Alberta Residents 'Shell-Shocked' as Investigation Reveals White Supremacist Group Trained at Rural Hall

In a CBC News visual investigation, footage posted by Second Sons Canada on Telegram shows more than 60 masked members conducting military-style drills at a community hall in rural Alberta. The group, widely described as Canada's predominant white nationalist organisation, held its second annual national meeting in early July at Square Butte Hall near Millarville, roughly 70 kilometres southwest of Calgary — and residents say they had no idea until the investigation revealed it. The findings raise pointed questions for Canadians about how extremist groups secure community venues, and what police and volunteer boards can do about it.

Alberta residents 'shell-shocked' as investigation reveals white supremacist group trained at rural community hall

Millarville, Alta. – Wednesday — Second Sons Canada, the country's predominant white nationalist group, organised its second annual national meeting at Square Butte Hall near Millarville in early July 2026. More than 60 members participated in drills that included army crawls and marching with cots, according to videos the group posted on Telegram. The CBC News visual investigation identified the location by matching visual clues in the group's own posts against public imagery of the area.

The Investigation

CBC's visual investigations team traced the July gathering to Square Butte Hall after the group disclosed only that its meetup took place in the "foothills of Alberta." The group routinely publishes visuals of its exercises, but members are often masked or digitally obscured, and precise locations are never shared. Matching the distinctive welcome arch outside the hall, interior architectural details and the Highway 2 banner gave investigators the confirmation they needed — the same open-source methods the team has used to track fascist fight clubs across the country.

Jeremy MacKenzie, an Afghanistan veteran who founded Second Sons in 2024, led a military-inspired chant referencing fighting the Taliban, punctuated by the group's slogan: "Our people, our home, our future." Members wore shirts emblazoned with the words "old stock enforcer," crossed swords behind an old-school goalie mask. In a Telegram post published weeks after the gathering, MacKenzie praised members for a weekend that included "friendly combat sports competition, organizational training, promotions, awards, excellent food and social time."

The hall itself is a volunteer-run space that normally hosts community dances, recipe exchanges and fire prevention training. Its board president, Shanna Dunne, said in a statement to CBC that "the organization that booked the hall did not identify itself to us in any way." She added that the Square Butte Community Association is "committed to providing a respectful and inclusive community space." Dunne also told CBC that an RCMP officer had contacted the hall seeking information about the Second Sons meetup.

Canadian Context

Second Sons Canada was formed in 2024 and maintains chapters across the country. It describes itself as a "men's nationalist club," but the Canadian Anti-Hate Network characterises it as a members-only organisation for white men inspired by militant white nationalist groups abroad. The group's leaders have welcomed neo-Nazis into their ranks, called for mass deportations "at gunpoint" of non-white people from Canada and said Canadian politicians should be executed as traitors.

The group follows the "active club" model promoted by the global white supremacist movement: male-focused networks that expect the current political order to be swept aside, potentially by force. The approach traces back to Robert Rundo's Rise Above Movement in the United States; Rundo was later sentenced to two years in prison for planning and engaging in riots across California. In Canada, similar groups include Nationalist-13, which CBC has documented alongside Second Sons in its coverage of fascist fight clubs.

MacKenzie previously created Dialagon, a right-wing network that the RCMP has labelled an extremist, militia-like organisation. In May 2026, a CBC visual investigation found that members of Canada's biggest white nationalist group trained this spring with U.S. counterparts south of the border and met with the founder of a global movement of fascist fight clubs — a signal one expert called "very significant."

Impact on Canadians

The undisclosed use of volunteer community halls strikes at the trust that holds rural Canadian communities together. Square Butte Hall is the kind of space where neighbours gather for dances and fire prevention training; its volunteers book events through standard procedures that do not include ideological screening. When an extremist group books such a venue under false pretences, the institution itself is drawn into national attention through no fault of its own.

For residents of Millarville, learning about the gathering after the fact was unsettling. Foothills County Reeve Rob Siewert said the county "recently became aware of activities that are reported to have occurred on private property," but added that no formal complaints had been received and no calls had been logged with county staff. The episode also tests the balance between freedom of association and the protection of multicultural values enshrined in Canadian law — a balance that plays out differently in every province and territory.

The broader concern for communities across Canada is recruitment. Experts who study active clubs note that the movement is deliberately trying to draw in young men, using fitness, martial arts and a sense of belonging as entry points before revealing the full scope of the ideology. A drill weekend in the foothills, shared across Telegram and other platforms, serves the group's visibility as much as its training — which is why the venue pattern matters far beyond one Alberta hamlet.

Reactions and Analysis

"My first reaction is: that scares me," Lou Kuiack, a Millarville-area resident, told a CBC Calgary reporter. "I didn't think that would come to our small little town, in our backyard." Leanna Bridgeman, manager of the local coffee shop Miss Marple's, said she was "absolutely shell-shocked that something like that would happen out here," calling it "completely disturbing." Tim Babey, owner of the Millarville General Store, said he was "really surprised," noting that "people out here are pretty accepting, but I think they'd still be quite shocked at seeing something like that going on."

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said the "old stock enforcer" shirts carry a deliberate meaning. "When they say 'old stock,' they mean white and European people," he told CBC. "When they label themselves as enforcers, it's tied to their belief that they will have to use culture, politics and violence to achieve their goal of a racist mass deportation of people who aren't old stock Canadian." He added that "booking community spaces under false pretenses is normal for white nationalist movements, because most spaces wouldn't agree to hold their events."

The venue pattern is well documented. Last September, CBC tracked a similar Second Sons meeting in southern Ontario to a Lions Club in Caledonia, Ont., where the hall said the booking would not have been approved had staff known who was behind it. In late May, the group marched through downtown Sudbury, Ont., and installed a two-metre-high cross at the Crosses for Change memorial dedicated to people who died from drug overdoses, blaming the overdose crisis on newcomers in social media posts. The group has previously appeared in Halifax and the Niagara Region.

Tony McAleer, a former neo-Nazi who now works as a Vancouver-based anti-hate activist, described the approach as "mainstreaming." "It's nothing new. It's about covering yourself in the cloak of respectability and it's part of an overall strategy, which has been around for decades, called 'mainstreaming,'" he said. Mack Lamoureux of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think-tank, put it more bluntly: "The minute you peel back even the slightest layer of this onion, it becomes far more insidious. These are virulent white supremacists."

What Happens Next

Second Sons Canada did not respond to CBC's request for comment. The RCMP said it does not confirm or deny investigations, but that it is "aware of the Second Sons." The force emphasised that it does not "investigate movements or ideologies," focusing instead on criminal activities by individuals or groups, while "actively monitoring the rise of hate-motivated crime and incidents across the country."

That distinction matters for enforcement. Hate propaganda provisions in the Criminal Code give police tools to act when individuals or groups cross from speech into criminal conduct, but monitoring an ideology is not, by itself, grounds for charges. Community associations retain the authority to review future booking requests, and the pattern documented by CBC — in Alberta and Ontario alike — may prompt volunteer boards across the country to ask tougher questions about who is renting their halls.

For Canadians, the investigation is a reminder that extremist organising does not happen only in anonymous corners of the internet. It can unfold in a volunteer-run hall in the Alberta foothills, booked under a name no one recognised. The response of residents in Millarville — surprise, concern and a determination to protect their community's character — may prove as important as any police action in the months ahead.

By Alex Thompson, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Reporting is based on sources cited in the article.