Image via WikipediaWhen did the saying of a prayer by a Christian become a fineable offence — in a country endowed with what I now laughingly think of as a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The mayor of Saguenay — God save him for a gentleman — is fighting this ludicrous and offensive decision.
You can be sure that if Saguenay had some 50-year-old service station about to be torn down, or someone wanted to raze an old henhouse, there’d be howls of “desecrating our culture,” of “obliterating the area’s heritage” and “disrespecting our past.” But beyond old buildings, in the far more profound, more deeply infused area of religious thought and cultural practice, any “remnants” of the past are to be strip-mined to benefit the whims of political corrections and its tribunal czars.
We Canadians are who we are because of our past, our intellectual, social and religious origins. Our cohesion and coherence as a nation today depends equally in some large measure on knowing and respecting where we came from, the beliefs that have, and in many case still do, animate us. Defend this part of our heritage with a greater ferocity than any building or landmark, or we will become a nation of fads and hollow gestures.
To some degree, alas, we already have.Rex, you just keep getting better and better.
My Canada includes Rex Murphy.
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