When it comes to accommodating individual religious practices, Canadian law appears to support the contention that Canadian society is “inclusively secular.” The Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides broad protections for freedom of conscience and religion.
Yet a new report says that two out of three Canadians are not comfortable with some cultural and religious practices tolerated in the name of multiculturalism.
We are not, according to the report, fully comfortable with the wearing by some Islamic women of the niqab or the wearing of turbans by members of police forces.
“There is a troubling schism between theoretical acceptance [of multiculturalism] and practical application,” says the report by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation.
Some of us are not even comfortable with Christmas and Easter being celebrated in schools, because of their religious origins.
That’s ironic. Although we pretty much all came from somewhere else, we have to accept that we are now a muddled mixture, a jumbled assortment of races, religions, skin colours and beliefs.
And, unlike in many other countries, we try to make it work.
While Christmas and Easter, for example, began as solely Christian religious observances, we have found ways to celebrate those and other events reflective of a culturally and religiously complex population without offending anybody.
Walk into any classroom these days and you’ll see Canada at its youthful, exuberant best. That’s partly because as our young culture continues to evolve and develop its own traditions, some celebrations become commonly shared, regardless of their origins.
And nobody objects to that.
We have Caribbean Days Festival, the Mushtari Begum Festival of Indian Classical Music and Dance, Muslim Fest in Toronto, Carnival de Québec in Quebec City, Diwali and Vaisakhi, especially important for Sikh communities.
As well as different interpretations of Christianity, Canada struggles to accommodate a broader religious diversity and tolerance to a degree that hardly any other country in the world does.
We are free to be members of the Bahai faith; we are Hutterites, Mennonites, Catholics, Mormons, Presbyterians and Anglicans. In our schools, there are children whose family life and cultural practices are based in Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Jainism and Sikhism.
Canadian Christmas is as much a Canadian cultural institution as it is a religious observance, and the kids in our schools, the kids from all those other respected traditions, join in unless some adults try to tell them otherwise.
I’m talking not only about kids who live in ethnically oriented communities, but kids who still like to have fun with all the other kids singing Christmas songs without anyone worrying they are somehow being hijacked into someone else’s religious movement.
Yet some parents, from time to time, express concern about Christmas songs that, simply because they’ve been that way for hundreds of years, contain traditional Christian lyrics about angels and a baby in a manger.
So where do schools draw the line between Canadian cultural traditions like Christmas and semi-religious practices? Whether it is Christmas with herald angels singing or Halloween based on Celtic harvest festivals with pagan roots, someone is sure to be upset.
The School Act is intentionally vague, although Section 76 states that schools “must be conducted on strictly secular and non-sectarian principles.” It instructs that “no religious dogma or creed is to be taught.”
It is a narrow and barely supported gangplank that teachers walk, above a dark sea of fretfulness from some parents who are concerned that recognition of Christmas and other traditions in classrooms is a devious plot to shanghai kids into religious practices.
Should classrooms recognize that large segments of the Canadian population celebrate Hanukkah, Vaisakhi or Ramadan? Does simply mentioning any of this contravene the expectations of Section 76 and expose teachers to criticism?
That would be unfortunate. Schools are reflections of their communities. Without a clear idea of what the educational implications are, teachers are expected to somehow convey to their students what it means to live in Canada in 2014.
I hope that will always at least include a recognition of Christmas, along with all those other celebrations that make us who we are.
Geoff Johnson is a retired superintendent of schools.
