UndergradThesis

SUSTAINING SUPERFICIAL SECULARISM:
CULTURAL TENSIONS AND ETHNO-RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATION IN
QUEBEC
BY
MIRANDA GOUCHIE
A thesis submitted to the
Canadian Studies Programme,
Mount Allison University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Bachelor Arts degree
with Honours in Canadian Studies
April 2014

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the numerous people who have helped me with the
development and execution of this thesis. Firstly, thank you to Dr. Andrew
Nurse, whose supervision often entailed refocusing me on the pertinent
issues. Your continued guidance, knowledge, and ability to know something
about everything made this thesis and my four years at Mount Allison
rewarding and possible. To Dr. Meaghan Beaton, thank you for your help as
my second reader. Your advice and positivity undoubtedly lent a new
perspective to this project and my final year. To my family, numerous
library and study pals, and my ‘cohort,’ you have all been an invaluable
sounding board for my ideas and frustrations and remain my driving force.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................i
Table of Contents......................................................................................................iii
Introduction
Unravelling Religion and Ethnicity in Quebec...........................................................1
Chapter I
Creating Cultural Space: The Jewish People of Quebec..........................................19
Chapter II
Reconciling Modernity with Religiosity: Quebec’s Muslim Community...............41
Chapter III
Different But the Same: Sikhs in Quebec.................................................................57
Conclusion
Moving on, Moving Forward? The Demise of the Charter of Values.....................70
Appendix..................................................................................................................73
Bibliography.............................................................................................................88

Introduction
Unravelling Religion and Ethnicity in Quebec
Quebec…its society, composed of a national francophone majority, a
national anglophone minority, eleven aboriginal nations, and a multiplicity
of Quebecers from other backgrounds is at once multinational, multicultural
and hybrid.1
The province of Quebec released the terms of its controversial secular charter on
September 10, 2013. If implemented, the charter would establish religious
‘neutrality’ on the part of all state personnel, limit personal use of religious symbols
in the public sphere, make it mandatory that one’s face remains uncovered while
receiving or providing state services, and create an implementation strategy for this
initiatives for use in state departments.2
While the proposed policy aims to do such
things as eliminate the wearing of large crosses by civil servants, it fails to enact
true secularism by leaving certain Christian practices and symbols in public spaces.
State secularism supposedly relies on equality, respect, freedom of conscience, the
separation of church and state, and state neutrality towards religion.3
However, the
actions taken by the Quebec government raise questions about neutrality. The
ensuing debate led the Parti Québécois (PQ) to make an exception for the crucifix
that hangs above the Speaker’s chair in the National Assembly. Deemed one of the
“items of cultural heritage” in need of protection,4
there has since been some
indication that the crucifix may be removed following the release of its policy
document entitled Bill no
60: Charter affirming the values of State secularism and
religious neutrality and of equality between women and men, and providing a
framework for accommodation requests.5
The media and political communities
1
Jocelyn Maclure, Quebec Identity: The Challenge of Pluralism (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2003), 3.
2
“Charter of Quebec values would ban religious symbols for public workers,” CBC News,
September 10, 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/charter-of-quebec-values-would-ban-
religious-symbols-for-public-workers-1.1699315.
3
Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, trans. Jane Marie
Todd (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 20.
4
“Quebec’s identity politics: When is a crucifix not religious?” The Economist, September 14,
2013, http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21586338-when-it-object-electoral-calculation-
when-crucifix-not-religious.
5
“Bill no
60: Charter affirming the values of State secularism and religious neutrality and of equality
between women and men, and providing a framework for accommodation requests,” Assemblé
Nationale, November 7, 2013, http://www.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-

exploded, arguing about whether the restriction of religious expression is justified
when its practitioners are not members of the majority group within a ‘host’
society. For example, Conrad Black contends that “Quebec, for the purposes of its
own ruling elites, has renounced its past” by removing religion from its formerly
prominent place in the public sphere while simultaneously attempting to legislate
values in a democracy.6
The debates surrounding the removal of the crucifix are not new, nor are the
opposing public views held about religious accommodation. Throughout North
America, the need to accommodate religious diversity has become more prominent
in the public sphere, but Quebecers have reacted more strongly to this reality,
particularly in relation to Sikhs, Muslims, and Jewish peoples.7
In the three year
period leading up to the establishment of the province’s Consultation Commission
on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences in 2007, better known
as the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, 40 cases cultural conflict were documented.8
As Howard Adelman suggests, an exaggeration of accommodation requests in the
media, through reports of, for example, Muslims asking for a prayer space in a
restaurant, became misconstrued as widespread demands for change.9
As part of
their report, co-commissioners Gerard Bouchard, a sovereigntist sociologist, and
Charles Taylor, a federalist philosopher, concluded that the crucifix should be
removed from Quebec’s National Assembly. Then-Premier Jean Charest
immediately denounced this recommendation on the same day that he stated that
Quebec had been a secular society since the 1960s, thus emphasizing religious
heritage while affirming the state’s secularism.10
loi-60-40-1.html. See Appendix 1 for the precise language used in the secular charter.
6
Conrad Black, “Conrad Black: Spurning Quebec’s proud Catholic roots,” National Post,
September 14, 2013, http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/14/conrad-black-spurning-
quebecs-proud-catholic-roots/.
7
Solange Lefebvre, “Between Law and Public Opinion: The Case of Quebec,” in Religion and
Diversity in Canada, ed. Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 176.
8
Howard Adelman, “Monoculturalism versus Interculturalism in a Multicultural World,” in
Religion, Culture, and the State: Reflections on the Bouchard-Taylor Report, ed. Howard Adelman
and Pierre Anctil (Toronto: University, 2011), 44-45.
9
Ruth Abbey, “Plus Ca Change: Charles Taylor on Accommodating Quebec’s Minority Cultures,”
Thesis Eleven 99 (2009): 71-92.
10
Darryl Leroux, “The Many Paradoxes of Race in Quebec: in Quebec: Civilization, Laïcité, and
Gender Equality,” in Critical Inquiries: A Reader in Studies of Canada, ed. Lynn Caldwell,

Adelman suggests Charest’s dismissal of the recommendation was justified
since there is little indication that the state overtly favours Christianity except to
recognize that it is a part of the majority’s belief system and heritage.11
Yet, there
are overt references to Christianity in everyday life, from the lyrics of the national
anthem, to the prayers said before the opening of legislatures, and the Gregorian
calendar used to conduct public business. History and demography have helped to
determine these societal norms, but as Adelman fails to recognize, their assumed
nature does not render them neutral.12
Lori G. Beaman contends that a “shadow
establishment” of religion remains13
both provincially and federally. Christian
symbols, structures, and values have become an ingrained part of a system whose
politicians have rapidly pushed religion out of the public sphere.14
As the German
philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder first argued in the eighteenth century, how a
society structures and tolerates symbols encodes invisible ways through which
citizens’ experiences are managed.15
Even if the removal of the crucifix is
unjustified based on the grounds of religious heritage, numerous Christian
references remain intertwined with the inherent liberalism of the modern Canadian
project. This illustrates the need to discuss religion, ethnicity, and identity together
in context.16
This thesis explores religious accommodation in a supposedly culturally and
politically secular society by examining Quebec’s historic and present-day
accommodation policies. Quebec’s circumstances follow, in part, from its unique
Carrianne Leung and Darryl Leroux (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2013), 63.
11
Howard Adelman, “Conclusion: Religion, Culture, and the State,” in Religion, Culture, and the
State: Reflections on the Bouchard-Taylor Report, ed. Howard Adelman and Pierre Anctil (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2011), 109.
12
Maclure and Taylor, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, 68.
13
Lori G. Beaman, “A Cross-National Comparison of Approaches to Religious Diversity: Canada,
France, and the United States,” in Religion and Diversity in Canada, ed. Lori G. Beaman and Peter
Beyer (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 204.
14
John Biles and Humera Ibrahim, “Religion and Public Policy: Immigration, Citizenship, and
Multiculturalism—Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” in Religion, and Ethnicity in Canada, ed. Paul
Bramadat and David Seljak (Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2005), 167.
15
Howard Adelman, “Contrasting Commissions on Interculturalism: The Hijab and the Workings of
Interculturalism in Quebec and France,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 32, no. 3 (2011): 246.
16
Paul Bramadat and David Seljak, “Charting the New Terrain: Christianity and Ethnicity in
Canada,” in Christianity and Diversity in Canada, ed. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2008), 20.

place as a majority Francophone society in an English-dominated Canada. The
reasonable accommodation debates and secular charter are parts of ongoing
discussions about ethno-cultural, linguistic, and religious accommodation.
Quebec’s demographic reality has reinforced Francophones’ desire to maintain
their national identity and distinct culture within Canada. This case study relates
more broadly to both philosophical and political concerns about the integration of
diverse populations in a country lacking a strong sense of national self. Since the
advent of the idea of a ‘just society,’ civic nationalism has animated the debates
surrounding fairness, rights, and other liberal principles. Questions about the kinds
of cultural differences minority groups can maintain and how these groups must
conduct themselves publicly are juxtaposed against how far a host society should
go to accommodate difference. This thesis explores these issues in the context of
Quebec through an examination of Jewish, Sikh, and Muslim peoples in both
historic and present-day contexts. Ultimately, it suggests that the aims of the secular
charter are questionable at best given the limited demands of these groups, the
exaggeration of the accommodation crisis, and the reasonableness of many of the
requests. From these debates, however, emerges a prime opportunity for Quebecers
and, by extension, all Canadians, to consider how best to manage interactions
between diverse groups. This will highlight the problematic nature of Quebec
secularism as not being true religious neutrality, but a tool through which to limit
difference in a host society that sees itself as threatened.
Christianity, and more specifically Catholicism, has become an inextricable
part of Francophone Quebecois identity since colonization. The hybrid nature of
Catholicism in Quebec has allowed the provincial government to continue its
support for its principles in harmony with secularism and liberalism. While a liberal
democratic society is, by its principles, egalitarian and diverse, the state must
ensure that it maintains neutrality in relation to religion while upholding its core
principles, including basic human rights.17
The rights in question in the reasonable
accommodation and secular charter debates include basic liberal principles, such as
liberty, free speech, and free practice of religion. Protecting Catholicism as an
17
Maclure and Taylor, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, 9-11.

aspect of cultural heritage while attempting to limit religious freedom in the name
of upholding the society’s supposed secular nature produces a contradiction
between the province’s aims and its principles. This has turned heritage into
something that goes beyond identity, to a cultural aspect in need of government
protection. An examination of the reasonableness of Quebec’s actions will be
evaluated through a brief theoretical examination of the province’s place within the
Canadian nation. This introduction will also introduce the theoretical lens of
Critical Race Theory (CRT) through which it will examine how religion, ethnicity,
and language have become intertwined throughout Quebec’s history to reinforce the
dominance of French Catholicism, its values, and other cultural components, such
as ethnicity.
Religion, National Identity, and Diversity
Diversity has long been a cultural, political, and scholarly concern in Canada.
While Canada has not had a state religion since long before Confederation,
Christianity forms an assumed value structure through which a certain idea of
national identity and belonging has been created and constructed. In Quebec, these
concerns predate Confederation to debates about French-speaking Canadiens, their
language, and religion post-Conquest. Following the fall of New France to Britain
in 1759 and the official transfer of the colony in 1763, French Canadians demanded
the retention of French civil law, the opportunity to hold elected government posts,
and the right to use French as the colony’s public language, all of which Governor
Guy Carleton ultimately accepted.18
Eva Mackey contends that a better way of
understanding these concessions was that the British Crown aimed to foster better
ties to the Catholic clergy in light of unrest in the empire’s southern colonies
leading up to the American Revolution.19
This demonstrates the power religion held
at this time and how it could be used to further the interests of the state. Due in part
18
Anctil, “Reasonable Accommodation in the Canadian Legal Context,” 17, and Lefebvre,
“Between Law and Public Opinion,” 107.
19
Eva Mackey, The House of Difference: Cultural politics and national identity in Canada (London
& New York: Routledge, 1999), 27.

to the religious concessions made in the colony, a unique relationship between
religion and ethnicity developed. The two became inextricably linked and went
beyond spirituality to include aspects of culture, identity, worldviews, and
education.
Religion has played a role in the legitimization of limits on diversity and in
the cultural constitution of Quebecois identity in Canada. It remains, however, an
under-examined domain within Canadian multiculturalism.20
Darryl Leroux argues
that there has always been a discourse of Francophone whiteness as supreme in
Quebec, a characteristic that is invariably tied to religion.21
One of the earliest
examples of this is of the French settlers who justified the colonization of a space
already occupied by Aboriginal peoples by relying on the Christian idea of saving
them from their traditional spirituality through Jesus Christ in the name of France.22
The French colonizers desired to build a Christian society where Roman
Catholicism would hold a monopoly over permanent colonial settlements.23
This, in
turn, caused Aboriginal peoples to lose their claim to sovereignty because they
were not Christian.
Richard J. F. Day argues that New France’s integration into the British
Empire set a precedent for the treatment of subsequent minority groups in Canada
leading up to present day.24
French-speaking Canadians, however, were
simultaneously set apart from other North Americans. As Day notes, “This, in its
most concise form, is the sting of the Conquest: to be shifted from the Self in one’s
own system to Other in an Other’s, to go from providing solutions to problems to
be managed as a problem oneself.”25
The Catholic Church provided French
speakers an opportunity to maintain their culture and language, forming the core of
pleas for linguistic and educational rights leading up to the Quiet Revolution,26
but
20
Banting, Keith and Will Kymlicka, “Canadian Multiculturalism: Global Anxieties and Local
Debates,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 23, no. 1 (2010): 63.
21
Leroux, “The Many Paradoxes of Race in Quebec,” 54.
22
Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Diversity in Canada, 78.
23
Bramadat and Seljak, “Charting the New Terrain,” 7.
24
Day, Multiculturalism and the History of Diversity in Canada, 107.
25
Ibid., 102.
26
Solange Lefebvre, “The Francophone Roman Catholic Church,” in Christianity and Diversity in
Canada, ed. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 109.

especially following the Rebellions of 1837 and 1838, and the 1841 Act of Union.
The Rebellions gave the clergy great power over citizens as the bishops sided with
Britain against the rebelling Patriotes, with the state again using the Church as a
means of control.27
The nineteenth century also saw an enthusiastic revival of
Catholicism known as Ultramontanism that solidified the institutional church as a
core part of French Catholic life.28
Interestingly, Ultramontanism grew as a
response to the spread of liberalism in the Western world and intended to help
French-speaking Catholics in British North America resist Protestantism and
secularism.29
Across Canada, the 1867 British North America Act established an already-
existent separation of church and state through the absence of religion in its text,
save for the compromise concerning the availability of both Protestant and Roman
Catholic education in the provinces. Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor state that
the Conquest marked the formal separation of church and state in pre-
Confederation Canada and thus was the beginning of French Canadian
secularization. This was among the first measures of tolerance put in place to foster
peace between the French Roman Catholics and English Protestants.30
But there has
never been official state neutrality with respect to religion in Canada. Indeed, there
was little doubt among Canadians that they lived in a Christian country. The
injunction of religion was undeniably harsher in Quebec.31
People of British and French descent formed the majority within the new
Canadian state and pushed others to the periphery across the country. Since
colonization, concerns about diversity within modern-day Canadian territory have
been directed at Aboriginal groups, immigrants, established minorities, and the
need to maintain a certain heritage, an element of which is undeniably religious.
The further colonization and assimilation of Aboriginal peoples continuing in the
27
Lefebvre, “The Francophone Roman Catholic Church,” 107.
28
Mark C. McGowan, “Roman Catholics (Anglophone and Allophone),” in Christianity and
Diversity in Canada, ed. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2008), 64-65.
29
Multiculturalism and the History of Diversity in Canada, 107-108.
30
Maclure and Taylor, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience, 54-55.
31

nineteenth century occurred through the Indian Act, the reserve system, and
residential school system created in conjunction with Protestant and Catholic
churches.32
Christianity became a part of the “hegemonic national project” that
subjugated ethnic and religious minorities to harsh immigration policies, such as the
Chinese head tax.33
These kinds of policies are recalled today through the long-
standing anti-Semitism in Canada and the discrimination against Muslims, Sikhs,
and others whose religion carries a strong ethnic implication. Although Taylor
argues that a democratic society must demand equality for all cultures and
religions,34
Christianity formed the base of Canada’s dominant culture as economic,
social, and political institutions were in part sustained by their connections to
religion.35
Christianity was the clear identity marker that was equated with civility,
morality, and whiteness.36
Leading up to the Second World War, a fusion of popular culture,
education, family relations, and understandings of the self with Catholicism
characterized Francophone identity in Quebec.37
With the death of Premier Maurice
Duplessis in 1959 and the election of Jean Lesage’s Liberal government in 1960,
liberalization swept Quebec. As the society rapidly modernized, Roman
Catholicism was deemed “traditional or anti-modern.”38
Due to the liberalization of
federal immigration policies, Quebecers found themselves dealing with rapid
secularization, modernization, and increased ethnic and religious diversity
simultaneously.39
Despite the unofficial disestablishment of Roman Catholicism in the 1960s,
to preserve of the Quebecois nation, there remains a need for a common cause and
32
Mackey, The House of Difference, 14 and John S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian
Government and the Residential School System, 1879 to 1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba
Press, 1999).
33
34
Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of
Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 27.
35
36
37
Multiculturalism and the History of Diversity in Canada, 106.
38
Michael Gauvreau, The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 1931-1970 (Montreal &
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005), 5.
39

identity.40
In Quebec, the Catholic Church controlled the province’s social welfare
system up to the 1960s, maintaining its foothold on education, health, and other
integral services. Undeniably, these aims are informed by values, which are, in turn,
informed by culture, of which Catholicism still forms a significant pillar. Some
argue that the Quiet Revolution marked an identity shift with the state, rather than
the Catholic Church, becoming the core of what protected the province from
outside forces.41
Michael Gauvreau maintains that the Quiet Revolution is best
viewed as a move towards Catholic modernity and a further anchoring of religion
within the culture.42
Reginald W. Bibby found that the power held by the Church
was in turn transferred to Quebec’s Catholic citizens, who then provided services in
institutions still strongly marked by religion, such as schools and hospitals.43
The
province’s elites continued to operate in a world anchored by the Catholic values
that had informed the society’s development going back to colonization.44
In 2002,
approximately 6 million Quebecers identified themselves as Roman Catholics,
compared to about 4 million in the 1950s, marking a continued identification with
the province’s religious past.
Stuart Hall predicted that people’s capacity to live with difference would
come into question in the twenty-first century.45
This is undeniably true in Canada,
as diverse regions now struggle with the accommodation of religious, ethnic, and
cultural difference. In Quebec, despite heightened immigration,46
Francophone
Catholics whose ancestors have lived in the province for at least three generations
still form a majority, although this is set to change if current immigration trends
40
41
Peter Beyer, “From Far and Wide: Canadian Religious and Cultural Diversity in Global/Local
Context,” in Religious and Diversity in Canada, ed. Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer (Leiden: Brill,
2008), 17.
42
Gauvreau, The Catholic Origins of Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, 12-13.
43
Reginald W. Bibby, Restless Gods: The Renaissance of Religion in Canada (Toronto: Stoddart,
2002), 16.
44
45
Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation,” Cultural Studies 7 no. 3 (1993): 359.
46
In 2006, Quebec’s immigrant population totaled 851,560 of an overall population of 7,425,900.
For further information, please see Statistics Canada, Population by immigrant status and period of
immigration, 2006 counts, for Canada, provinces and territories, 20% sample data
http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/hlt/97-557/T403-eng.cfm?
Lang=E&T=403&GH=4&SC=1&S=99&O=A.

continue.47
The resurgence of the importance of spiritual beliefs in public debates
could mark a strong reaction to growing non-Christian religiosity in a society that
believed it could retain its values and principles in a secular society.48
Adelman argues that Quebec is only superficially secular because only half
of Quebecers approved of the province’s non-denominational ethics and religion
course compared to 78 percent of non-Francophones.49
His research holds that
Catholicism continues to be an important marker of cultural heritage and a way to
differentiate the province in what he calls a “marked schizophrenia” to Quebec’s
cultural past.50
Taylor argues that some aspects of Quebec society were slower to
secularize, such as the education system, partially because parents were reluctant to
give up this means of engraining a certain set of values in their children, forming a
difficult divide between secularism and wanting to deny the formation of new
cultural positions.51
Many Christians today believe that secularization is a betrayal of the
foundations of Canadian society.52
Catholic Quebecers seem to be the least
supportive of tolerating other cultures and lifestyles and are the least tolerant of
ethno-religious minorities in Canada, with church attendance having little to no
impact of their views.53
They continue to identify with their ancestral religious
denomination, maintaining this affiliation as a marker of culture and identity. Paul
Bramadat and David Seljak counter this, stating that Canadians are decreasingly
informed about many aspects of their religion, including its beliefs, rituals, and
ethics.54
Regardless, most Canadians continue to include their religion as a part of
how they define themselves, as is apparent through their ongoing, if minimal,
religious participation and the cultural legacies that live on within Canadian
47
Lefebvre, “The Francophone Roman Catholic Church,” 105, 118-119.
48
Anctil, “Introduction,” 4.
49
Adelman, “Conclusion,” 101.
50
Ibid., 109.
51
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2007), 598-599.
52
53
Sam Reimer, “Does Religion Matter? Canadian Religious Traditions and Attitudes Towards
Diversity,” in Religion and Diversity in Canada, ed. Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer (Leiden: Brill,
2008), 110-116.
54

institutions.55
As such, the understanding that religion encodes a set of beliefs that
informs identity56
fits well with this discussion of Catholicism and religion as part
of a person’s culture, heritage, and ethnicity not only because it shapes values and
practices, because it influences attitudes towards diversity and accommodation.57
Shifts in culture and demographics mean that Catholicism is no longer the
force in Quebec that it had once been,58
but it has maintained an influence despite
widespread societal secularization. Dealing with diversity may be especially
difficult in Quebec because of the historic need to protect the majority culture,
especially in light of a growing internal ‘Other’ with different spiritual or cultural
sensibilities.59
The voice of other religions is notably absent from public debates
that directly affect them, overshadowed by voices that maintain that certain ethno-
religious practices are threatening Quebec’s cultural heritage.
Theoretical and Analytic Perspectives
With diversity being such an important issue with close ties to religion, ethnicity,
and language, Canadian scholars have approached its study in a concerted way. One
of the earliest works was J. Murray Gibbon’s Canadian Mosaic, which argued
against Canada’s assimilationist policies to highlight the value of the country’s
diversity.60
Anglophone scholar Charles Taylor explained the intricacies of French-
language protection policies in Quebec in an accessible way to English Canada in
the 1960s. This work coincided with the groundbreaking Royal Commission on
Bilingualism and Biculturalism that sought to promote French throughout the
country and paved the path for Canada to become a multicultural country.61
55
Reginald W. Bibby, Unknown Gods: The Ongoing Story of Religion in Canada (Toronto:
Stoddart, 1993), 155, 168.
56
Paul Bramadat, “Beyond Christian Canada: Religion and Ethnicityi n a Multicultural Society,” in
Religion and Ethnicity in Canada, ed. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak (Toronto: Pearson Education
Canada, 2005), 11.
57
Reimer, “Does Religion Matter?” 122.
58
59
Lefebvre, “The Francophone Roman Catholic Church,” 118.
60
J. Murray Gibbon, Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation (Toronto: McClelland
and Stewart, 1938).
61
Hugh Donald Forbes, “Canada: From Bilingualism to Multiculturalism,” Journal of Democracy

For Canadian liberals like Taylor and Will Kymlicka, diversity and its
intrinsic ties to language, religion, and ethnicity have been matters of the utmost
concern. Both Taylor and Kymlicka argue that French Quebecers and Aboriginal
peoples in Canada are “national minorities,” as their differences have been
incorporated into Canadian institutions and practices, privileging them to pursue a
form of asymmetrical federalism that can support their unique needs and cultures.62
Asymmetrical federalism provides Quebec with increased control over jurisdictions
such as immigration policy and allows a sense of autonomy in the province.63
Since
the 1990s, Quebec has worked to create its own immigrant selection criteria,
maintains international immigration offices abroad, and places a higher weight on
the importance of French.64
Acknowledging that maintaining a national minority
requires change, this justified laws designed to protect the French language and, by
extension, the majority culture, post-Quiet Revolution.
Taylor and Kymlicka believe that some level of accommodation is required
for diverse religious and cultural minorities, and argue for its fairness. This special
treatment allows minorities to preserve their distinctiveness. Kymlicka furthers this
argument in Liberalism, Community and Culture, putting forth that “no life goes
better by being led from the outside according to values that the person doesn’t
endorse;” citizens should be included in their society and have the liberty to live
according to their own values without penalty.65
In Kymlicka’s view, the Canadian
state tries to ensure that its citizens share certain values that form a base for
solidarity and allegiance such as tolerance, support for diversity, and a belief in
consultation and dialogue.66
Such values are actually shared principles or liberal-
democratic norms, and are insufficient determinants of social unity when a better
4, no. 4 (1993): 77-83.
62
Elke Winter, Us, Them, and Others: Pluralism and National Identity in Diverse Societies
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 42.
63
Charles Taylor, “Shared and Divergent Values,” in Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on
Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, ed. Guy LaForest (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 1993), 183.
64
Marie McAndrew, “The Muslim Community and Education in Quebec: Controversies and Mutual
Adaptation,” International Migration and Integration 11 (2010): 43.
65
Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 12-
13.
66
Will Kymlicka, Finding Our Way: Rethinking Ethnocultural Relations in Canada (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 150.

solution in Kymlicka’s opinion is a shared identity.67
A shared identity among
ethnic groups, however, does not preclude asymmetrical treatment as in the case of
“national minorities” due to the lack of incorporated institutional need to maintain
their sense of difference within the society.68
Taylor argues in The Politics of Recognition that liberalism is not a neutral
meeting ground for all cultures. Rather, it is an expression of a hegemonic culture69
that imposes a certain understanding of the good life.70
A liberal society should
promote certain values for which it cannot maintain neutrality that contribute only
in part to one’s sense of the good.71
This means that Quebec liberalism as it
operates is always already value-laden. Liberalism as implemented in Canada is not
secular, but an ideology informed by and grounded in Christianity.72
The
continuation of Christian structures and beliefs in the face of modernity and
secularization has made it more difficult for some societies to integrate those with
values and beliefs that go against Christian moral codes.73
Liberalism forms a part
of “the politics of equal dignity,” where a level of sameness is to permeate society,
individuals, and their citizenship.74
In the case of Quebec, however, it is evident that
cultural differences are viewed as negatively affecting this sameness. This is
problematic, because culture and language are not harmful to the good, and are, in
fact, necessary for a sense of the good as key components of one’s identity.
Western societies like Canada will remain informed by their Christian heritages.
Even if fewer people will identify strongly with the faith based on their group
identity.75
Asking Quebecers to accept the state’s liberal neutrality, therefore, is
meant to help maintain the Francophone majority.
CRT developed in Canada as a critique of problematic policies that
67
Kymlicka, Finding Our Way, 151, 173.
68
Winter, Us, Them, and Others, 140.
69
Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 43-44.
70
Redhead, Charles Taylor, 97-102.
71
Ibid., 90.
72
Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 62.
73
Charles Taylor, “A Catholic Modernity?,” in A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist
Award Lecture, ed. James L. Heft (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 16-17.
74
Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” 38.
75
Taylor, A Secular Age, 514.

exercised power through the existing liberal-pluralist state channels.76
Laws and
practices have justified power as a means of regulating society’s diversity through
social constructs, such as race. CRT questions liberal thinkers who have argued that
multiculturalism in Canada is a defender of diversity, arguing that no law is neutral.
It problematizes Canada’s legal and policy operations to reveal the whiteness
embedded in the country’s identity markers. 77
Thus, multiculturalism and shared
values are never neutral. They carry with them specific identity codes that reinforce
ethno-linguistic and religiously based power relations.
CRT suggests that the Canadian multicultural ideal forms an aspect of
public policy that unintentionally embeds conceptions of whiteness. The
intertwined nature of religion, language, and ethnicity, through the lens of CRT,
racializes Quebec’s ethno-religious minorities. CRT recognizes that the law
maintains subordination based on race, ethnicity, and religion.78
Theorists argue that
the ‘colour blindness’ of post-Charter of Rights and Freedoms Canada should be
replaced by a more asymmetrical way of operating that acknowledges cultural
dominance and biases on the part of the legal system.79
This thesis will use this lens
to examine accommodation in Quebec. This view focuses attention on the subtle
forms of subordination and inherent problems in Canadian liberalism through such
allegedly neutral policies as a secular charter.
The Quebec provincial government has never accepted multiculturalism. It
has instead designed interculturalism, which characterizes the majority as
possessing a right to maintain their culture before the diversity of minorities and
immigrants.80
Pierre Anctil argues that interculturalism tolerates and encourages a
certain level of diversity, but only insofar as other characteristics remain
subordinate to the French language and the established culture.81
Both
76
Mackey, The House of Difference, 5.
77
Carol A. Aylward, Critical Race Theory: Racism and the Law (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing,
1999), 30.
78
Ibid., 31.
79
Ibid., 31-34.
80
Bina Toledo Friewald, “Qui est nous? Some Answers from the Bouchard-Taylor Commission’s
Archive,” in Religion, Culture, and the State: Reflections on the Bouchard-Taylor Report, ed.
Howard Adelman and Pierre Anctil (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 76.
81
Pierre Anctil, “Introduction,” in Religion, Culture, and the State: Reflections on the Bouchard-
Taylor Report, ed. Howard Adelman and Pierre Anctil (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011),

interculturalism and multiculturalism are supposedly based on tolerance and
pluralism, but,
…multiculturalism allows differences to exist side by side…while
interculturalism assumes that people of different cultures will interact with,
and be transformed by, encounters with each other while maintaining some
basic social values (finding a middle ground between “mosaic” and
“melting pot”).82
Perhaps what is occurring in Quebec is in part a failure of the intercultural ideal,
where visible minorities and immigrants are not being substantially transformed to
this standard that dominates the province’s political life.
The overarching discourse in Canadian society implies that there is a
majority ‘us’ that must make concessions to the minority ‘them.’83
The concept of
whiteness is typically juxtaposed with otherness in an effort to define its effects and
purposes. Eva Mackey contends that Canadianness has defined its characteristics in
relation to perceived internal and external ‘Others’ because whiteness is perceived
to encompass heterogeneous groups, while minority ethno-religious groups, such as
Muslims, are viewed as more homogeneous.84
Sherene Razack maintains that settler
societies are structured in a way that transforms the North American colonization
narrative into one of peaceful settlement rather than of conquest.85
Today’s
“cultural racism” has moved away from the idea of biological constructs to
perpetuate exclusionary practices through a constructed patriotism linked to a
homogeneous national culture of whiteness.86
According to Leroux, culture can stand in for alleged biological differences
between Euro-Canadians and ethnic ‘Others.’87
In today’s English-dominated
Canada, Francophone Quebecers are ‘othered,’ making their actions towards visible
17.
82
Meena Sharify-Funk, “Muslims and the Politics of ‘Reasonable Accommodation’: Analyzing the
Bouchard-Taylor Report and Its Impact on the Canadian Province of Quebec,” Journal of Muslims
Minority Affairs 30, no. 4 (2010): 544.
83
Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer, “Introduction: Religion and Diversity in Canada,” in Religion
and Diversity in Canada, ed. Lori G. Beaman and Peter Beyer (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 3.
84
Mackey, The House of Difference, 21-22.
85
Sherene Razack, Race, Space, and the Law (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), 1-2.
86
87
Leroux, “The Many Paradoxes of Race in Quebec,” 57.

minorities all the more striking.88
Even as a recognized minority culture within
Canada, Quebecers also effectively ‘other’ Aboriginal peoples, visible minorities
and immigrants in a way that makes them second-class citizens. Mackey contends
that Quebec’s marginal status has become an integral aspect of the provincial
identity, wherein Francophone Quebecers are peripheral to the Canadian core.89
Culturally, Catholic Quebecers are the “invisible majority” against which ethno-
religious minorities should formulate their identities.90
This discussion mirrors later
explorations of Sikh, Muslim, and Jewish peoples in Quebec and how their
religions are closely tied to their ethnicities and understandings of their beliefs,
cultures, and heritages. This process of otherness edits history and culture.
Differences between religious minorities are ignored and they are treated as both
homogeneous groups and problems to be addressed through state policy. Said
differently, CRT shows the ways in which Canadian public discourses and policies
recognize diversity between groups like Euro-Canadians of British or French
origin, but tend to homogenize and ‘other’ minorities and immigrants. This
homogenization is difficult to sustain empirically and forges discursive links
between religion and ethnicity that do not necessarily reflect the societal reality.
Development
The remainder of this thesis explores the accommodation of diversity in Quebec as
a distinct case within Canada because of the unique development and character of
the province’s majority culture. In Canadian Studies, debates surrounding the
reasonableness of accommodation demands raise important policy questions
pertaining to the accommodation of minority cultures within an already threatened
host society. Can or should a province deny minority cultures religious freedom
based on its unique position as a ‘national minority’? What are the limits of
reasonable accommodation? How can these limits be evaluated, and what are the
strengths and weaknesses of the state’s approaches?
88
89
90

To address these issues, this thesis explores three distinct case studies of
ethno-religious groups implicated in Quebec’s accommodation crisis. Starting with
the historic Jewish community and the growing numbers of Hasidic Jews in the
province, the first chapter explores historic and modern day accommodation
demands and responses in Quebec. Hasidic Jews especially have garnered
significant public attention in the twenty-first century for their demand for frosted
windows at a Montreal YMCA and other forms of public religiosity. The roots of
Muslim accommodation are deeper and the scope of their requests more topical
because their demands for concessions have been highly publicized and are
supposedly limiting on gender equality. Furthermore, there has been a ‘moral
panic’ stemming from twenty-first century concerns about the severity of Muslim
beliefs. The Sikh case study will focus on ideas about violence associated with
symbols such as the kirpan and confusion between the group and Muslims that
serves to skew the public opinion of the religious tradition.
The reasonable accommodation debates serve as a synthesizing anchor to
discuss crosscutting issues about liberal concerns related to state neutrality, gender
equality, and equal treatment. Taken together, these chapters argue that the goals of
the secular charter are not neutral. They aim to protect a certain understanding of
Quebecois heritage and liberalism; the reality of the required accommodation crisis
has been far overstated. Today, the question of who gets to regulate how cultural
understandings are formed and how a society will continue to develop is limited by
the provincial government’s aim to diminish the intrusion of minority religions into
public spaces. The supposedly long-understood neutrality of the state is being
exploited to deny religious freedoms. Based on the small number of historic and
present-day accommodation demands, the reasonableness of requests, and the
exaggeration of the crisis in the media, what Quebec is trying to implement is not
religious neutrality but an ethno-religious management tool in an ‘othered’ society
simultaneously threatened by ethno-religious difference.

Chapter I
Creating Cultural Space:
The Jewish People of Quebec
As an ethno-religious group in Quebec, the Jewish community is both significant
and diverse. Since at least the 1700s,91
Jews have lived in—and were the first non-
Christian group to settle in—what became Canada. As Norman Rayvin notes,
“Jews have become ‘the most institutionally complete group in Canada, comparable
to on-reserve First Nations and Hutterites’” with their own social services,
newspapers, and other institutions.92
Langlais and Rome similarly note that Jews
form a “distinct society” because of their collective aspirations and institutional
completeness.93
At the same time, it is important to question the cohesiveness and
homogeneity of this community within Quebec. To refer to Jews is to simplify
differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews as well as Reform,
Conservative, Orthodox, and ultra-Orthodox or Hasidic Jews, among other groups
and traditions. The Jewish community, therefore, serves as an appropriate starting
point for an examination Canada’s pluralist debates and challenges to the dominant
Christian-infused secularism, especially due to the group’s high concentration in
the Montreal area.94
Jewish Quebecers have been involved in an extended struggle for
accommodation in a diverse range of areas. Overall, the relatively minor nature of
their claims, as well as the sameness or whiteness between Euro-Canadians and
Jews, made their accommodation quite easy. Historically, accommodation requests
have emerged from specific aspects of Jewish cultural and individual life that were
being challenged in public life. Before Confederation, the struggle for
accommodation concerned equality in the formal political sphere and other aspects
of public life. Post-Confederation Quebec saw the development of increasingly
91
Beaman and Beyer, “Introduction,” 3.
92
Norman Rayvin, “Jews in Canada: A Travelling Cantor on the Prairie, and Other Pictures of
Canadian Jewish Life,” in Religion and Ethnicity in Canada, ed. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak
(Toronto: Pearson Education Canada, 2005), 114.
93
Jacques Langlais and David Rome, Jews and French Quebecers: Two Hundred Years of Shared
History, trans. Barbara Young (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 1991), 54.
94
Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky, “Introduction,” in Renewing our Days: Montreal Jews in the
Twentieth Century, ed. Ira Robinson and Mervin Butovsky (Montreal: Vehicule Press, 1995), 10.

accessible public education that was not fully accessible to Jews and other non-
Christians, leading to a half-century-long education conflict. The increasing number
of North African Sephardic Jews and the growing public profile of Montreal’s
Hasidic population has amplified conflicts about the use of public and visible space
over the past two decades. Studies show that Quebecers’ general characteristics
cause them to more readily perpetuate anti-Semitic discourse. This is arguably not
tied to nationalism, but to conformity and its value in a society such as Quebec.95
This chapter will explore how Jews of varying religiosity sought to create their
own, distinct cultural space.96
It focuses on challenges for accommodation and
change within in the public sphere, their interaction with rights and the law, and the
role of the media in creating controversy and manipulating public perception.
Early Settlement and Issues
Leading up to the Conquest, Jews were denied citizenship in New France and
therefore did not settle in the colony. They nonetheless contributed to the trading
system as intermittent visitors. This ban on inclusion arguably influenced the power
of Christianity in public life and politics going forward to the twentieth century.97
This changed post-1763. Jews sought a new life in British North America wherein
they were allowed a greater degree of freedom and equality than anywhere else in
the world at the time.98
During the hundred-year-long “honeymoon period” that ran
from the Conquest to Confederation, Jews were welcome and secure in their faith
within the colony, with few exceptions.99
It is clear from this early inclusionary
period that Jews are different from other ethno-religious minorities in that many of
the religion’s practitioners are difficult to distinguish from the general population,
especially in comparison to other minority groups implicated in similar
controversies.
95
Paul M. Sniderman et al., “Psychological and cultural foundations of prejudice: The case of anti-
Semitism in Quebec,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 30, no. 2 (1993): 242-243.
96
Robinson and Butovsky, “Introduction,” 15.
97
Rayvin, “Jews in Canada,” 115, 117.
98
Langlais and Rome, Jews and French Quebecers, 11.
99
Ibid., 4.

One of the earliest documentations of a cultural crisis in what became
Quebec was the first election of Ezekiel Hart in 1807, a member of a prominent
Jewish family, to Lower Canada’s Assembly. Robinson and Butovsky argue that
the advent of modernity in Canada allowed Jews the greatest equality and political
rights at that time, but on the condition of abandoning their religiosity and
culture.100
In other words, Jews were treated equally so long as they did not behave
differently form the general population. Hart was elected to the legislature in both
1807 and 1808, signalling the integration and importance of his family in the Trois-
Rivières area, but he was not allowed to sit in the Assembly either time.101
Upon
swearing his oath, he replaced the word “Christian” with “Jewish,” causing alarm
amongst the English-speaking and legalistic members of the Assembly. Tulchinsky
argues that this lack of accommodation of religious difference affirmed the second-
class citizenship of Jews in the colony in this period.102
Subsequently, steps were
taken to move away from the Christian exclusivity in public life. The Lower
Canadian assembly adopted a principle of equality for Jews in the colony in 1831.
Despite challenges to this principle on technical grounds, it was officially
confirmed in 1834.103
The 1880s saw the first signs of change in the Quebec Jewish community’s
composition that altered the community’s societal relations with Christians as well.
Immigrants fleeing the persecution of the Russian Empire’s pogroms, often even
unaware that they were headed for Canada rather than the United States, increased
the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the Jewish community.104
They were typically
Romanian or Russian in origin, but more broadly could be understood to have
arrived from the former Ottoman Empire. As the majority of Jews had previously
arrived from within the British Empire, anti-Semitic sentiments were on the rise
due to the differences between the socioeconomic standings of Quebec
Anglophones and Francophones and the new arrivals that formed enclaves in the
100
Robinson and Butovsky, “Introduction,” 9-10.
101
102
Gerald Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews: A People’s Journey (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2008), 26-28.
103
Langlais and Rome, Jews and French Quebecers, 15, Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 28.
104
Rayvin, “Jews in Canada,” 116.

Montreal area. From 1871 to 1931, the community expanded from roughly 400 to
over 58,000.105
Pierre Anctil notes the growing anti-Semitism of the late-nineteenth and
early-twentieth centuries. With connections to the Anglophone community, second
generation Jews born to immigrant parents developed skills that allowed them
social mobility, higher education, and a place in the liberal professions. Their
success brought disdain from the Francophone majority, whose place in society
manifested itself in a typically lower social status.106
Schools and Mid-century Issues
As the Jewish community turned to the privileged Quebec Anglophone community
as a means of economic advancement and integration, the vast majority adopted the
English language and enrolled their children in the Protestant school system. At the
same time, it was clear that Jewish aims were not entirely consistent with those of
the Christian majority. In the early post-Confederation period, the Christian group
the Ligue du dimanche argued that some business owners were operating every day
of the week, leading to an amendment to Quebec’s Lord’s Day Act. Previously,
Jews had been allowed to operate their businesses on Sundays on the concession
that they could close for the Sabbath.107
For Jews who observed the Sabbath, this
Christian-fuelled push to halt work only on Sundays shook their religious
foundation.108
The very design of the school system, divided along religious and linguistic
lines, was not intended to accommodate an increasingly pluralistic society.109
The
Francophone-taught Catholic system saw instruction from nuns and priests and was
105
106
Pierre Anctil, “Interlude of Hostility: Judeo-Christian Relations in Quebec’s Interwar Period,
1919-1939,” in Quebec Since 1800: Selected Readings, ed. Michael D. Behiels, 396-424 (Toronto:
Irwin Publishing, 2002), 399.
107
Jacques Lacoursière, Histoire Populaire du Quebec, Tome 4 (Quebec City: Septentrion, 1997),
213.
108
Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 251.
109
Roger Magnuson, “The Public School Myth: Quebec Education 1875-1960,” McGill Journal of
Education 22, no. 1 (1987): 37.

inherently exclusionary based on the worship and the anti-immigration sentiment
perpetuated by the Church.110
There was no inclusive space for Jewish students in
the Catholic system; therefore it was reluctantly the Protestants’ place to provide
educational services. An official agreement with Montreal’s Protestant School
Board was reached in 1894 and renewed in 1903. The agreement allowed for
elementary education in return for school taxes collected from Jewish properties
and a salary provided for an instructor in religion and Hebrew to applicable
students.111
Langlais and Rome state that the agreement was arrived at because the
school board, province, and the Jewish community worked together toward the goal
of accommodation.112
An early issue in the Protestant school system was the Jacob Pinsler
scholarship case. In 1901, Jacob Pinsler and nine other Jewish children were
awarded high school scholarships by the Protestant Board of Commissioners. There
was a fear, however, that such a large volume of Jewish students whose parents
were not paying to be a part of the system diminished Christian influence in
secondary education.113
The Quebec Superior Court heard the case brought forward
by Pinsler’s father in 1902. The court agreed that because Jewish parents were not
“rate-paying proprietors,” with their tax contributions covering only a third of the
fees to educate them,114
that their children could not claim the right to benefit from
scholarship programs. Parents did, however, pay school taxes, but were unable to
sit on the school board, and were not allowed to keep their children home on Jewish
holidays without penalty.115
This, in effect, ensured education only for Jewish
property owners’ children, while Protestants had a right to education regardless of
parental contribution.116
Jewish absences from school on their religious holidays left
Protestant students feeling like they were being treated unfairly.117
This inequality
110
111
112
113
Joe King, From the Ghetto to the Main: The Story of the Jews of Montreal (Montreal: Montreal
Jewish Publication Society, 2001), 135.
114
115
King, From the Ghetto to the Main, 136-138.
116
Magnuson, “The Public School Myth,” 37.
117

was enough to make the community consider its options. Thus, the province
enacted legislation in 1903 that gave Jews equal rights in the educational system
and allowed them to excuse themselves from the schools’ religious aspects in return
for Jewish property taxes.118
While a step forward, the Quebec government failed to
properly remedy the inequality of power perpetuated by the court’s decision.
By 1909, the demand for a Jewish community role in the school system
grew, as did the idea of having a separate, Jewish-administered board.119
By 1914,
Jewish students accounted for 43.5 percent of all students in the province’s
Protestant schools.120
The burgeoning number of Jewish students in the Protestant
school system caused some who had supported integration to change their minds
and oppose their inclusion. The shifting composition of the schools was viewed
ultimately as a threat to Protestantism and Christian religiosity.121
Although the
Protestant School Board often had all-Jewish classes and, when numbers warranted,
entirely Jewish schools, there were few Jewish teachers, especially at the high
school level.122
Although a 1921 bill proposed that ‘neutral’ (or, non-Christian)
students could choose between Catholic and Protestant schooling never passed, the
province raised the school tax levied on these groups for the disproportionate costs
of educating their typically larger families.
The decision that Jews continue to attend Protestant schools did not satisfy
all parents and community members. A Jewish education committee formed in
1922 that encouraged inter-faith education for the betterment of all Canadians’
citizenship. Others believed that such an education system encouraged
secularization and integration into the society at large. The proposal for a separate
Jewish school system by the Jewish Community Council garnered some support as
a viable alternative to a segregated non-Christian school that would include Jews
with Muslims, Orthodox Greeks, and people of Asian origin, among others.123
That
Jews were considered for a completely separate school system apart from other
118
Magnuson, “The Public School Myth,” 37-38.
119
120
King, From the Ghetto to the Main, 137.
121
122
123

‘neutral’ religious groups shows the importance of the group and the case that they
made for inclusion on grounds of similarities to the Euro-Christian majority in
Quebec society.
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Quebec Superior Court decision
that Jews could form a separate school system in 1921. This ruling, however,
applied only to Montreal and Quebec City, rather than to suburbs such as
Outremont where many Jewish families were moving. Britain’s Judicial Committee
of the Privy Council finally decided in 1928 that Quebec had to establish a Jewish
school commission if it was so required.124
It found that section 93 of the
Constitution Act, 1867 guaranteed educational responsibility to the provinces, but
that these jurisdictions could not deny another denomination the right to education
in a prejudicial manner.125
While this case is considered a landmark for its time, it is important to
consider the implications that this use of the judicial system held for non-Christians
in Quebec society. In effect, it created a hierarchy of education, wherein there could
be denominational schools, common schools, and dissentient schools.
Constitutional protection under section 93 was provided only to denominational and
dissentient institutions, thus protecting Christian religious authority in education.
By deciding that Jews were not classified as Protestants for the purposes of
education, “it conferred second class citizenship on Jews and by implication on all
non-Protestants, who were attending Protestant schools in Montreal.”126
Nonetheless, it also shows that Jews were considered separate from other minority
groups that sat between the majority and other minorities with certain rights for
which non-white ethnic groups did not dream to ask at the time. While there were
limits, there were also opportunities that other immigrants and minorities did not
have.
The Quebec government of Louis-Alexandre Taschereau agreed in 1930, in
what is known as the ‘David law,’ to allow for the creation of Jewish schools when
Jewish and Protestant education commissions were unable to come to an
124
125
Magnuson, “The Public School Myth,” 38.
126
Ibid., 38-39.

agreement. The agreement allowed Jews representation on the school board. This
decision created a backlash in the media and among the Catholic clergy,
particularly concerning the equality that this legislation provided Jews and the
precedent it set for other groups. This signalled to the government that they would
need to abolish this clause. The public protest that erupted in Quebec’s newspaper
columns and editorials led to reluctance to continue with this plan. A combination
of the fear of losing the Christian society and internal Jewish divisions fuelled this
debate.127
The province repealed the David law with the promise to establish a
Jewish board of school commissioners.128
But, it then applied pressure to the Jews
to sign a new agreement with the Protestant school boards in Montreal and
Outremont, a move that halted change for a further fifteen years.129
Jewish students
had to participate in Christian devotional exercises, accept loss of credit for their
religious holidays, and Jewish teachers were still out of the question.130
While the agreements passed again without amendment in 1945, Jewish
communities found ways to educate their children in their religious tradition outside
of the Protestant system. A set of private institutions was implemented for families
who were able to afford it, a move that neglected the poverty and limited
economics means of a large portion of the Jewish population.131
Interestingly, these
schools were more secular than religious in their educational focus and techniques.
The 1960s also brought in changes in the Jewish community. The provincial Royal
Commission of Inquiry on Education recommended Jewish representation on the
Protestant School Board that established in 1963.132
By the end of the decade, the
provincial government required that Protestant school boards fund the Jewish-only
institutions. The Jewish Federation argued in the 1970s that, “every child has a
right to [a Jewish education], no matter the financial circumstances of its
parents.”133
Eventually, the Quebec government took on the funding role and was
127
128
Ibid., 299.
129
Langlais and Rome, Jews and French Quebecers, 80-82.
130
131
132
133

the only Canadian province to do so. In addition to Jewish schools, there were also
after-school Jewish programs for children who remained in the Protestant education
system.134
What this long, challenging fight for educational rights in Quebec shows is
that Jewish Quebecers could be accommodated, although they had to fight for these
rights. The denial of separate, public institutions for an extended period created
more problems for the Catholic and Protestant populations who felt that they should
dominate the education system. While they were allowed to be a part of the
Protestant school system, Jews remained marginalized and eventually went on to
form private institutions.
Another influx occurred in the 1960s, as Jews from northern Africa, Syria,
and other minority French-speaking areas of Central and Eastern Europe
immigrated to Montreal.135
A small minority of Montreal’s Jewish community are
Francophones. The Sephardic Jews, among the later waves of Jewish immigration,
to Quebec, constituted not only the largest wave of Francophone Jewish
immigration, but also the largest French-speaking immigration since the territory’s
transition to British control in 1763.136
This influx drew attention to the shortage of
French-language services for Jews, especially in education. With a lack of French
education for non-Catholics, Sephardic children were often placed in lower grades
until their English skills improved. The community was later able to open its own
day school in 1968, followed by the creation of two francophone day schools that
were financially backed by the Quebec government.137
North African Jews faced such problems undoubtedly in part because they
were visibly different from other Jewish Quebecers. They are an excellent example
of the politics of difference at play, wherein the system thought it could
accommodate all Jews in the English Protestant system. However, the subtlety and
variety of branches of Judaism, and their encroachment on white, Francophone
territory beginning in the 1960s, began to create more problems. Sephardic Jews
134
135
136
137
Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 449-450.

were visibly different from the majority in Quebec, as would be later waves of
immigrants, including the Hasidim.
Parti Québécois Legislation and the Jewish Community
The election of the PQ in 1976 saw many changes in the Jewish and immigrant
experiences in Quebec. Many of the government’s policies targeted Allophones and
Anglophones in the province, challenging the dominant position of English
speakers and Jews who had integrated effectively into their structures. As a result,
due in part to perceived exclusion and economic opportunities elsewhere, Montreal
continues to see an exodus of thousands of its community members to other North
American Jewish communities such as Toronto or New York.138
The 1977 passage of the Charte de la langue française requiring all people
moving to the province from elsewhere in Canada or abroad to enrol their children
in French schools was aimed at halting further Anglophone and Allophone
immigration. Following this law, its legality was challenged up to the Supreme
Court of Canada, which found that English language education should be
guaranteed for Canadian migrants, but not for newcomers from abroad.139
Although
Quebec moved from Protestant and Catholic schooling to French and English
schooling in 1998, it is clear that problems persist in terms of integrating
Allophones and immigrants into the system in general.
In 1988, Bill 178, which regulates signage and language use on signage,
brought to light the severity of the situation and the threat it posed to non-
Francophone civil rights. Kosher foods arriving in the province from the United
States were not properly labelled, and thus this limited the food that could be
imported. While exemption efforts were undertaken, issues pertaining to kosher
food and Bill 178 were reported up until at least the late 1990s.140
Such protectionist government initiatives have perpetuated a certain
understanding of Quebecers, as post-Quiet Revolution, Francophones have found
138
Rayvin, “Jews in Canada,” 118.
139
Tulchinsky, Canada’s Jews, 448-449.
140
Ibid.

themselves as the dominant group in Quebecois society. Language is intertwined
with religion and ethnicity in ways that have implications for minorities such as
Jews. Nationalistic pride and a desire to preserve culture and language has served to
exclude the largely Anglophone Jewish community in new ways. These laws have a
significant effect on the way in which Quebec culture is regulated and the degree to
which diversity is tolerated and respected. These laws perpetuate a narrow
understanding of Quebec identity, as it holds Jews and other Allophone or
Anglophone immigrants back from certain opportunities and creates problems in
what were once easy, everyday tasks.
The Orthodox Community
The Montreal Jewish community has many dimensions, including differences in the
practice of their religion and the expression of culture and traditions. The Orthodox
community is varied, with the two extremes being modern Orthodox, those whose
religious tradition is important to them but remain engaged with secular society, to
the Hasidim, who protect themselves from outside influences. Those who practice
Orthodox Judaism may adhere to up to 613 religious commandments that control
how they conduct their everyday lives, from food preparation to worship and
societal interaction.141
They control the secular nature of their schooling, educate
girls and boys separately, create their own institutions, and each group (also known
as a sect) maintains its social customs and worship separate from others.142
Regardless of group differences, each sect maintains the importance of halting
cultural and linguistic assimilation, and limits its interactions, even with other
Orthodox Jews.143
Of the sizable Orthodox community in Montreal, estimates about
the number of Hasidic Jews vary from as low as 4,000 to as high as 10,000.144
141
Rayvin, “Canada’s Jews,” 111.
142
Ibid., 124.
143
William Shaffir, “Safeguarding a Distinctive Identity: Hasidic Jews in Montreal,” in Renewing
our Days: Montreal Jews in the Twentieth Century (Montreal, Vehicule Press, 1995), 77.
144
Shaffir, “Safeguarding a Distinctive Identity,” 76, Randal F. Schnoor, “Tradition and Innovation
in an Ultra-Orthodox Community, the Hasidim of Outremont,” Canadian Jewish Studies 10 (2002):
56, and King, From the Ghetto to the Main, 314.

Although these people often isolate themselves in separate communities,
Montreal’s Hasidim live a life apart within the larger urban centre. This isolationist
group has garnered the most attention concerning accommodation in the period
leading up to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, with many of their requests
represented in the media as requests for different uses of public and private space.
Eruvim, or wires used to expand private space outside of the home, have
caused conflict in Quebec and throughout the Jewish diaspora. The meaning of the
word eruv comes from the Hebrew word for partnership in reference to the
communities that agree to allow its stringing in public spaces.145
Meyer Siemiatycki
argues that these practices raise questions about the regulation of public and private
space, the secular nature of government, inter-religious relations, values, and
understandings of traditions throughout the modern world.146
Each individual eruv
is used to expand the space in which Orthodox Jews push and carry items outside of
the home, behaviours that are not allowed on religious holidays and the weekly
Sabbath.147
As “an interesting combination of real and imagined space,” an eruv
encapsulates an Orthodox sect in a space wherein their synagogue and homes
exist.148
As a separate municipality in the greater Montreal area, Outremont was
approached to approve the stringing of an eruv on its utility poles in the late 1990s.
Non-Jews in the neighbourhood feared ghettoization and argued that this practice
posed a threat to Francophone cultural preservation. The request was not
outrageous, as Montreal and the nearby municipalities of Coté St. Luc, Dollard-des-
Ormeaux and St. Laurent had approved eruvim in the same period. Although the
Orthodox community obtained permission to string the wire in October of 1999,149
Outremont Mayor Jerome Unterberg denied the request later that year on the
grounds that the power conferred on municipalities by the province forbade local
145
Valerie Stoker, “Drawing the Line: Hasidic Jews, Eruvim, and the Public Space of Outremont,
Quebec,” History of Religions 43, no. 1 (2003): 34.
146
Meyer Siemiatycki, “Contesting Sacred Urban Space: The Case of the Eruv,” Journal of
International Migration and Integration 6, no. 2 (2005): 257.
147
Stoker, “Drawing the Line,” 18-19.
148
Siemiatycki, “Safeguarding a Distinctive Identity,” 259.
149
Stoker, “Drawing the Line,” 19-20.

governments from allowing public space to be used for religious purposes. The
municipality proceeded to cut down the existing eruv late in the evening the day
before the holiday of Rosh Hashanah.150
As such, Unterberg, a man of Jewish faith
himself, argued that such a use of public space was “ostracizing non-Jews.”
Although a temporary court injunction was awarded to prevent the dismantling of
an eruv in the area, the case continued on into the 2000s.151
Valerie Stoker argues that there were both Jewish and Francophone
opponents to the eruv, but as the privileged and outspoken voices on the issues,
Francophones came to dominate the public face of the opposition. The main
concern was the anti-modern and religious manner through which the Orthodox
community aimed to express its religiosity.152
Outremont resident Luc Brien stated
that,
I’m not against a few fishing lines but the symbolism is disturbing…I don’t
think that [the Catholic crosses that once stood at intersection of rural
Quebec’s roads] would be very welcome today…and if we allow one
community to put up something, where will it end?153
Those who agreed with eruvim and other incidents of Orthodox Jewish
accommodation argue that laws and by-laws are social constructs that must change
with community needs.154
The position taken by the Mouvement laïque québécois
(MLQ), a non-partisan secular pressure group in the province, garnered the most
public attention by arguing that eruvim alter society’s secular character and lead to
the formation of religious enclaves.155
The media presented the issue as a “turf war”
between the secular municipal government and the local Orthodox community.156
The language used by newspapers like The Gazette and The National Post referred
to eruvim as “fishing line.”157
It was clear that the importance of this millennia-old
150
Charlie Fidelman, “City accused of intolerance: Jewish community claims municipal officials
went too far: [Final Edition],” The Gazette, October 5, 2000, A6.
151
Siemiatycki, “Contesting Sacred Urban Space,” 266.
152
Stoker, “Drawing the Line,” 35.
153
Charlie Fidelman, “Outremont Jews to fight for ritual: [Final Edition],” The Gazette, September
27, 2000, A7.
154
155
Ibid., 39.
156
157
“Fishing-line wrangle goes to court: [Final Edition],” The Gazette, October 16, 2000, A5, and
Graeme Hamilton, “Montreal enclave, Hasidic residents fight ‘turf war’: Fishing line fence seen as

religious practice was lost on the general public.
Well-known human rights lawyer Julius Grey, representing five members of
the Hasidic community, challenged the municipality on its position. He argued that
Outremont was being unfair in its application of the secularism clause, as utility
poles and other properties in the area were regularly mounted with Christmas
decorations for the annual celebration of the Christian holiday. Before going to
court, Grey accused the municipality of “false neutrality. It’s a neutrality like the
Tower of Pisa—leaning one way.”158
The municipality had previously heard a
human rights commission complaint ordering it to stop Christian prayers before city
council meetings, on which it followed through.159
The eruv was much less visible
to Outremont’s citizens than these other symbols of religiosity. The backdrop of
Christianity in the case was an afterthought, as the assumption that Christian use of
public space, even for a highly secularized holiday, was considered by the
municipality to be reasonable and non-threatening to minority groups or the
‘secular’ municipal government. Richard Moon raises an important point about the
neutrality of secularism:
[J]udicial ambiguity about the value of religion and the nature of religious
commitment shows itself in the courts’ uncertainty about the character of
public secularism. Even when the courts accept or assume that public
secularism involves the exclusion of religion from the public sphere, they
are sometimes uncertain about its neutrality. They are uncertain whether
secularism truly represents a neutral ground…or whether it should be seen
as a partisan, non-religious or anti-spiritual perspective that is in
competition with religious worldviews.160
Such an interpretation of the meaning of public secularism is applicable in the eruv
case, especially when considering the position of the Outremont municipal
government. Moon’s insight goes beyond the courtroom to broader confusion about
the character of secularism and society’s cloudy neutrality. Robert Perusse’s June
25, 2001 editorial in The Gazette notes that Christmas trees and other decorations
encroaching on public land [National Edition],” National Post, June 7, 2001, A7.
158
Fidelman, “City accused of intolerance.”
159
Janice Arnold, “Eruv installation refused: Outremont mayor says it is illegal,” Canadian Jewish
News, October 12, 2000, 30.
160
Richard Moon, “Religious Commitment and Identity: Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem,”
Supreme Court Law Review 29 (2005): 212.

have come to symbolize the winter season for many religions and cultures other
than Christians.161
That an eruv remains year-round also increases the cultural
burden it places on the general public.162
Conversely, Alex Werzberger, president of
the Coalition of Outremont Hasidic Organizations, argued, “If you’re allowed to
hang things up for other religions but not [Hasidic Judaism], then you’re
discriminating…What this basically is, is intolerance.”163
The result of this court challenge as been called “a benchmark for religious
freedom cases in Canada.”164
Quebec’s Superior Court found in June of 2001 that
secularism in Canada is meant to allow people to freely practice their religions
rather than to restrict its expression.165
Accommodation should thus be understood
as inherent to religious neutrality in that society should in no way hinder the open
practice of religion so long as it does not harm others.166
Judge Allan Hilton
differentiated between eruv and Christian iconography by stating that eruvim are a
necessity of Orthodox Jewish life.167
This countered Mayor Unterberg’s assertion
that the provincial laws did not give Outremont or other Quebec municipalities the
power to authorize religious use of its public spaces based on his legal analysis.
Unterberg had also disagreed with the Hasidic community based on the idea that
the eruv was not necessary to practice their religion, only making it “simpler.”168
Such a decision transcends the liberal framework of the law to protect the
freedom of minorities in Canada. Hilton’s understanding of religious
accommodation addresses the social construction of liberal thought in deciding that
neutrality means freedom rather than control within a narrow definition of
respectable religious practice within a public space. The resulting dissent towards
161
Christmas decorations’ confusing symbolism illuminates the hybrid nature of contemporary
Christianity. Whether or not Christmas trees are culturally Christian is dubious; however, the event
that they are meant to commemorate dictates that they are.
162
Robert Perusse, “Many find Outremont eruvs offensive: [Final Edition],” The Gazette, June 25,
2001, B2.
163
Ingrid Peritz, “Chi-chi Quebec enclave clashes with Hasidim,” The Globe and Mail, October 18,
2000, A1.
164
Siemiatycki, “Contesting Sacred Urban Space,” 267.
165
166
Ibid., 39.
167
Ibid., 43.
168
Arnold, “Eruv installation refused.”

the court’s decision reflects changing Canadian conceptions of acceptable
accommodation. Hilton’s decision is undoubtedly controversial, as it raises
questions about the reasonableness of accommodation practices and how far such
exemptions can go as they approach violations of civil laws.169
While there are
certainly limits, Hilton recognized that they have not gone far enough and to deny
change is to ignore the cultural influences and societal pressures of the day. Those
who contend that eruvim mark the cultural dominance of the Orthodox Jewish
community170
fail to recognize Christian dominance at play in public space. For
other cultures to exist within such a system, there must be greater flexibility.
It is also important to note the unevenness of accommodation practices. In
comparison to the Jewish schools crisis of the twentieth century, the eruv case also
discusses the use of public space by a non-Christian religious group. It is apparent
that the general population is more amenable to some forms of accommodation
over others, and one that is so visible raised widespread concern about the use of
public space. Similarly, the use of public space by Christians for Christmas
decorations was considered fine, and perhaps even as a secular practice in this case,
demarking the Christianity and whiteness of the boundaries of reasonable
accommodation.
Another prominent case of Jewish Orthodox accommodation is the 2004
Supreme Court of Canada decision in Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem. In that case,
the Jewish tenants in a condominium complex argued that they should be able to
construct a ritualistic hut, called a succah, on their balconies that would remain
there throughout the duration of the nine-day religious festival of Succot. As the
Syndicat Northcrest condominium association was unwilling to allow for an
exemption to its strict rules concerning decorations, alterations, and construction on
balconies, it rejected its Jewish tenants’ appeals for an exemption.171
Lori G.
Beaman contends that the case is especially useful for understanding the
subjectivity of religion and the ways in which the Supreme Court of Canada must
reconcile belief with practice in modern Canada. This moves the case beyond
169
170
Ibid., 20.
171
Moon, “Religious Commitment and Identity,” 203.

freedom of conscience to defend freedom of religion.172
The Supreme Court of Canada held that the Montreal condominium
association violated its Jewish tenants’ religious freedom under the Quebec Charter
of Rights and Freedoms by not allowing them to construct familial succahs.173
Justice Frank Iacobucci argued that although the condominium association was
prepared to provide the families with the opportunity to build a communal succah
in the gardens, this still violated the need to build private, familial succahs as a part
of the celebration.174
Commenting on this case, Moon argues that religious practices
deserve exemption because of their ties to cultural and community identity as an
expression of autonomy.175
This is important, as only a minority of Jews overall
celebrate Succot. By contrast, Margaret H. Oglivie views the Supreme Court’s
decision in favour of a “minority religion” as a defeat of the property and civil
rights of all Quebecers,176
clearly siding with the dissenting judges. Similarly,
columnist John Robson questioned,
What possible belief or practice would not qualify under [the Court’s
definition of religious freedom]? And if such an open-ended “religious
freedom” lets one disregard otherwise legally binding obligations, what
freedom or security can any of us count on having?177
Such an understanding of law ignores the fact that the condominium association
failed to follow through on its contractual obligation to hear appeals for an
exemption to its ban on balcony constructions. The tenants were willing to make
some changes to fall in line with the aesthetic of the building and to allow access to
fire lanes and ensure safety and security for all residents, facts that failed to sway
Quebec’s Superior Court.178
The Quebec court understood that because this was a
minority belief, it should not be privileged as an overarching Jewish tradition. This
172
Lori G. Beaman, “Is Religious Freedom Impossible in Canada?,” Law, Culture and the
Humanities 8, no. 2 (2010): 278.
173
Ibid., 201.
174
Moon, “Religious Commitment and Identity,” 205.
175
Ibid., 216-218.
176
Margaret H. Ogilvie, “And Then There Was One: Freedom of Religion in Canada—the
Incredible Shrinking Concept,” Ecclesiastical Law Journal 10, no. 2 (2008): 202-203.
177
John Robson, “Supreme court tries my faith: [Final Edition],” The Ottawa Citizen, July 7, 2004,
A16.
178
Ogilvie, “And Then There Was One,” 198.

reduced the importance of the Orthodox community’s religiosity by judging it to be
less important than Judaism as is broadly understood by the legal system. Robson’s
language also ‘others’ the Orthodox Jewish community by marking a clear
separation between them and the majority in Canadian society at large. It also
misses the point by deploying an odd logic. Robson employed the sort of
understanding often used in public discourse concerning accommodation requests.
He is of the view that if requests for accommodation are heard, there will be endless
other requests that cannot be denied. Robson fails to recognize that the
condominium association and the courts were deciding a specific case and were
being asked to accommodate a specific request. All regulation and order of space
was not being retracted, but simply altered in this instance so that a specific
community could practice their religious ritual to fulfill their spiritual obligation.
The public view that this is wrong mystified issues by inappropriately tying
requests to extremist logic and the likelihood of improbable stakes.
The visibility of the Hasidim and the resulting constructions from their
accommodation requests show how intrusions into shared public space are viewed
as a threat to Quebec society in general. There are clear demarcations to what is
acceptable in a public space and what is not, and the public viewed the
accommodation requests as going too far. The visibility of Judaism in a public
space became a spatial threat in the eyes of many Quebecers, taking equality
beyond where they felt comfortable. Fortunately, the courts disagreed, viewing use
of space for religious purposes, excepting practices that impose harm to others, as
acceptable. Examining Amselem highlights the different ways in which
accommodation requests and Judaism are constructed in the public sphere.179
What
is most interesting is the way in which rights are implicated in this discourse.
Freedom of conscience becomes, for those who object to accommodation, a
problem in itself. The logic of this argument is that the right goes too far; this is the
same position taken by advocates of the secular charter.
Another case that spearheaded the reasonable accommodation controversy
in Quebec also pertained to the Hasidim. Outremont’s Hasidic community
179
Beaman, “Is Religious Freedom Impossible in Canada?,” 283.

complained that their synagogue members could see women in various states of
undress exercising at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)` across the
alley. Offering to pay the cost of frosting the windows, the Hasidim asked the
YMCA if it would comply with its request to be in line with their religious values.
Although the YMCA agreed to the request in 2006, some of its female patrons
argued that this was a humiliating and degrading request.180
YMCA member Renee
Lavaillante started a petition that was signed by over 100 exercisers to remove the
frosting on the windows, saying, “To you, I represent evil, and I should hide
myself…I don’t think that in Montreal we have to hide ourselves to work out.”181
Furthermore, she stated, “You have to be yourself and protect your values in the
face of such requests…I won’t be closing the blinds, because it would be
collaborating with creating our own ghetto, one I don’t wish to be a part of.”182
Her
language asserts the dominance of Anglophone and Francophones in Quebec
society, arguing that there are certain changes that the Hasidim have to make. She
clearly thinks that the YMCA should not be accessible to all value systems and
should stand its ground, with window frosting serving as a first step to assimilation
into the Hasidim and the loss of her identity. Another YMCA member argued,
“Quebec is a secular society…we shouldn’t have to hide [to accommodate] a
religious group.”183
The YMCA reversed its decision in 2007, amid widespread
controversy.
The fact that this assertion of secularism was made from within a Christian
institution, the YMCA, is both fascinating and telling. It illustrates the hybridity of
Quebecois Christianity and the easy transition between public and Christian
institutions. The very fact that a Christian institution is considerable a public,
secular institution is problematic. That this fact is devoid from the public discourse
is also telling of the overwhelming, Christian nature of public secularism in modern
180
Meital Pinto, “What are Offences to Feelings Really About? A New Regulative Principle for the
Multicultural Era,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 30, no. 4 (2010): 695-696.
181
Janet Bagnall, “Throughout history, men have forced women to cover up: [Final Edition],” The
Gazette, November 22, 2006, A31.
182
Les Perreaux, “Montreal YMCA ditches frosted glass over objection of synagogue,” Canadian
Press NewsWire, March 19, 2007.
183
Benoit Aubin, “Whose Freedoms?,” Macleans, December 4, 2006, 33.

Quebec.
Janet Bagnall argued that the accommodation request had little to do with
religion, but the control of women. She argued that the request discouraged women
from exercising and taking part in sports, when in reality,184
window frosting does
little if anything to affect the quality of an exercise routine. Interestingly, Gazette
columnist Pearl Eliadis argues that there is a hierarchy of accommodation
completely devoid of the harm principle. She argues that wearing the hijab is a
right. The Hasidic community had no right to have the YMCA’s windows frosted,
but, she notes that “There is no real harm in asking,” marking such a change a
courtesy rather than a right.185
The Hasidic request for window frosting could have
been easily turned down by the YMCA, but the organization chose to undertake the
change at its own discretion. The YMCA case marked a private request for
accommodation between neighbours, rather than a wider request to society at large
for change. Upon reversal, Alex Werzberger stated, “They did what they had to
do,” clearly understanding the YMCA’s decision to go back to clear windows with
blind coverings was reasonable within what had been asked of the organization.186
Ultimately, it was an accommodation request, not an order.
What this situation demonstrates is how requests between neighbours—
requests that might easily be handled—become public controversies in the eyes of
the media. The YMCA request certainly began in such a light, wherein one
religious community organization, the Hasidic synagogue, asked another for a
favour involving a small modification of the other’s space. In news coverage and
scholarly work about the controversy, the YMCA was instead understood as a
public institution that was asked by a religious institution to change its practices,
completely altering the framing of the issue. The window frosting quickly became a
demand for change rather than a neighbourly request for accommodation,
threatening the equality that secularized spaces once provided in the wider public
space.
184
Bagnall, “Throughout history, men have forced women to cover up.”
185
Pearl Eliadis, “We should not need permission to wear what we want; Starting point in Canada
should be liberal – we shouldn’t need to fight for rights,” The Gazette, April 26, 2007, A25.
186
Max Harold, “Y goes back to clear windows: [Final Edition],” The Gazette, March 20, 2007, A7.

Conclusion
Jewish Quebecers continue to face problems concerning their religiosity and the
character of some community practices. The abundance of separate Jewish spaces
and institutions within Quebec society have not halted their interactions with other
groups, often leading up challenges like the twentieth-century schools crisis,
eruvim debates, and laws affecting signage. While some of these minor incidents
exploded in the press and spurred public debate, the character of these concessions
did not intend to upset societal relations, but improve them and increase the
inclusivity of Quebec’s public spaces. Since the early 2000s, Outremont’s Hasidic
community has faced further problems, including bans on buses travelling between
the community and New York, a failed referendum on an already approved
expansion to a local synagogue, challenges to their special parking agreement with
the municipality on religious holidays, and complaints about noise levels, especially
during holidays.187
Thus far, it is clear that the judicial system serves as a final
option for remedying the limiting laws put forth by Quebec’s provincial and
municipal governments, as courts equate religious accommodation with freedom of
religion. While the nature of Christianity has led to a more nuanced understanding
of what is reasonable to the general public and the courts,188
there remain clear
limits on what people believe should be allowable that are clearly based in
dominant practices and the limited ways of expressing religiosity based in the
Catholic faith juxtaposed versus more orthodox practices.
What is interesting is that the most controversial issues involved Christan
space assured to be public space and how it should accommodate ethno-religious
diversity. By definition, public space involves the interaction of all sorts of people
within it. Discourses that oppose accommodation deny this and instead recognize
public space as a site of majoritarian cultural power. As a consideration of Islamic
187
Catherine Solyom, “Outremont’s Hassidim fight back; When a city councilor started a quarrel
with the Jewish community, one man decided to go on the offensive – with a blog,” The Gazette,
April 6, 2012, A3.
188
Beaman, “Is Religious Freedom Impossible in Canada?,” 267.

and Sikh Quebecers will demonstrate, Hasidic Jews are not alone in bearing the
brunt of this discursive problem.

Chapter II
Reconciling Modernity with Religiosity:
Quebec’s Muslim Community
Quebec’s Muslims are diverse in their religiosity and ethnicity. Nationally,
Muslims have formed Canada’s second largest religious group since the turn of the
century, although racist immigration policies made it difficult for Islamic people to
come to Canada up until the 1960s and 1970s.189
While this limits the cultural
memory of the group, there have been Islamic people in Canada since at least to the
1850s,190
followed by Muslim traders from Syria and Lebanon who sold and carried
goods to remote farms and fur trading posts. The liberalization of immigration
policy, as well as its neoliberal turn toward economic immigration, has led to a
highly educated, young, and professionalized Muslim community, the fastest
growing ethno-religious group in the nation.191
Muslims are not only of Arabic
origin, but hail from southern and western Asia and northern Africa in large
numbers forming over 70 separate sects within the larger divisions of Shi’a and
Sunni Islam.192
The majority of accommodation struggles faced by Muslims in Quebec
emerged with the growth of the community starting in the 1980s. The documented
strength and fervour of this backlash is especially surprising, considering the high
economic status of many Muslims in Quebec and their undeniable francophone
linguistic integration.193
Focused in urban centres, primarily Montreal and its
suburbs, confusion over religious practice and fundamentalism continued in the
public sphere and in the media leading up to and following the Bouchard-Taylor
Commission. An oversimplification of the community’s homogeneity and beliefs
189
Beyer, “From Far and Wide,” 21.
190
Jasmin Zine, “Introduction: Muslim Cultural Politics in the Canadian Hinterlands,” in Islam in
the Hinterlands: Muslim Cultural Politics in Canada, ed. Jasmin Zine (Vancouver: UBC Press,
2012), 2.
191
Sheila McDonough and Homa Hoodfar, Muslims in Canada: From Ethnic Group to Religious
Community,” in Religion and Ethnicity in Canada, ed. Paul Bramadat and David Seljak (Toronto:
Pearson Education Canada: 2005), 136.
192
Saeed Rahnema, “Islam in diaspora and challenges to multiculturalism,” in Muslim Diaspora:
Gender, Culture and Identity, ed. Haideh Moghissi (New York: Routledge, 2006), 24.
193
Marie McAndrew, “The Muslim Community and Education in Quebec: Controversies and
Mutual Adaptation,” International Migration and Integration 11 (2010): 42.

has led to widespread and general confusion about Quebecois Muslims. Focusing
primarily on issues related to gender equality and education, this chapter will look
at the hijab, the halal diet, and Muslim schooling and investigate how these issues
have played out in the media. Interestingly, in Quebec and elsewhere, affronts to
Muslim religious practices are justified using the same liberal framework people
use to protect Islam under reasonable accommodation. One side of the debate sees
practices such as veiling as illiberal and as subjugating women, while the other
maintains that it goes against gender equality to tell women what they can or cannot
wear.194
This chapter will also explore how Muslim women navigate tensions
between their religion, traditional values, public secularism, and modernity in
Canada. This analysis will focus on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the
timeframe during which concerns about Muslim fundamentalism exploded in
Quebec, Canada, and abroad. A more in-depth and complete discussion of the
public treatment of and confusion between Sikhism and Islam and its effects in
Quebec’s reasonable accommodation debates will follow in the third chapter.
Quebec’s Muslim Community to the 1990s
Leading up to the 1980s, Quebecois Muslims lived in a world blind to their
presence. Sheila McDonough and Homa Hoodfar argue that the Iranian Revolution
of 1979 delineated a break in public discourse concerning Muslims, leading to
media coverage that perpetuated misconceptions about Canada’s Muslims and the
complexity of their beliefs.195
Quebec schools have offered the Programme d’enseignement des langues
d’origine (PELO), or the Heritage Language Program, since 1977. Such programs
allow children to study their family’s historical language in a classroom setting
outside of regular instructional hours. In what became one of the first prominent
issues to face the Quebec Muslim community, the parents’ school committee of
Ecole Henri-Beaulieu in St. Laurent resisted the teaching of Arabic, although
194
Zine, “Introduction,” 12.
195
McDonough and Hoodfar, “Muslims in Canada,” 133.

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