Most Canadian Unificationists returned to Canada following the Yankee Stadium festival to tear down posters in the cities where they campaigned while others who had never seen Rev. Moon until that time attended his June 2 speech at Tarrytown, New York. Duffy also attended a meeting of the international Unification leadership with Rev. Moon the same day. There reports were shared and Duffy, although extremely ill at the time, when asked by Rev. Moon, related the Canadian strategy for bringing 1,000 people from Canada to New York City. He explained how hard the members had worked and spoke of the three city tour leading up to the rally. Rev. Moon was visibly pleased and said to Duffy, "I will never forget your name." Rev. Moon then challenged the American leadership saying, "Look the Canadians brought 1,000 people across an international border and you could hardly bring people across the state line." He then announced, to everyone's surprise, that the Washington Monument rally which had originally been slated for the spring of 1977 would be held in three months' time. At the time no preparations had been made. Rev. Moon emphasized that the pattern established by the Canadian church would be used to bring people to his speech at the Washington Monument which was held on September 18, 1976. He subsequently asked that every bus on the east coast of the United States be chartered for the event. Undoubtedly much was made of the fact that the Canadians had traveled several hundred miles to New York City.⁵³

Rev. Moon also asked Duffy what he would do for the Washington Monument campaign. Duffy, who still felt wobbly due to his illness, responded that he wasn't sure and had to look at a map since Washington D.C. was substantially further from Canada than New York City. He suggested that the Canadians would either bring 2,000 people from Canada or work together with members in the United States during the campaign. Rev. Moon responded, "Alright it's your choice."⁵⁴

Much of the summer of 1976 was occupied by a fifty-day fund-raising drive throughout Canada which began June 10. The campaign for Yankee Stadium had left some bills to pay, not to mention the loan to the American Church which was paid off in July. Five teams were set up at a two-day internal workshop on June 7-8 at the Repo Estate. Jorg Heller, Jim Buchanan, Wayne Lamond, Alan Thibideau and Jacques Blain were appointed as team leaders of fund-raising teams which traveled throughout Canada. The fund-raising campaign, which was quite successful, continued till early August when a workshop was held at Camp Genessee near North Bay, Ontario, between August 4-8. By that time it had been decided that the Canadian members would go to the United States to support the campaign for the festival held at the Washington Monument.

As was the case with the Yankee Stadium Festival, the Bicentennial God Bless America Festival held at the Washington Monument was viewed as an extremely important event by Unificationists. It was viewed as the last in a series of three major speeches given by Rev. Moon. The three speeches given at Madison Square Garden in 1974, Yankee Stadium and Washington Monument in 1976 respectively represented the three stages of formation, growth and completion as explained in Divine Principle.⁵⁵ Upon reflection Rev. Moon later stated that the two major rallies of 1976 represented the culmination of the history of God. He said:

The rest of the world came around, trying to beat us, during the momentous year of 1976. In 1976, the entire history of God was culminated in two major events: the Yankee Stadium rally and the Washington Monument rally. World attention toward our movement came to a peak that year. In the year of 1976 I became known to the world. The events that we created, that God created, in the year of 1976 cannot be removed from the history of religion or from human history...

I want you to know that the Washington Monument rally was a decisive victory that became the turning point of human history.⁵⁶

Messages that the success of these rallies were vital for the victory of God's dispensation were the daily diet of Unificationists in the period leading to the September rally. Rev. Moon also explained that the victory of these rallies fulfilled a covenant with God.

My offering on the worldwide scale was completed by 1976...The final climax of this offering was the Washington Monument rally. That was the altar upon which we offered God everything that we had received. I want you to know that Sept. 18, 1976 was the day of offering for the sake of the world. Centering on the worldwide dispensation for America, that offering was made in Washington D.C., the nation's capital. The five races of the world gathered together there, symbolically proclaiming, "God, we have made this an altar of ourselves; please accept all of us...How can I express to you the seriousness of Sept. 18? The showdown of God was at hand. The showdown of the entire struggle of good and evil was at hand...⁵⁷

No doubt Rev. Moon's serious message was taken to heart by Unificationists. Since the Yankee Stadium festival had not been as successful as envisioned and expectations of a stadium filled to overflowing had not been met, the members felt added pressure. Furthermore, the Washington Monument festival had unexpectedly been moved forward by almost a year and the goal was to bring several hundred thousand people to hear Rev. Moon speak.

On August 10 Duffy attended an international leaders meeting with Rev. Moon in Irvington, New York. There it was decided that the majority of the Canadian members would work in Wilmington, Delaware, for the campaign leading to the Washington Monument, while a smaller group of members would remain in Canada to bring people from Canada. Duffy later regretted this decision saying, "I should have looked at a map. It wasn't that much further than New York and we could have brought people from Canada."⁵⁸ He thought later that it would have been better for the Canadian mission had they worked to invite people from Canada.

Thirty Canadian members traveled to Delaware and arrived on August 14. They immediately joined their American counterparts and helped invite people to the Washington Monument Festival by visiting people door to door and inviting people to take the bus to the Washington Monument. They remained there till October 6, 1976. The campaign in Delaware was very successful and all buses were filled as over 2,000 people attended the festival from Wilmington. ⁵⁹ According to Steve Sell, then Unification Church state leader for Delaware, results in Wilmington were the best per capita for the whole American campaign.⁶⁰

Meanwhile in Canada efforts were made by the remaining members to invite people to the festival in Washington D.C. It was again decided to invite people from Ottawa, Montreal and Toronto. On August 28 for example a Bicentennial banquet was held at the Lichee Gardens restaurant in Toronto to which thirty people came. The result of this and other efforts was that five bus loads of people from the three cities traveled to hear the Rev. Moon speak at the Washington Monument on September 18. A Unification Church film of the event explained how people were bused to Washington D.C. from a number of cities which included Philadelphia, Baltimore and New York City, and exclaimed that "they came even from Canada." The approximately two hundred people who traveled the long journey from Canada participated in an outdoor festival which included musical performances and a speech by Rev. Moon entitled "America and God's Will", where he proclaimed God's ideal of "One World Under God". The program, attended by between 200-300,000 people, concluded with a fireworks display. Unlike the festival at Yankee Stadium the meeting in Washington D.C. was declared a total success by Rev. Moon.⁶²

After spending almost two weeks engaged in outreach activities in Delaware the thirty Canadian members returned to Canada on October 6 prepared to embark on a new campaign to multiply membership. Indeed, Rev. Moon put emphasis on increased evangelism after the end of the campaign. He also expressed concern over English-French linguistic tension in Canada. At a meeting of state and international leaders on October 3, 1976, Rev. Moon said:

Canada is a target for Communist agitation due to the division between English and French speaking Canadians. Accordingly membership in our church should increase in Canada.⁶³

Rev. Moon might have formed that impression on his then recent visit to Canada which occurred shortly after the Washington Monument Festival.

A few days after the Washington Monument Festival and an international leader's meeting held on September 20, 1976, Rev. and Mrs. Moon and several elder Korean Unification Church members visited Canada's East Coast. Among the Korean members were twelve of Rev. Moon's earliest disciples such as Won Pil Kim, Young Whi Kim, Bo Hi Pak, San Kil Han, Chung Hwan Kwak and Young Suk Choi.⁶⁴ The purpose of this visit was to survey the fishing grounds off the coast of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Rev. Moon was keenly interested in tuna fishing and had accordingly spent much of the summer of 1976 going out to sea off the coast of Massachusetts. In a speech given to members in New York prior to the Washington Monument festival Rev. Moon explained his motives:

I am leaving again today for Boston, and again I have an important mission. I will go out to sea, not for pleasure, but to lay a foundation for the future economy of the Unification Church. That's my goal. There is no way we can exceed the advances in industry and technology, except in the one virtually untapped area of the sea and sea products...I have to train you. People criticize me and say that Rev. Moon is taking it easy on a yacht out in the Atlantic Ocean, enjoying himself. Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think many of you will inherit large fortunes from your own parents, so I am responsible for you. I must begin to plan how you can support yourselves. You will be blessed in marriage, and God will bless your marriages with children, whom you must be able to support. While you're going down to Washington to fight this battle, I am looking more than ten years ahead and going to sea to prepare our future economic foundation.⁶⁵

At the time, it was common knowledge in the fishing industry that the largest tuna had been caught off the coasts of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and thus Rev. Moon embarked on a short tuna fishing expedition. Unfortunately, no tuna fish was caught during the short visit.⁶⁶

Rev. Moon and his party flew via Montreal to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and later traveled to Prince Edward Island.⁶⁷ At the time Duffy was still in Wilmington, Delaware with the rest of the Canadian members, and since Rev. Moon appeared on very short notice Sung San Lee was the only member in Canada who was able to join Rev. Moon on the East Coast.⁶⁸ During the course of his return to New York, Rev. Moon and his party stopped over at the Dorval airport in Montreal for a few hours and met Alan Wilding, Anne Caze and Enid Somerset for lunch. Rev. Moon spoke with them and particularly asked Alan Wilding for an update on the status of the Unification Church in Canada and also expressed special interest in Sung San Lee's activities.⁶⁹ During the course of conversation Wilding confessed his doubts at the time of Rev. Moon's visit to Canada in 1971. Rev. Moon had then predicted what he would accomplish in America and that his name would be known in every household in the United States in a very short time. Wilding shared how he could then see that Rev. Moon's prediction had indeed come true. Rev. Moon later commented about this conversation in a speech given October 3, 1976 to the membership at Tarrytown:

Recently I went to Montreal and had lunch with the members there. One man who has been a member of the Unification Church for eight years vividly remembered my arrival in America on December 18, 1971. At that time I did not have a visa to enter America from Korea, so I came to Canada instead. Our members in America were very persistent in asking the State Department, "Why won't you issue a visa to Rev. Moon?" Ironically, officials kept telling them that I was a communist in 1968 and so I was undesirable in this country. Finally, it was proven to them that I have truly been crusading for the victory over communism and they couldn't resist any further. That was the beginning of my actual ministry in America.

At that time the Canadian members asked me to stay in Canada, but I told them that according to God's plan I must achieve certain goals in the next 3½ years in America, since America is the focal point of world restoration. The eight year member confessed that four years ago he doubted me and couldn't trust my words. He thought at that time that I was a very crazy person. Now everything has been accomplished as I said and he is willing to hear my plans for the next 3½ years. He has no doubt that they will be accomplished also.⁷⁰

Although Wilding later denied ever saying that he thought Rev. Moon was a crazy person he did agree that the conversation had been accurately portrayed.⁷¹

Meanwhile Duffy, who was rather disappointed that he could not meet Rev. Moon during the visit to the Canadian East Coast, rushed back from Delaware to greet Rev. and Mrs. Moon at the Montreal Airport prior to their departure for New York. Duffy would regret not having participated in this visit for many years. Interestingly, for some reason beyond his understanding, he considered his decision to bring the majority of the Canadian membership to work in Delaware prior to the Washington Monument festival and his not being present for Rev. Moon's 1976 visit as two of his most serious mistakes as leader of the Unification Church in Canada. From that point until the end of his tenure he felt he was going down hill.⁷² However, this was not necessarily the case for the rest of the Canadian members, as many were greatly invigorated by their participation alongside their American counterparts. Other underlying factors, however, might have contributed to Duffy's perceived decline.

1. Reorganization

All Canadian members returned to Toronto from Delaware on October 6, 1976, where they remained for the following two weeks. Meetings were held, a five-day fund-raising drive was conducted, and after a three-day Divine Principle workshop for all members a new organization was implemented. Duffy gave instructions for the following three months with a goal to find one hundred fifty members and to raise the necessary funds for the purchase of a training center in the country side. Terry Brabazon was appointed leader of the Toronto center while Wayne Lamond, Jacques Blain and Anne Caze respectively became directors of the Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City centers. Jorg Heller became responsible for a National Mobile Fundraising Team, Alan Wilding and Sung San Lee continued their work with V.O.C., I.F.A. and C.A.R.P., while David Decker became responsible for Rapkin's Products and formed a four man team, which included Wesley Ramage, Paul Resnyak and Richard Gallant, to sell Ginseng Tea.

Due to outreach activities conducted by the Unification Theological Seminary (U.T.S.) in Barrytown, New York, a Unification Theology and Christian Thought Seminar was held at St. Michael's College of the University of Toronto on October 25-28 where a number of professors such as Herbert Richardson and Petro Bilaniuk helped facilitate the event. Young Oon Kim, then a lecturer at U.T.S., was the primary speaker. During the seminar Miss Kim introduced her then recent text Unification Theology and Christian Thought.⁷³ Discussions were held with academicians and students on such topics as Creation, Christology and Eschatology.

Although outreach activities were conducted in each church center the members became more preoccupied with political issues at the time particularly with the apparent spread of communism and the rise of the separatist movement in Quebec. Indeed a provincial election was won by the Parti Quebecois, a French-Canadian separatist party, on November 15, 1976. Prior to the election, members had organized a World Peace and Freedom Seminar attended by fifty people in Montreal on October 30. Furthermore, leaflets were distributed in both Montreal and Quebec City against separatism.

In what was considered a risky move, the small group of French Canadian Unificationists printed the first issue of Le Journal de l'Unification in Quebec City shortly before the provincial election for mass distribution. Those who distributed the handout were greeted with hostility from those members of the public who supported the idea of provincial separation from Canada.⁷⁴ The pamphlet warned the French speaking population of the perils of separatism. It said:

To save our country...NO TO SEPARATISM!!!

There have always been contradictions and conflicts in the history of human society. In nature, however, contradiction does not exist. It is by a harmonious relationship of give and take that all existence, action and multiplication are possible. Give and take action provokes neither opposition nor conflict, but it is fundamentally harmonious, cooperative and reciprocal. It is true that there are contradictions in human society. Fallen man has deviated from God's original principle. Man finds himself divided between a good and original nature as well as a fallen evil nature.⁷⁵

Although it approached the issue religiously stressing spiritual principles, the members hoped to sway the voters from choosing separatism. The statement further explained that separatism was no solution:

Unity is the key to the problems of the next twenty years. Let us seek to live beyond our language. Our crisis is a universal one. It is neither by violence nor by separatism that we will solve it, but through a spirit of harmony, cooperation and reciprocity. The ideal that should guide the whole world must come from a sacrificial spirit for a higher cause.⁷⁶

This action inspired the further monthly publication of the Journal de l'Unification and gave the small group in the province of Quebec a tool for outreach. It later avoided the explosive issue of separatism and focused on more fundamental spiritual issues such as the payment of spiritual debts, creationist versus evolutionary views and religious education.⁷⁷

In Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal members focused on holding C.A.R.P., I.F.A. meetings and seminars under the auspices of the Committee for the International Rally for World Freedom. Meetings were held in each city throughout the months of November and December. The culmination of such activities in Toronto was a Christmas party, jointly sponsored by C.A.R.P and I.F.A., held at St. Vladimir's Hall for one hundred people on December 23. It was also decided at a mid-December director's meeting that the focus for the first month of 1977 would be on inviting people to the International Rally for World Freedom on February 5.

The spread of international communism was one of Rev. Moon's primary concerns since the beginnings of the Unification Church. Indeed the spread of atheistic and materialistic communist ideology was often referred to as the worst of God's three major headaches. The other two being the decline of Christianity or spirituality and the rise of immorality among young people.⁷⁸ Moreover, Unificationists opposed communism because it denied the existence of God. With the intention to thwart the spread of communism, Canadian Unificationists engaged in activities directed to educate the public about the evils of communism. Consequently, the International Rally for World Freedom was conceived.

The principal organizers of the rally, Sung San Lee and Alan Wilding, had been working on preparations since late autumn 1976. The strategy was to mobilize existing anti-communist groups and particularly those ethnic communities who had been victims of communism. Canada, and especially Toronto, had a large population of immigrants from countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic States, the Balkans and different parts of Asia such as China, Korea and Vietnam which were then all under communist governments. Many of these ethnic groups, although against communism, were also divided due to nationalistic interests. A major challenge was to bring all these groups together for a joint meeting. During the time leading to the rally, Wilding and Lee visited numerous groups. For example Wilding spoke to a group of fifty people at the Young Americans for Freedom Convention, in Toronto on January 15.

To intensify outreach to the various communities, it was decided that all members from throughout the country gather in Toronto to help invite people to the rally beginning January 24. Earlier in January John Bellavance and Franco Famularo went to Toronto to help contact the many ethnic newspapers in the Toronto area to place advertisements about the rally. The Glos Polski (Polish Voice Weekly), for example, was one of many ethnic papers that promoted the rally.⁷⁹

Over one thousand people gathered for the rally held Saturday, February 5, 1977, in the Commonwealth Ballroom of the Holiday Inn in downtown Toronto under the theme "Mobilize the Forces of World Freedom." The program featured Petro Bilaniuk, himself ethnically Ukrainian and a professor of theology at the University of Toronto, as the keynote speaker. In his speech entitled "Christianity and the Communist Threat" Bilaniuk enumerated the many atrocities that Communism had committed and explained that Christianity's response was not as effective as it should have been. He spoke of how numerous Christian leaders had been silenced by fellow Christians when they opposed Communism. He reflected that with the advent of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI the Catholic Church's stand against communism had diminished and that Catholic leaders such as Joszef Cardinal Mindszenty had been deposed by the Church hierarchy. He also referred to Rev. Moon as being condemned by Communist inspired Christians and Jewish leaders and smeared by the pink press for his stand against communism.⁸⁰

The rally was supported by a number of organizations such as: the Committee for Human Rights in South East Asia, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters, Communaute Khmere du Canada (Cambodia), Bulgarian National Front, The Polish Combatants Association in Canada, League for the Liberation of the Ukraine, and many others. Letters of support were received from distinguished citizens such as then Premier of Ontario, William Davis, then Mayor of Toronto David Crombie, Member of Federal Parliament, Perrin Beatty and others.⁸¹ As expressed in the letter sent to leaders of various organizations the aim of the rally was as follows:

We feel that the greatest threat to world freedom today is dialectical materialism, embodied and systematized through International Communism. Our aim through the rally is to alert people to take personal and collective responsibility for Freedom by promoting the highest spiritual and moral values, embodied in our Judeo-Christian Democratic tradition.⁸²

The rally itself consisted of music, and a series of speeches by numerous delegates and representatives of anti-communist organizations. Of note were an invocation given by Rev. Dr. Synan, President of the Pontifical Institute of Medieaeval Studies at the University of Toronto, a congratulatory address given by Margaret Campbell, a member of Ontario's provincial parliament and a speech by Russian Dissident, Alexander Guidoni. At the conclusion of the rally an open letter was read and then sent to the leaders of thirty-five communist states including the Soviet Union's Leonid Breshnev, Cuba's Fidel Castro, North Korea's Kim Il Sung and Roumania's Nicholae Ceausescu. It said in its concluding statement:

We the undersigned, of the COMMITTEE FOR THE INTERNATIONAL RALLY FOR WORLD FREEDOM...have no alternative but to denounce your inferior and demonic ideology, practices, and systems; and we demand that you immediately abandon your present totalitarian States, the direct consequence of a false view of man, and that your seek a superior alternative, which embraces the spiritual as well as the physical view of man.⁸³

It was yet another bold move for the small group of Unificationists. The rally did not go unopposed, however. A few days prior a bomb threat was telephoned to the hotel manager which almost caused him to cancel the event.⁸⁴ There were also those who attended the rally in order to protest that the sponsors were members of Rev. Moon's Unification Church. Several members of Marxist groups marched in front of the Holiday Inn carrying placards stating that V.O.C and C.A.R.P. were front groups of the Unification Church.

In later years detractors of the Unification Church would often comment that those that participated and especially those who sent endorsements were not aware of the rally's affiliation with the Unification Church. Josh Freed, in a postscript to his book Moonwebs: Journey into the Mind of a Cult, wrote that in 1977 the organizers of the Rally for World Freedom did not identify themselves to the prominent citizens who gave endorsements to the rally.⁸⁵ Indeed, although Unification Church members were the primary organizers, the church entity itself did not officially assist the program. Accusations of deceiving the public were often made by detractors of the Unification Church.

For the Unificationists who gathered to celebrate the victory celebration that evening this was seen as the first major step toward influencing the whole country. Never before had they been able to attract such a large crowd with support from so many dignitaries. But this would be one of the final major events of Duffy's term. Underneath the surface of external activities was an undercurrent of dissent and dissatisfaction with his leadership which eventually contributed to Duffy's transfer.

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