal democracy enjoys no immunity from collapse when it is under assault from dark passions. Liberal realism means discarding hopes for revolutions of any kind in favor of what Max Weber famously called the “slow boring of hard boards.” This is how enduring reform takes hold. It is the real work of democracy.”
[i] https://www.amazon.ca/But-Not-Canada-Walter-Stewart/dp/B00PM26BYK
[ii] https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/77/liberalism-without-illusions/
[iii] Op cit
[iv] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_of_Canada#Election_results
[v] https://psacunion.ca/psac-condemns-truck-convoy-protests-calls-urgent and https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/31/canada-trudeau-denounces-anti-vaccine-trucker-protests
[vi] See https://brookejeffrey.ca/avi-lewis-targets-all-canadian-jews/
[vii] https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/09/29/Masked-Group-Kamloops-Alarm-Racism-Fears/
[viii] https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/expert-on-white-nationalism-in-canada-disturbed-not-surprised-by-demonstration-at-tk%CC%93emlups-te-secwepemc/
[ix] https://lfpress.com/news/what-to-know-about-second-sons-canada-after-its-london-rally-backlash/
[x] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/second-sons-rally-in-niagara-1.7628162
[xi] https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/09/29/Masked-Group-Kamloops-Alarm-Racism-Fears/
[xii] https://www.tvo.org/transcript/2634162/a-history-of-the-kkk-in-canada
