Joshua N. Haldeman

Joshua Norman Haldeman (November 25, 1902 – January 13, 1974) was a Canadian and later South African chiropractor, aviator, and politician.

Early life and education
Haldeman was born in 1902 in Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, to father John Elon Haldeman and mother Almeda Jane (Norman) Haldeman. He had a sister, also named Almeda. When he was two years old, his father was diagnosed with diabetes; in an effort to treat her husband, his mother studied at E. W. Lynch's Chiropractic School in Minneapolis and earned her D.C. on January 20, 1905. The family then moved to Saskatchewan, where she became the first recorded chiropractor in Canada. John Haldeman died in 1909 and Almeda Haldeman remarried to Heseltine Wilson; Joshua Haldeman grew up on his ranch.

Haldeman attended a number of colleges and universities, including Moose Jaw College, Regina College, Winnipeg Agricultural College, and the University of Chicago. He graduated in 1926 from B. J. Palmer's Iowa-based Palmer School of Chiropractic. Haldeman remained a friend of Palmer and a user of the neurocalometer, a device which Palmer leased to practitioners.

Career
After a short time practicing as a chiropractor, Haldeman concentrated on farming, but the Great Depression led to his losing the farm in the mid-1930s, after which he worked in a variety of jobs including as a cowboy and a rodeo performer.

From 1936 to 1941, he was involved in Howard Scott's Technocracy Incorporated, which led to his arrest on October 8, 1940 in Vancouver by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on a charge of membership in an illegal organization. He was returned to Regina and released on $8,000 bail; at trial, he was fined for his role "writing, publishing, or circulating" a document titled "Statement of Patriotism by Those Who Were Technocrats", which the court deemed likely to cause "disaffection to His Majesty".

In 1941, he resigned from that group and for two years attempted to form his own political party, publishing a newsletter titled Total War & Defence. In 1943, he joined the Social Credit Party of Canada and served as the party's leader in the province. During that era, Haldeman worked to discourage the previously prevalent antisemitism in the party. In 1945, he made a bid for a seat in the federal parliament. In 1946, he cited the party's opposition to Communism in the press. He was chairman of the party's national council until 1949, when he resigned.

Professionally, Haldeman represented Saskatchewan during the organization of the Dominion Council of Canadian Chiropractors (DCCC), later the Canadian Chiropractic Association, and was elected provincial representative in 1943. He was a founder member of the board of the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College. In 1947, he was elected vice president of the DCCC, and from 1948 to 1950 he was its appointed representative to the Board of Control of the International Chiropractors Association (ICA).

To facilitate travel between his home and practice in Regina and his various other commitments, including the ICA in Davenport, Iowa, Haldeman took flying lessons, earning his pilot's license in 1948 and buying a single-engine plane. He and his second wife became known as flying enthusiasts, toured North America, and in the mid-1950s co-wrote a book titled The Flying Haldemans: Pity the Poor Private Pilots.

In 1950, the family relocated to South Africa, where he opened a chiropractic clinic in Pretoria. He served as secretary of the South African Chiropractors Association (SACA) from 1952 to 1959, after which he was its president until 1969.

The Haldemans continued to fly extensively. In 1954, they flew some 30,000 miles to Australia and back via Asia, possibly the longest journey by a private pilot in a single-engine plane. Beginning in 1953, they also undertook a dozen expeditions in search of the "Lost City of the Kalahari". Haldeman co-founded the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of South Africa and served as a representative on the Civil Aviation Advisory Council and the Air Navigation Regulations Committee of South Africa. In 1956, he also tied for first place in the third edition of the trans-Africa Algiers-Cape Town Rally, driving a Ford Ranch-Wagon 5.4L.

In later life, he self-published two books alleging international conspiracies: The International Conspiracy to Establish a World Dictatorship and the Menace to South Africa (1960) and "The International Conspiracy in Health", which cast suspicion on fluoridation, vaccinations, and health insurance.

Personal life and death
Haldeman married Eve Peters in 1927. Their first child, Joshua Jerry Noel Haldeman, was born in 1934. The couple separated by 1937. He remarried in 1942 to Winnifred Josephine Fletcher, a dance teacher, with whom he had 4 children, including twin daughters, Maye and Kaye, born in 1948. On January 13, 1974, he and a passenger were killed when his plane's wheels caught in a powerline during a practice landing.