‘When has a cult ever turned good?’: Richmound mayor describes aftermath of raid

Sewage water continues to seep into a large puddle near the entrance of a purple school-turned-compound that housed members of a cult in the southwest Saskatchewan village of Richmound for the last two years.

Although the “Kingdom of Canada” was driven out earlier this month after a police raid, Mayor Brad Miller says the sewage water — overflow from toilets and sinks inside the building — remains.

“If there’s wind, people probably 500 feet away can smell it,” says Miller, 64, in an interview.

“If you get it on your hands or whatever, you can smell it for hours. It stinks like you wouldn’t believe.”

Miller thinks daily about how to keep members of the group out if they return.

“I’m fed up. My family’s fed up. If you came out to the southwest, people are just fed up. It’s enough. It’s scary.

“When has a cult ever turned good?”

The sewage began pooling outside the building last year, after the village cut the compound’s water and sewage system as a last resort to drive out the members.

The owner of the building, Ricky Manz, wasn’t paying his water and utility bills, Miller says. Cult members began dumping waste around the building.

During a July visit to the compound with RCMP to check on the sewage issue, Miller says he ended up on the ground with Manz, rolling around in waste.

“I’m not kidding, I threw my pants away after the fight,” Miller says. “I never washed them or nothing.”

But it wasn’t the sewage that forced RCMP to raid the compound on Sept. 3. Mounties said they obtained a search warrant to enter the property on a report that someone inside had a firearm.

Mounties seized 13 imitation semi-automatic handguns along with ammunition and electronic devices. Manz, group leader Romana Didulo and others were arrested.

Miller, who has lived in the village of about 200 people for nearly 40 years, describes the late-night raid as one of the happiest moments of his life for a community that he says has been tormented for two years by the Kingdom of Canada and Didulo, the self-styled Queen of Canada.

“I was shaking with joy,” Miller says.

“They were sleeping when that raid happened.”

Manz, 61, a Richmound resident, faces multiple charges, including breaching a court order and attempting to intimidate a justice system participant, along with previous charges of assaulting two police officers.

Health officials have declared the building unfit for human habitation and have banned anyone from living there.

Didulo also is facing charges of breaching a court order and attempting to intimidate a justice system participant.

The mayor says after Didulo’s arrival, he and his council tried to get the cult to leave because they appeared to be violating nuisance and commercial building bylaws, but nothing worked.

“It was a commercial building and no one was allowed to sleep in there. We knew. The RCMP knew. But we couldn’t get in without that warrant. We couldn’t prove it.”

Miller says cult members barricaded the compound, set up security cameras and erected bright LED lights, some of which faced the main highway that runs through the community. The group also harassed locals by yelling and recording them.

Children became scared to go to the playground near the compound, Miller says.

The hatred and conspiracy theories the cult spread online shocked the community.

“But nobody cared about the small town in southwest Saskatchewan,” Miller says.

The Kingdom of Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment to its email, and Manz’s lawyer declined an interview.

Christine Sarteschi, a criminology professor at Chatham University in Pennsylvania, has written a book about cults that includes details of Didulo’s Kingdom of Canada.

“There’s probably no cult as bizarre as hers,” the professor says.

Sarteschi says Didulo, who is in her 50s, moved to Vancouver from the Philippines around the age of 15 to live with her grandparents after her parents died.

Didulo gained prominence during the 2022 “Freedom Convoy” occupation in Ottawa, where she tried to burn the Canadian flag.

Now she claims to be the “Queen of Canada” and characterizes herself as “the custodian of Earth and humanity,” an alien from another planet who can walk on water, Sarteschi says.

Sarteschi says Didulo encourages thousands of her followers via social media to stop paying their bills, taxes and debt under “natural law.”

Miller says the last two years of his five-year mayoralty have drained him, and he worries for his safety sometimes.

“I’m just a normal hard worker. I worked in the gas (industry) for 35 years. And I thought I’d help my town out, become mayor,” he says.

He doesn’t know whether he’ll continue leading the village, he says, but there is worry over whether the Kingdom of Canada will return.

“What’s going to happen now? They’ll still start staying in that school and we won’t know again?” Miller asks.

“Then do we got to get a warrant again to get in there? That doesn’t even make sense.

“The whole system doesn’t make sense.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2025.

— With files from Jeremy Simes in Regina

Fakiha Baig, The Canadian Press