“All of these western populist movements had a spiritual dimension to them,” Preston acknowledges. “Riel might have been crazy at the end, but his rebellion was as much influenced by his Catholic upbringing as it was anything else.” And, he continues, “the movement to create the United Church, which was a bottom-up attempt to integrate things, occurred at exactly the same time as the farmers’ movement. Then in the Depression, you had Tommy Douglas, who was a Baptist minister,” and in Alberta, “Bible Bill” Aberhart.
