Stockwell Day and the School of Tomorrow

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Alberta's oil booms often meant massive increases in population, which resulted in a shortage of schools and qualified teachers.

Consequently, several private education facilities were established, most Bible or Christian, and because of the increased workload for the Alberta education ministry, they were allowed to teach what they wanted, and unless a complaint was launched, without interference.

One of these facilities was the Bentley Christian Training Centre, run by a charismatic pastor, Bill Lewis, a man of uncompromising beliefs. His assistant and the administrator of the education centre was a man by the name of Stockwell Burt Day.

Day was an unlikely choice as a school administrator, having only a high school education and a sporadic career, that included everything from deckhand to auctioneer. But none the less he all but ran the facility, directing the curriculum and overseeing the six teachers employed to instruct about 100 students. (1)

The school's teachings were based on modules obtained by the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) program from the Texas based Schools of Tomorrow.

The School Of Tomorrow is a Christian Fundamentalist organization that operates a large number of community and parent controlled schools. Theirs is perhaps the largest home schooling program in Canada using the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) modules. Because the ACE program is non-accredited, and used largely by community and family-run schools, organizations such as the School of Tomorrow have been allowed to proliferate without conforming to the educational standards of public schools. (2)

An example of this comes from an eight-year-old boy:

Then God came and attacked the circle and he came with his good and holy angels. The attack looked like lightning. When the lightning came and struck the circle it became swished and it got smaller and smaller. Then God dropped it into the sea of fire. As it dropped, Satan was going down into the fire and also all the Non-Christians, Muslims and Jews that he was holding onto. All of them came down with Satan because they couldn't get away." (2)

However, their anonymity would soon be put into question, when in 1982, a school teacher in the neighbouring town of Eckville, Jim Keegstra, was found teaching his students of a Jewish Conspiracy and that the Holocaust was a hoax. In the wake of this, the Alberta government took steps to rein in the independent schools.

Overnight, Day became a political activist, founding the Alberta Association of Independent Schools, a lobby group for fifteen of the independent schools.

Government officials of the time seem to have found him civil and pleasant, but also found Day intransigent in meeting repeated requests to comply with government regulations ... Day once stated: "God's law is clear. Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school. If we ask for (the education minister's) approval, we are recognizing his authority." (1)

The Alberta ministry of education, found the ACE program being used in many of these schools, including Bentley, were based on a strict interpretation of the Bible, stifling creativity and critical thinking. They were also determined to be insensitive to "blacks, Jews and natives."

Alberta Education had specific concerns with Day's own Training Centre. The department argued the Centre's six teachers were not qualified and that it was operating without government approval. The department also expressed concern the Centre was employing the ACE curriculum, though no racist materials were in evidence. Day denied the validity of any of these concerns, contending the staff were qualified, the Training Centre was properly registered, and that the teaching materials used in the school neither condoned nor encouraged racism or anti-Semitism. (1)

The Bentley Church Centre also became a catalyst for unrest in the small community of 900 residents, as his students were forbidden to interact with other children. Many referred to the school and it's church, as a cult bent on taking over the town. Indeed when Stockwell Day finally left the school to enter politics, the pastor who took over for him, said that it was the closest thing to a cult you'll ever get.

Rathjen arrived in 1986 to a disaster: a demoralized congregation had shrunk almost by half, allegations of fraud were afoot, and the church owed $12,000 to creditors. Factions were warring. It was a dark time in Bentley. "The church leaders had risen to unquestioned authority," explains Rathjen. "They had moved away from the congregational government with the assumption "You're here to serve and not ask questions." Rathjen reports that, before its collapse, the former Bentley Christian Centre was a renegade Pentecostal church that instituted a divine mandate to replace grassroots congregational representation.

Throughout this period, Stockwell Day was assistant pastor and school administrator. "They changed their by-laws so that the people would have no say - leaders to be appointed by other leader, as determined by scripture," explains Rathjen. "It was a haughty, arrogant, pride-filled success story that led to disaster." Fuelled by American-style revivalism, the church emphasized radical gospel practices - such as speaking-in-tongues - that whipped worshippers into a frenzy. "They have emotional experiences and then try to build a doctrine around it," explains Rathjen. The intensity of the church and constant stream of visiting American pastors gave Bentley an international profile within fundamentalist circles. But the church eventually succumbed to its own extremes.

"I would say that it was as close to a cult as you can get," says pastor Rathjen. "They were still holding on to the Christian teaching - but with manipulation and control. (3)

That uncompromising fundamentalism still defines Stockwell Day, and as head of the Treasury, we are seeing his disdain for education, represented in cuts to funding for any program not within his realm of beliefs.

Sources:

1. Requiem for a Lightweight: Stockwell Day and Image Politics, By Trevor Harrison, Black Rose Books, 2002, ISBN: 1-55164-206-9, Pg. 8-9

2. School Of Tomorrow, by David Kostinchuk, March 1, 2001

3. Bentley, Alberta: Hellfire, Neo-Nazis and Stockwell Day: A two-part look inside the little town that nurtured a would-be prime minister - and some of the most notorious hate-mongers in Canada, By Gordon Laird, NOW Magazine, 2000

Abe Lincoln, Preston Manning and the Reform Movement

In 1982, at the Social Credit leadership convention, candidate Ken Sweigard " ... arrived dressed as U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, wearing a top hat and carrying a walking stick. His entourage, dressed in 1860s style, held placards reading "Free the Slaves" and chanted "Free the economic slaves", a reference to the social credit theory of monetary reform and opposition to the charging of interest on borrowed money." (1)

He lost to Martin Hattersley, but the following year Hattersley resigned when James Keegstra and two others were reinstated, after he had dismissed them due to their anti-Semitic views. Sweigard called Keegstra "a good Christian gentleman".

In later interviews with Keegstra, when he was being tried for hate crimes, after it was revealed that for 15 years he had been teaching his students that the Holocaust was a hoax, he blamed the Jews for killing Abraham Lincoln, calling John Wilkes Booth, a Jew. He wasn't.

In 1997 when Stephen Harper was speaking at a Council for National Policy conference in Montreal he discussed the current state of Canada's Progressive Conservative Party:

The Progressive Conservative party is very much comparable to the Whigs of the 1850s and 1860s. What is happening to them is very similar to the Whigs. A moderate conservative party, increasingly under stress because of the secession [Bloc] movement, on the one hand, and the reaction to that movement from harder line English Canadians on the other hand.

You may recall that the Whigs, in their dying days, went through a series of metamorphoses. They ended up as what was called the Unionist movement that won some of the border states in your 1860 election.

If you look at the surviving PC support, it's very much concentrated in Atlantic Canada, in the provinces to the east of Quebec. These are very much equivalent to the United States border states. They're weak economically. They have very grim prospects if Quebec separates. These people want a solution at almost any cost. And some of the solutions they propose would be exactly that. (2)

Of course the Whig Party would eventually become the Republican Party in a series of coalitions, and Abraham Lincoln would become their first president. He had been a member of the 'Whig' Party in Maryland.

Harper continues:

But I don't use this comparison of the pre-Civil War lightly. Preston Manning, the leader of the Reform party has spent a lot of time reading about pre-Civil War politics. He compares the Reform party himself to the Republican party of that period. He is very well-read on Abraham Lincoln and a keen follower and admirer of Lincoln.

I know Mr. Manning very well. I would say that next to his own father, who is a prominent Western Canadian politician, Abraham Lincoln has probably had more effect on Mr. Manning's political philosophy than any individual politician. (2)

I find that statement to be very compelling. Next to his own father ...

But Stephen Harper was not the only one to have noted Manning's obsession with the Civil War era president:

While still a teenager, he [Manning] read ... Carl Sandburg's multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, who emerged from the backwoods of Illinois to steer his country through the challenge of secession by the southern states and the bloody Civil War that ensued. That fascination with the assassinated American president and the pre-Civil War period has endured, as Manning searches for lessons to be learned and applied to the ongoing threat of Quebec secession.

In particular, he is drawn to the 1858 debates between Lincoln and southern states rights proponent Stephen Douglas, when the future of the union and the principles it should be based on were passionately argued. He claims the same has not happened in Canada, in the days leading up to the last Quebec referendum, and particularly during last spring's federal election campaign. "It seems to me our debate on this subject has been so shallow compared with what has been debated in other countries," says Manning.

After years of debating the national unity issue, many Canadians may find that opinion disingenuous - and self-serving. Others perceive more ominous undertones in Manning's historical interests. Michael Fellman, a professor of American history
at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., accuses Manning of having a "superficial understanding" of the pre-Civil War period - and its consequences.

"The Lincoln-Douglas debates and the rise of the Republican party heightened tensions and contradictions in the United States," he says, "and led to civil war because they couldn't solve the problems of the nation." George Melnyk, a Prairie historian and lecturer at the University of Calgary, wonders if Manning sees himself as a Canadian equivalent of Lincoln. "Personal mythologies are not light matters," says Melnyk, who has known the Reform leader since the 1970s. "If Preston Manning truly believes that he may one day have to play the role of Abraham Lincoln as the preserver of the unity and integrity of Canada, then the scenario of civil war is not farfetched." (3)

I believe that when Ken Seigard dressed as Abe Lincoln it was a publicity stunt, and I probably wouldn't read more into it, except that I do find on many Christian fundamentalist sites, a certain almost hero worship for Lincoln, which I will get to later.

But back to Stephen Harper:

The Reform party is much closer to what you would call conservative Republican ... The Reform party is very much a modern manifestation of the Republican movement in Western Canada; the U.S. Republicans started in the western United States. The Reform Party is very resistant to the agenda and the
demands of the secessionists, and on a very deep philosophical level. (2)

That certainly explains the close connection between the Reform Party and the Republican Party. Manning saw them as being of the same political stripe with the same history. Even if most of that history was fabricated.

Continue to Preston Manning and a House Divided

Sources:

1. "Monetary system not part of jet age, Socred leader says", Globe and Mail, July 5, 1982.

2. Full text of Stephen Harper's 1997 speech, Canadian Press, December 14, 2005

3. Preston Manning, By: Dale Eisler, Maclean's, September 22, 1997

Justinas Pranaitis and the The Talmud Unmasked

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

When James Keegstra was asked about his beliefs in regards to Jews, he claimed initially to have come to them after reading the Talmud. But what was later revealed was that they were formed, at least in part, after reading The Talmud Unmasked: The Secret Rabbinical Teachings Concerning Christians, by a former priest, Justinas Pranaitis. (1)

I suspect that there were other books and pamphlets that he digested, but this is where his knowledge of the Jewish scriptures came from.

However, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that formed the basis of both the Nazi Party and Social Credit, and have also inspired modern day neo-Nazis, The Talmud Unmasked was a fraud.

They were written by a priest in Russia at a time when anti-Semitism had unleashed violence and hatred against the Jewish communities.

In 1905 when the fraudulent Protocols were published, they resulted in the Kishinev Pogrom, though that was just a warm up, considering that they were also behind the Holocaust and countless other hate crimes.

When Jews fleeing Kishinev found refuge at the home of a young Leo Strauss, he wondered if something like that could ever happen in Germany. And indeed the same Protocols that created the pogrom would also force Strauss into exile under Adolf Hitler, where he inspired the neoconservative movement at the Chicago School. And his teachings, though badly twisted, are said to be behind the horrendous actions of George W. Bush.

This is why we can't study movements like this enough, and can never forget the case of James Keegstra. Freedom of speech is one thing. But this kind of unfounded hatred, can have devastating results.

The sad thing is that after reading several books and magazine articles, I don't believe that James Keegstra was an evil man. I think he was the product of the times and while he grew up believing in the Jewish conspiracy espoused by Social Credit, then nurtured them with anti-Semitic material he obtained on his own, he came to a horrible conclusion. And it became his mission to retell history.

But unfortunately, he passed on his horrendous views to his students, so who knows how many now harbour that same hatred.

Menahem Mendel Beilis and the Murder of Andrei Yushschinsky

On March 12, 1911, a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, Andrei Yushchinsky, disappeared on his way to school. Eight days later his mutilated body was discovered in a cave near a local brick factory.

On July 21, 1911, Mendel Beilis was arrested for the murder, and the subsequent trial would lay bare the anti-Semitism that was out of control in Russia.

Later it was determined that Andrey decided to skip school and visit his friend Zhenya Cheberyak. Zhenya's mother, Vera was known in the neighborhood as an associate of criminals and as a "fence" (a seller of stolen property). During preliminary hearings it was revealed that Andrey and Zhenya were seen walking together at a point halfway between the Cheberyak home and the Zaitsev brick factory where Mendel Beilis worked as a clerk. (2)

And the priest Justinas Pranaitis would be at the centre of the false accusations and his book The Talmud Unmasked would join the Protocols as a catalyst for hatred.

Pranaitis was supposed to be a master of theology, but after giving his testimony at the trial it became clear that he had no idea what was contained in the Talmud. His book was based sole on his own anti-Semitism.

Cross-examination of Pranaitis has weakened the evidential value of his expert opinion, exposing lack of knowledge of texts and insufficient knowledge of Jewish literature. Because of his amateurish knowledge and lack of resourcefulness, Pranaitis' expert opinion is of very low value.

And yet you can still buy this book. It is being reprinted and used to 'educate' future generations. Do we need to round them up and burn them? Of course not. But we must discredit them as the rantings of an anti-Semite, not expert opinion of Jewish doctrine.

Because there are a lot of James Keegstras out there and they are not all wearing swastikas or donning white robes.

Sources:

1. A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair, By: David Bercuson and Douglas Wertheimer, Doubleday Canada, 1985, ISBN: 0-385-25003-7, Pg

2. The Anti Semitic Trail that Shook the World, By: by Laurence Krane, The Jewish Magazine, November, 2003

The Strange Case of James Keegstra

Another graduate of the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute and long time member of the Social Credit Party, was James Keegstra, the Alberta school teacher who gained notoriety when it was discovered that for 15 years he had been teaching his students that the Holocaust was a hoax.

His sensational trial became the subject of much debate over free speech vs hate crimes, but what was interesting, was not the mainstream contempt for his beliefs, but the people who came to his defense.

Yes there were the usual neo-Nazis and hate mongers, but there were also many religious groups who saw his 'persecution' as a threat to their rights to teach Biblical interpretation.

One of those was a man by the name of Stockwell Burt Day, then assistant pastor at the Bentley [Alberta] Christian Centre and spokesperson for the Alberta Association of Independent Church Schools.

Day was already embroiled in a battle with the Alberta Department of Education and their decision to remove the Bentley Christian School's accreditation because of their teachings, which were deemed be both racist and anti-Semitic. He felt that religious schools should have the right to set their own curriculum. “God's law is clear. Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school.” (1)

The connection between James Keegstra and Stockwell Day went back further than that, however, in their links to both the Social Credit Party and Keegstra's lawyer; Doug Christie.

Social Credit and Anti-Semitism

Keegstra's parents had joined the Social Credit Party at it's inception in 1935, inspired not only by the promise of monetary reform, but also the Christian fundamentalism.

They listened to Aberhart's radio broadcasts and questioned not a word.

And when the party began distributing anti-Semitic material across the country, they collected every piece, sharing them with their son James.

And when James Keegstra was old enough, they sent him to the Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, then under the leadership of Ernest Manning, where he would be "taught right."

In 1957, James himself joined the Social Credit Party, and would remain active in the movement throughout his adult life.

He ran for the party, representing Red Deer in the 1972, 1974 and 1984 federal elections. In 1986, he ran unsuccessfully for the party's leadership with the support of white supremacist Don Andrews and Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel*.

In 1972, when Keegstra first ran for the federal Socreds, the party leader was Real Caouette (the image to the left above). During the same campaign and under the same leader, Stockwell Day Sr, also ran for the party, against Tommy Douglas; not expecting to win but only to publicly attack Douglas' Socialist platform. (Tommy Douglas gave us medicare and is the grandfather of Kiefer Sutherland)

Caouette had some pretty extreme views. According to John Gray:

The disdain for outsiders always seemed to fit conveniently with the theory of conspiracy of the old parties. The Jews were another and equally convenient part of the ... demonology and there was a continuing strain of anti-Semitism ... Caouette revealed that his political heroes were Hitler and Mussolini. As late as a few years ago, his bookshelves contained The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.... If non-Creditisites were horrified, the loyalists did not seem to care. (2)

The Day family were also longtime Social Credit members, and according to Stock Jr.'s mother; Gwendolyn (nee: Gilbert) he was exposed to political activism at home.

When Real Caouette fist won the leadership race in 1961, Ernest Manning, then Premier of Alberta, vetoed the nomination, claiming that his province would never accept a francophone Catholic as party leader. Real left to start his own party, but they were reunited in 1972.

Opposing the political climate in Quebec, Stock Sr. packed up his family and headed west in 1967. He would eventually meet up with Doug Christie and joined his Western Canada Concept Party, which was formed to promote western separation. He would contribute regularly to to the Western Separatist, the party's newspaper.

Day Sr. also appeared to have been friendly with Robert Thompson and in fact Thomson's children once stayed with the Day family for a while. According to David Lethbridge, Thompson was a fan of Ronald Gostick** who made his money distributing racist and anti-Semitic material. (3)

I know that a lot of the names that enter this story appear to be guilt by association. Yes Stock Day Sr. was friends with Doug Christie who defended many Neo-Nazis and hate propagandists. That doesn't mean that Christie himself was anti-Semitic, nor does it mean that everyone associated with him is anti-Semitic.

But this speaks to a long history with this party, that was grounded in fanatical Christian extremism. They believed in a Jewish conspiracy and the fact that 'Socialists' and 'Jews' were in cahoots. William Aberhart suggested:

Personally, I have little doubt that in working through Jews, the Jewish financial group has sacrificed its own people on the altar of its greed for power and this group is preeminently responsible for the poisonous anti-Semitism which is rampant in the world today. (4)

And as late as 1943 when Manning was Premier, their report included:

If international finance and socialism are travelling in the same direction is it possible that socialism is promoted by the money power to hasten the completion of their plot for world domination? Not only is it possible, but there is a fund of evidence which leads to the inevitable conclusion that there is a plot, worldwide in scope, deliberately engineered by a small number of ruthless international financiers. (4)

But then in February 1947:

Imperial Oil had brought in Leduc No. 1, a gusher which was obviously going to transform Alberta from a province of poverty to one of plenty. The month after Leduc, Manning acted. The government passed a resolution repudiating "any statements ()r publications which are incompatible with the established British ideals of democratic freedom or which endorse, excuse or incite anti-Semitism or racial or religious intolerance in any form." Within the next year the Alberta Social Credit Board had been dissolved and the leading Douglasites had been purged from the Cabinet. (4)

He was being pushed by the Douglasites in the party to adopt the economic principles, and this was why he purged the party of the Douglasite anti-Semitics. He no longer needed monetary reform and no longer needed them. But it clearly did not end the anti-Semistism or racism within the movement. Far from it.

Footnotes:

*Ernst Zundel was also a client of Doug Christie. During the 2000 federal election, where Stockwell Day was running against jean Chretien, the story of Day's involvement with neo-Nazis and his relationship with James Keegstra became public, Ernst Zundel came to his defense saying: "I know the personal toll of standing up for what you believe in, and I was inspired by Stockwell's spirited defense of his school's Accelerated Christian Education curriculum which states that 'Buddhists and Muslims are evil' and 'Jewish leaders were children of their father, the devil."

**Ronald Gostick attended Crescent Heights High School when William Aberhart was principal. He was a long time member of the Social Credit Party and in fact his mother was one of the first Scial Credit MLAs when Aberhart's Party swept the Alberta elections in 1935.

Sources:

1. Canadian Alliance's Stockwell Day and the charge of anti-Semitism: What is the right trying to cover up? By Guy Leblanc and Keith Jones, November 27, 2000

2. Real Caouette: Question now; can message survive?, John Gray, Montreal Gazette, November 9, 1976

3. Jew-haters and red-baiters: The Canadian League of Rights, By David Lethbridge, AntiFa Info-Bulletin, February 2, 1999

4. A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair, By: David Bercuson and Douglas Wertheimer, Doubleday Canada, 1985, ISBN: 0-385-25003-7, Pg. 34-38