Joshua Haldeman, the Flying Political Chiropractor

A Brief History of Family X

The following is a chapter in a series about the evolution of the famed family X.

John Elon Haldeman was an intelligent and educated man who relocated his young family from Minnesota to Saskatchewan. Although his son Joshua was drawn back to Davenport, Iowa, to attend the world’s first chiropractic institute, he returned to Canada to practice this new profession. Chiropractic medicine was initially of questionable value.

In 1926, Joshua returned to Canada from the Palmer School of Chiropractic as Doctor Haldeman to practice this new, exotic discipline. He was Canada’s first chiropractor, and he married Wanda Eva Peters in December 1927. However, his new professional choice did not go well. After two years as a chiropractor, he was compelled to take up farming. As a traditional farming family, Wanda gave birth to Joshua Gerald Noel Haldeman in Saskatchewan in December 1934.

Unfortunately, Dr. Haldeman’s stint as a farmer was a failure. Perhaps he was unlucky, a poor farmer, or both. However, the Great Depression probably contributed to his agricultural demise. He lost his farm because he was unable to pay for the equipment he had purchased. He also lost his family after Wanda and young Joshua left him. Dr. Haldeman moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1936, to resume his chiropractic business. He thought that Chiropractic medicine could cure all illnesses. Since his profession was not well-established, he helped create a legal and respected chiropractic organization in Canada.  However, he felt persecuted by the government and other medical professionals, so it was a struggle every step of the way.

The sting of his personal losses and professional struggles led Dr. Haldeman to become interested in Canadian politics. In 1938, he joined a political organization known as Technology, Incorporated, as a Director. Some of the radical ideas of this organization led to it becoming a target for the local police. In July 1940, on the eve of World War II, Technology, Inc. was compelled to issue statements declaring its patriotism and willingness to defend Canada. In October 1940, Dr. Haldeman was convicted under the Defence of Canada regulations despite their patriotic declarations. He was fined $100 or two months in jail for “1) defending an illegal organization, and 2) making or publishing or distributing or circulating a writing or printing of a document entitled ‘Statement of Patriotism…’ ”.

How did Dr. Haldeman fall into such a subversive, criminal political group? What were the aims of this group?

Technology, Incorporated, or the Technology Party, believed scientists and engineers should rule the world. They did not trust dictators, hereditary kings, or democracies ruled by “the people.” How they proposed to elect, select, or find these all-powerful scientists and engineers was never made clear. Perhaps the Canadian Prime Minister would empower them to walk into every Canadian government office and decide who to fire and which departments should be eliminated after rummaging through all the tax and expenditure files. Maybe this Technology Party was ahead of its time?

Members of Technology, Inc. were jailed during World War II for their extremist views. Members used numbers instead of names to obfuscate their identities or convert their activities to pure mathematics. Joshua Haldeman became 10450-1. Howard Scott, the organization’s national leader, said they would be a government-in-waiting in the likely event of the collapse of the current system.

After a few nights in jail and a harsh public criticism in the newspapers, Technology, Inc. was discredited. The irrepressible Joshua Haldeman moved on to Clifford Davis’ Social Credit movement. This group believed workers were not paid enough to consume all the goods and services they delivered to the marketplace. Unsurprisingly, they felt that scientists and engineers should regulate wages and the marketplace to bring the country into balance. The Social Credit movement also thought the secret ballot should be eliminated since it was supposed to be a tool of the global Jewish conspiracy. Clifford Douglas’ paranoia was so extreme that he believed the Jews were behind the rise of Hitler. Joshua Haldeman ran twice for the Canadian Parliament as the Social Credit Party representative but lost badly each time.

Despite his political setbacks and jail time, Joshua finally generated chiropractic customers, and his financial status improved markedly. In 1942, while taking dancing lessons, he met Winnifred Josephine Fletcher. Without missing a step, he quickly made Winnifred his second wife. He and Winnifred had five children between 1943 and 1948, including twin girls in April 1948.

Joshua continually pushed the envelope of politics, chiropractic, family life, and adventuring. Among other things, there was a machine for measuring nerve pressure.

Finally, both Haldeman and Canada had had enough of each other. In 1950, Haldeman crated and placed his new private airplane on a ship, taking his second family to South Africa to avoid the “oppressive restrictions” of Canadian culture.

His greener pastures were painted white. A September 2023 Atlantic article said, “Haldeman believed that apartheid South Africa was destined to lead ‘White Christian Civilization’ in its fight against the ‘International Conspiracy’ of Jewish bankers and the ‘hordes of Coloured people’ they controlled.”

A biography by Walter Isaacson about Joshua’s famous grandson, released in September 2023, soft-peddled Joshua’s racism by portraying him as simply an adventurer and risk-taker. He was both, but his book downplays Haldeman’s racism and anti-democratic impulses.  Ultimately, Haldeman took one too many risks when his private plane crashed into some high-line wires, and he died in South Africa in 1974.