Who is right and who is wrong? The tide of de-christianization in Canada has proven irresistible.

The present flag of the governor general, adopted in 1981

"A historical snapshot illustrates the contrasts over time with which I am concerned." - Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

1959: "May Almighty God in his infinite wisdom and mercy bless the sacred mission which has been entrusted to me by Her Majesty the Queen and help me to fulfill it in all humility."

Major Georges P. Vanier of the 22nd Battalion became Canada's 19th Governor General,

serving from 1959 to 1967.…

On September 15, 1959, Georges Vanier was installed as Canada's 19th Governor-General, the Queen's formal representative in her Canadian dominion.  Vanier, a much-decorated general, diplomat, and active Roman Catholic began his acceptance speech like this: "Mr. Prime Minister, my first words are a prayer.  May Almighty God in his infinite wisdom and mercy bless the sacred mission which has been entrusted to me by Her Majesty the Queen and help me to fulfill it in all humility.  In exchange for his strength, I offer him my weakness.  May he give peace to this beloved land of ours and, to those who live in it, the grace of mutual understanding, respect, and love."

2005: Canadian history "speaks powerfully about the freedom to invent a new world."

Jean presiding over Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa, 2007.

Fifty-six years later, on September 27, 2005, Michaëlle Jean, became Canada's 27th Governor-General.  Jean, a multi-lingual, Haitian-born film-maker and journalist, offered a forward-looking address that stressed, as had Vanier's, the importance of mutual toleration for Canada's social well-being.  Otherwise, however, there were no themes in common, for Jean's primary concern was the exaltation of individual liberty; for her, Canadian history "speaks powerfully about the freedom to invent a new world."  In this speech there was no mention of the deity.

2005: Contrast with the United States' 2004 Presidential Election

George W. Bush

John Kerry

The contrast with the United States is striking.  Vanier's straightforward invocation of God could be likened to the prayer with which Dwight D. Eisenhower began his presidential inaugural in January 1953.  And Governor-General Jean's stress on the theme of freedom certainly echoed emphases in the presidential inaugural of George W. Bush in January 2005.  Yet her sphere of discourse was far removed from both Georges Vanier's 1959 address and the speeches that John Kerry and George Bush made during the 2004 presidential campaign, when talk of God and more general religious matters was noticeably more prominent than it had been in Eisenhower's day.

1982: Canada's New Constitution

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II

The proclamation of the Constitution Act, 1982, signed by Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada

 A second example underscores a similar contrast.  Until the recent past Canada's constitutional existence had been enfolded in the common-law traditions of the British parliament before which Americans, with our penchant for thinking that a constitutional democracy requires a written constitution, stand in clueless bemusement.  Yet in 1982, after painstaking exertions by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada, with the relieved cooperation of the British parliament, finally took control of its own constitution.  Even at that relatively late date public theism remained prominent in Canada's new Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  In a complex drafting history, Trudeau first proposed including one off-hand reference to God in the new constitution, which was taken from an earlier Canadian Bill of Rights written during the administration of Conservative leader, John Diefenbaker.  That reference was removed because of pressure from members of Trudeau's own Liberal party.  But then the issue resurfaced when a broad ecumenical coalition lobbied for formal recognition of Canada's traditional Christian posture.  As a result of its pressure, the new Charter was amended to include the following assertion in its preamble: "Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law."  The inclusion of such an affirmation in the Charter did not, however, presage a resurgence of traditional Christianity, for under the new Charter, Canadian legislation and jurisprudence have increasingly privileged principles of privacy, multiculturalism, enforced toleration, and public religious neutrality, even when such moves de-christianize public spaces in which religious language was once commonplace.

Education from 1948 to Today

1950 Canadian School Train. Pupils attend classes at Nemegos near Chapleau, Ontario.

Education provides another example of significant cultural change.  Ontario public schools long included a major place for confessional Christian instruction, even as the province also funded a separate system for its Catholic citizens.  This well-established practice, however, came to an end in the recent past.  In the words of R. D. Gidney and W. P. J. Millar, "The centrality of Christian doctrine in Ontario's public schools, albeit in a nondenominational Protestant form, was alive and well in the mid-twentieth century; still alive, though less well, as late as the mid-1960s; and, even in the last third of the century, finally ousted only through a prolonged, contested process."  But the result of this recent change in unmistakable: "In this particular part of the public arena ... Christianity has not only been disestablished but banished."  Inherited religious traditions lasted longer in Quebec and Newfoundland, where virtually all education has been effectively under church supervision until the 1990s.  But even in Quebec, which has enjoyed more than two centuries of Catholic educational dominance, and in Newfoundland, which entered the Dominion in 1948 with an explicit guarantee for its government-funded but denominationally-administered school system, the tide of de-christianization has proven irresistible, and education has been secularized.

Source: Noll, Mark A.  What Happened To Christian Canada?, Vancouver, Canada: Regent College Publishing, 2007, pages 8-12.