©
Flickr cc Stacy
Canada Travel Guide
©
Flickr cc Stacy
Canada is a country that does not have a state religion and where the number of people who belong to a church is constantly decreasing. Actually, despite a very large religious diversity, religion has less and less influence. You can easily see this during your visit to Canada.
Christianity is easily the majority religion in Canada. Almost 70% of the population are Christian. Catholicism is its most common form in Canada. The colonists brought Christianity with them. Obviously, the territory's natives had animist beliefs until the arrival of the Europeans. The god they venerated was nature. As soon as they arrived, the colonists made efforts to convert the Canadians to Christianity. Up to the end of the 1950s crimes against humanity were committed on the native communities in the name of religion.
Astonishingly, the second most important "belief" after Christianity is that of the non-believers who represent more than a quarter of the population. As well as having a high level of non-believers, Canada has an ever growing level of people who no longer practice, or who are even apostates. This decline in religion is allied to the secularization of the State, which advocates that religious practice be a private matter and not part of public life. This last affirmation is controversial because Canada's Constitution refers to God.
This drastic change in opinion with regard to religion began during Quebec's Quiet Revolution in 1960. Up until then the inhabitant of the province of Quebec had been very religious. At that time, education was almost completely controlled by the Church.
Strangely, even though the level of interest in the Catholic religion is at its lowest ever level, most Quebecois still say they believe in God, even if they are not practicing Catholics.
Nevertheless, despite the general lack of interest by Canadians, religious pluralism and the freedom of belief are Canadian values, even if you do feel some tension with regard to Islam. This is linked to cultural differences and to current evens which have not been favourable to it for the last decade.
There is an interesting plurality of religions in Canada. The country's openness to immigration largely explains this diversity. You can see Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses and even Raëliens. These last belong to a religious movement that is very active in Quebec and whose beliefs centre around the contact of their leader, Raël, with extraterrestrials.
