That does not sound like a combination that would go together, but it's true. Ted Byfield is interviewed in the January 2006 issue of The Wittenburg Door. No, wait, Mr Byfield is listed as an online extra, so apparently he's not in the print edition. Is Ted too risqué even for The Door? That's hard to imagine, but who knows?

The interview gets off to a rocky start with this introduction:

Ted Byfield may or may not be the most conservative man in Canada. As editor-in-chief of the ultra-conservative Alberta Report magazine, he's like the Great White North's version of Bill O'Rielly [sic]. Only he's older, better-looking, and more talented.

Bill O'Reilly? Please! Ted is not nearly as loud and overbearing. (That other stuff about him is all true, though.) The interview focuses mainly on Mr Byfield's current project as editor of The Christians, a planned 40-volume series on the history of Christianity. There is also some discussion of the differences between Canada and the United States, and the difference that makes for believers in the two countries.

BYFIELD: . . . Canada has abandoned Christianity much more decisively than the Americans have.

DOOR: To what do you think you would attribute that?

BYFIELD: I think the main reason is that, we had a great writer by the name of Bruce Hutchinson that died some years ago but he said that Canada is the affirmation of order, and the United States is the affirmation of dissent. What he meant was that Canada always went along with whatever the establishment said it should do. We have always had that attitude. The American colonies rebelled against that, and because they rebelled then a hundred years later we were able to secure a considerable degree of independence, eventually a full degree of independence ourselves because of the American precedent. The Brits knew, "If we pick a fight with these guys, they're just going to join the Americans. So we're not going to do that." The consequence of this is that when the official establishment becomes religiously skeptical so does the Canadian public.
. . .
DOOR: The impression in some parts of the United States of Canadians is that you're a more docile, and easily lead, or a more suggestible people.

BYFIELD: Absolutely, and they're right, that is absolutely true. It's nothing to be proud of but it's something you have to contend with, and a consequence of this is something that can quite quickly become a colorless country. It doesn't mean we're cowardly because, for instance, back when we were more British than we are now, before the first and second world wars for example, we plunged into WWII two years before the Americans. And into the first world war three years before the Americans. Canada in both world wars had a magnificent battle record, it really was good, so it's not as though we're cowardly. It's just that at that time this is what the established order wanted us to do so we did it. Now it wants us to be religiously skeptical, so we're skeptical.

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification, but there is much truth in that.

Read the whole thing.

Ted Byfield is, in my view, one of the mainsprings of the current success of the Conservative Party. Back in the dark days of Trudeau and Mulroney, he kept Christian conservative ideas alive in Western Canada through his magazines Alberta Report and British Columbia Report. (And, no, they weren't "ultra-conservative", except to Liberals and NDPers.) He deserves some of the credit for Stephen Harper's victory. Sadly, both magazines have folded, but Western Standard carries on the banner of grass-roots conservatism in Canada.

Ted Byfield also writes weekly columns for The Calgary Sun and World Net Daily. The Calgary Sun keeps only his latest column online, while his WND archive is posted here.

UPDATE (2 Feb.): I took it upon myself to correct the transcription errors in The Door's online version of the interview. I wasn't sure about the right thing to do in this situation, but I decided that sprinkling the text with "[sic]" several times probably looks pedantic and detracts from reading the interview. Those who want to see the original with errors intact should click on "Read the whole thing".