This is a familiar story. It happened in Canada in 1907, but you could easily change the names and dates and find the same story in many other times and places. Replace “Mormon” with the name of any other despised religious group, and this post could be a current news article.

In January 1907, a Glasgow-born Presbyterian minister, university professor (Knox College, Toronto), social reformer named Thomas Buchanan Kilpatrick rose to speak at a mission meeting in Toronto, Canada. “The greatest grief in Alberta,” he said, “[is] the Mormon settlement. These people [are] Mormons first and Canadians afterwards. It [is] not enough to say they [grow] good beets – do they grow good Canadian citizens?”

His colleague, the Rev. Dr. John Sommerville, treasurer of the same church, extended Dr. Kilpatrick’s ideas. “The Mormon invasion [is] a sin to be laid at the government’s door. They [form] a dangerous element in Canadian life.”

These remarks and more were soon published in the newspapers. Upon reading them, Mr. Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior in the Canadian government, responded to a journalist’s query by saying:

I have lived many years in Alberta, and this is the first time I have heard that the Mormon settlements were a cause of grief. The region now occupied by the Mormons was unoccupied until they came, and so far as we can see it would have remained unoccupied for an interminable period had it not been for their knowledge of like conditions in the United States, and of means by which these conditions could be overcome. …

Nor can anything be said against their citizenship. They are sober, orderly, law-abiding, intelligent, and progressive. With the citizenship of the Mormons, the government has all to do; with their religion it has nothing to do. the churches, which exist for the purpose of dealing with matters of conscience are quite within their rights is discussing the merits or demerits of religious views of members or adherents of their own or other churches, but they have no right, because they dissent from the religious views of a certain body of people, to try by misrepresentation to discredit them as citizens, or by some misrepresentation arouse religious prejudice to be turned to account in party politics.

The newspaper war was on. Dr. Kilpatrick responded to Mr. Oliver, denying “having slandered the Mormons,” because what he had said was true, he reiterated. He and Dr.  Sommerville raised the stakes by referring to polygamy, charging the Mormons of Alberta “with immorality and disloyalty.” There was a moral danger, the men said, “because the Mormons taught polygamy in their text books, and preached it in their pulpits.” There was a political danger as well, because, they said, “they always voted in a unit.”

Mr. Oliver responded again.

I expressed the view that the government had all to do with the citizenship of the Mormons and nothing to do with their religion. From this view Dr. Kilpatrick emphatically dissented. That is to say, he holds the government accountable for the religious views of the members of the Mormon church, and for their expression of these views.

If [this] attitude is correct, it certainly adds very greatly, and so far as I am concerned, very unexpectedly, to the duties and responsibilities of the government. … It is up to Dr. Kilpatrick to tell the public just what authority the government has either to exclude Mormons from the country because of their views on polygamy, or to prevent persons who have become residents of the country from holding or voicing that or other doctrines of the Mormon church.

Naturally, the public debate was widely discussed in Alberta, where most Canadian Mormons lived, and the only province where a Mormon had a seat in a Provincial Legislature. An Edmonton correspondent for the national newspapers reported that “when the subject was brought up, there was only one voice, and it was in condemnation of what was considered an unfair attack upon a respectable and law-abiding section of the population. Strong, even violent speeches were delivered.”

Malcolm McKenzie, the member from Macleod, delivered one of those “strong speeches.” He declared that “the statements of these eastern doctors of divinity were a reflection on the whole province, which should and would not go unchallenged. It is unfair and dastardly for opponents 2,000 miles away to so shamefully traduce these people, whom they do not even know. If they have evidence pf their assertions [of the practice of polygamy or other legal violations], the criminal courts are wide open, and if they have not evidence they are cowards and slanderers, and deserve to be branded so.”

As for the charge that Mormons were a political danger because they always voted as a block, Mr. McKenzie said,

During the territorial election of 1902, Mr. John Woolf … ran against Mr. H.S. Allen, who was high in the Mormon Church, and had been elected as President of the Raymond Stake of Zion, the highest dignity that could be conferred by the Mormon Church in Canada upon any individual. It was a keen contest. The Elders and Bishops were arrayed on both sides and fought the issue to a finish. The Church made no attempt to force the election, and remained neutral, with the result that Mr. Woolf was returned by a large majority against the highest Mormon Church dignitary.

Other members of the legislature – Mr. Moore, the member for Red Deer, Mr. Simmons, the member for Lethbridge, among them – non-Mormons – offered similar speeches of support for their Mormon neighbors and in denial of the charges from the Toronto churchmen.

John W. Woolf, the sole Mormon legislator, provided a statement on modern Mormonism and polygamy.

The Mormon church does not teach polygamy in any shape or form, nor does it countenance the teaching of it by inferior bodies or private individuals. Polygamy is not held as an article of faith, nor as a practice to be permitted by the Mormon church. It is not taught in religious or week-day schools, nor conveyed n any form from elder to young.

I can state positively that there is not a Mormon child in Canada that is being brought up with any other view of polygamy than the children of other communities.

My own views on polygamy and those of my family, as well as those of every Mormon family I know, are exactly the same as, for instance, your own. …

Polygamy is not an issue with us, any more than slavery is an issue with the people of the United States. Both existed once upon a time. There are, doubtless, living today people who, having practiced one or the other, still believe they were right. But as a factor in the life and teachings of the people, one is not more dead than the other.

The furor continued for a while. Drs. Kilpatrick and Sommerville dismissed the Alberta legislators’ speeches as political nonsense delivered in a cynical bid for Mormon political support. Alberta’s attorney-general repeated that if any charge of polygamy or criminal disloyalty could be made and evidence presented, his department would attend to it. No one had such evidence, of course, and the uproar gradually died.

Mr. Moore, the member from Red Deer, seemed fond of proverbs, filling his speech to the Alberta Legislature with them. They form as fitting a caution to us today in our accusations against others as to those of 1907.

“Tell the truth and shame the devil.”

“Nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice.”

“With malice toward none, and charity towards all.”