Ronald Gostick, the Canadian Intelligence Service, and the “Paranoid Style” in Postwar Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the activities of Ronald Gostick who, in the 1950s and 1960s, was Canada’s leading far-right conspiracy theorist. While active for more than half a century, Gostick rose to prominence in the postwar period, years of great changes in Canadian politics, government, society, and culture. At the far right of political opinion, Gostick had much to say and write about these developments, which he traced to a vast Jewish-led conspiracy to destroy Canadians’ individual freedom and, ultimately, Canada’s supposed Christian heritage. Gostick’s views epitomized what American historian Richard Hofstadter labeled a “paranoid style,” an outlook rooted in conspiracism. What is evident from this study of Gostick’s ideas and activism is that in several areas his extremism differed little from more respectable viewpoints, signifying that the separation between fringe and mainstream opinion is often only a few degrees of difference.