A compulsive litigator, Maloney engaged in dozens of lawsuits,
ultimately alienating members of his organization and the broader
community. He left Edmonton under a cloud, but not before a
rousing send-off dinner in the Macdonald Hotel ballroom.
While Maloney was making and smudging his mark in Edmonton,
Snelgrove toured central Alberta communities like Lacombe, Red
Deer, and Drumheller. A prominent Orange Order activist, he argued
that the Klan was not needed in Alberta because the province
already had an effective network of Orange Lodges to keep the
papists at bay. But he promoted his rallies and lectures under the
banner of "the fiery cross," a transparent reference to
the Klan without recourse to the name or initials-and Klan
doings, some probably genuine, others possibly bogus, seemed to
anticipate or follow his progress.
Three cross-burnings took place in towns Snelgrove visited, one in
Lacombe and two in Drumheller, where three professed members of
the KKK had been elected to the town council of 1927. (Maloney may
have fanned the flames of three fiery crosses, two in Vermilion,
one in Edmonton). A kidnapping and tar-and-feathering incident
involved an allegedly sexually promiscuous Lacombe blacksmith
named Fred Doberstein and up to five masked men who claimed to be
Klansmen. The Klan connection was never verified, and letters to
the Lacombe Western Globe claiming Klan authority and threatening
retaliation for unfavourable coverage of the incident produced no
follow-up action.
Doberstein's attackers may not have been Klansmen, but like
Calgary's incendiary letter-writers, they certainly understood the
value of the KKK as a weapon of intimidation. What really matters
is that there existed in Alberta at the beginning of the
Depression a potentially explosive atmosphere of intolerance,
distrust, threatened violence, and nameless fears that made resort
to such intimidation strategies both thinkable and doable. And,
aside from earnest protests in most Alberta newspapers, there was
no serious outcry or opposition. Premier Brownlee said the Klan
would be tolerated as long as it did not break the law, His
Agriculture Minister, George Hoadley, said publicly and pointedly
that he could find nothing objectionable in the Klan's principles
and objectives.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
