FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved
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by Gordon LairdOn the surface, Bentley looks a little like a set from an old western movie: a single main street rolls through the centre of town alongside old storefronts and residences. An old beer parlour and hotel sits downtown, and you can't turn a corner without finding a house of worship.
It's a picturesque slice of central Alberta and the place where Stockwell Day, who made his name as leader of a renegade evangelical church, went from pastor to politician. Until recently the treasurer of Alberta, Day is now a candidate for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance party.
But despite the bucolic setting, back when Day was becoming a public figure, Bentley and nearby Red Deer and Eckville percolated with Christian fundamentalism – and a virulent, faith-driven brand of anti-Semitism. This ideological weave of old Social Credit conspiracy doctrines, religion and far-right politics explains why to this day, despite Day's prominence in Alberta's cabinet, there are still neo-Nazi sympathizers from back home who claim to be his friends.
FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS
When anti-Semitic teacher Jim Keegstra got tossed from his classroom in Red Deer in the early ’80s for teaching about the "Jewish conspiracy,'' he certainly didn't stop profligating his message.
Rather, he headed to Bentley, where he set up the Christian Defence League and ran a mechanic's garage. The garage was popular, despite Keegstra's public denial of the Holocaust. Even Stockwell Day – the man who would be prime minister some day – took his car to get serviced there.
Eventually, Keegstra – who calls Day by his nickname, "Stock,'' as does everyone in town – attracted a bevy of notorious characters. Visiting him in the garage or at his Eckville home were Aryan Nation leader Terry Long, Douglas Christie, lawyer for almost every major Canadian Holocaust denier who's ever ran afoul of the law, neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel and various white supremacists from south of the border – all of whom lent their passions to the already combustible area.
Indeed politics and religion in this central Alberta region have always been intense. It is Reform country, and before that Social Credit country. The party ruled Alberta from 1935 to ’72 and continually struggled with anti-Semitism within its ranks.
In the Day family, Stock's father, Stockwell Day Sr., ran for the federal Socreds against the New Democrat Party’s Tommy Douglas in Vancouver in 1972. Later, he hooked up with the separatist Western Concept Party, also dedicated to preserving "our'' Christian and European heritage and founded by lawyer Doug Christie. ("Doug, it is time for you, the captain, to call "all aboard,''wrote Stockwell Sr. in the organization's newsletter in 1996.)
EXTREME EDUCATION
Following the Socred tradition, Stock Day Jr. found his political calling while at the controversial Bentley Christian Centre. From 1978 to 85, he was assistant pastor and school administrator. And in 1984 he made headlines for defending fundamentalist school curricula that a government commission later found to hold "a degree of insensitivity towards blacks, Jews and natives.''
Alberta Senator Ron Ghitter headed the 18-month commission on schooling in the wake of the Keegstra affair. His report raised serious questions about Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), a curriculum imported by the Centre from the Texas-based School of Tomorrow and a rigid set of prescriptions for fundamentalist teaching on scripture and creation science.
"ACE schools were schools of dogma,'' says Ghitter, a former cabinet minister. "They didn't follow official curriculum and the kids who came out had sort of a twisted Christianity with anti-Semitic overtones.''
Ghitter recalls one telling incident in a Red Deer Christian school where he discovered an ACE book that argued "all kinds of Buddhists and Muslims are evil.'' He took the book to the principal, who promptly denied knowing anything about the literature, saying that it was an old book. Ghitter checked the cover: it was new.
"It's repulsive that people would be teaching this material,'' he explains. "But in certain pockets of central Alberta – Eckville, Bentley, Red Deer – they're good people, but they sometimes take the position that their religion is right and others are inferior.''
At the time, Day fervently defended the material – and the right of his school to teach whatever it wanted – saying he was willing to "go to jail, if need be.''
"God's law is clear,'' said an angry Day to the Alberta Report in 1984. "Standards of education are not set by government, but by God, the Bible, the home and the school.''
But there was more to the ACE material than just Bible teaching. Social studies lessons warned students that democratic governments "represent the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and totally alien to God's word.'' Science lessons taught pure creationism, noting that all evolutionists were guilty of "depravity and sinfulness.''
In other words, the ACE material that Day so passionately defended sometimes took an extreme and dismissive view on secular society – a position that was radical even for religious private schooling.
Moreover, there was the Jewish question. Paula Simons of the Edmonton Journal, who interviewed Day at the time, recently reported that the ACE materials were peppered with some disturbing Keegstra-esque statements. In one reading lesson, junior high students were asked: "The Jewish leaders were children of their father, the devil – true or false?''
Day was quick to insist that the teachings at the Bentley Christian Centre were never anti-Semitic or intolerant. "That is totally inaccurate and slanderous," he told a reporter in 1985. "We refer to the Jews as the chosen people – the materials are against anti-Semitism.''
What Day has to say about this today cannot be known by Fast Forward readers as the former treasurer did not respond to five calls over six days and a set of e-mail questions.
Ghitter himself is careful about accusing the former pastor of being anti-Semitic. "I would never make that allegation against Stockwell,'' says the senator, who himself is Jewish.
"But built in that (religious) ideology is the roots of anti-Semitism. It's there in the roots of Social Credit – and it is in today's Alliance, though not necessarily in the leaders.''
RELIGIOUS ROOTS
The current pastor at Day's church doesn't spare much sympathy for the former Alberta treasurer. Gregory Rathjen says that when Day left in 1985 to pursue a political career, the assistant pastor left behind a community that was deeply divided.
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.’''
He 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 bylaws so that the people would have no say – leaders to be appointed by other leaders, 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.... They were still holding on to the Christian teaching – but with manipulation and control. Very few people knew. It's not acceptable,'' says the pastor, who outright rejected Day's old ACE curriculum after a trip down to ACE's Texas headquarters.
And Stockwell Day? "Stock wrote me a letter saying he had nothing to do with it – but he lived off of it and enjoyed it,'' Rathjen says frankly. "That's what this church was – a bully. They bullied people and won.''
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Bentley locals tell stories about Stockwell Day's church group going out to "push down'' the Bentley beer parlour with prayer one evening: a group laid their hands on the building and prayed for it to fall like Babylon.
"They prayed by the hotel, put their hands on the beer parlour to collapse it for being sinful,'' recalls one resident. "It was this charismatic preacher there – Stockwell had charisma, but followed this minister blindly.''
It is impossible to avoid religion in Bentley. On a per capita basis, Alberta's self-described "model community'' has more places of worship than most towns – six churches for 900 residents.
Day's church comprised one-third of Bentley's population, with nearly 300 people. And just to keep things interesting, Bentley reportedly had a practicing witch – and a coven – for a number of years.
Religious feelings were so high-strung that kids from the Bentley Christian Centre weren't allowed to play sports with children from outside the parish. The intense dynamic sometimes exploded. Local doctor Bill McKendrich claims he was driven out of Bentley in 1978 by the Bentley Christian Centre because church leaders wanted their own doctor.
"When I was there in Bentley, there was a very strong fundamentalist group trying to take over the village,'' he says. "If you don't belong to the church, you don't belong to the community.''
"People are helpful here,'' says longtime resident Doris Bargholz, "but when there's a controversy, people aren't afraid to take sides: the coffee shop, the barber shop, these are places where conflicts are resolved.''
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ANTI-SEMITISM
Just as the Bentley region had more faith than it sometimes knew what to do with, it certainly saw more neo-Nazis than most sleepy rural towns.
Keegstra made international headlines in 1983 when he was dismissed for teaching "Jewish conspiracy theory as if it were fact'' to hundreds of Eckville students over an eight-year span. After unsuccessful appeals to win back his job, Keegstra wound up in criminal court in 1984, charged with a federal hate crime. He was convicted in 1985 after a sensational trial that revealed a central Albertan community torn by racism – and a trenchant defendant supported by a ragtag collection of anti-Semite activists, "free speech'' advocates and self-avowed neo-Nazis.
Bentley resident Jim Green was an old Social Credit insider who'd been running – and losing – in federal elections since 1972. He was also a formidable scholar and fundamentalist in his own right. When Keegstra got into trouble, Green phoned up to give him some practical advice: "‘You should keep your mouth shut,’ I told him,'' he recalls of Keegstra's outspoken and unrepentant ways.
"I said, 'Would you consider losing your life over it?’
"He said, ‘So be it.’
"I said, ‘Me too.’ So that's how we got so close.''
Together with Bentley native Terry Long and Calgary Aryan activist Tom Erhart, Green and Keegstra formed the Bentley-based Christian Defence League (CDL), a Keegstra fund-raising group that pledged "to defend the basic principles of Christianity in this modern age.''
In Web of Hate, author Warren Kinsella describes the CDL as "the most extreme anti-Jewish organization active in Canada'' at the time. Long would later leave the CDL to become Canadian head of the para-military Church of Aryan Nations.
For those familiar with Keegstra's hate crime trial or the CDL, it came as little surprise that he came from a strong Social Credit family, attended Bill Aberhart's (the first Social Credit premier of Alberta) Calgary Prophetic Bible Institute, and by 1957, had already joined the party.
And what is to be made of the fact that this extremist, who says he has differences with the Alliance candidate on theology, still considers Day a political icon?
"I'd vote for Stockwell,'' Keegstra tells me. "Not just (from) knowing him.'' He quickly dismisses other Canadian Alliance leadership candidates, including Reform Party founder Preston Manning.
"I don't know about Preston,'' he says with some concern. "Preston went to a Bilderberg (summit) meeting. Rides in a limo with Conrad Black. (He's) hobnobbing with the New World Order.''
Manning, says Keegstra, is too close to the "Jewish World Government'' conspiracy.
Keegstra remembers meeting Day first in 1983. "I knew he had the gift of meeting people and of getting along with people,'' says the former schoolteacher from his home in Red Deer. "So when I heard that he was getting into politics, I thought he'd found his chosen path.''
Keegstra says he worked on Stock's cars all the time, and recalls chats they had in 1984 about freedom-of-speech issues and Keegstra's upcoming hate trial. "I discussed the topic with him.''
He says that they differed on matters of theology, noting that Stock's church favoured prophetic doctrine that favoured "the Jews as God's children.''
Green says he knew Stock "pretty well'' through the garage and the Bentley Christian Centre. "He came to the garage – said he wanted to be one of the first ones in there when Keegstra opened his garage.''
He says he didn't know Day's politics at the time. "As far as I know Day didn't support the CDL – but he liked Jim Keegstra.''
Green, who now lives in B.C., claims Day corresponds with him. "Usually if you write to an MLA you get a form letter, but when you get a four-page letter back, you know he's listening. And the handwritten ones too. I know he's reading my letters – but nothing that could be used against him, you know. You gotta read between the lines.''
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STOCK SPEAKS OUT
Few Canadian politicians have a rap sheet of gaffes as long as Stockwell Day. When he won his first election in 1996, his acceptance speech was full of ambitious moral prescriptions that had nothing to do with his new job as a provincial legislator.
He "railed against homosexuals in the armed forces and pornography,'' reported the Red Deer Advocate at the time. "He called for harsher penalties for violent crimes, and attacked other issues that belong in the federal domain.'' From early on, Day had big aspirations.
"As a Christian, I acknowledge the lordship of Jesus Christ over the whole universe,'' explained Day in 1998, in response to a gaffe made against single-parent families. "I believe that The Bible is the infallible word of God and every word in it, cover to cover, is true.''
With this literalist belief in The Bible comes some unusual ideas that rarely gather press. As one educator made notes in an informal presentation Day made in Red Deer during 1997, the treasurer claimed the following things to be true: 1) The Earth is 6,000 years old; 2) Adam and Eve were real people; 3) Humans and dinosaurs co-existed; and 4) There's as much evidence for creation as evolution.
The educator declines to be named because he believes Day to be vengeful and worries that a public comment could affect local school funding.
A GOOD CHRISTIAN
Around Keegtra's Bentley garage, fundamentalism was the common thread: in learning how to love God better, some of these men somehow learned how to hate, too.
Day and Keegstra might not agree on Christian eschatology or conspiracy theory, but the fact of the matter is that Day won the respect of men who have, more or less, decided that everyone is against them.
Not just because Stock is a local boy done good, but because, as Green put it, "he's a good Christian.''
Green and Keegstra attended a few 6 a.m. prayer meetings that pastor Day led for local menfolk.
"I realized that Mr. Day had a certain quality: it is the knowledge and experience in his life – from his dad, too,'' says Green.
"The people in North Red Deer [where Day was elected provincially in 1986], the Christian people, they liked what he stood for and talked him into moving there.... He was always pushed: people wanted someone with strong principles. I paraded [protested] with Day and his people in front of a school in Red Deer – against sex education.''
Self-avowed libertarian Gary Botting describes Day as a friend. "Stock and I would pick each other's brains,'' he recalls. "Politics, a lot to do with education, a bit to do with what was going to happen with Keegstra. I found him very much down to earth.''
Botting is a fascinating figure: despite articling with Doug Christie as a lawyer in 1991, by 1996 Botting had completely disavowed Christie's "anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi agenda,'' as he put it.
Throughout the ’80s, Botting prepared briefs for the local RCMP about the activities of Keegstra, Long and other members of the far right. But at the same time, Botting maintained extensive correspondence with – and sometimes hosted – insurgent racialists from the Western Guard and the American Anti-Communist Federation. In 1991, Botting championed the case of Howard Pursley, a neo-Nazi from Texas, in his bid for political refugee status.
His dismissal from Red Deer college was based on his controversial support of Keegstra – as a civil liberties case – and his own curious attempt to bring Keegstra's favourite book, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, into his own college classroom.
Nevertheless, Botting remains convinced that his motives were pure and that both he and Day were above the repugnant but legitimate views of the CDL.
"Day was concerned about the notion of free speech – the principle of free speech of where I was coming from. He understood. Not everyone did.''
Botting is emphatic: "Day didn't buy into Keegstra's anti-Semitic platform at all. Put it this way, if it had to be a Christian world – God help us – you'd want Day there.''
(Gordon Laird is an award-winning journalist and author of Slumming it at the Rodeo: the Cultural Roots of Canada's Right-wing Revolution, Douglas and McIntyre.)
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