The Edmund Burke Society and Right-Wing Extremism in Late Twentieth-Century Canada

Abstract

Emerging in Toronto in the late 1960s, the Edmund Burke Society (ebs) became a leading far-right outlet. From picketing Model United Nations meetings and gatherings of left-wing groups to staging pro-Vietnam War protests and engaging in racially motivated vandalism, the ebs became a bellwether of what journalists and social scientists identified as a “virtual explosion” of Canadian right-wing extremism. The far right has a long history in Canada, and, in this regard, ebs members’ views reflected long-standing strains of extreme nationalism, racism, anti-statism, and anti-communism. However, the ebs and its successor organizations were very much concerned with issues that were current in late twentieth-century Canada: the expanding welfare state; changes in Canadian immigration policy; multiculturalism and a more civic-based nationalism; and the entrenchment of the rights revolution. Furthermore, the group was also a response to 1960s counterculture, a counter-counterculture in that it offered a radical challenge from the right, not only to the status quo but also to the New Left. While much of the history of Canada in the 1960s is focused on the left, the emergence of the ebs highlights the growth of activism at the other end of the political spectrum. Providing an important look at Canadian far-right extremism, this examination of the ebs serves as a reminder that the 1960s were not all Trudeaumania and flower power and that societal changes in the later decades of the century did not go uncontested.