Ted W. Kulp

Ted W. Kulp is a Canadian linguist and political activist. He has long been active in the country's republican movement, and is a leading proponent of language reform in Canada and internationally. Kulp has also been a member of several political parties, and attempted to start his own Forward Canada Party in the 1990s.

Kulp was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada in the 1960s. He attended the party's national student (Y.P.C.) convention in 1963, and attained notoriety for opposing a confidence motion in party leader John Diefenbaker, and calling for the abolition of the Monarchy in Canada. ["Elections Dryng Up." The Ubyssey. 31 jan. 1963: A-3. http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/pdfs/ubyssey/UBYSSEY_1963_01_31.pdf] In 1981, he organized the Committee for the Republic of Canada, calling for the country's "foreign head of state" to be replaced by a Canadian president. [Globe and Mail, 28 February 1981.]

He campaigned for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in the 1971 election as a candidate of the New Democratic Party in York West, and finished third against Progressive Conservative John MacBeth. Kulp later joined the provincial Liberal Party, and twice ran for leadership of the party. He withdrew before the vote, both times. In early 1985, he brought forward a motion to the York Mills Liberal riding association opposing the extension of provincial funding to Ontario's Catholic school system. The motion was defeated. [Globe and Mail, 22 January 1985.] He now supports a large public educational system with autonomous sectors.

He formed, with C. Roach, the Alliance for the Republic of Canada in the 1990s, and protested a visit by Prince Charles to Canada in 1996. [Reuters News, 26 April 1996.]

Kulp was member of "th Simplified Spelling Society of Canada" (sic) during the 1980s, and was a proponent of reformation of the English language. He proposed a new language, Kanadio, with radical adjustments from the grammar and spelling of conventional English. In 1987 officially created Kanadio and founded the "Internatial Unio For Kanadio" (sic) in order to control the international expansion of Kanadio. [Reuters News, 11 Feb 1990.]

In 1988 he co-founded (with U.Chakrabarti) the Toronto-Calcutta Foundation, a charity for the Indian subcontinent. It has a number of charitable projects in West Bengal. Kulp was the International President of the TCF for 10 years.

In the 1997 federal election, Kulp contested Toronto Centre—Rosedale as a candidate of his own Forward Canada Party. He described the FCP as nationalistic, republican, and socially progressive. He called for the legalization of marijuana, the creation of new provinces by annexation of Bermuda and Greenland, and for linguistic reforms of both English and French. [Toronto Star, 30 May 1997.] His party was unregistered and he was defeated.