A Web in the Weaving: A Brief History of Wicca in Canada
It is fairly easy for us to learn about the history of the Wicca and contemporary Paganism in the
In the late sixties and during the seventies, a series of
‘Wicca seeds’ were planted across the country from various sources—including
initiates of Gerald Gardner, Maxine Sanders and the Farrars who emigrated to
Canada, bringing their Craft with them, as well as influences and initiates
from the United States. In some cases these seeds grew into practicing groups
and covens, who later came into contact with each other through similar
interests, early Pagan magazines or occult shops; and eventually some of these
groups or individuals became more public. These are some of the seeds.
Part I - The Early Years
Gardnerian Wicca arrived in Canada quite early, possibly even prior to its arrival in the U.S via Raymond Buckland.
Originally from the Isle of Man , Jim Davies was
initiated into the Craft by Gerald Gardner and his High Priestess, D.P., in
1960.[i] He
later emigrated to Canada
settled in Toronto .
A talented custom machinist by training, Davies was known for his ability to
create some fine Craft tools.[ii]
Reports of his impact on the early Craft scene in Toronto are varied. By some accounts, it is
through Davies that many seekers were introduced to Gardnerian practice;[iii]
others describe him as a bit of a “lone wolf” with few initiates.[iv]
In the early 1980s, Davies initiated an Italian woman, Raven, and for a short
while in 1983 they ran an occult shop called “The Witchy Shop” on Harbord
Street.[v] He
remained visible on the scene for some time after the store closed. Davies died
in the early 1990s.
Another initiate of Gardnerian Wicca who emigrated to Canada was Roy
Blunden. His first encounter with Wica was in 1954 when he picked up a copy of Gardner ’s Witchcraft
Today. It was another five years before Blunden was able to find a coven
practicing in London , England , through a chance encounter
in an occult bookstore. In the 1960s, Blunden brought his style of Wicca to the
west coast, where he led a quiet life practicing as a solitary as well as
belonging to various covens. A geoscientist, Blunden describes his approach to
Wicca as pragmatic. He is also fascinated by “the complex symbolism used to
express Wicca as a transcendental religious faith,”[vi]
and has spent close to 50 years exploring this in depth. Along with his wife,
an American initiate, he taught and initiated many students.[vii]
If Gardnerian witches in Canada remained true to the epithet
‘her hidden children,’ Alexandrian Craft was much less hidden. Public
Alexandrian witches and covens were well known in Vancouver ,
Toronto , and possibly Halifax .
Sion Davies was a very public witch in British
Columbia who claimed Alexandrian initiation by the Farrars in Ireland . He was
a merchant seaman with a broad Irish accent and a penchant for the “spooky side
of things.”[viii]
Davies ran a public coven in the early 1970s in Victoria , and was in the news a few times
during that period. He also held public rituals: A bit of publicity in The
Georgia Straight, a well-known Vancouver
weekly newspaper, (date unknown) invited the Vancouver
public to join “witches and warlocks from the Vancouver
area” to “celebrate a Black Mass at midnight” in Stanley Park
in honour of Hallowe’en. Other bits of publicity included discharging lingering
spirits from haunted houses.[ix]
By 1981 his approach to publicity had softened somewhat. In an interview with
The Ubyssey,[x] he
described as being “bothered by the lack of distinction between witches and
satanists, [sic]” and cautioning that many symbols used by stereotypical
Satanists actually come from the Wiccan faith. He is also quoted as saying in 1981 that “All environmentalists are
actually Wiccans who aren’t initiated, because anybody who cares about mother
nature is a witch.” These days Sion Davies maintains a low profile, but he
still runs a coven near Mission ,
B.C., where he has lived for the past 20 years.[xi]
Meanwhile, in the Toronto
area, Roy Diamond, also known as “Cock Robin” or “Rob Roy” was the early
Canadian face of Alexandrian Wicca.[xii]
Originally an initiate of the Long Island
(Buckland) Gardnerian line,[xiii]
he later took an Alexandrian initiation and is better known as the
‘grand-daddy’ of most of the early Alexandrian initiates in the area.[xiv]
It is believed that he took this third degree with Maxine Sanders herself.[xv]
Dymond was not media shy and an article about him is said to have appeared in
MacLean’s magazine in the 1960s. [xvi]
He also had very strong traditional beliefs, one of which was chronicled quite
well in a ‘Witch War’ that took place in the Green Egg magazine in 1973.
A traditionalist, Dymond believed that homosexuality had no place in a
fertility-based religion,[xvii]
which was not an uncommon stance at the time.
Many traditionalists perceived Wicca as a fertility religion requiring
polarity and not necessarily a nature religion.[xviii] Dymond remained well-known and active on the
Toronto Pagan scene until his death in 1983 or 1984.[xix]
Other traditions of witchcraft also play a key role in the
history of Wicca in Canada .
Jean Kozocari was a hereditary witch living in British Columbia who claims that she can
trace her family’s witchcraft roots back to 1443. She was initiated by her
grandfather at age 16, and sent her to study with a “teacher who had been a
stockbroker with a seat on the Toronto Stock Exchange.”[xx]
Witchcraft, she says, remained quite underground until the 1960s and 1970s when
“more liberal thinking allowed her to come out of the broom closet.”[xxi]
Kozocari, no stranger to being interviewed about witchcraft, was called as an
expert witness during a B.C. Supreme Court libel hearing brought against the
evangelical television show 100
Huntley Street by Wiccan and Gnostic priest
Lion-Serpent Sun in 1988.[xxii]
Four years earlier the show aired a segment where Pentecostal minister Len
Olsen told how he had found Jesus after attending a ritual in 1972 where Sun
(then Mark Fedoruk) tried to kill him as a sacrifice to Satan. Sun sued 100 Huntley Street
for libel.[xxiii]
During the trial Kozacari testified that witches must come ‘out of the closet
and say that we don’t worship Satan,” and that there is a lot of “garbage about
witches” in the popular culture and media. [xxiv]
"We are the only people still judged by Mother Goose and Walt Disney fairy
tale standards," she said.[xxv]
She spoke of the Wiccan Rede, expressed as "And it harm none - do what
thou will," and said that Wiccans believe that “all gods are one - we just
have a different view about him, her or it. It doesn't matter what name we use.
We could call it Ralph." [xxvi]
Kozacari currently lives a quiet life in Victoria .[xxvii]
One of Kozacari’s initiates was well-known Canadian poet
Robin Skelton. Also known as “Canada ’s
Merlin,” Skelton was a very public witch and the founder of the creative
writing program at the University
of Victoria . He was also
a professor within the department. Skelton was initiated by Kozacari in 1981,[xxviii]
and at the time of his death in 1997 was generally considered an elder of BC
neo-Paganism.[xxix] He
was also known as a local ‘ghost-buster’ and regularly performed ritual
cleansing of houses, ridding them of spiritual disturbances. Together with
Kozacari, he authoured a book on the topic called A Gathering of Ghosts.
A prolific writer, Skelton published several books on magic and witchcraft as
well as over 70 volumes on other topics, ranging from “poetry to criticism,
from short stories to Greek translations,” during his lifetime.[xxx]
He was described in the media as “peering out at the world from the midst of a
majestic and unruly mane of grey hair and beard,”[xxxi]
and by his daughter following his death as “dramatic, […] often wearing a black
turtleneck and sometimes a black hat.”[xxxii]
He was certainly one of the most recognizable faces of contemporary Paganism in
Canada .
In 1979, Richard and Tamarra James moved to Toronto
from New York .
They quickly opened the “Occult Shop” and became quite active on the Toronto
Pagan scene. Shortly afterwards, they incorporated the Wiccan Church of Canada
(WCC) to be a public face of Wicca as opposed to the less open coven structure
that was prevalent at the time. It was also hoped that a bit of public
structure would give Wicca a legitimacy in the eyes of the public and give
Wiccans ‘rights’ afforded other religions.[xxxiii],
[xxxiv]
Richard James now says that the name was a mistake, but at the time it seemed
appropriate.[xxxv] In
addition to the classes offered by the WCC, the James’ maintained a small
coven. As the coven grew and hived off into smaller groups, a completely
home-grown Canadian Wiccan tradition, the Odyssean tradition, was born. The
name Odyssean is in recognition of the individual spiritual journal or odyssey,
which is different for every initiate. Also, through the James, Toronto is also the official home for many of the
artefacts from Gardner ’s
museum of witchcraft, including his original Books of Shadow, which they
purchased from Ripley’s museum in 1987.[xxxvi]
The documents are available to initiates and scholars to view.
These are not the only people who were practicing or
teaching the Craft during the early years of Wicca in Canada . There
were covens in Halifax , Montreal
and Ottawa ; and
probably in other cities and communities across the country. This is only a
small slice of our national Wiccan, and NeoPagan, story. I regret that I did
not have the space in this article to touch on more of the individuals and
groups that have played a part in our history. I hope to be able to explore
their contributions in later articles. In the meanwhile, stay tuned for part II
of this article: Rights.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I am also enormously grateful to
everyone who took the time to answer my questions and share their stories. I am
especially indebted to Castalia, Hawk, Richard James, Shelley Rabinovitch, and
Sam Wagar for their help with this article. This article would not have been
possible without their patience and time spent with me in person or online, or
the valuable resources and contacts they provided.
[i]
www.thewica.co.uk/wica/wica.htm Accessed April, 2007.
[ii] Richard
James, interview at Gaia Gathering ,
May 21, 2007.
[iii]
Rabinovitch, personal correspondence.
[iv] Richard
James, interview at Gaia Gathering ,
May 21, 2007.
[v] Richard
James, interview at Gaia Gathering ,
May 21, 2007.
[vi]
http://www.wiccanweb.ca/wiki/index.php/Roy_Blunden. Accessed April 2007.
[vii]
Paragraph adapted from http://www.wiccanweb.ca/wiki/index.php/Roy_Blunden.
Accessed April 2007.
[viii] Sam
Wagar, personal correspondence, May 11, 2007.
[ix] Georgia
Straight, date unknown; received from Sam Wagar.
[x] The
Ubyssey, Friday October 30, 1981.
[xi] Sam
Wagar, personal correspondence.
[xii]
Shelley Rabinovitch, personal communication.
[xiii]
Castalia, interview at Gaia Gathering
on May 20, 2007.
[xiv] This
changed in the late 1990s, when another line of Alexandrians came to South
Western Ontario via the United
States , and started initiating students in
their own line, and hiving off covens. (Castalia, interview at Gaia Gathering on May 20, 2007)
[xv]
Castalia, interview at Gaia Gathering
on May 20, 2007.
[xvi] Rabinovitch , MA
thesis and personal correspondence.
[xvii] Green
Egg, 1973.
[xviii] For
Wicca as a fertility religion versus nature religion, see Chas Clifton. Her
Hidden Children.
[xix]
Richard James, interview at Gaia Gathering ,
May 21, 2007; Castalia, interview at Gaia Gathering ,
May 20, 2007.
[xx] History
of witchcraft told by expert witness. The Vancouver Sun, June 15, 1988. pg A10.
[xxi]
Rabinovitch and Lewis, p141.
[xxii]
History of witchcraft told by expert witness. The Vancouver Sun, June 15, 1988. pg A10.
[xxiii] See
part II of this article for more on this trial.
[xxiv]
History of witchcraft told by expert witness. The Vancouver Sun, June 15, 1988. pg A10.
[xxv]
Witches not devilish, trial told. The Vancouver
Sun, June 16, 1988. pg E15.
[xxvi]
Witches not devilish, trial told. The Vancouver
Sun, June 16, 1988. pg E15.
[xxvii]
Rabinovitch and Lewis, p141.
[xxviii] TV
preacher names 3 more as Satanists. The Vancouver Sun. June 30, 1988. pg. A17.
[xxix]
Rabinovitch and Lewis, p251.
[xxx] The
problem with ghosts? -- they think they're alive; Witches give advice. The Vancouver Sun.
September 8, 1989. pg. G4.
[xxxi] The
problem with ghosts? -- they think they're alive; Witches give advice. The Vancouver Sun.
September 8, 1989. pg. G4.
[xxxii]
Remembering poet Robin Skelton as only a daughter can. The Vancouver Sun. Vancouver, B.C.: Aug 30, 1997. pg. B3.
[xxxiii]
Richard James, interview at Gaia Gathering ,
May 21, 2007.
[xxxiv]
Note, in Canada ,
religion is a freedom not a right. All religions are ‘legitimate’ in Canada . The
practices of a religion, however, must conform to Canadian law.
[xxxv]
Richard James, comment made during a panel of church models for NeoPagans at Gaia Gathering 2007.
[xxxvi]
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos324.htm. Accessed May 22, 2007.
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