Front Burner - ‘Queen of Canada’ cult leader arrested

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

On Wednesday, 16 people — including Romana Didulo, the cult leader known as the “Queen of Canada” — were arrested in the tiny Saskatchewan village of Richmound. RCMP released them the following day, but then re-arrested two unidentified individuals.Didulo and her followers have been holed up in a decommissioned school there for two years. Their presence has been a source of ire for many locals, and ratcheted up divisions between the townspeople.Today: What happens when a cult comes to town — especially in a time of such intense societal polarization? Our guest is Rachel Browne, an investigative journalist and documentary maker who is currently working on a podcast for CBC about the impact that the “Queen of Canada” has had on this tiny village.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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Certain conditions apply. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, everybody, I'm Jamie Poisson. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, some 30 police cars surrounded a decommissioned school in the tiny village of Richmond, Saskatchewan, and arrested the cult leader known as the Queen of Canada and her followers. says you're under arrest. We have a warrant. They have a warrant for what?

What kind of warrant did they have? Do they have a arrest? Romana Dida Diedelow live streamed the arrest from the building where she and roughly a dozen followers have been holed up for almost two years. Their presence has enraged many in the tiny community and ramped up tensions between locals. To get the inside story on how the so-called Kingdom of Canada has fueled polar, in this village and what happens when a cult comes to town. I'm speaking to Rachel Brown. She's an investigative journalist and documentary maker,

and she's currently working on a podcast for CBC about Diedelow's impact on the village of Richmond. We recorded our interview early yesterday morning, and Rachel has since gotten some updates from the RCMP on the status of the case. They say they found and seized 13 imitation semi-automatic handguns, ammunition as well as a large number of electronic devices. After releasing everyone originally swept up, the RCMP re-arrested a man and a woman. They've not been identified. All right, let's get to it.

Rachel, hey, it's so great to have you on the show. Hey, Jamie, thanks for having me. So I'll just say that we're speaking Thursday morning at 9 a.m. Eastern, and there are likely to be some changes here. But what do we know at this point about Diedelow and her followers' arrests? How did it go down? What were they arrested for? So we know that on Wednesday morning in Richmond, Saskatchewan, at about 4.30 a.m., 5 a.m., a.m., a.m., a number of RCMP vehicles, I'm hearing that there were done.

dozens of our CMP members who pulled into Richmond at the crack of dawn just before dawn and essentially descended on what has become their compound. It's this decommissioned school building that's one of the biggest properties in town. They plowed through the fence, sort of this flimsy construction fence that had been around the school. They plowed through it, descended onto the school, went into the school building, and arrested 16 people, including, including Romana Diedelow herself. Leave the phone down. You're under arrest. All right.

The RCMP arrest of the woman who calls herself the Queen of Canada, captured by her own phone during a live stream. As of this moment, no charges have been laid, but the RCMP was executing a search warrant at the school building and talked about the search warrant being pertaining to firearms in the school building. Okay, and just to be clear, I think the RCMP said they found replica handguns, but not any real guns, right? That's right. The RCMP, again, has been pretty scant on specifics at this point. The search warrant was obtained after we received a report of an individual occupying the building was in possession of a firearm.

And they wouldn't answer questions about whether they could fire bullets and sort of the nature of these replica handguns at this time. So that is the latest news that we have right now, but we have covered Diedelow several times on the podcast over the years. Just briefly, can you explain and remind me what she and her followers believe, what the Kingdom of Canada cult is about, essentially? So Romana Diedelow is this woman who is from V.C. and was living in B.C. for many, many years had come to B.C. from the Philippines as a teenager. And she'd started and sort of failed to get a number of businesses off the ground. But around 2021, Q, the poster of the Q&on movement, went dark. Let me ask you about Q&ON. It is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that. Well, I don't know much about the movement other than I understand.

They like me very much. which I appreciate. And so she had also been flirting with various political aspirations at that time that never really got off the ground. She had the Canada First Party that she tried to launch this federal party. Hello, Canada. I'm Romana Didolo. I'm the founder and the leader of Canada first. It's time for us to clean up the swamp in Ottawa to put an end. And I think she saw this power vacuum. Others have described this too, this power. vacuum that existed in the Q movement at the time. And this is the height of the pandemic as well.

So everyone is glued to their computers and social media and other platforms. And so she kind of emerges and crowns herself as a potential leader or inheritor of the Q&on movement. And very quickly, she starts referring to herself as the queen of Canada and that her followers are part of the kingdom of Canada. My fellow Canadians, I address you today. as your queen, commander-in-chief, and head of government. So she since then has sort of evolved in her stance and her beliefs in what she touts, but it's really this mixture of QAnon, anti-Vax, sovereign citizen movement ideology, all wrapped up into this really unique and interesting package.

To the unconscious, the programmed, the M.K. Altered, you have been lied to. your entire life. Governments, media, schools, politics, it was all theater. Her royal majesty, Queen Romana Dodulo, the first queen of the kingdom of Canada and queen of the world under natural. Law has come to restore truth, peace, prosperity, and freedom to all sovereign beings on this planet. I think a big thing that she promotes is, again, that she herself is the ultimate leader of the country and so forth, and that there are no taxes. You don't have to pay your utility bills, credit card bills, nothing like that. None of the laws that pertain to us as Canadians actually pertain to the people who follow her.

Paying income tax was never a necessity. This is all really coming back to me now. Just tell me a little bit more about some of the things that have drawn a lot of attention to her and the cult in the last few years. You mentioned her stance on taxes, but just give me a little bit more. Yeah, I mean, she really has convinced a lot of people to stop paying their taxes and stop paying their bills. You'll see, you know, there was a lot of chatter over months and years on the telegram channel that she has where people would write in and say, thank you for your decree. So she rules by quote unquote royal decree saying things like no hydro.

You don't have to pay your income tax. This royal decree distinguishes and restores your rights and freedoms. Even for those of you who are attached to constitutional law. So people will write in and say, you know, I'm not paying this. Thank you for this. And they'll praise her. other people will write in saying, I haven't paid my, my car payments, my utility payments, and now my power is shut off. My house is going to be repossessed. All these bad things happen to people.

So they're taking her very seriously. And what's interesting is that even for the people who go through these horrible things in life, where they're losing basic parts of their life, their home, their car, and so forth, they still are devoted to her. So she's garnered. a lot of attention for those types of promises that she's made and these terrible things that have happened to many of the followers. At the same time, she's also garnered a lot of attention because especially over the course of 2022, 2023, she had come out, traveled across Canada on a royal tour of sorts, which a bunch of people in RVs traveled across Canada, landing in Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy, if you remember those days. She was there. And that was sort of like

One of her big coming out in real life moments, there was a flag that she had had, and she and her followers lit it on fire on Parliament Hill. This is the old corporation's flag. It has no place. So that, of course, garners a lot of attention. Eventually, she leaves and starts trying to drum up other attention and support in cities. across Canada from there. Right, right. And basically, am I right to say that they basically,

like she and her followers basically get chased out of a bunch of these places? Yeah. So time and time again, they'll land in a certain town. They'll go across Ontario from Ottawa. Then they headed out east. They headed out to Nova Scotia and other maritime provinces. And they made a lot of locals angry because, Romana and her followers were denying that Hurricane Fiona happened.

They called it a hoax. And so a lot of local people took issue with that and basically drove them out of town there. And prior to that, they also had landed in Peterborough and were participating in anti-COVID restrictions, anti-COVID vaccine demonstrations. And Romana's followers, while she was sitting in an RV, they were out there being extremely loud, boisterous and so forth and approached the Peterborough police and staged citizen

arrests of police officers and many of her followers were charged with assaults and assaulting police at that time. They came to the police station looking for what they say is justice. To make a citizen's arrest of officers for enforcing vaccine mandates and

other COVID-19 restrictions. We could all start to call 911. Instead, three protesters themselves were arrested. So that as well was a major moment where her followers faced criminal charges for what they did. And that really got a lot of media attention across the country. So for people who hadn't heard of Romano Diedelow by that point, they had started to. And that is what a lot of people in Rich Mound had heard of or had started to hear about when they arrived in Ridge Mound. How did they end up in Richmond? So this guy in Richmond, a man named

Ricky Mans, who himself was, you know, for a while at QAnon follower, conspiracy theorist himself, I think had been following what was going on. And what we can tell is that he seems to have reached out to them and offered them this vacant building, what was formerly the school building in Rich Mound offered them this place where they could come. And then a few days later, they arrive in Rich Mound. Huh. And Mands was actually charged in July, right, with assaulting to police officers. He's got a court date later this month. Do we know anything more about what he is accused of? There's footage of this altercation that occurred in July. It's been a regular occurrence where Mans will confront RCP and other authorities who try to come to the school

for various complaints or to inquire about various bylaw complaints and other types of enforcement issues. That was not the first time that Rick Mans had been charged either. He'd been charged previously for assaults as well, involving an altercation with a local in Richmond. So this July charge was at least the second time that he'd been charged as it pertains to the situation in richmond since romana had arrived but we don't know too much more about his current charge we should know more soon we are gathered here today to celebrate life's big milestones do you promise to stand together through home purchases auto upgrades and surprise dense and dings We do.

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rated car shopping app in Canada on the Apple app and Google Play, according to App Follow. Buy your next car today with Car Gurus, and make sure your big deal is the best deal at car gurus.ca. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot CA. Car gurus.ca.cair-Gurus.ca.ca. Rachel, tell me more about this town. I know that you have visited Rich Mound on several occasions for this podcast you're making about this, about what happens, essentially, when a cult comes to town. And, you know, what's it like? I know it's very small. It is very small. It's a half a square kilometer, basically.

And it's this town of about 120 people or so surrounded by farmland. So you're driving throughout farmland in Saskatchewan, and suddenly you land on this little time. tiny village. And there's no bar, there's no restaurant, there's no coffee shop. There's this post office slash convenience store slash liquor store. That's basically where everyone can kind of get basic supplies. There's a few administrative buildings, other businesses, a church. And then there's about 65 homes in Richmond. So you can basically go from one end of the town to the other in about two minutes, depending on how fast you're driving. And then, of course, the school is there. The school is a huge property in comparison to the rest of the town. So it's right at the edge of town as this

giant school building. And so Richmond, you know, like many small towns in the prairies, has had its fortunes tied to the rise and fall of agriculture and the oil and gas industry. And that brought a lot of prosperity in the 80s and 90s. And by the 2000s, that industry starts to go into decline. So too did the population of Richmond. and the student population in particular. So by 2008, the school closes because they don't have enough young folks to attend the school. So the school, which had formed, like, the basis of this community for so long was suddenly empty. Okay.

So in a town with just 65 homes, of course, then you would really notice if people set up and started living in the abandoned school. and just tell me what some of the first things that Diedelow and her followers did that that ruffled townspeople's feathers. Yeah, and it was about maybe 10 to 15 people. So when Diedelow arrived in the fall of 2023, there was this, you know, giant convoy of RVs. That in itself would stick out in a small town. So you have imagine, you're just in this town,

you see like these giant RVs. RVs. Some of them have Romana's face on the side with a sword, the, you know, the purple flag with the, with a white maple leaf and a sword through it. You'd be like, what on earth is going on here? But out of the gate, Romana and her followers, like, did not exactly ingratiate themselves to the town of Richmond. They put up this, um, construction fencing around the school grounds and they had no trespassing signs. And there was this sign outside of the school that had been, there for a long time even after it had closed. And it was this sign that said putting you in Richmond. So Richmount has a U in it. And then this was spelled Y-O-U. So it's this kind of little sign that the community liked. And it was the town motto. But then Romana takes a saw grinder. And you can see footage of this. She's like scraping the sign. No. Rich Mound with a U in it. So your majesty, what are we doing at the moment? So at the moment, we are number one. One, this property is private.

Number two, the word school, when spelled backward, is luge, which I believe is a German word for dumb down. I mean, for this town, you're seeing this group of people come in and basically deface the school and say, like, we don't care about this property. We don't care about your way of life. So that gets people immediately on edge. We're sick and tired of walking around and having a cell phone pop up and be. in your face and on your license plate of your vehicle, like, for what? What do you need that for? It feels like we're living next to a dormant volcano. Worst case scenario is that they get themselves elected to village council and start making their own rules. And at the same time, you know, Romana

has these security folks that run security for her. They wear these hats and they have these t-shirts and they film everyone on their phone who comes by. So they started doing that outside at the school property as well, like going up to the fence and anyone who was curious about what was going on, they would start filming them. So people started feeling unsafe to bring their children to the playground that's next to the school. That's one of the only, if not the only playground in town. So that already gets people on edge. They were fearful. They were saying they just don't feel safe bringing their kids out to play on the playground. And are there, sorry, are there like altercations between the townspeople and, and Dietelone, any of her followers?

like either near the school or, you know, what happens if they go into town to get something from the convenience store? I think there was more just as in those early days a sense of confusion and tension. There was a moment at the super store in Medicine Hat where Romano was out shopping and someone from Richmond had come in and they started filming each other. They started shouting at each other. There's allegations that someone pushed someone. You're harassing me. I'm shopping. You're stalking me. Okay, you're stalking me. That camera is on. These people are harassing us. Okay. These people are harassing us here. We're shopping inside the store. So that was really a big flare-up moment early on. But the biggest moment came when townspeople decided to stage protests of Romana's presence in the school. And that happened quite early on after their arrival.

Hundreds of people from around surrounding communities came in to show their support for Rich Mound, shouting at the school, ramming their horn. They also ignored Rich Mound's protest. The people we spoke with who live here in Rich Mound say they don't want to share their opinions publicly because they're afraid of facing individual threats. There was a special RC&P detachment set up in Rich Mound, which is not typically there. I wasn't there, but my former colleague from Vice Matt Glamourou, was there and said it was like heavily armed RCMP all over the place. I talked to one local

who said he thought he saw snipers on a roof somewhere. And it was like people were actually very afraid that this could have turned into a wake-out type situation at that time. They were very afraid of what was happening. And a lot of the locals thought that the RCMP would be there to help protect them from the cult, but kind of quickly started to think that, okay, actually the RCMP is protecting the cult from us. There were no major issues that arose from the protests in the end. So after that, things get relatively calm. There were these email threats that started to go around to the mayor and other locals in town saying they were execution orders supposedly on behalf of Romana Diedelo and the Kingdom of Canada.

Digiloh's group sent out threatening letters to locals and authorities, suggesting whoever gets in the group's way or doesn't abide by its beliefs will face public execution. The locals complained about this to the RCMP. They say that the RC&P said they couldn't trace where the emails were coming from or who was sending them. We're taking these issues with the most seriousness, seriousness and making sure that we're able to maintain some freedom of association. some freedom of speech. So those emails and these messages of execution got locals really riled up as well. But that also fizzled out because no one ended up being charged.

No one ended up being arrested at that time. But really, again, the tone is set. There's the locals versus the cult. So my understanding. understanding is at some point, some kind of divide starts to form in the town, right? And I know that you've spoken to Rich Mound locals on both sides of that divide. And how would you describe what the two camps think? And how do they see the other side? So when I started talking to people in Rich Mound, I kept hearing over and over again that this town was already divided

and this cult is making things worse. So even before, Romana and her group landed in Richmond, there were these divisions in town between people who were supportive of the mayor and the local government and those who really despised the local government and wanted a change in government because they didn't feel like they were being heard. They felt like their grievances were not being taken seriously, that there was some favoritism in town. Anyway, by the time the cult comes into town, it really further divides the town into those who are seen as against the cult by any means, those who are desperate and eager to get the cult out no matter what.

And those who kind of started to think, well, this cult is not really, the people in the school are not affecting my day-to-day life. Why do we need to get so worked up? What is the point of, so there was a further divide in town between those who were seen as anti-cult and those seen as cult sympathizers or sort of people who are apathetic towards the cult. Yeah. Cult-agnostic.

Cult-agnostic. Cult agnostic. That's a perfect way to put it. Yeah. So anti-cult and cult agnostic, exactly. I know you've spoken to the mayor of Rich Mound, Brad Miller, about all of this, right? What did he have to say? He has been front and center of the charge to call for the cults to be ousted. He has been very vocal about the fears that he has around the presence of them in town, the dangers that they could pose, the effects that he thinks that they're having on the climate and the sense of community in town. out who really wanted her gone and who helped her stay. And there's a handful of people fighting us every step of the way. Some meanings were interrupted. You know, in a small town and village, there's lots of stuff that goes wrong, like

infrastructure and water treatment plant. And that stuff is sort of on the back burner. He's talked about pursuing other ways to try to get the cult out and has been frustrated. People are just staying in their houses more. And I did talk to a younger kid, whatever, the other day. And I said, what do you think of these people here? And he said, oh, man, that's scary. I'll never go there.

What does happen if something does happen to a kid? And then everybody says, oh, maybe we should have did something. And that's too late then. So he's been leading the charge. And then he has a lot of support in town for his efforts to do this. Was this part of why he got reelected? I would say it was part of why he got reelected. So there were local elections last fall, and the incumbent, Mayor Brad Miller at the time, ran again and ran largely on a campaign of, you know, promoting unity in town and other sorts of promises that aren't to do with the cult.

But also his run was framed as one of like, I'm the guy to get the cult out. So if you support getting the cult out, you have to vote for me is basically how a lot of people saw his campaign and his. opponent, a man named Jody Smith, a lot of his values and the values of his followers were like, we don't need to spend time and resources getting the cult out. It really shouldn't be a priority. They're not doing anything wrong. So he had other promises for folks in town. And the voter turnout at that election was like over 99%. I mean, it's a town of 120 people. I don't know how many people actually could vote off the top of my head. But it was a huge turnout. It was a very intense election. a lot of, a lot of disputes over ballots and people really, really fighting for democracy, I would say.

It was a really interesting election to see in the end, Brad won with a sweeping victory. And that's why he's mayor today. But I would say, you know, a lot of post-election chatter was like, okay, we've got him back in. We've got to continue the effort to get the cult out. The dozen or so people living in this school, what do we know about who they are? Like, what is their day like? What's it like inside the school? We know very little about the day-to-day inside the school.

We do know that they do live streams on a daily basis, sometimes hours on end. So you can kind of get a glimpse of what's going on in there. tell that the folks who live there, Romana's inner circle, are older folks. There are seniors. We know that a lot of them are retired, so they're living off pensions and fixed incomes. We know that the conditions aren't great in there. There's been a lot of concerns about, is there adequate heating in the winter? And winters can get very, very cold there. Is there adequate AC or cooling in the summer in the warmer months? What is the plumbing situation? look like. A lot of bylaw enforcement efforts have been made to inspect the school and see

what's going on. But there hasn't been much traction there. But there are concerns about the conditions in the school and what it's been like. I saw one of these decrees from Dita Lo about a year ago where she was telling followers not to take their prescription drugs, which she called poisonous and to use natural medicine instead. And have there been concerns, too, that our followers might be a real safety or health, right? risk. Absolutely. There are a lot of people worried about, including people in Richmond, who are worried about older folks not taking their meds and older folks being in pretty bleak conditions and what that could do to their overall physical health. From your perspective, Rachel,

having followed this for a long time, what do you think it is that draws people to Diedelow? We're talking about a small group, obviously, but these people have given up their lives, basically to follow her. And so what sense do you have of what the allure of this like specific leader would be for them? To be honest with you, I'm a bit confused by it. Yeah, I mean, you talk about these sorts of leaders as being generally quite charismatic. I really think in Romana's case, that's subjective. Maybe some people find her charismatic, but I sort of struggle to see what charismatic element that is there and how that compares to other sort of similar leaders of cults that we've seen throughout history. I think what draws people to her is her ideology

in this critical take, this anti-government approach at a time when people, and again, Richemount kind of is like a little microcosm of what's going on broadly in society, this division that pre-exists in our society between people who have whatever it is, different political views, different views of reality, different news habits, the way that they view the world is very polarized. And so when you have a figure like this who presents herself as the ultimate authority and is going to lead you down a path that is the truth and provides a better alternative to maybe things that are frustrating in your life, whether you're frustrated with your finances, your cost of living, your health care system.

She comes in and she promises that there's no more taxes and also that there's med beds, medical beds that she will provide, which will help cure any illness that you have and maybe even make you immortal. She promotes this non-existent technology that's a conspiracy theory. So she comes in and she presents herself as this alternative and almost a divine figure. And I think that can be quite appealing to a lot of people who are very frustrated. at this moment in time with the way that society is going and a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear that people have at this moment. If you were to really zoom out here, I'm wondering what this

whole story and what has happened to this town says to you, like what the bigger thing it stands for beyond itself is. It's a really good question and one that I'm, one that I've been grappling with for a while, because to me, Richmount is really this tiny example that shows how people respond and what can happen to a community when a conspiracy theory takes over, when a conspiracy theory in the case of Richmond literally lands in your backyard. Richmount sort of forces us to ask ourselves, to what extent would we go to to confront a conspiracy theory or confront people who are challenging what we believe in and what our sense of reality is, but it results in vigilante justice. Would law enforcement be able to do anything to

deal with this conspiracy theory? A lot of them would say no. So then what? What do we do as citizens? If we care about our belief system, if we care about our systems of government, if we care about our systems of democracy and criminal justice. What can and what should we do to protect that or promote our own beliefs in the face of something that is literally in opposition? Yep. Rachel, this was great.

Super interesting. Thank you. Thanks, Jamie. Okay, that is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening.