Press for Conversion! (Issue # 68) March 201622

Religious Guardians of the Peaceable Kingdom:Winnipeg’s Key Social-Gospel Gatekeepers of Canada West

By Richard Sanders

With the ethnic cleansing of In-digenous peoples from the prai-ries and the arrival of the rail-

way in the 1880s, Winnipeg’s train stationwas the “Gateway to the West.” By the on-set of WWI, over a million newcomers hadbeen moved in to settle western Canada.

While Canadian churches main-tained their blissful silence about the im-perial land grab, the mass confinement ofIndians on reserves, and the cultural gen-ocide imposed by Christian residentialschools, they quickly created morally in-dignant narratives to decry the rapid in-flux of nonAngloSaxons. In reaction tothese immigrants, who they considered in-ferior, some of Winnipeg’s most prestig-ious clergymen took it upon themselves tobecome the civil-society “gatekeepers” offortress Canada. These progressives weresoon locked in a battle against the gate-crashing “aliens” who had penetrated thewalls of their sacred Peaceable Kingdom.

With brave and heroic tales aboutthe progressive spread of enlightened Brit-ish culture across the untamed West, main-stream Protestant churches saw themselvesas the vanguard of a grand imperial projectcalled Canada. In waging their cultural waragainst First Nations, these self-appointedguardians of national security created pop-ular myths about their valiant mission toprotect Canada from savage attacks by re-ligious, political and racial inferiours. Lat-er, when confronted by unwanted immi-grants with religious beliefs and politicalloyalties that competed with their own,AngloProtestants changed the sights oftheir xenophobic narratives and workedthemselves into a new, moral frenzy.

To convey their collective panic,they filled a host of traditional cultural ves-sels—from sermons, college lectures, mis-sionary tracts and other, more popular re-ligious fictions, like novels—with caution-ary tales about strangers. These narrativeswere like church bells sounding warningof an impending peril. East Europeans—seen as spiritually backward, unassimilableand politically radical—were seen as aworrisome new threat by respected gate-keepers of Canada’s Christian civilisation.

In their propaganda war againstunwanted foreigners, Winnipeg gatekeep-ers demonised a certain class of “enemyaliens.” This was soon followed by theirmass captivity in WWI-era, labour camps.

Invading the KingdomBetween 1871 and 1911, Canada’s prairiepopulation grew by 1.3 million: 375,000in Alberta, 492,000 in Saskatchewan and430,000 in Manitoba.1 Most settlers camewest via Winnipeg on Canada’s new rail-road. They were largely Anglos, especial-ly in Manitoba where 64% were British.While Germans and Scandinavians madeup 15% of the total, Francophones wereonly 6%. During this preWWI spurt, thedominance of northwest Europeans beganto decline. For example, the prairies’ Brit-ish population fellfrom 86% in 1901 to77% in 1911.

During thatsame decade, eastEuropeans becamefar more visible onthe prairies. Manito-ba’s Slavic commu-nity of Austro-Hun-garians, Russiansand Poles, almostquintupled from12,760 in 1901, to59,230 in 1911. Thisincreased their presence from 5% to 13%of the total population.2 Most of theseSlavs were Ukrainian. About 170,000 ofthem had entered Canada between 1891and 1914, with a record number of 22,000arriving in 1913,3 on the very eve of WWI.

But gates are not just entry points,they are also exits for expelling the unwant-ed. While between 1903 and 1908 Cana-da deported 1,401 “undesirables,” 1,748were thrown out in 1909 alone. This fol-lowed an influx of aliens fleeing Czaristrepression after the Russian revolution of1905-1907. (See pp.36-39). This recordnumber of deportations was not matcheduntil 1914. During WWI, 5,943 were un-ceremoniously thrown from our gates.4

By war’s end, Canada was engagedin “the deliberate and systematic deporta-tion of agitators, activists and radicals,”said historian Barbara Roberts. The “threatthey posed was not to the people of Cana-da” but to “vested interests such as bigbusiness, exploitative employers, and agovernment acting on behalf of interestgroups.” Deportees included opponents ofWWI and conscription, militant labour ac-tivists and radical socialists. The excusefor deporting them was often that, as indi-gents, they might need state assistance.5

Information GatewaysWinnipeg clergymen, Charles Gordon,J.S.Woodsworth and J.W.Sparling, wereon the front line of a culture war to main-tain the supremacy of Canada’s AngloProt-estant civilisation. Although they did notcontrol the physical gates through whichaliens entered and exited Canada’s gates,these Social Gospellers did exert controlover the flow of information about aliens.

Social Gospellers were gatekeepersin the sense invoked by Kurt Lewin, theJewish-American father of social psychol-

ogy who fled Germany in 1933. In 1943,Lewin published his gatekeeping theory toexplain how individuals controlled the flowof commodities and data within social sys-tems. Interestingly, he was influenced bypolitical scientist Harold Lasswell’s 1920sresearch on the decision-making process-es used to create WWI propaganda.

Lewin said that his gatekeepingmodel could be used to understand socialorganizations and newsrooms. Since then,scholars in many disciplines have devel-oped Lewin’s gatekeeping theory to ana-lyse how data is filtered through varioussystems to construct social realities.6 Asmass communications professors PamelaShoemaker and Tim Vos have explained:

“Gatekeeping is the process of cullingand crafting countless bits of informa-tion into the limited number of mes-sages that reach people each day.... [It]determines not only which informationis selected, but also what the contentand nature of the messages, such asnews, will be.”7

Gatekeeping theory can explainhow Social Gospellers used ethnocentricreligious and political filters to select dataabout aliens that they then crafted into nar-ratives to sway the minds of their parish-ioners, politicians and the public at large.

Cathedral-like rotunda of Winnipeg’s Union Station

Gatewayto the West

March 2016 (Issue # 68) Press for Conversion! 23

shepherded and covered up the savage cru-elty of those who saw themselves as beingon the vanguard of a physically, culturally,morally and spiritually advanced race.

Gordon’s zeal for assimilation waschannelled through a morality tale, TheForeigner (1908). His urgent plea for ro-bust missionary action conjures up the direthreat of depraved Slavs who had pen-etrated Canada via Winnipeg’s gates. Hisallegory focuses on the rescue of what hecalls “a poor, stupid, Galician [Ukrainian]woman with none too savoury a reputa-tion.” Entering stage right, preparing tosave the day, were the heroic churches:

“Many and generous were the philan-thropies of Winnipeg, but as yet therewas none that had to do with the dirt,disease and degradation that were toooften found in the environment of theforeign people. There were manychurches in the city rich in good work...but there was not yet one whose spe-cial duty it was to confer and to reportupon the unhappy and struggling andunsavoury foreigner within their citygate.”15

Gordon molded this book’s hero,

Brown, after himself, an AngloProtestantmissionary trying to uplift aliens in Win-nipeg’s North End. Gordon and Brownwere both trapped by an overpowering ob-session: to Canadianise and Christianiseforeigners. As Brown put it, he wanted “tomake them good Christians and good Ca-nadians, which is the same thing.”16

Through Brown, Gordon articu-lated the common Canadian phobia thateast Europeans could not be absorbedquickly enough into the vastly superiourAngloProtestant culture. This process ofmoral and social absorption required “up-lifting” inferiour races and cultures withwhat are now commonly called “Canadianvalues.” As Brown saw it, east Europeans

“here exist as an undigested foreignmass. They must be digested and ab-sorbed into the body politic. They mustbe taught our ways of thinking and liv-ing, or it will be a mighty bad thing forus in Western Canada.”17

But the novel’s secondary hero—French—expressed the public doubt thatSlavs could ever be instilled with the val-ues of Canada’s advanced civilisation.Calling them “a score of dirty little Gali-cians,” he says “You go in and give themsome of our Canadian ideas of living..., andbefore you know they are striking for high-er wages and giving no end of trouble.”18

But Gordon was no mere novelis-ing missionary, he was also a powerfulmediator in “industrial disputes…on be-half of the Dominion government.” Whileworking for the government to bridge con-flicts between huge corporations and rad-ical unions, he exchanged many cordial let-ters with the Liberal’s Labour Minister,MacKenzie King.19 Gordon also “count-ed national leaders such as Sir Wilfrid Lau-rier, Theodore Roosevelt, and WoodrowWilson among his readers and friends.”20

To Gordon, Canada was not only afaithful servant of British imperialism, itwas also part of a divine empire of Whitenations led by God that was marching to-wards a glorious, global conquest. As hetold thousands gathered at the national mis-sionary congress in 1909, Canada was:

“part of a Greater Empire...that knowsno boundary all round this great world,...an Empire led on to the conquest ofthe world not by any human mind or byany human hand, but ...by the great GodHimself. For this conquest Canada mustgird herself now; and if ...Canada is notable to maintain those high traditionsfor godliness... Canada [will] fail of herdestiny,...[to] keep pace with the greaterAnglo-Saxon nations who are march-ing on to evangelize the world.”21

Rev. Charles Gordon, aka “Ralph Connor”

ThisSocialGospellerwas a best-selling writerof “ImperialAdventure”novels. Hepreached aMuscularChristianityinspiringracism& fear.

The leading populariser of the SocialGospel was best-selling author, Rev.

Charles Gordon. His first three swashbuck-ling novels sold over five million copies.The “sole purpose” of his first book, hesaid, “was to awaken my church …to thesplendour of the mighty religious adven-ture being attempted by the missionary pio-neers” in Canada’s west.8

Using the alias Ralph Connor, Gor-don was “the most successful practitioner…in the world” of a genre called “impe-rial adventure fiction.”9 His thirty novelsalso captured the spirit of so-called “Mus-cular Christianity,” a Victorian movementstressing a mix of pious athleticism withvirile masculinity. It was hardcore Chris-tian evangelism on imperial steroids.

In The Social Uplifters: Presbyte-rian Progressives and the Social Gospelin Canada, Brian Fraser—a Church His-tory professor at Vancouver’s School ofTheology—praised Gordon as one of the“central figures in articulating and imple-menting a social Christianity.”10 What hedoes not explain is that Gordon used hisliterary pulpit to preach an ethnocentricxenophobia that spread fear and hatred.

An avid imperialist, Gordon trans-formed fictive Mounties—like CorporalCameron—into graven macho images ofbiblical dimensions. Mounties were to beidolised for defending what Gordon called“the ‘pax Britannica’...of Her Majesty’sdominions in this far northwest reach ofEmpire.”11 Gordon’s cartoonified cops,and their tough missionary helpmates,teamed up in novels about the NorthwestRebellion. In Gordon’s racist mind, the vil-lain’s role was played by “thousands of sav-age Indians, utterly strange to any rule orlaw”12 who were “thirsting for revengeupon the white man.” His narrative saw the“insatiable lust for glory formerly won inwar” as the “fiery spirit of the red man,long subdued by those powers that repre-sented the civilization of the white man.”13

Gordon’s words captured the im-age of the Métis as “ignorant, insignificant,half-tamed pioneers of civilization,” withtheir leader, that “blood-lusting,” “vain andempty-headed Riel” who stirred up

“horror unspeakable in the revival ofthat ancient savage spirit which hadbeen so very materially softened andtamed by years of kindly, patient andfirm control on the part of those whorepresented among them British law andcivilization.”14

Gordon not only reflected the pre-vailing racism of his time, he promoted,