Moral reform societies of the early 1900s were successful in uniting all Protestant denominations behind the Ban-the-Bar crusades which led to Prohibition.
But when it came to cleaning up brothels, boozeries and gambling joints, the bane of most prairie cities, their protests, according to historian James Gray, were “as ephemeral as the effect of a Sunday sermon.”
In Moose Jaw, police chief Walter Johnson turned a deaf ear to occasional thunderings from local pulpits and city council.
He had no intention of cleaning up River Street because Moose Jaw’s lowlife was boxed in on that thoroughfare, which was separated from the vice-free rest of the city by its business district. Most respectable citizens simply ignored the street’s existence.
Then in January 1927, the Ku Klux Klan hit town bent on moral reform, and local authorities were warned that if they didn’t clean up the red-light district, the Klan would.
Moose Jaw became the provincial headquarters of the Klan, with an office in the Hammond building and Pat Emmons, or Pat Emory as he called himself, an unordained revivalist preacher from South Bend, Ind., was installed as local organizer.
Emory had become disillusioned by the violence and brutality of the American Klan, but here things would be different.
It would be a “super Christian endeavour” heavy on brotherly love and peace while preaching the doctrine of Anglo-Saxon superiority under the slogan “One Flag, One Language, One School, One Race, One Religion.”
Emory later admitted “We fed the people ‘antis.’ Whatever we found that they could be taught to hate and fear, we fed them.”
Soon postcards bearing a mysterious message were turning up in the mail: “Your fondest aspiration after this old world is Heaven. But before you go we need you in Hammond Building three eleven.”
To attract “prestige” members, Emory began handing out free memberships to clergy and prominent local businessmen. He estimated that of the 2,000 Klansmen he enrolled in Moose Jaw, 600 came in on the free admission.
Locally, people were attracted to the Klan by its promise to put an end to immorality, which ran the gamut from police corruption to prostitution.
Emory said he was shocked by Moose Jaw’s “painted ladies” and their “obnoxious” profession, and urged “upright, God-fearing citizens” to join the Klan and put an end to sin.
When Emory noticed that too many Moose Jaw restaurants were operated by non-whites, he used some of the membership funds to set up a small restaurant business at 314 Main St. N.
In return for Klan patronage, the owner displayed the letters KIGY (Klansmen I Greet You) on the facade of his premises.
On June 7, 1927, Moose Jaw became the site of the first and largest Ku Klux Klan Konclave ever held in Canada.
An estimated 7,000 people came by automobile and train — some even walked in from country points — to a big field on the south side of Caribou West just beyond Rosedale Cemetery.
One special train from Regina brought a band and 435 Klansmen who were met at the station by automobile-owning local Klansmen and driven to the rally site.
Never before in Saskatchewan had so many automobiles gathered in one spot.
Since there was no organized parking, the simultaneous departure of cars at the end of the rally caused a traffic jam that has never been duplicated in Moose Jaw’s history.
On the speaker’s platform with Pat Emory were one of Moose Jaw’s leading clergymen and a visiting evangelist from Chicago.
Since electrical voice amplifiers were still in the future, only a small portion of that vast throng was able to get within earshot.
Emory’s message was that River Street should be cleaned out and the city made safe for Anglo Saxon Protestantism.
Spectators who came hoping for rabble-rousing and fireworks were disappointed.
The whole thing was likened to an evangelistic service which culminated in the burning of a 60-foot fiery cross.
In the fall of 1927, Pat Emory and Klan funds disappeared. Eventually he was brought back from Indiana to face two charges of fraud and was acquitted on both counts.
In the end it wasn’t the KKK that cleaned up River Street. Credit goes to the Great Depression for the decrease in immorality across the Prairies — sin was no longer affordable.
