(Winnipeg, Manitoba) Despite claims they had thwarted a government ban and had entered Canada, members of an anti-gay group that purports to be a church failed to show up for their threatened protest at the funeral of a man who was stabbed to death and beheaded aboard a Greyhound bus.

Members of Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., claimed they had successfully entered the country by removing material that referred to the “church” from their vehicles and shipped them by courier to Winnipeg after the material was used to blocked them from another crossing into Manitoba on Thursday.

A directive was sent to border guards last week by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to bar the group under Canada’s hate crime law, after Pat Martin, a New Democratic Party member of Parliament from Winnipeg, said he had received hundreds of complaints about the planned protest. 

The Phelps group said it would protest at the weekend funeral of Tim McLean to show Canadians that murder was God’s response to liberal Canadian policies toward homosexuality.

A large police contingent was on hand to prevent trouble at the funeral.  Earlier in the day, more than 500 Winnipegers filled nearby streets determined to prevent any protest from being seen by mourners.

McLean, 22, was brutally attacked as he sat in his seat on a Greyhound bus traveling west of Winnipeg on July 30. A fellow passenger has been charged with murder.

The Phelps followers were no-shows at two other protests in Canada over the weekend. The group had threatened to demonstrate in Red Deer, Alberta where a local theater company was performing “The Laramie Project,” a play about the homophobic murder of college student Matthew Shepard.

The group also failed to make good on a threat to demonstrate in Toronto where a satirical play titled “The Pastor Phelps Project” is being performed.

Westboro Baptist members frequently demonstrate at funerals for American servicemembers killed in Iraq. The group claims the deaths are God’s punishment on America for being too pro-gay.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepherd.