Crime Story: Rachel Browne on how online extremism bleeds into everyday life

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Cult Queen of Canada from Uncover

Episode: Crime Story: Rachel Browne on how online extremism bleeds into everyday life
Host: Kathleen Goldhar (Crime Story, CBC)
Guest: Rachel Browne (investigative journalist, host of "The Cult Queen of Canada")
Date: March 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode unpacks the story behind Romana Didulo, the self-proclaimed "Queen of Canada," and explores how her online extremist movement bled into real-world chaos—most notably, in the small Saskatchewan town of Richmond. Host Kathleen Goldhar interviews journalist Rachel Browne about her deep investigation into Romana’s impact, the vulnerabilities of her followers, the dramatic tensions in Richmond, and how online conspiracy movements rupture everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Background: Who is Romana Didulo?

Timestamp: 03:26 – 06:16

• Didulo was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to British Columbia as a teenager.
• Her early adult years were marked by failed entrepreneurial projects and attempts at consulting, including in the oil and gas industry.
• “She was always driven by this desire to achieve something and become someone...always someone ready to pivot if the thing that she's working on doesn't pan out.” (Rachel Browne, 06:08)
• In 2020, she launched an unsuccessful federal political party (“Canada First Party”), echoing American right-wing slogans.

Seizing the QAnon Power Vacuum

Timestamp: 06:16 – 07:42

• After QAnon’s anonymous leader disappeared post-January 6th, Didulo stepped into the conspiratorial vacuum.
• The pandemic served as fertile ground for her rise: “It was this perfect storm for her to come in and kind of capitalize on it.” (Rachel Browne, 07:34)

The Telegram Kingdom: Cult Tactics and Radical Promises

Timestamp: 07:42 – 09:35

• Didulo's Telegram community swelled to 70,000+, where she issued pseudo-royal decrees: “You don't have to pay taxes anymore. You don't have to pay your hydro bills, your mortgage payments, your car payments.”
• She also promised miracle cures via imaginary technologies like “medbeds.”
• The channel fed a feedback loop of desperate requests and uncritical praise.

Real-world Harm Done to Followers

Timestamp: 09:35 – 11:09

• Many followers—often seniors or financially vulnerable—suffered serious consequences by following Didulo’s decrees.
• “There's that couple in Quebec ... lost their home that was worth over a million dollars.” (Rachel Browne, 10:25)
• Stories abounded of people losing homes, facing Canada Revenue Agency crackdowns, losing power or utilities.

The Cross-Canada "Royal Tour" and Arrival in Richmond, Saskatchewan

Timestamp: 11:14 – 14:44

• Didulo and her convoy toured Canada by RVs, seeking followers and donations.
• High-profile stunts included burning a Canadian flag on Parliament Hill and inciting followers to attempt citizens' arrests of police in Peterborough.
• As notoriety grew, more towns pushed them out—they ultimately arrived in Richmond, invited by Ricky Manns, a local with QAnon sympathies and strained town relations.

Richmond in Crisis: Fear, Division, and Protest

Timestamp: 17:01 – 23:36

• Richmond (pop. 120), unprepared for the cult's presence, erupts in anxiety.
• Residents feared for safety (especially after receiving specific email death threats), increasing community hostility.
• The group’s presence was “a recipe for disaster...they didn't make friends, the minute they arrived in town.” (Rachel Browne, 18:24)
• A mass protest followed, uniting much of Richmond and neighboring towns against Didulo's followers.

Town Divides: Legal Limbo and Electoral Drama

Timestamp: 23:36 – 27:33

• Supporters in town enabled Didulo’s followers to be added to local land titles, potentially allowing them to influence local elections.
• The 2024 mayoral race became a proxy war over cult presence, with suspicions that the cult members could swing results; ultimately, they did not vote, and the incumbent Brad Miller won.
• Community now split between actively anti-cult residents, neutral observers, and a handful of sympathizers.

Living Conditions and the End of the Richmond Enclave

Timestamp: 28:47 – 31:29

• Didulo’s followers, mostly elderly, lived in poor conditions inside the abandoned school: “without heat, without proper cooling,” with health and safety risks.
• The RCMP raided the school in September 2025 due to reports of replica guns; Didulo, followers, and Ricky Manns were arrested.
• Saskatchewan authorities later declared the school uninhabitable.

Didulo’s Current Status

Timestamp: 31:29 – 32:17

• Didulo is now in Regina, facing criminal charges. She represents herself in court, refusing legal counsel, invoking “natural law.”

Charisma, Myth, and Cult Appeal

Timestamp: 33:07 – 35:06

• Despite not fitting the “charismatic leader” mythos, Didulo’s appeal lies in “saying the right things at the right time,” offering anti-government rhetoric, humor, and a quirky, mysterious persona.
• “She loves to dance. She loves Rasputin, the Boney M song. She has her own kind of...rendition of it.” (Rachel Browne, 34:00)

Memorable Moment: The Boney M “Rah Rah Romana” Anthem

Timestamp: 33:56 – 34:11

• Didulo adopts Boney M’s “Rasputin” as her unofficial anthem, altering the lyrics to praise herself as “Precious Queen of Canada.”
• “Rah Rah Romana, Precious Queen of Canada or something.” (Rachel Browne, 34:00)

The Larger Picture: Vulnerability, Polarization, and the Anatomy of Cults

Timestamp: 35:44 – 37:09

• Modern cults thrive on polarization, disinformation, and a distrust of authority.
• Didulo capitalized on COVID anxieties, vaccine skepticism, and feelings of alienation.
• “It's that polarization, this unwillingness to see nuance...that gives rise to someone like her.” (Rachel Browne, 36:45)

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Notable Quotes & Speaker Attribution

• On Didulo’s opportunism:
  “She was very attuned to what was going on online...It was this perfect storm for her to come in and kind of capitalize on it.”
  (Rachel Browne, 07:34)

• On the suffering of followers:
  “There's that couple in Quebec ... lost their home that was worth over a million dollars.”
  (Rachel Browne, 10:25)

• On Richmond’s reaction:
  “A recipe for disaster...the cult didn't do themselves any favors by kind of antagonizing the locals.”
  (Rachel Browne, 18:24)

• On the town’s legal predicament:
  “It is not illegal to be part of a cult...they weren’t committing any crimes when it came to trespassing.”
  (Rachel Browne, 21:57)

• On Didulo’s charisma:
  “She kind of bucks a lot of the stereotypes...but I do think genuinely, for those who follow her, they do find her charismatic.”
  (Rachel Browne, 33:18)

• On conditions in the school:
  “In the school they were living in without heat, without proper cooling…concerns that they were being forced to work for Romana in various capacities around the clock.”
  (Rachel Browne, 29:00)

• On broader implications:
  “There's just something about her that picks up on that [polarization] and capitalizes on this polarization that's becoming more and more apparent.”
  (Rachel Browne, 36:18)

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Important Timestamps for Key Segments

• 03:26 — Romana Didulo’s early life & failed enterprises
• 06:16 — Post-QAnon power vacuum and Didulo’s rise
• 07:42 — Telegram channel, “royal decrees,” and cult tactics
• 09:35 — Harm to followers, financial ruin
• 11:14 — The convoy, trucker protests, and cross-country tour
• 14:44 — Richmond: the school, the invitation, and tensions
• 17:01 — Community division, fear, and escalation
• 19:48 — Incident of death threats; protest justification
• 23:55 — Land title gambit and election anxieties
• 28:53 — Living conditions in the abandoned school
• 30:40 — The raid, arrests, and exodus from Richmond
• 33:07 — Charisma, myth-making, and appeal
• 35:44 — Broader lessons on polarization and cults

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Summary Takeaway

This in-depth conversation reveals how online extremism—stoked by figures like Romana Didulo—can upend real communities and prey on vulnerable people. Richmond’s ordeal serves as a chilling case study of digital disinformation flowing into daily life, creating not just isolated victims but persistent and sometimes terrifying ripples through entire towns and institutions. The episode offers both a cautionary tale and a nuanced exploration of cult dynamics in the age of social media.

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Transcript

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[Rachel Brown]

Hey everyone, Rachel Brown here. First of all, I want to give a massive thanks to our listeners. This project was a labor of love and it's so cool to see it being received like this. If you listen to all of the cult Queen of Canada, I think you'll appreciate my recent chat with Kathleen Goldhar. On her podcast Crime Story. I tell her about all things Romana, including behind the scenes stories from the making of this project. And after this, consider checking out other episodes in the Crime Story feed. It's linked in the show notes. I think you'll like it. Now onto my interview with Kathleen. Thanks for listening. There's a lot of people who are struggling already financially who report on the Telegram channel. I've lost my home. I. I have the CRA on my back because I'm not paying my taxes. I've had my power and utilities turned off because I paid my. I stopped paying my bills. Queen Romana, help me. What's going on? So you see a lot of desperation, but then a lot of sort of blind loyalty and allegiance to her nonetheless.

[Narrator]

Richmond, Saskatchewan is a tiny Prairie town, population 120. It doesn't have a restaurant or a coffee shop. It doesn't even have a gas station. But what it does have is an abandoned school building. And for a brief surreal stretch of time, that school became the headquarters of the self declared Queen of Canada. Her name is Romana Didalo and she used conspiracy theories to gain hundreds of thousands of followers and to entice Canadians to join her in Saskatchewan. So when the residents of Richmond found out what she was doing. Some immediately pushed back, while others quietly wondered, could this be the next Waco? What happened next wasn't just a strange story from a small town in Canada. It was the beginning of a collision between online extremism and everyday life. In her new podcast, the Cult Queen of Canada, host Rachel Brown investigates what happened in Richmond.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Rachel, welcome to Crime Story.

[Rachel Brown]

Thanks, Kathleen.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

So you have been following this story for years, and you first wrote about it in 2024 in the Walrus. Tell me about this woman at the center of it, Romana Didlo. Tell me about who she is and how she became the Queen of Canada.

[Rachel Brown]

Well, we don't know too much about Romana's earlier years. We kind of know bits and pieces based on what she's said online and has said in her live stream and that sort of thing. So we can kind of piece together a little bit. What we do know is that she was born and raised in the Philippines. And she describes that she was raised in a, the modern equivalent of the royal family in its own right in the Philippines, whatever that means. And then as a teenager in the 90s, she immigrated with a family member to live in British Columbia. Raised by relatives there. And then as she became older and an adult, she started kind of being more entrepreneurial. So she would start different jobs like cleaning services, consulting services. At one point she was doing consulting for the oil and gas industry, looking to help businesses bring in foreign workers into these types of industries in Alberta and elsewhere, and then sort of started other small businesses here and there that really didn't have much success. And then in 2020 is when she tries to become a political leader. So she starts this federal political party called the Canada First Party, which has a lot of slogans that are similar to what you hear with the American Republican Party, like draining the swamp in Ottawa, that sort of thing. And she tries to get that off the ground. But like her businesses, it's really take off. So that's sort of, in a nutshell, what we know about Romana Pre, the Queen of Canada.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Okay. Do we have any sense? Did trauma exist in her life? Does she talk about having any kind of issues, like maybe why the family immigrated? Do we have any idea of sort of like anything out of an ordinary life of hers?

[Rachel Brown]

Not really. Her family hasn't, hasn't spoken out publicly as, as far as I'm aware at this point about who she is. So everything we know comes from her and everything's kind of sugarcoated. And she has very much an agenda of how she wants to portray herself and how she wants to portray her background. But it's very light on details. We're left to kind of figure out or at least kind of guess or surmise what may or may not have led to her becoming who she is. But it's clear that she was always driven by this desire to achieve something and become someone. And I think as time went on, it's clear that she was after a sense of power and control, sort of in the business world and then in the political world. And she's always someone that is ready to pivot if the thing that she's working on doesn't pan out. Right.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

What I found so interesting about the timing of her sort of bursting on to the weird sphere was that she sort of filled a void with the fall of QAnon and that she kind of snuck herself in there. Can you tell me more about that?

[Rachel Brown]

Yeah. So after 2021, after January 6th, this anonymous figure, Q, which is the anonymous leader of the QAnon movement, had stopped posting online on message boards and other online corners of the Internet where Q was prominent. So as my former colleague at vice, Mack Lamoure, put it, there was this power vacuum that was created. And she, as someone who I think was clearly seeing that her political aspirations in a more traditional sense weren't going to pan out, she was very attuned to what was going on online. It was also during the height of the pandemic, so there were so many people online, conspiracy theories were swirling. She really saw this as a moment to capture an audience and an audience that was basically primed for someone like her and almost desperate for someone like her, like a leader, to come and start talking about ways that she was going to have control and ownership over this very chaotic time period that we were all living in. So it was this perfect storm for her to come in and kind of capitalize on it.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

You found a telegram channel that these guys were communicating on, and you sort of lurked around there. What were you reading? Like, what were they talking to each other about?

[Rachel Brown]

So in the early days of the telegram channel, so this is where Romana started this, you know, giant group chat, essentially where anyone her followers could join. At one point, it was over 70,000 people that were on this telegram channel. And there is where she would post her so called royal decrees. So she would start making these proclamations like, as the queen of Canada, as the leader, the true leader of this country, I decree that you don't have to pay taxes anymore. You don't have to pay your hydro bills, your mortgage payments, your car payments. And she would make these big promises that would pertain to people's finances and healthcare as well. Over time, she started making promises pertaining to this fake technology called medbeds. She says, I'm rolling out med beds across the country and anyone with physical ailment or a medical issue is going to become magically cured, or maybe even you could anti age or de age in this so called medical chamber. And so it'd be royal decrees, and it would be other promises she would make, like, I will, you know, if you believe in me, if you donate to me, good things will come in your life. So it was also a place where people would beg for things that they wanted in their life when it came to finances, medical issues, that sort of thing. They would say, you know, please, Romana, I'm dealing with such and such an issue in my life. Can you help me? So it was a place for her to have this back and forth with her followers who would ask her for these things. She would issue these royal decrees and. And then it would be full of people praising her for these things that they believed she was doing. And at the height of COVID she would also spread a lot of conspiracy theories and misinformation about the vaccine, about the pandemic, about government restrictions. So it was a place for her to also preach essentially this belief system and these conspiracy theories.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Did she ever help anybody?

[Rachel Brown]

Not as far as I know. She's only ever caused harm.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And the harm, I mean, it was really devastating to hear about some of the harm, especially with seniors.

[Rachel Brown]

Definitely. You know, we sort of have this sense that a lot of Romana's followers, which are part of the so called Kingdom of Canada, as they call themselves, and she refers to them, are people who are older people on fixed incomes. So a lot of her followers, from what we can tell, are pretty vulnerable and are not people who can afford to just give significant portions of their income to this person, this person who has no accountability, no track record, does not deliver on what she says she's going to do.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

There's a couple that lost their home because they stopped paying taxes.

[Rachel Brown]

That's right, yes. We have a lot of reports of. There's that couple in Quebec even that lost their home that was worth over a million dollars. So that shows that it's not just people who, you know, are living paycheck to paycheck, not a fixed income. There's a wider range of people, probably more than, than we know, but there's a lot of people who are struggling already financially who report on the Telegram channel. I've lost my home. I've. I have the CRA on my back because I'm not paying my taxes. I've had my power and utilities turned off because I paid my. I stopped paying my bills. Queen Romana, help me. What's going on? So you see a lot of desperation, but then a lot of sort of blind loyalty and allegiance to her nonetheless.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

That's devastating. How does she end up in Saskatchewan?

[Rachel Brown]

So this was around 2022 and into 2023. Romana, who was initially based in Victoria in B.C. that's where she lived and worked for many, many years. She started this Cross Canada Royal Tour, as she calls it, in a fleet of RVs. So they went from Victoria, her most loyal followers all banded together and traveled on these RVs to Ottawa where the

[Kathleen Goldhar]

trucker protests, that's where I first remember hearing about her was during the trucker.

[Rachel Brown]

Yeah, and that was sort of, like, I put it like her kind of coming out or like kind of coronation in a way, where she got up there on Parliament Hill with a megaphone and lit a Canadian flag on fire.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

So strange thing for the Queen to do.

[Rachel Brown]

Very strange thing for the Queen to do. And it also alienated her, I think, from a lot of the. More the broader movement, the trucker convoy movement, that even was a step too far for them. But yeah, so it was this Cross Canada tour where she was really trying to raise awareness about the group, maybe attract some more followers, and in the process get some more financial donations from followers. So really going from city to city, from the convoy, she went out east and then to Peterborough where there was a major flare up, where she encouraged her followers to arrest Peterborough police officers for enforcing Covid restrictions and Covid rules. They got charged with assault, a lot of them, quite a few of them laugh, but, I mean, it's all absurd. It is absurd. So that was the Cross Canada tour is what eventually led her to kind of be kicked out from town to town. So while she would often arrive in these places, the more and more she gained notoriety, media coverage and awareness, so too did that bring out people who would oppose her. So there'd be these protesters or people coming out filming her, trying to get law enforcement or whoever to encourage them to leave. So that started happening more and more and more. She kicked out of these towns in the Maritimes, come back through Ontario. So she's kind of moving back west towards the end of 2023. And then where she Ends up in. In Cam Sac, which is at the border of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. They were there for a day that really caused a big outcry by the people of Cam Sac. And the mayor came out, other people in town said, you're not welcome here. They tried to host a meeting where they were going to talk one on one with Romana. Romana never. And so they get kicked out of Cam Sack and they really are left without a place to land. And so they essentially, the queen gets an invite by someone who lives in the town of Richmond, and that's where they end up, because it's the place where it's really the only place left they have to go.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Who invited her?

[Rachel Brown]

What we later found out, what we later find out is that it's a man named Ricky Manns who lives in Richmond and owns the school property, the building and the grounds of this abandoned school. That hadn't been enough, hadn't been in use since 2008. So he owned the property. And he said, I'm, I'm sort of speculating. What you would have said is, hey, I have this property in this building. You guys need a place to land, come here, and I will let you live on my private property in this town. It's kind of like the ideal spot for you.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And do you know from Ricky why he offered it to them, what he saw in Romana?

[Rachel Brown]

Ricky's never talked to me. I've tried reaching out to him. I've never heard from him, but he's appeared on the group's livestream and he said, you know, I invited them here. He doesn't really go into so much detail about why, but I was told by people in town that over the course of the pandemic, you know, he kind of was someone who believed in the QAnon conspiracy theories, kind of aligned with what Romana was talking about. So it kind of made sense from what people knew of him that he. He was believing in this kind of stuff and maybe saw her as someone he wanted to socialize with, someone he wanted to genuinely help out. He saw maybe these people needed somewhere to go. And he was like, I have. I have a spot, and you guys look kind of cool. So I think that's probably along the lines of what happened. And from what I'm told as well, he has a bit of a tense relationship with a lot of people in town. So perhaps it was also kind of like a bit of a middle finger to those that he doesn't get along with in town.

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[Rachel Brown]

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[Rachel Brown]

you

[Kathleen Goldhar]

end up going to Richmond more than once, right? Yes. But the town that you find this tiny town, 120 people, everyone's gonna know everybody in turmoil, right? They are just tossed up. Talk to me about this town and what having Romana and her followers living in this school does. Like, why it just rips this town apart.

[Rachel Brown]

From the minute that people in town heard that romana and her RVs were coming in, a lot of people in town had never heard of her before. And so when they arrived, they started looking online and they see what happened in Peterborough, you know, chaos there. They're staging these citizen arrests of police officers. They see that, you know, Romana has a history of issuing death threats for people who are enforcing Covid restrictions and vaccine restrictions. So they wonder, is this group dangerous? They're also such a small town, and the school is probably the biggest building in town, and so they're going to have a major presence in this town. This pretty. You know, people can kind of keep to themselves if they want. If there's tensions in town, it can kind of be behind closed doors a little bit. But when this group arrived in town, it brought so much attention and fear and fear of the unknown that it really got people angry. And they wanted to know if the mayor, the town council could do anything to get them out. And I think a lot of people had a bit of friction with Ricky Manns anyway, so it just sort of ignited further any tensions that already existed. And Just made people scared that they have this cult living in their backyard. They shouldn't have to, you know, put up with this. And, you know, the cult didn't make themselves, didn't make friends. The minute that they arrived in town, they came out. There were security folks with the group that would come and be out on the perimeter of the school filming anyone in Richmond who came by. There's a playground next to the school where a lot of people would bring their kids. And so they would. These parents would be like, I don't want these random people filming my children as they're playing on the playground. That's creepy. That's potentially. That's frightening. Yeah. So it just. It was just a recipe for disaster. People in town were freaked out. And then the cult didn't do themselves any favors by kind of antagonizing the locals.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

It leads eventually to a really big protest. But what can you tell me about some of the incidences that got to the point where they were like, okay, we're not just bitching about it on Facebook. We're not talking to our neighbors about it. We're actually gonna come out and show ourselves as upset about this.

[Rachel Brown]

Yeah, I think there was just a buildup. People in town getting really nervous and scared about this group. We wanna do something. And a lot of people who've never even protested before were like, we're gonna have a protest. We're gonna go building with our truck horns. You know, we're true Saskatchewans. We're just gonna lay on our truck horns and bring out our farm equipment and just make so much noise and make it known to them and the world. Because media outlets from all over descended on the town because they're following Queen Romana in general. And then there's this protest. They wanna show the world that they're against. They don't stand for what this group stands for. And then people in surrounding towns as well came and showed their support for the locals who wanted the cult out. So it kind of became this rallying CR against this group against what they stood for, against, you know, conspiracy theories and the harms that they've been perpetuating for many months now.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Were there any practical things that happened in town like that actually? Like, it's one thing to have a group of people living there, but if they stuck to themselves. And I'm not saying it's not creepy to have these guys with cameras, but did they interact at all with the town? Was there any of that?

[Rachel Brown]

Well, a big inciting incident for the outrage was when people in town, very specific people, started getting, including the mayor and others, got addressed to them by name, email death threats from the cult. It appeared to be from the cult and Queen Romana. And it was just sort of these long pages, long, rambling death threats, including, you know, I will kill you, execute you in public in front of your grandchildren. That. That kind of specific language. And that was the breaking point for a lot of people saying, we have to show these people that we will not stand for this, and we're not going to be threatened. Our lives are not going to be threatened in our own town. And so I think it's, you know, the least that they could do, which is just kind of rally in the street and vocalize their disgust.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Yeah. Any benefit to that? Did anything happen?

[Rachel Brown]

I think in terms of a benefit, it did not get the school. It did not get the people out of the school. It did not get the cult out of town. It is not illegal to be part of a cult. A cult existing is not a crime. They were on private property that they had been invited to. They weren't committing any crimes when it came to trespassing. So they weren't. The protests and the vocalizing of their being appalled at their presence did not result in any actual results of the cult leaving, but it did kind of bring, you know, bring people together. And I think they. People in town found a bit of a sense of community. It kind of confirmed, like, we. We love our town. We don't want to see this happen. This is a disgrace. So that was sort of a benefit from the. From that side. But I think it also created further divisions in town. There were people who asked, like, I mean, they don't support sort of these death threats, but they'd said as time went on, the cult folks are staying in the school. They're not out here antagonizing us in the streets. They're not. We don't even see them. So really, what's the harm that they're causing us? If we just leave them alone, maybe they'll keep leaving us alone. So it created this division in town between the people who were kind of more neutral when it came to the cult. Some people were arguably supportive of the cult in general, but there was a division between people who were more neutral and those people that were just vehemently wanting the cults out by any means necessary.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

It kind of all comes to a big head during an election. Yes. Which I thought was so interesting. So tell me about. It's more than just the election. Before that there was a deal made where somehow some of the members were given the right to vote.

[Rachel Brown]

Yes. So again, when I'm mentioning that there's some people in town that were more neutral towards the cult, there were a couple of people. There's Ricky and there's a woman in town named Melinda, who were more supportive of the cult. They would appear on the cult's live streams. They were given ministerial titles in Romana's cast cabinet. So they were there talking about how much they thought the cult was doing good work. They didn't. They shouldn't be villainized in this way. And so over time, this woman named Melinda added 12 members of the cult, including Romana Didalo herself, to the land title of one of her plots of land in town. It was. It's kind of like more of like this junkyard, but she added them to the land title. And so people in town got really freaked out when they learned about this, because they were like, okay, we have this election coming up at the end of 2024. It's a mayoral election for town council. And what if this means that 12 people in a town of 120 people fewer than that can actually vote? But that's like 10% of the voting population at least. Maybe they could really swing this election and get the current mayor, who was quite liked by a lot of people in town and was really against the cult being. Being against the cult living there, they could swing this election. So that just again, it was this other whole dimension to this story where someone locally was putting them on land title. And it just. People were freaked right out, like, why are you doing this? And what could this mean for the future of our town?

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And it was another one of the quote unquote, neutral community members that ran against the mayor.

[Rachel Brown]

That's right. A man named Jody Smith was someone who told me he feared some of the locals more than the cult because as weeks went on, some people in town would go up to the fence of the school, scream at them in the middle of the night, yell for them to leave, be on Facebook groups. Kind of just, you know, very worked up about the presence of the cults. There was this video circulating online showing people wearing. It was dead of night, people wearing clown costumes, lighting Romana's Kingdom of Canada flag on fire, and just kind of standing there in clown suits, lighting something on fire.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

It's a bit creepy.

[Rachel Brown]

It's a bit creepy. So people were alarmed by that. There were other altercations in town between people who were deemed cult sympathizers. Because they weren't out there protesting against the cult. And so there was a lot of chaos that was starting to unfold in town. And so someone like Jody Smith comes in and he's like, you know, maybe I'm going to run for mayor. He also had his own grievances with the town, a sort of small town politics. For instance, he was someone who wanted to be able to have a chicken coop in his backyard and was like, why can't we have chicken coops? That should be a bylaw that we're allowed to have chicken coops in our backyard. And so that was sort of the cult issue became something that was part of a broader campaign that he wanted to really change the town. And so he ran against Brad Miller, the incumbent mayor, very much against the cult. And so it really became this very tense election that was also unfolding as the US election was unfolding. But I was much more focused on Richmond, I have to say. The only person in the world. Exactly. So, you know, and there was just up until vote, up until the polls had closed, there was just, will they, won't they? Will the cult come out and vote? Won't they? Maybe they won't. Yeah, in the end, they didn't. Spoiler alert. But yeah.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And Brad won.

[Rachel Brown]

And Brad won. And it was just a very tense election that was like, centered around this cult in a way.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

You keep saying cult very comfortably. You're comfortable by calling it a cult. I mean, that is like a. I have my own opinions about it, but I know people always like, really mash hands trying to make the decision. But you call it a cult here, you call it a culture during the podcast. That's something you're good with.

[Rachel Brown]

Yeah, I think from the reporting that's been done by myself and a lot of other people, a lot of academic work that's been done and researched on this group, I think it's clear that it checks a lot of boxes for criteria of what counts as a cult. I mean, there's this adherence to extreme ideology perpetuated by a leader who has great power over a number of people. There's. If people are in the group, they're often alienated from their family and community supports. We see that in this group for sure. You know, financial dependence, financial extortion to an extent, I would say so. There's just a lot of characteristics of this group that I think makes myself and a lot of people comfortable calling it a culture.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Do you have any idea of what the living conditions were for the people living in the school,

[Rachel Brown]

we can see, based on the livestream, as well as reports from family members of some people who had been living in the school, they were very concerned that, again, it seemed to be a lot of people who were older who needed medical care and medication. A lot of family members were concerned that in the school they were living in without heat, without proper cooling. So in Saskatchewan, it gets really, really cold in the winter and hot. So they're worried about the conditions in the school. They're worried about their loved ones having access to medication, medical care. There was an instance where someone was taken to the hospital. Very mysterious circumstances. We don't know what happened with that. And concerns that they were being forced to work for Romana in various capacities around the clock, whether that was security around the perimeter of the school, being online on Telegram and other online channels, communicating with potential followers, asking for money, that sort of thing. So there was just a concern that they were being run into the ground. Are they getting fed properly? There was a lot of questions. So we can tell that it's this abandoned school that really wasn't up to code. And so when you have a group of people living in a place that's not supposed to be a residence, it raised a lot of concerns for people. But there's still a lot that we don't know about what exactly we were dealing with in terms of the conditions in the school. We do know that after the arrest of Romana and after everyone who was living there was forced to leave Saskatchewan, health authorities deemed it uninhabitable and it's been closed off ever since. So that gives us an indication that the conditions were obviously a problem. Yeah.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

You mentioned her arrest. All told, how long did they live there?

[Rachel Brown]

About two years they lived there.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And how did it end? You indicate there was an arrest?

[Rachel Brown]

There was an arrest. So in September of last year, September 2025, the RCMP conducted an early morning raid on the school. Based on what they ended up talking about at the press conference was there was reports of imitation or replica guns in the school. So they went in and arrested Romana. They arrested the followers living inside the school. Romana and others were charged. Ricky Manns was also eventually charged. I'm fast forwarding through a few things here. That's okay. But it then came to be that part of Romana's bail conditions was she wasn't allowed back in the school, had to live in Regina. And so that raid and arrest of Romana and her followers was the end of their time in Richmond.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And where is she now she is

[Rachel Brown]

in Regina and she is. She has pending court proceedings ongoing against her pertaining to. You have to look up the exact charges. Obstruction of justice, imitation of a justice system participant. Don't quote me on that. You can fill that in. And she is out on bail representing herself. She is not hiring a lawyer, doesn't have a lawyer representing her because she goes by natural law and she's the leader of the country. So she's going to defend herself. And she is awaiting her preliminary inquiry proceedings and sort of in this back and forth right now with the crown prosecutor over disclosure in her case that she's fighting for. So she's representing herself. We'll see how that goes. But it's. It sort of keeps getting delayed due to, like, procedural things in the case.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

I understand the fall of QAnon, the coming of COVID all of us living online, the rise of conspiracy theories, the need to find somebody who can kind of help you figure out your way through the fear of that time. But what I. What I haven't. And it's because she's not really out there, but I. Did you see a charismatic leader, do you understand what people found in her? And especially now that a lot of that stuff is gone. I mean, I'm not saying conspiracies and online is gone, but the tension and the buildup is lessened. She's kind of made her way through Canada, sort of. Probably a lot of people have decided that they're uninterested. But tell me about her. Like, what is it about her? Or is that faltering that brings people to her in the way that they have?

[Rachel Brown]

It's a good question, I think, whether or not someone is a charismatic leader or not. I think there's figures, leaders of cults who are objectively charismatic. I don't think that applies to her. She kind of bucks a lot of the stereotypes and notions that we think of when it comes to a charismatic leader or a cult leader. But I do think genuinely, for those who follow her, they do find her charismatic. And maybe it's in line with a lot of the reasons that you said she was saying the right things at the right time. You know, she also has a sense of humor. She kind of. She makes fun of, you know, political leaders. She can kind of have this snarky, sarcastic side to her. So I could see why people are drawn to that more humorous side of her. She also loves to dance. She is someone.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

And she loves Rasputin.

[Rachel Brown]

She loves Boney M's. Rasputin.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Oh, my God, yeah.

[Rachel Brown]

Loves it's on every live stream. She has her own kind of like, rendition of it. Rah Rah Romana, Precious Queen of Canada or something.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

Wow.

[Rachel Brown]

So she likes to dance. She has this kind of quirky side that I could see people.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

She's fun.

[Rachel Brown]

She's fun, I think, for some people, to an extent. So I can see why people would be drawn to her. And she kind of. Because we don't know a lot about her background, as we were talking about before, it kind of creates. She's kind of able to create this mystery and this mythology around her. She talks about, you know, communing with aliens and being appointed by or supported by Putin and Trump. And she, in her early days, presented herself as this shapeshifter who could infiltrate your dreams. Like, there's just sort of these things that she talks about that are. I think, if you're into that stuff, could be appealing. And she's saying the right things, like who doesn't who. You know, not paying taxes, not paying your bills. I could see that being appealing to some people. So she's saying the right things, and I think there's parts of her that people latch onto.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

I've talked to you before. The last time you were on the show, we talked about another leader who more tragically ended up with his followers being dead. What have you learned about, with all of your research and your time looking into these charismatic leaders? Because I've done it, too. I find, like, every project you do that's like this, you start to sort of put pieces together more and more about what makes these people tick and more so what makes people want to follow them. Like what? Where do you think Romana, you said she's not quite. She bucks a bit of the trend. But what are you starting to kind of put together in your own journalistic mind about why or how or who she is? You know what I mean?

[Rachel Brown]

Yeah. And there are, I think, quite a few similarities between our last conversation. The leader, Kevin Smith, was Covid conspiracies thought the end times were coming. And that's what drew a lot of people in, because he was picking up on a lot of these ideas that people were feeling generally, like, is this, you know, mistrust of government, mistrust of society? I think those are bigger themes that play into Romana as well. So Romana is someone who, you know, picks up on the very zeitgeisty moments. This mistrust of health authorities, this mistrust of science and education. She's very against education and at this moment, we're so polarized in the types of information and news and content that we consume online. There's just something about her that picks up on that and capitalizes on this polarization that's becoming more and more apparent. Certainly was apparent in Richmond. And I think it's that polarization, this unwillingness to see nuance and kind of engage with uncomfortable truths or the gray areas of our lives and institutions that give rise to someone like her. Yeah. If that makes sense.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

It does. It does. Yeah. It's fascinating. Thank you. Great work and it was really nice to see you again.

[Rachel Brown]

Thank you. You're welcome to.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

You've been listening to crime story from cbc podcasts. You can hear the show ad free by subscribing to cbc true crime on apple podcasts. Be sure to follow us there on apple or on Spotify. You can also find us on YouTube. Just search and subscribe to cbc true crime. The show is hosted by me, kathleen goldar. Our producers are nicky manfredi and hadil abdelnabi. Sound design and video production by julian uzieli, reza daya and evan agard. Our digital producer is emily kinnell and our YouTube producer is john lee. Our senior producer is kate evans. Executive producers are cecil fernandez and chris oak. Tanya springer is the senior manager of cpc podcast and arif narani is the director.

[Rachel Brown]

For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.