Career
And numerous books and pamphlets. Gostick influenced a number of figures on the Canadian far right. Jim Keegstra got most of his reading material through his membership in Gostick"s League.
David Lethbridge, an anti-fascist activist and Communist Party member, described the CLR and Gostick as a "danger" because they soft-pedaled an essentially "fascist" message.
"What made them dangerous was that they came across as mainstream," said Lethbridge to the Globe and Mail. Ron Gostick was born in Wales to Canadian parents and moved with them to Canada shortly after the First World War.
They established a homestead near Stettler, Alberta and lived there for nine years before moving to Calgary. From 1933 to 1935, he attended Crescent Heights High School and was influenced by the school"s principal, William Aberhart, a proponent of the social cr movement in Alberta.
His mother, Edith Gostick, was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in the 1935 provincial election that brought Social Cr to power for the first time, making Aberhardt Premier of Alberta.
Ron Gostick entered the Canadian Army in 1941 and fought in the Second World War. After demobilization, he worked as a court reporter in Ontario and served as national secretary of the Social Cr Party of Canada, the less successful federal counterpart of Aberhardt"s Alberta Social Cr party. He settled in Flesherton, Ontario where he spent most of the rest of his life.
In the 1945 federal election, he ran as the Social Cr candidate in the Ontario riding of Grey North, coming in last place with 250 votes.
In 1946, Gostick founded the "Union of Electors", a social cr based provincial party that was inspired by the more radical Quebec wing of the Canadian social cr movement, the Union des electeurs. He also began his publishing activities at the same time, beginning to issue the periodical Social Cr in 1947.
The publication was disowned by the Social Cr Association of Canada in 1950 because of its anti-Semitism. Gostick renamed the periodical The Canadian Intelligence Service in 1951.
The CACL became the Christian Action Movement and later in 1967 became the "Canadian League of Rights" (CLR).
B"nai Brith described the organization as being "long-known to support racist and anti-Semitic positions."
Gostick died of cancer at the age of 87.