And every so often she would let Jim hold a shrunken head.

My uncle, now in his 60s, told me it was one of the most unusual things he had ever seen and touched in his life. He described the leathery texture, the tiny ears. The mouth that was sewn together. The same proportions as a normal head—just smaller. The Gourlays called it Snowball because it fit in the palm of your hand like a well-packed ball of snow. “Cousin Gay was a very interesting person. It was special going there. She really treated me well,” he said. Gretchen was in her early 70s at the time. Her husband, Robert, had died several years before, and she lived alone. Jim thinks she also appreciated his visits. “She enjoyed my company, and I enjoyed her company. It was just one of those things that worked out,” he said.

Jim sent me a photo of an old newspaper clipping that announced Gretchen’s donation of the shrunken head to the Glenbow Museum in late 1970. “The unique object was recently donated by Mrs. Robert Gourlay, whose husband purchased the head in Ecuador 14 years ago,” the article read. I found another Calgary Herald piece about an exhibit from February 1971 called “One Hundred” that was designed to showcase the variety of material collected by the museum the previous year. It said, “From more distant sources come a shrunken head from Ecuador and a sealskin and ivory chess set from Pelly Bay, NWT.”

But then the trail went cold. No record of any exhibits for decades. I wondered if the shrunken head was still at the museum, tucked away in a storage drawer. And if it was still at the Glenbow, then maybe I could go and see it.

The cultural tradition of head shrinking goes back to at least the 16th century, according to anthropologist and author Frances Larson in Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found. The Shuar, an Indigenous group who live along the border between Ecuador and Peru, would raid neighbouring tribes, such as the Achuar, and take their heads. They shrank them by removing the skull and all the flesh from the skin and then filling the skin with hot rocks and sand until it was reduced to the size of a large orange. The lips and eyes were sewn shut. “These practicalities served to harness the extraordinary power of their victim’s soul and were part of complex ceremonies that lasted many years,” Larson writes. That power was often transferred, via a series of celebratory feasts, to women in the community as a way of ensuring plentiful food for their households.

Europeans arrived in Ecuador and Peru in the late 19th century to harvest rubber and cinchona bark, the source for the active ingredient in quinine, an anti-malarial drug. Larson describes how these foreigners were enthralled by shrunken heads, also known as tsantsas, and traded with the Shuar to get them. The price became one gun for one shrunken head. “Guns were used to take heads, which were, in turn, exchanged for more guns,” Larson writes. The ceremonial significance of tsantsas was overshadowed by their sudden rise in commercial value. They became a commodity, and people created forgeries to satisfy the demand. People shrank monkey and sloth heads, or made them from goatskin, wood, resin and rubber. Larson describes how taxidermists created fake tsantsas out of real heads, using unclaimed or sometimes stolen bodies from morgues—although this source for the counterfeit heads has more recently been disputed because there is little evidence to prove it.

The museum world has an old saying that a museum without a mummy is not a museum. It represents an outdated vision for the purpose of the institution, one rooted in the project of colonialism. But that same sort of mentality applied to shrunken heads in the 19th and 20th centuries. They ended up in the collections of museums across the western world. The government of Ecuador passed laws forbidding the manufacture and trade of tsantsas, but many were still sold into the late 1900s. It’s estimated that between 80 and 90 per cent of the shrunken heads in museum collections around the world are fake, meaning they were created to sell and not for ceremonial use.

As it turned out, the tsantsa at the Glenbow was not in a drawer but rather in a cabinet, on the sixth floor. And it was under lock and key alongside, you guessed it, another shrunken head. Cynthia Chang-Christison, the museum’s director of external relations, was quick to deflate any hope I had of visiting the museum and seeing the tsantsa my uncle had held as a child. “Glenbow made the decision decades ago that this type of material would not be made available for public viewing,” she wrote in an email in late June.

I met with several staff from the Glenbow, including Daryl Betenia, the director of collections, a couple weeks later at a coffee shop across the pedestrian mall from the museum, which is in the midst of a multi-year, roughly $130-million renovation. The old precast concrete panels had been stripped from the sides of the eight-storey building and the opening for a new entrance was cut into the northeast corner. Betenia told me the other tsantsa had been purchased in 1968 as part of a larger acquisition from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. A student from the University of Calgary studied the two shrunken heads in the Glenbow’s collection in the mid ’90s. “Her conclusion in the end was that the Gourlay one is likely authentic, and the other one is likely not,” Betenia said. The next step for the tsantsas, she explained, would be to try and repatriate them to their communities of origin. Giving something back, however, is sometimes not as easy as it sounds.

The director of Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, Laura Van Broekhoven, told me she knew of 172 tsantsas in museums in Europe, the United States and the UK that are stuck in a similar kind of limbo as the two at the Glenbow. “They’re all just sort of lying in storage,” she said during a call in early July. Staff at Pitt Rivers are tracking down the number and location of tsantsas in museums worldwide, and Van Broekhoven suspects they will be adding many more to their list. But then there are also the more commercial interests, venues such as Ripley’s Believe It or Not, which claims on its website to have more than 100 genuine shrunken heads. One expert I spoke to estimated that the total number of ceremonial tsantsas worldwide, in both public and private collections, would be somewhere in the hundreds.

Van Broekhoven is part of an international group of researchers working with representatives of the Shuar people to figure out what the next chapter might look like for shrunken heads. The Tsantsas Project started in 2017 and includes participants from the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), the Pumapungo museum, and the National Institute of Cultural Heritage of Ecuador. Their goal is not only to help the Shuar and Achuar reclaim their cultural heritage but to give them a chance to tell a more nuanced and accurate story about who they are and why their ancestors engaged in the ritual of head shrinking.

The researchers have organized several workshops and consultations with delegates from Shuar communities since 2017. Van Broekhoven wrote about the Tsantsas Project in the Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage and Death in 2024 in an article that includes comments and perspectives from the Shuar. “We don’t have anything against the world knowing our world, and for museums to have our souvenirs and talk about our cosmovision, our ways of living here. What we ask is that museums involve us Shuar so that it can be us who tell the stories, and we can show the world all our instruments and aspects of our attire, the tsantsas,” said Jefferson Acacho, a leader of the Shuar federation in Zamora, at a workshop in 2022.

The team of researchers signed a memorandum of understanding with five of the Shuar federations, representing about 200,000 people, in April of 2023. The agreement grants the institutions involved in the Tsantsas Project the ability to represent the Shuar when communicating with other museums about their cultural heritage.

The mapping project by staff at Pitt Rivers, finding out the number and location of tsantsas worldwide, is ongoing. Another important step is to figure out a reliable and efficient way to determine whether a head is a fake. Andrew Nelson, a professor and department chair of anthropology at Western University in Ontario, has been working on a series of research papers testing different scanning technologies on shrunken heads. He used a micro-computed tomography scanner to study a tsantsa from the Chatham–Kent museum in southern Ontario. He determined it was made from human remains, but likely not for ceremonial use. The modern thread and precise stitchwork to sew eyes and lips and the incision on the back of the head were clues that it was counterfeit.

He is working on another paper about using a dental scanner, which is less expensive and easier to find than a micro-CT scanner. Both machines can determine whether the tsantsa is made from human remains, but it will take a large sample of scans to determine a reliable method for distinguishing the shrunken heads that are human but fake from the ones that are human and created for ceremonial use.

The Pitt Rivers museum has 10 tsantsas in storage: six human, two sloth and two made from monkey remains. Four of them had been part of a display cabinet called “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” which had been one of the museum’s biggest draws since it was created in the 1940s right up until it was removed in 2020. In fact, Pitt Rivers was sometimes referred to as the “shrunken head museum” in guidebooks and the media. The overhaul of the exhibits in 2020 included the removal of more than 100 other human remains, including skulls, scalps and mummies.

Tsantsas in museums are stuck in limbo, just lying in storage, until the Shuar and Achuar can tell a more accurate story.

Van Broekhoven told me the decision was a long time coming. The displays were in contravention of a national government policy for the care of human remains in museums. The museum’s internal audience research had indicated that regardless of the context that curators provided alongside the tsantsas, many visitors continued to interpret the display in ways that reinforced stereotypes instead of deepening their understanding about another way of life. Larson writes about how the display of severed heads in museums exemplified a story that people in the West used to enjoy telling, about so-called primitive people living in remote and exotic places. The glass display case offered a tidy distinction between civilization and savagery.

Larson was working at the Pitt Rivers museum when she started thinking about writing a book about disembodied heads. She observed how visitors invariably got the impression from the display of tsantsas that headhunting was something done in the distant past in far-off lands. She explores in her book how severed heads have long had a place in western society. Medical students dissect them; religious people travel to see the heads of saints displayed in churches all over Europe; artists visit morgues to study them; and people ask to have their heads removed after death so they can be cryogenically preserved. Larson wrote Severed to try to answer the question “What can we learn about our common humanity from this, the ultimate image of inhumanity?”

The anthropologist also charts the different connections between colonialism, museums and human remains. “The 19th century saw a massive increase in the number of human remains housed in museums as archaeologists, medics and anthropologists, eager to ground their theories in solid evidence, went out in search of more and more data,” she writes. One of the theories that scientists tried to prove by measuring and cataloguing the bodies and bones of people from other cultures was the racist notion of white superiority. By the turn of the 21st century, more than 100,000 human remains were held in British cultural institutions, and likely more than 200,000 Native American human remains were held in federally sponsored US institutions. Larson observes, “It is a truly colossal inheritance.”

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act [NAGPRA] was passed in the United States in 1990 and recognizes that the human remains, as well as other forms of cultural heritage, of Indigenous people should be returned to their communities of origin. ProPublica published a series of articles in 2023 that outlined how some American museums and universities continue to resist and delay the return of this type of material. The US Department of the Interior announced changes to NAGPRA in late 2023 to streamline the process and make it easier for people to get the remains of their relatives back from museums. Canada has no such federal legislation about repatriation. It’s up to each institution to decide whether and how to return this type of material.

Van Broekhoven told me that giving something back can be straightforward, but the situation with the tsantsas is more complex. Any request for the return of a tsantsa from Pitt Rivers would need to include an agreement from both the Shuar and the Achuar, which so far has not come to fruition. Some institutions have returned shrunken heads to Ecuador, but Van Broekhoven said there is no guarantee that the government will then engage with the Indigenous communities. She emphasized the importance of patience, and of building relationships, to carrying out a responsible repatriation, “so that it actually helps build unity, peace, real redress and reconciliation in the community.”

The staff at the Glenbow explained how they see this type of engagement as part of their responsibilities as museum professionals. People who run museums have shifted to seeing themselves as stewards, instead of owners, of the collection. The renovation project at the Glenbow includes new spaces for holding ceremonies and hosting people who want to visit and study what’s on display and in storage.

This more open and collaborative approach to running a museum often yields valuable new information and insights. Van Broekhoven described how they have learned more about the shrunken heads in the last few years by working with the Shuar than had been learned during the entire eight decades they were on display. For example, all the academic literature about tsantsas claimed the heads were only taken during raids. The Shuar delegates told the research team that the ritual of head shrinking was also done as way to honour leaders of the community, both men and women.

I had managed to track down Gretchen Gourlay’s granddaughter in the fall of 2023. Liz Gibbs was 68 and a retired nurse. She lived in the same house that my uncle Jim used to visit after school. The same clock in the corner of the living room still chimed to announce the turn of each hour. Gibbs told me all about her grandfather. Robert Gourlay was a land surveyor with a keen sense of adventure. She called him a “wild Scotsman” and showed me a series of letters he had mailed home to his family in Canada while travelling in Ecuador and Peru in 1956, the trip on which he had bought the shrunken head.

Gibbs showed me a black-and-white photo of the tsantsa and the sturdy wooden box it had been kept in, one of Robert’s cases for his surveying instruments. The mouth was sewn with a thick, straw-like fibre that was looped around a set of three short pegs. The thread for the eyes was finer and hard to discern. The dark hair was cut short. I felt myself slow down as I absorbed what I was seeing. Even a photograph of the tsantsa exerted a kind of gravitational pull.

Frances Larson wrote about how a severed head, regardless of its origin or even the context in which we encounter it, hits us on a gut level. Discrete circuits in our brains have evolved to recognize and interpret facial expressions. “When it is the face of a bodiless head, our physical reflex—that instinctive empathy—conflicts with the knowledge that this person must be dead,” she wrote. It’s a powerful type of memento mori, a reminder of our mortality.

The experience is unsettling, whether we’re in a museum or a morgue or a living room, because we intuit that the head is somehow both an object and a person. “It presents an apparently impossible duality,” Larson writes. But that enigmatic quality is what allows this type of human remains to travel through time and mean different things to different people. “It can be an item of trade, a communication aid, a political pawn or a family heirloom; and it can be many of these things at once,” she writes.

My uncle Jim never mentioned feeling scared as a kid when seeing and handling the shrunken head. But he talked about the experience, so many decades later, in hushed tones. He described how some of Gretchen’s stories had seemed far-fetched, but then she actually had a shrunken head, which lent everything else she told him more credence. The tsantsa had suggested to my uncle that the world was a bigger and more mysterious place than he had ever imagined. It had also played a part in the unlikely friendship that developed between him and Gretchen, a 7-year-old and a 70-year-old enjoying each other’s company on those weekday afternoons all those years ago.

Doug Horner’s first book is Back from the Deep (Steerforth Press, 2024). He is a former departments editor with Alberta Views.

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Years later, when Josie describes Holy Ghost Ministries, she stresses that on any given Sunday in northeast Calgary someone is giving testimony in the lobby of a cinema, or in the back room of a 3D-printing shop, or in the basement of a conference centre. In a half-hour stroll through the McCall and Horizon industrial–commercial districts, you could miss 11 sacred spaces if you weren’t paying attention. Holy Ghost Ministries’s sacred space was three floors above a bowling alley. The head pastor, Uncle Wale, had been inviting the Ohuruogus to attend for years. Pa would politely decline in public (My guy, we are Catholic. Maybe another time.) and vehemently in private (Tufiakwa! So Wale wants us to go roll on the floor?).

A few months after Pa landed at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo drove past St. Thomas More Catholic Church and turned left onto 36 Street. The Great Gateway Bowling Centre was nestled between a thrift store and an autobody shop.

Perhaps she would be stuck inside the hyphen between Nigerian and Canadian all her life.

The day before Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo attended their first service at Holy Ghost Ministries, they’d sat in the Ohuruogus’ living room and watched precolonial Igbo village dramas. They’d sat on the same peeling pleather couch that Josie would find Ma half-dead on 10 years later. Then, it was 2010 and Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo were indulging in their Friday tradition. Aunty Glo was providing running commentary. When a chalk-marked dibia sat before his shrine, Aunty Glo pointed out the Alusi, from Amadioha to Ekwensu, and how their carved figurines were like St. Thomas More’s sculpted Blessed Virgin Mary. When a king’s younger brother plotted for the throne, Aunty Glo invoked the earth, Ani. If the brother killed the king, the king’s blood on the earth would cry out for vengeance and Ani would rise up and mete out justice. When the mmanwu danced across the screen at harvest festivals, adorned in raffia and wooden beads, Aunty Glo told Josie that they were watching their reanimated ancestors. Aunty Glo was convinced that great-grandmother Lotachi had returned in Josie, as they shared a hexagon-shaped birthmark on their left wrists, an overappreciation of onions and a fear of dogs.

Josie had never been to Nigeria, but she felt she knew all she could because of Aunty Glo. It almost didn’t matter that, outside of her household, her lessons covered people and places that felt far removed. In social studies the class had learned about the pagan reaction, and Eleanor, her closest friend, pointed at a map of Poland in their textbook and said, “See, see That’s where my family’s from.”

In hindsight there were many potential stimuli driving Ma to take up Uncle Wale’s invitation. Money was tight and the economy was crashing, so maybe she was looking for a miracle. Pa had annoyed her, what with packing off to Lagos and leaving Ma to raise Josie, so maybe she was trying to spite him. St. Thomas More was very white and very stiff, so maybe she was searching for colour and rhythm. Whatever the reason, Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo alighted from the family car and ambled towards a door marked with a SERVICE UPSTAIRS—HOLY GHOST MINISTRIES poster. Behind the door was a damp stairwell, four flights of stairs and muffled music beckoning them upwards.

Josie thinks back to that stairwell and its promise of salvation when Eleanor kisses her for the first time. They are standing in the stairwell of Eleanor’s apartment and Josie is begging Eleanor not to join the nunhood. While Josie was dreaming about medical school acceptance letters, Eleanor was dreaming about the nunnery. The former was years in the making. The latter was revelatory. “A convent?” Josie had whisper-yelled. “You’re going to a fucking convent?”

“A monastery, Josie. It’s different.”

“Either way, you’d really become a nun?”

“I want to be happy, Jos-Jos. Church helps me be happy.”

Josie can’t argue with that. When Eleanor had stopped eating and her yellow hair began falling out in tufts, Josie wanted to believe it was her coaxing that improved things. But she knew it was Eleanor’s parish and its stained glass walls and domed ceiling. For weeks Josie skipped her bioethics seminar to accompany Eleanor at Friday vigils. Eleanor’s hair grew back. Now Eleanor is kissing her, saying goodbye.

“Our ancestors believed in different ways, and they were good people. Isn’t that all that matters?”

Josie didn’t remember much about Holy Ghost Ministries except for the venue, the music and the speaking in tongues. The venue. A low-ceilinged space starkly lit by fluorescent tubes. The pews were made up of metal folding chairs and the lectern was a music-sheet stand. Josie, Ma and Aunty Glo were on time, which meant they were early, and half the seats were empty. They sat in the third row. There were five rows. Everyone present and arriving was Black, except for one shaggy-haired man wearing a kente shirt. Josie recognized a third of the attendees from cultural events held by the local Nigerian association where she shadowed Ma and eavesdropped on wives’ stories about disrespectful children, cheating partners and racist bosses. Then, since Ma spoke to everyone, she’d listen to husbands who insisted gossip was for women yet always had supplementary, catastrophized commentary. The music. A drummer, pianist, saxophonist and three-person choir played through an opening set in the corner left of the lectern. They were definitely livelier than St. Thomas More’s choir; there were riffs, claps and solo moments. Stuff that Josie heard on the radio. Almost everyone was standing, dancing, raising their hands in the air. More and more families shuffled into the room. In the row ahead, Josie watched a girl around her age and tried to mimic her movements. The way she swayed from side to side and tossed her head back as she sang. The speaking in tongues. After a sermon, much longer than St. Thomas More’s, Uncle Wale exclaimed, “We are filled with the Holy Ghost!” and the room erupted in noises Josie could not comprehend.

She wanted so badly to comprehend. The people, the noises, her place in it all.

Josie would feel the same loneliness during her first trip to Nigeria. After that first service, Ma and Josie returned to St. Thomas More, but Aunty Glo was transmuted. She joined the choir at Holy Ghost Ministries. She began attending their bible studies. She started proselytizing at train stations. Then Aunty Glo got engaged to an associate pastor at Holy Ghost Ministries.

The Ohuruogus flew to Nnewi for the wine-carrying ceremony, where the dense shrubbery, red Anambra soil and whole cows roasting on spits were just like Josie had seen in the village dramas. Most similarities stopped there. Josie’s agemate cousins were sure to remind her that Nigerians had running water, only aunties listened to highlife music, and her attempts at Igbo were subpar. Further, Josie’s vocal fry was reminiscent of a valley girl, and Josie could not properly pronounce her own surname. As far as her cousins were concerned, Josie was an oyibo.

There she was, in her mother’s family compound with a backpack full of Chinua Achebe books, finding out that she was Canadian in Nigeria. It would hurt less if she didn’t feel Nigerian in Canada. Josie had needed that trip to feel like a return home. She had fantasized about what it could feel like to not be the odd one out. But perhaps she would be stuck inside the hyphen between Nigerian and Canadian all her life. In the parlour, Josie cried in Ma’s lap. Who could she have been if she’d grown up in Anambra Surely her tongue would have grown flexible enough to navigate sharp proverbs, to curse out her critics. Canada had softened her resolve and dampened her potential. She was just like her English teacher, who, when he heard she was visiting Nnewi, said, “Nigeria Aren’t there terrorists there Will you be safe?” She was a stranger, an interloper, a fraud.

Ma had wiped Josie’s tears and whispered, “Ozugo.”

“But Ma…” sniffled Josie.

“This is your home too.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“The same blood of our ancestors runs in your veins.”

“Like great-grandmother Lotachi?”

“Yes. And she always loved a good game.”

Slowly, dramatically, Josie wiped her tears and left to play Ludo with Obinna and cousin Azuka under a thatch canopy in the yard. Every time they passed the dice, they asked a true or false question. Azuka handed the pair of dice to Josie and said, “Only those who believe in Jesus will find heaven.” Obinna rolled his eyes. Azuka was always seeking to evangelize, even the evangelized.

“False,” said Josie, and she felt her brother’s eyes on her. Josie and Obinna were born a decade apart and rarely spoke after years of sibling squabbles. Obinna’s first memories were of Nigeria, and Josie could only imagine. To her, he was selfish and flippant, defying Ma and Pa whenever he could. She felt he thought her spoiled and goody-goody.

“Come again, little one?” said Azuka, eyeing her skeptically.

“Our ancestors believed in different ways, and they were good people,” insisted Josie, slowly shaking the dice inside her small, fisted hand. “Isn’t that all that matters?”

Later, when Josie and Obinna were sitting in the parlour and eating egusi with poundo, her brother asked, “Where did that come from?”

“Huh?”

“Doubt,” smiled Obinna.

Josie grinned back, downed her glass of water. Something inside Josie was hardening, and perhaps it was the holy ghost.

Back in Canada, Josie walked with slightly more assuredness.

In junior high, Josie’s hair was always braided, but one long weekend Ma split her ring fingernail and couldn’t plait Josie’s hair. Not for lack of trying. The two of them sat in the living room, Ma on the pleather couch and Josie on a leather pouf, her shoulders tucked between Ma’s sturdy thighs. Josie had transitioned out of relaxers by then, because of burns, breakage and Aunty Glo bombarding Ma with articles linking lye-containing products with endocrine disruption and fibroids. When Ma began to braid, Josie’s curls dug into her exposed nail bed. She would have continued had Josie not pulled away.

The next day Josie went to school with her hair both untwisted and unrelaxed for the first time. Ma had packed Josie’s hair into a tight bun but, after Ma left for work, Josie wincingly combed out her dry hair. She then patted it into the tight, perfect circle she’d seen on her parents’ highlife CD covers and in black-and-white photos of the civil rights movement. Her afro wasn’t as big as Nelly Uchendu’s on Love Nwantiti or Angela Davis’s in her trial photos, but it was close enough. At school, Josie traipsed across the courtyard, through the main doors, into her mathematics classroom, and there Eleanor was. She had nerve then, enough nerve to ask Josie, “Do you ever wish your hair was like mine?” when Josie sat beside her at their designated table.

“What?”

“You know. Straight, long, blonde.”

“Hmm.” The only times Josie thought about being a straight, long, blonde was when watching true crime television. She remembered taking solace in not having the features the serial killers and kidnappers on Forensic Files seemed obsessed over. “No, Eleanor, I’d rather my hair wasn’t pale and stringy.”

Ma had gotten a kick out of that one. Maybe Josie had said what she said because she knew it would make Ma laugh. For years, when silence settled between them in the family car, or an amusement park ride, or a cashier lineup, one of them would say, sternly, “Straight, long, blonde,” and they’d both scatter into laughter.

Another weekend, Aunty Glo invited Josie to a Holy Ghost Ministries youth group meeting. Pa was in town and hesitantly dropped Josie off. Before they pulled up to the curb, he said, “We’re Catholic, Chidalu,” seemingly nervous Josie would enter Holy Ghost Ministries and convert on the spot. Josie stifled a laugh. By then, Pa had been abroad for two years. It had been hard to stay close over long-distance phone and Skype calls.

The youth group leader, Eunice, met Josie in front of the bowling alley doors and led her up the flights of stairs. Eunice was a freckled 20-something whose ambivalence towards marriage was unconvincing. As they walked up the stairs, Eunice rambled, “You know, I used to be so angry scrolling through Instagram, seeing all my mates getting married. But God reminded me that everything comes in time. Who knows if those couples are even happy, you get They could be in abusive partnerships. They could hate each other. I’m leading this group because the youth need saving. So much insecurity, peer pressure, unhappiness.” They reached the final landing at last and Eunice looked back at Josie. “Josephine, I want God to save you.”

“Oh,” said Josie, “I’m already… saved.”

Eunice solemnly opened the door before them. Back inside the low-ceilinged space, Josie counted seven teenagers. A senior pastor arrived after they’d all grabbed stacked chairs from the corner and formed a circle, and Eunice said, “Ms. Blessing here will be providing the biblical perspective.” When everyone was seated they began. What does it mean to have faith How can God work through you Why is prayer important Eunice raised each question and a few people raised their hands, some shyly, some confidently, all hopeful. Each question was re-answered by Ms. Blessing, who always began with “Yes, but…” Josie felt the Holy Ghost Ministries youth group was anathema to the improv course she’d taken in Mills Estate with Eleanor months back.

“Can you reach heaven without accepting Jesus Christ?” asked Eunice.

Josie raised her hand, gave the same answer she’d given Azuka all those months ago, felt the same skepticism.

“Yes, but…” Ms. Blessing cleared her throat. “Our ancestors may have lived good. As in, they may have been good people, abi But they were not living to the glory of God. In fact, some of us are still paying for it. Look at Africa. Our lineages, the generational curses. You understand. And the Bible says…”

Eunice looked at her. “Josephine, I want God to save you.” “Oh,” said Josie, “I’m already… saved.”

Improv requires an improviser to adopt “Yes, and” thinking: accept your colleague’s premise and expand on it. In Mills Estate, Josie and Eleanor had improvised a scene about an astronaut who discovered his emptiness was a result of never meeting his twin sister. His mother had sent his twin away for having the wrong hair colour and ruining her tarot card alignment. The astronaut found peace by moving to Madagascar. Improv forces cooperation and flattens hierarchies. Josie was sure her God was one of parallel earth, not hierarchical heaven.

After the youth group meeting, Josie told Ma about Ms. Blessing as Igbo nwelu Eze flashed across the living room flatscreen. Aunty Glo had sworn off secular movies, but Josie and Ma had continued to watch village dramas chock full of mysterious murders, wailing concubines and poorly exe-cuted CGI. Josie had spent every minute since leaving the youth group thinking about Aunty Glo. How Aunty Glo, who’d lionized Ọdinani, who’d told her that her great-great-grandfather was a dibia, who’d insisted that great-grandmother Lotachi had returned in Josie, led her to Ms. Blessing. Ma didn’t respond for a long time, and Josie figured she was too entranced by Queen Amarachi dripping poison into a jug of palm wine.

“Ma?” asked Josie.

Ma simply pulled Josie into her chest, whispered, “Our heaven won’t be full of only oyibos. Tufiakwa.”

Eleanor kisses Josie in the stairwell, and Josie wants to ask how Eleanor could dedicate her entire life to a blatantly imperfect Church. Did Eleanor remember that the same blood that led the pagan reaction still ran inside her veins As a nun, would she get to question the catechism, or the Pope, or the sexual abuse cases Why does Josie have so many questions Maybe Josie didn’t believe enough. Maybe if she did, the universe would have told her that Ma was dying before it was too late. Ma, the sole constant in Josie’s life. Maybe Josie should have gone to all the youth group meetings, joined a monastery, made a shrine. Maybe Josie shouldn’t have kissed Eleanor back.

Now, Josie is on her knees at 5 a.m. in Nose Hill Park. Two days ago Josie found Ma curled up on the pleather couch, coughing up blood, and drove her straight to the hospital. The Bible said no weapons fashioned against the righteous shall prosper, but the virus was propagating, replicating, and Josie couldn’t even hold Ma’s hand. There are no visitors. There is no vaccine. There is no contact. The soil in Nose Hill Park is gummy underneath Josie’s fingernails. If she focuses enough, Ani will swallow her whole. This is the land of Moriah, Josie an offering. Little else matters. Aunty Glo is texting, telling her to drink blended ginger, beetroot and garlic. Obinna and Pa are flying back to Calgary. Eleanor is at St. Clare’s monastery. But, fuck, none of that really matters. Not really. Not when Josie’s thinking about Amadioha and Jesus and antivirals. She’s pouring libations on the earth and reciting pray for us sinners and meditating on medication. It doesn’t make sense.

She doesn’t care which holy ghost answers her prayer.

Mirabelle Chiderah Harris-Eze is a Canadian-Nigerian-American, and the 2022/23 national president of the Black Law Students’ Association of Canada. She won the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers in 2021.

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Karen Kerr says no

President of Edmonton Atheists and co-founder of Alberta Secular Conference 

In Canada many charities and other non-profits, including churches and religious groups, are tax-exempt if they are deemed to create public benefit. The exemption is premised on the idea that they provide a public good. However, churches differ from non-profit charities in some important ways.

Charitable non-profit groups include food banks, the SPCA, hostels, homeless shelters and the Salvation Army. The main difference between these groups and religious places of worship are the rules the non-profits must follow, which include the building being “unrestricted at least 70 per cent of operating time” and adherence to rules against discrimination (race, culture, religious belief etc.). While charities must focus on charitable acts, religious groups can focus on the needs of their congregations first, with the charity coming second. Even if religious groups totally ignore the stipulations about public access and non-discrimination, they are often assumed to be contributing to the community.

We need to start asking: Should all churches/religious buildings automatically be given tax exemptions, or should they first meet the same requirements as other non-profits?

Many religious groups do use their buildings to benefit the community while serving the public without discrimination. With others, however, services come with a trade-off of sitting through a sermon first, or are unavailable to certain demographics, such as the LGBTQ+ community. In White Rock, BC, for example, an LGBTQ+ group was denied a church rental in April 2019 because they weren’t aligned with the values of the church. Allowance for such discrimination is built into automatic approval for churches’ tax exemption.

Public revenue is lost in Alberta through such tax breaks. Some BC numbers can give us a rough idea. Saanich, a district on Vancouver Island, has a population of about 120,000. In 2018 Saanich determined they gave tax breaks on property to 46 churches, resulting in just over $550,000 of forgone revenue. Given Alberta and BC property tax rates aren’t so dramatically different and the fact Edmonton alone has over 250 churches, Alberta loses out on multiple millions of dollars worth of public revenue each year because of property tax breaks given to religious groups.

With a 2019 provincial budget that saw billions of dollars cut from social services, education and healthcare, we need to start looking at sources of revenue that haven’t been previously explored and examining who gets tax breaks. A public benefits test for religions would protect tax exemptions for those churches that contribute to the community in valuable ways without discrimination, while the ones that don’t fulfill the requirements can contribute to their communities by paying property taxes, which in turn fund the services we need. It’s a win-win.

Rev. Markus Wilhelm says yes

Pastor at Sherwood Park’s Glory Lutheran Church and Chester Ronning Centre adviser 

I’d like to rephrase the question: Should charities receive tax breaks Churches are registered charities under federal law. According to the government of Canada, charities “must use their resources for charitable activities and have charitable purposes that fall into one or more of the following categories: the relief of poverty, the advancement of education, the advancement of religion, [and] other purposes that benefit the community.”

Most churches provide such things as meals for the hungry, refugee sponsorship and resettlement, clothing drives, overseas relief and development aid, community gardens, seniors housing, nursing homes, daycares, space for friendship and mutual support, music and cultural events, weddings and funerals, as well as grief support and various forms of counselling. Many of these are local, small-scale activities tailored to specific situations, such as the soup kitchen operating in a church hall. Others are larger scale, such as Catholic Social Services and the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers.

The law also recognizes the role of religion alongside that of education and other activities. The core purpose of churches and other faith communities is worship, ritual and spiritual teaching. Religious activity is concerned, among other things, with the transmission of the virtue of charity, which is another word for love. A maxim many traditions teach is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Christian faith teaches to “love your neighbour as yourself.” It also teaches that taxes should be paid to whom they are due. (Jesus famously said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”) Government uses taxes, among other things, to help the poor, the sick, the elderly, the needy and the disadvantaged; churches teach charity and practise it wherever possible. Governments and society, by giving tax breaks to churches, are acknowledging this vital role of religious communities.

Not everyone recognizes the importance of worship, ritual and religious teaching. By the same token, not everyone requires a nursing home or language training, uses libraries or appreciates classical music. Charitable activity doesn’t require that everyone agree on its benefit. It’s enough that we recognize the cultural, moral or material benefits to society as a whole.

Charitable organizations in general have low administrative costs and are required by law to channel their income towards charitable activities and purposes. They are also closely audited. Canada’s current system of taxation and service delivery means that churches and other religious organizations will continue to play an important role in providing vital services. Most importantly, perhaps, religious traditions provide a moral foundation for the kinds of charitable services society depends on and which government is ultimately responsible for funding. Exempting churches from taxes is a way of recognizing this role too.

Karen Kerr responds to Markus Wilhelm

My dialogue partner has tried to change the topic question in an effort to equate churches and religious groups, first and foremost, with charitable organizations. It’s important to know that organizations offering charity through a religious orientation aren’t necessarily focused on charity as their first goal. Religious groups’ mission statements tend to include the advancement of religion as their main goal, not the charitable cause that’s also supported. This main mission is to proselytize. Charity is secondary—and in some cases the charity work even provides an outlet for the main mission of proselytizing.

My argument, then, is against the assumption that they be given tax breaks and charitable status automatically, and I further contend that advancement of religion cannot be the only benchmark.

In order to qualify as a charity in our country, you must show that your organization follows laws and public policies, including those against discrimination. While my dialogue partner points out that religion is concerned with teaching the virtue of charity, some beliefs within some religious teachings can directly conflict with public policies.

For example, while public policy does not allow for discrimination, some religions actively discriminate even within their own hiring and hierarchical systems. Women and LGBTQ+ people are not allowed to hold certain positions in some churches and are segregated in others. Some religious groups actively teach that homosexuality needs to be “cured,” and in some more dangerous examples use their untaxed revenues to fund “conversion therapy” (a practice that is being banned in many cities across our country because it is so harmful, has no science behind it and goes against human rights). Same-sex marriage is not accepted or performed in certain religious groups. Most religions have rigid ethical codes written into them as part of their teachings, which cannot waver or change even when faced with our modern understanding of humanity and human rights.

Canadians also all have a Charter right to freedom of (and from) religion, whichever religion you choose that to be. If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of requiring a helping hand via a charitable organization, you certainly shouldn’t have to also be faced with religious views that differ from your own as part and parcel with the services.

Pastor Wilhelm also makes the assumption that religions provide our moral foundations. The golden rule (ethic of reciprocity) he quoted is found in many cultures, going back all the way to ancient Egypt, long before the Abrahamic religions. While I do not have the space to go into detail in this dialogue, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that many moral foundations have also been witnessed in the animal kingdom, evolving as we evolved into humans (if you’re interested, research the work of primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal).

Simply put: Religion does not have a monopoly on altruism.

So, this raises a new question: Why is “advancement of religion,” which can go against public policy, still automatically recognized as charitable Maybe it’s time to look at our charity laws and make amendments.

My dialogue partner offered a list of wonderful charitable services that most (not all, as he admits) churches provide, without noting that none of these services require “advancement of religion” superimposed on it in order to be a benefit to communities in need. His entire list of charitable causes can be supported perfectly well through secular organizations instead. Indeed, advancement of religion as the first mission, with charity merely secondary, may actually affect how well a religious charity can meet the needs of those who require it, if that particular charity has rigid ethical codes as part of its teachings.

Secular charities also have to work under tougher conditions. While not everyone needs to access a food bank or a nursing home, as my dialogue partner points out, those that do require these services shouldn’t be denied them based on their gender, relationship status or any other reason that in Canada has been deemed discrimination. Yet religious groups sometimes do deny charitable services on these grounds (or at least deter people who are often discriminated against from seeking those services), leaving secular charities to pick up the slack.

I’d like to reiterate: It is easy to see the merit in allowing tax breaks for organizations that focus on charity work while still adhering to public policy, but this isn’t always the case with many religious groups. Instituting a public-benefit test would be a fairer way to ensure that those religious groups and churches that meet the requirement that other charities must can continue to reap benefits of those tax breaks afforded to them as a result. Those that do not can contribute to their communities through taxes.

Markus Wilhelm responds to Karen Kerr

Charitable status should be reserved for organizations that create public benefits and that operate within the laws of the land. Nobody should automatically be given a tax exemption. In this respect I am in complete agreement with Karen Kerr.

I question, however, whether the rule of unrestricted access 70 per cent of operating time is a good argument. It cannot mean giving access to facilities for activities that contradict the organization’s mission and purpose. Nursing homes and seniors facilities welcome young and able-bodied people to come and visit residents, but they don’t allow them to move in. LGBTQ+ groups welcome anyone seeking support or information on sexual orientation and gender issues, but probably not those who peddle “conversion therapy.” Libraries welcome everyone to spend time, read or borrow books, but not to hold a choir practice. The atheist society would expect people of faith to refrain from proselytizing its members.

Thus, while all people are certainly welcome in churches, the assumption is that they come to practise religion. A church would not be a church if its facilities were used by the local gun club, a political party or indeed members of a different religion 70 per cent of the time. In other words, every organization must “discriminate” in one way or another in order to fulfill its mission. If the mission and purpose fall within the definition of what is a charitable organization, constituting clear benefits for society, then they should be eligible for tax exemption.

The benefits of churches, as I said before, go far beyond the walls of their houses of worship. The Salvation Army’s mission, for example, is clearly charitable, as Kerr recognizes. (The Salvation Army is actually a church!) The Catholic Covenant Foundation operates public hospitals, nursing homes, auxiliary hospitals and other services throughout Alberta. The church denomination I belong to founded the Good Samaritan Society, which operates 29 seniors care facilities and programs in western Canada. While most of these facilities and services are not primarily funded or staffed by church members, their existence illustrates the connection between the worshiping community and their social impact well beyond the walls of the church building. People do get inspired and motivated by the sermons they sit through in church. Because Jesus said at the conclusion of the story of the Good Samaritan to “go and do likewise,” many churchgoers do just that.

There are self-serving people in the church, as there are everywhere. Fraudsters use their tax-exempt status to fleece vulnerable, gullible people, giving other religious people a bad name. Convicted felon Jimmy Bakker, for example, offers buckets of freeze-dried survival food for what he says is the imminent end time, in exchange for “charitable donations.” He also boasts that he helped elect Donald Trump. Trump in turn thanked him and issued an executive order to protect the tax-free status of quasi-corporate entities such as Bakker’s. Phoneys need to be stopped, and fraud punished. Those who subvert the mission of the church for their own ends should have their charitable status revoked. It is the government’s duty to keep churches in line with the tax code.

In January 2020 the US evangelical magazine Christianity Today ran an article titled “The Hidden Cost of Tax Exemption.” Its author, Paul Matzko, a church historian, questions the tax-exempt status of US churches, arguing that while tax exemption can be used to silence churches politically, it can also lead to collusion between church and state. Maybe it is time, the article concludes, for this privilege to be ended.

In the same issue of the magazine, on the other hand, a sociologist unaffiliated with a church offers the opposite opinion, based on research about churches’ contribution to the local economy. This so-called “halo effect” includes employment, food and the flowers that congregations buy, as well as direct financial savings such as when a pastor, through counselling, helps prevent someone’s suicide. Of course, this invites the question of whether or not taxing churches would decrease their charitable activity in the community. The debate rages on.

How much churches’ tax exemption might be costing society in lost public revenue is debatable. I would venture it’s considerably less than what is lost from for-profit industries through unpaid taxes. Oil and gas companies, for example, owe close to $200-million in unpaid property taxes to Alberta municipalities. In any case, considering what I’ve already written, I believe the overall benefits of faith communities to society outweigh the loss of revenue.

While paying taxes is a civic duty for Christians and the issue of tax exemption is not a hill I would want to die on, I believe that in Canada, under present rules, most churches deserve their tax-exempt status and should be treated the same as other charities.

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The Ahmad family’s home is in an expansive suburb on the outskirts of south Edmonton. On the walls are ornate Islamic decorations. One particularly eye-catching frame contains the 99 names of Allah, in thick and thin lines of Arabic script. Three generations of the Ahmad family live here: Shahab, his son Mobarak, his wife Fozia, their two boys, Khalid, 25, and Haris, 21, and daughter Sidra, 14.

It is the middle of the holy month of Ramadan, the Islamic fasting period of 30 days. By the time the Ahmad family sit down to eat after sunset, they have been without food for almost 14 hours. Edmonton’s long days of summer present the Qu’ran’s call to fast from sunrise to sunset at almost its most physically challenging.

Each family member has their favourite Ramadan food, all rooted in the family traditions of Indian and Pakistani cooking, such as black chickpeas, aloo pakora and beef with potatoes. During the meal the family chat enthusiastically about Fozia and Mobarak’s impending trip to Mecca to complete the Hajj, a pilgrimage conducted around two and a half months after the end of Ramadan. Last year the Ahmads’ other children visited Mecca for the Umrah, a pilgrimage conducted at any time of the year. The restrictions in Saudi Arabia gave the whole family a sense of the abundant freedoms available to them as Canadian citizens. Fozia describes life in Edmonton as rewarding for Muslims. “We have freedom of speech and freedom to write and have little fear of attack, compared with my sister who lives in America. We are blessed to be in Canada. People accept how we are.”

“We have freedom of speech and little fear of attack. We are blessed to be in Canada. People accept how we are.”

Over the evening, conversation touches on many topics: rising tuition, the tightening job market, gay–straight alliances and the Islamic perspective on climate change. This well-educated family seems comfortable with any subject, and it is clear they have drawn on Islam’s rich heritage to forge a life in North America that is congruent with both Islamic traditions and Western ones.

As Muslim-Canadian families seek to intensify their engagement with Canada, the question becomes to what extent Canada is willing to fully embrace their involvement. The Ahmads are members of the Ahmadiyya movement within Islam. On July 5, 2008, the Ahmadi community celebrated the opening of the Baitun Nur mosque in Calgary (Canada’s largest mosque, and spiritual home to 2,500 Muslims). Prime Minister Stephen Harper attended the opening of the mosque and praised the Ahmadiyya movement as exemplary: the “true face of Islam.”

While the community appreciated this endorsement at the time, the policies of the Harper government became increasingly harsh toward Muslims in the years that followed. While pursuing an anti-terrorism agenda and joining the military resistance to ISIS in the Middle East, the Harper government took steps domestically that exerted negative pressure on Canadian Muslims. On the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Harper gave a TV interview in which he identified “Islamicism,” rather than terrorism, as the major threat to Canadian security. Speaking in Parliament in January 2015, the Prime Minister directly linked Canadian mosques with the radicalization of young people wanting to fight for ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

His comments were described as “troubling” by the National Council for Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Muslim Lawyers’ Association, who accused the Prime Minister of fostering a climate that led to mosques being vandalized. Just two months later Harper was back on the offensive, describing the niqab, a cloth covering the face, as originating in a culture that is inherently “anti-women.”

Harper’s public statements about Islam were backed by far-reaching policy changes. In 2015 his government passed Bill C-51, a comprehensive security package criticized by Canadian civil liberty groups, including Muslim organizations, for stoking a climate of fear. One measure targeted dual-citizenship holders who, if convicted of terrorism or treason, could now be stripped of their Canadian citizenship and deported to their country of origin. Even though the overwhelming majority of Muslims had nothing to fear, the measure created a sense of a two-tier citizenship among those who were not born in Canada.

The Conservative government’s objections to the niqab had shown up earlier. In 2011 Citizenship Minister Jason Kenney introduced a policy banning anyone from covering their face during citizenship ceremonies. The policy was clearly aimed at Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab. After the policy was introduced, the Conservatives campaigned to secure public support by inviting people to sign an online petition backing the Prime Minister’s argument that it is “offensive that someone would hide their identity just at the moment they are joining the Canadian family.”

Zunera Ishaq, a Muslim woman living in Mississauga, challenged the policy in the courts. In February 2015 federal judge Keith Boswell ruled in favor of Ishaq, agreeing that the government’s niqab policy denigrated the religious beliefs of Muslim women. The Harper government appealed the decision to the Federal Court of Appeal and lost again. In September 2015, in the midst of the federal election, the government declared it would appeal again, this time to the Supreme Court of Canada—and asked for a stay of the FCA niqab ruling such that Ms. Ishaq could not become a Canadian citizen in time to vote in the fall election. Again the court refused.

Palestinian born researcher Ghada Ageel pictured at the UofA in Edmonton, Alta., on Monday October 26, 2015. Jason Franson for Alberta Views Magazine.

By this point, everyone knew that Stephen Harper was using the niqab to stir up anti-immigrant resentment to get votes. The promise of a barbaric practices tip line, basically an encouragement to spy on immigrants, was the next ploy. All of this went against policies of multiculturalism and personal freedom that have defined Canada in the past.

“The announcement was that no one in the niqab could become a citizen! No one in the room was wearing a niqab.”-Ghada Ageel

Of the Muslim women I spoke to for this article, some choose to cover their hair, while others do not. Regardless of their personal choice, they are united in their perspective on the niqab. It is a powerful symbol around which they are eager to give voice in defence of their religion and their culture.

Ghada Ageel, a Palestinian-born researcher at the University of Alberta, attended two citizenship ceremonies in 2015: first for her husband and three children, then, six months later, her own. “We chose this country,” she says. “But on this day, what was the sweetest day of my life—the day I became a Canadian citizen—an announcement came at the start of each ceremony that no one in niqab could become a citizen! Even though no one in the room was wearing the niqab, they still made this announcement. How can you attack my culture and my history like this?”

Ageel strongly refutes any security arguments regarding Muslim face coverings, and views the government policy as a refusal to see Islam as part of the tapestry of what it means to be a Canadian citizen.

Her 19-year-old daughter, Ghaida, went to Edmonton’s largest high school, Jasper Place, and participated in the student-run Global Café, where she learned about citizenship and human rights. She takes a more tempered view. “I can understand why people are fearful of the niqab when it is not part of their culture,” she says. “In our culture we are more used to it. For us it is more normal. I choose not to cover my hair. But coming from evening prayers in the mosque, I do have my hair covered. We go to the Tim Horton’s and the staff reacts very differently to me.”

When Fozia Ahmad moved to Edmonton, she had just completed her medical training in Karachi. She was moving for an arranged marriage with Mobarak. “Being a physician,” she says, “we always evaluate a patient by looking for what is really underneath their sickness. It is the same for this law: Is it really for security or is there something hidden There are Muslims who do wear the hijab or the niqab and Muslims who do not. They are not forced. If the government is forcing something by law, then who is the oppressor?”

Mobarak saw the politics of the situation during the federal election in 2015. “Polls said most Canadians were in favour of this ban, so that tells me it was a vote-getter. But the law had no value. The government has no business telling anyone what to wear or not to wear. The government of Saudi Arabia has a very strict set of laws telling women what to wear. What is the difference between telling women what they should wear and telling women what they should not wear?”

In episode one of CBC’s hit sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie rumours fly that one of the Muslims in the fictional Saskatchewan town of Mercy is a terrorist. The local radio shock-jock stokes fears about the fledgling Muslim community, and a local Muslim businessman becomes the focus of speculation. It emerges that well-regarded community figure Yasir is behind the establishment of a secret mosque in the parish hall of Mercy’s Anglican church. Yasir’s wife, Sarah (communications adviser to the mayor), is shocked to hear the allegations against her husband. “But Yasir couldn’t be a terrorist. He’s a card-carrying member of the Conservative party!”

In the TV series, the town’s Muslims tread the lines between being accepted members of the community, running businesses or working in the local hospital, and being seen as dangerous hardliners who don’t belong in small-town Canada. The experience portrayed in the comedy series reflects many of the struggles of Canada’s real-life Muslims who felt increasingly alienated by government policy during the Conservative regime.

The rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State and lone-wolf attacks on Canadian armed forces members in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa led to government responses that seemed to target Canadian Muslims. More was made of ISIS recruitment in Canada than of the efforts of Canadian Muslim leaders to condemn ISIS and to support communities affected by war across the Middle East and North Africa. A growing sense of alienation was the inevitable result.

The longer story of Alberta’s Muslims is that of an earnest partnership between Muslim and non-Muslim communities. The rich history of Muslims in Alberta began with Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s desire to populate western Canada. To that end, his government relaxed immigration laws at the turn of the 20th century. Laurier declared that Canada would become “the star towards which all men who love freedom and progress shall come.” Muslims, escaping from compulsory military service in the Ottoman Empire, responded to this call. Some chose northern Alberta as a place to settle.

Retired schoolteacher Richard Amid is an avid historian of the Muslim community in Alberta. His father arrived in London, Ontario, from Lebanon in 1901. Working as a peddler, with a case full of knick-knacks on his back, Amid’s father saved enough to open a general store in Brandon, Manitoba. He married a Ukrainian woman who converted to Islam and they moved to Edmonton in 1927. Describing these pioneering Muslim Albertans, Amid says, “They developed strong relationships with the indigenous community, learning their language and their trapping skills. Some Muslims established mink ranches in areas such as Fort Chipewyan and Fort McMurray. Others were drawn to Calgary by the possibility of work with the Canadian Pacific Railway.”

With the community’s growth came the desire to pass their language and religion on to the next generation. The first mosque in Alberta—the first in Canada—was located at 108th Avenue and 102nd Street in Edmonton. Muslim storeowners contributed the building supplies, and Ukrainian tradesmen did much of the construction. The mosque’s name was al Rashid, meaning “the rightly guided.” It opened in 1938.

Of al Rashid mosque’s early days, Amid says, “Muslim and Arab people are very hospitable. The mosque was opened regularly on Sundays for non-Muslims to participate in meals. The relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims was very good. My brother worked for Hymie and Marvin Weisler and later bought the business from them. The Jewish fur traders on 101st were constantly trading with the Muslims.” Twenty years after al Rashid opened, Lebanese Muslims in Lac La Biche started construction of Canada’s second mosque.

Belal Salla, left and Talal al Khoudry of the Universal Barbershop, tend to customers in Edmonton, Alta., on Friday October 16, 2015. Jason Franson for Alberta Views Magazine.

In the 42 years after al Rashid opened, until 1980 when it closed its doors, Alberta’s Muslim population grew from around 200 to almost 16,000. Today al Rashid is conserved in Fort Edmonton park as an official part of Edmonton and Alberta history. The most recent census showed 115,000 Muslims in Alberta, about 3.2 per cent of the population—in line with the national average. There are just over one million Muslims living in Canada today.

“We are just normal people looking to have normal lives. All this difficulty is politics. It has nothing to do with religion.”- Talal al Khoudry

The sense of an overbearing government interfering in people’s lives, and the unsettling perception that citizenship rights for particular groups are being eroded, has a long history for Muslims living in the western world. A standard criticism in western countries is that to be a Muslim one cannot be a westerner, that Islam is somehow incongruous with western values because of its treatment of women and apparent failure to embrace free speech.

In Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Islamic theologian Tariq Ramadan says, “We are currently living through a veritable silent revolution in Muslim communities in the West: more and more young people and intellectuals are actively looking for a way to live in harmony with their faith while participating in their societies.” However, attacks by violent groups in Europe and the Middle East—and the 2014 murder of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo in Ottawa—have fuelled the portrait of a humourless, oppressive and violent religion, despite the diversity of 1.6 billion Muslims around the world. Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said observed how, in the western imagination, Arabs are associated with “bloodthirsty dishonesty,” a caricature rooted in centuries of European Islamophobia.

For its adherents the true face of Islam is different. “Islam,” according to Tariq Ramadan, “is a quest for the liberation of [believers’] inner selves in a global world dominated by appearances and excessive possession and consumption.” While there are differing schools of thought, from reformists to traditionalists and literalists (or fundamentalists), there is agreement on the basic principles. To be Muslim one must profess faith that there is only one God and that Muhammad is his Prophet (shahada); pray towards Mecca five times a day (salat); give a percentage of your income to charity (zakat); make a pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj); and fast during Ramadan (sawm).

Beyond these five “pillars of Islam,” views diverge on the importance of the veil (hijab), the precise nature of jihad (definitions range from “holy war” to “internal spiritual struggle”) and the permissibility, or otherwise, of polygamy. How Muslims adjudicate these questions depends primarily on their cultural context. Muslim policy-makers in more patriarchal societies rely on conservative jurisprudence. In more liberal environments, Muslims tend to read the Qu’ran and hadith (sayings of the Prophet) more progressively.

The Muslims I have interviewed believe that Islam is clear and that those who violate its teachings—particularly through violence—are not Muslims and do not represent their views. Through mosques and in their own lives, local Muslims are actively working to explain the tenets of their faith. The Ahmadiyya community has an ongoing Canada-wide outreach initiative called “Meet a Muslim.” In November 2014, Khalid Ahmad, 25, president of the Ahmadiyya Students’ Association at University of Alberta, organized a conference called “Stop the Crisis.” The conference discussed the question of radicalization and set out to educate young Muslims about the teachings of Islam. Of the young men joining ISIS, Ahmad says, “It stems from a lack in their personal religious education. Their views aren’t representative of the Muslim faith.” Around 50 people, mostly young Muslims, attended. The conference generated headline coverage on local TV and radio stations.

Talal al Khoudry, a Whyte Avenue barber known for his quick hands and neat cuts, believes that the battle against radicalization must include a positive contribution to solving the humanitarian catastrophes in the Middle East. Before departing for Lebanon to visit his mother, al Khoudry was inundated with offers of money and other kinds of support. He says, “Any Muslim is the brother of another Muslim. The fundraising in the mosque is constant. I know Muslim psychologists here who are speaking with traumatized clients on Skype every day. I know of a Pakistani doctor sending money over to help. Giving to those who are less fortunate is part of our religion.”

Al Khoudry’s colleague, Calgary-born Belal Salla, his hands fresh from a busy afternoon cutting hair, tells me, “We are just normal people looking to have normal lives. All this difficulty is politics. It has nothing to do with religion. I want everyone to know that we are just normal people looking to do the best for our families and the people we love.”

Eóin Murray first became interested in the complexities of Islam while living in Gaza. He now calls Edmonton home.

The post Alberta’s Muslims appeared first on Alberta Views.

It’s a commercial carnival out here on the Alberta prairies. Hawkers shout for attention. Small children harass visitors, drag them over to racks of statuettes and books. Vendors are arrayed around the impromptu temple and its bizarre tropical oasis.

When we pull up in the parking lot, sliding in behind a coach full of Québécois tourists, my husband smirks knowingly at the weary look on my face.

“Try to have fun, okay Try to enjoy yourself.”

I cock an eyebrow at him. Since when have I ever had fun on one of his assignments

We established our dynamic early on. I’m the curmudgeonly one. He’s the adventurous one. I stay at home in Toronto denying visa applications for the immigration bureau. He jets around the world writing articles for his surprisingly lucrative travel blog.

When he does drag me along, it’s all forcing a smile in front of cliché monuments and trying to avoid doing anything blogworthy—a lesson I learned the hard way when I accidentally ate a bull penis in Saigon.

People bring their own inferior fruits—lacking the fullness and weight of Her soulful produce—to leave at her feet.

This trip, I can’t avoid being mentioned. I’m a subject of study. This is my home turf.

“I’ve been invited to go on a tour of Alberta!” he crowed the moment he got the email. “You have to come! You never talk about your homeland. You can show off your old haunts. Like I did when we went home to visit my parents.”

“Yeah, but you’re from New York. It’s not the same.”

“Well, I already emailed back, before the tour company finds some other blogger. Case closed. We’re going.”

Our marriage counsellor thinks it’s a great idea. Maybe going home will help resolve my insomnia and my sleepwalking, which have been getting worse.

So here I am. Musidora, Alberta. Formerly the armpit of nowhere. Now a major tourist destination. All thanks to Her.

“I can’t believe you’ve never been here,” says my husband as we leave the air-conditioned tranquility of the rental car and are immediately assaulted by a 10-year-old shaking sandalwood beads.

“You’d never been to the Statue of Liberty,” I say.

“That’s different. It’s a point of pride for New Yorkers to avoid the Statue of Liberty. And besides, there’s so much else to do in New York.”

We weave our way through the small community that has sprouted up around the accidental landmark. My husband buys too many souvenirs—a trucker hat, a pack of gum, a tube of incense. He buys a book, Divine Teachings of the Madonna of Musidora, which I’m sure will appear in my Christmas stocking this year.

We join the long queue for the temple, which stretches all the way around the spontaneous shrine. I hold our place as my husband goes to get some overpriced food. Really, he’s hunting for a good story in the thousand-strong crowd. It shouldn’t be too hard to find. There are dozens of pilgrims leaning on crutches and canes, waiting for the moment they can cast them away and declare themselves miraculously healed.

My husband returns eventually with some limp green onion cakes bathed in sriracha sauce, and I chew one of the cardboardy disks for the next 10 minutes. When we reach the entrance, a serene, white-robed acolyte tells us we are expected to limit our time to five minutes in Her presence, take no photos and remain reverently silent in the temple.

When we enter the grand room, however, we meet a scene of pandemonium. A crowd of at least a hundred is gathered around Her, pushing and jostling for position. Everyone has one hand in the air, all trying to take the exact same photo with their smartphones. I’m reminded of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, not just because of the mob of ill-behaved tourists, but also because of Her face.

The Madonna of Musidora wears an enigmatic smile. She sits there with Her legs pretzelled, Her eyes closed, Her metres of copper-gold hair. The temple has cold marble floors and golden walls, a cavernous space that amplifies the noise of the crowd. But the Madonna sits in the dirt, as She has since the beginning.

Behind Her sprouts the temple’s most impressive feature—a giant tree, growing up the curved side of the dome, reaching towards the oculus in its roof, through which sunlight rains down. Its boughs are heavy with fruit and bursting with blossoms, a biological impossibility just like the Madonna Herself.

The story goes that the Madonna had an orange in Her pocket when She sat down, and it fell out and implanted itself in the freshly tilled soil behind her. Her divine influence seeped out to infect the surrounding earth, making it absurdly fertile. People bring their own inferior fruits—genetically engineered to be flawless, though lacking the fullness and weight of Her soulful produce—to leave at Her feet and ask for a blessing.

Eventually we shuffle our way to the front of the crowd, behind a waist-high glass barrier that leaves us a metre away from Her. My husband passes me a piece of crystallized pineapple, and we kneel down and place our offerings beside a hundred-hour candle. I let the pineapple linger in my hand for a moment, visualizing my wish. My husband draws his hand away quickly. I’m sure he doesn’t wish for what I wish for.

The Madonna wears en enigmatic smile, with Her legs pretzelled, Her eyes closed, Her metres of copper-gold hair. She sits in the dirt.

He leans into me, almost nibbles on my ear as he whispers to me.

“What do you feel?”

I stare up into the woman’s face and consider the question. The Madonna of Musidora is like the Mona Lisa, with her famous smile. It’s mysterious and self-satisfied, to the point that it borders on smugness. She has this “I know something you don’t know” smirk, eyebrows raised to just the right angle.

When I look into her eternally young, glowing face I don’t feel peace or contentment or inspiration. I feel a yellow curd of resentment, stinking up my insides. Who does she think she is, really Why are you oh-so-enlightened What’s your great secret, huh

I hate my life. Everything that once seemed exciting, colourful, full of promise is now just a taunt, a reminder of how naive I once was. Most people hate their lives, I think, which is why we spend so much time grasping around at distractions. Doing things that other people pretend to be happy about and advertise, like buying a house or getting married.

But here sits this woman, almost 120 years old with the face of a 20-year-old, announcing silently that She’s figured it all out. She’s beaten the misery monster that gnaws at everyone from the inside. She’s achieved a pure and perfect joy, independent of circumstance, unassailable by doubt or regret or exhaustion. Wherever She is in there—in that strange, ageless body sitting rooted to the dusty prairie—She seems to be mocking us, showing us how easy it is to slip free of our shackles.

We’re shuffled out of the temple, into the interpretive centre and gift shop. My husband drags me into a small theatre that plays a short film. The story of her life.

“Before She came to be known as the Madonna, Victoria Sunady had another nickname: The Queen of the Porcelain Throne.”

A baritone voice narrates as photos of Her as an old woman fill the screen.

“She recognized that great wealth could spring from the most unexpected of places. She read a strange statistic about the amount of rare and precious metals in human biosolids, and decided to begin a waste control business that filtered and collected these base elements. Gold, silver, platinum, copper—a dozen valuable metals were mined directly from a million toilets across Alberta.”

A map appears, showing Victoria Sunady’s sewage pipelines, running from across the province to her central distillery in Edmonton.

“Her business boomed, and soon she was selling these metals back to various industries, for use in electronics and construction. She survived several assassination attempts by panicked strip mining companies, and her eco-conscious business model prevailed. Other nations copied her, and now her method is used globally.”

Footage of the distillation process fills the screen, frothy pools with fine-meshed sieves.

“But after having built an empire and accrued massive wealth, Victoria Sunady was stunned to discover Herself extremely unhappy. She hid Her depression for years, burying it away, burying Herself in work. Eventually, She came to a breaking point. Her life was intolerable. She had to change. So she walked away from it all, through the day, through the night. At dawn She sat down in the middle of a field. She closed Her eyes, and let out a deep breath.”

The narration pauses here, for dramatic effect. The crowd leans in perceptibly. My husband is hanging off every word, scribbling on his notepad manically.

“The Madonna of Musidora has only breathed twice since She came across the fields and sat down. Once was 40 years ago, when She breathed in. Once was 15 years ago, when She breathed out. The acolytes of Her Order wait for Her third breath, where they will find synchronicity with Her.”

The video ends and the screen plays a video montage of the #musidora Twitter and Instagram streams. My husband spends an hour in the giftshop, buying everything from a tin of dirt to a jar of honey made from the bees that suck the nectar from Her tree. The honey costs several hundred dollars.

“It’s a business expense,” says my husband innocently. “I’ll write it off on our taxes.”

I follow him back to the car, arms laden with his purchases, and soon I’m pulling us out of the oasis and back onto the highway. We pass through Musidora itself, originally a hamlet of 200 people whose population has mushroomed to 50,000, a local economy supported entirely by Victoria Sunady.

“I wish we’d seen Her breathe,” says my husband, chewing on the end of his pencil and staring out the window. “Imagine breathing in the air She exhaled, that’s been held in Her lungs for so long. It would be like a blessing. Maybe you’d start aging in reverse too.”

He grins at me. I keep my eyes on the road.

“I like the age I am,” I say.

We ride on in silence until we get back to Vegreville, which has also benefited from Musidora’s cash-flush pilgrims.

The Pysanka Hotel is a gaudy kaleidoscopic building whose staff pretends it’s 1870 and will only talk to you in Ukrainian. Of course my husband loves it, washboard laundry and butter churning and all. We head into the dining room for a perogy and kolbassa buffet. I pick at the onion-infested meal while my husband eats with gusto.

“I have so much to write about,” he says through a mouthful of dumpling and sausage. “I met this woman who was selling oranges from the Madonna’s actual tree. She said she was a skeptic herself, but then she ate one of them 10 years ago and it cured her of her infertility. And she had, like, six kids around her now. The oranges cost, like, thirty thousand dollars though, so I was like nah…that’s too much.”

It’s nice to know my husband has a ceiling, no matter how high it is.

“I heard Her children had a big court battle over Her estate,” continues my husband. “But the government ruled that they couldn’t inherit Her fortune because legally she’s still alive, even if Her heart only beats once a year.”

He digs in to his braided bread-cake and washes down each chunk with a big gulp of milk.

“Of course, they’re both dead now. She’ll probably outlive all her grandchildren too.”

If he notices my silence he doesn’t care. He only ever needed someone to listen as he talks on and on. I wonder if he’s talking all about children just to be vindictive. No. Probably not. He’s more thoughtless than he is cruel.

“How do you think She does it, really?”

He sips his milk and looks up at the shumka dancers, performing at the other end of the dining room in their bright woven costumes.

“I don’t know. I have a headache. I’m gonna go to bed early, I think.”

“You should drink some water. Eighty per cent of Canadians are chronically dehydrated.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

I stand up and set my dinner napkin beside my fork.

“I’ll be upstairs. Try not to make too much noise when you come up.”

My husband nods distractedly. He’s flipped open his notepad and is staining its pages with greasy fingerprints, leafing back through his treasure trove of experiences from the day. He’ll distill all of it into a 3,000-word advertisement, inspiring the envy of anyone too poor or too busy or too mainstream to visit Musidora. I used to like his writing. Now it’s all just a big fake confection about how great everything is and how happy you’d be if you were there, elsewhere, anywhere but where you are.

I feel a yellow curd of resentment, stinking up my insides. Who does she think she is, really Why are you oh-so-enlightened?

I brush my teeth and wash my face and lie in our bed, staring at the ceiling. Blood pounds in my temples. My eyes ache. I squeeze them shut. Like every night for the past decade, I retrace my steps through my memory, trying to find the moment where it all started to go wrong. When I left Edmonton When I did a graduate degree in literature When I met my husband-to-be When I married him Or even before all that, when I thought I was happy even though I wasn’t really

I drift off to sleep, and dream myself through a dozen different lives, where I made better choices. In one of them I’m living in Nagasaki, teaching English, learning Japanese. In one of them I’m a famous poet, performing to packed halls in Montreal. In one of them I have a rich, powerful husband who loves kids and who loves me for raising our bright, wonderful children.

We’re at our cabin on Lake Edith, playing Scrabble as a family and making up words. I feel right, like I belong here, like this is the life I truly deserve. My caring husband holds my hand as we play, ganging up on the kids and trying to convince them that “quizzy” is definitely a word.

The little one gets mad, says “No, it’s not!” and starts to hold her breath for as long as she can in protest. She takes a big gulp of air and smirks at us. After a moment she starts floating up towards the ceiling, her fiery hair billowing out in all directions. She squeezes her face and her chipmunk cheeks quiver and then she explodes like a helium balloon introduced to a hairpin.

An icicle of horror plunges through my gut, but before I can scream or cry, the world is erased. I wake up.

I’m lying on a smooth marble floor, in a perfect circle of moonlight. My feet are bare, broken, aching, bleeding. I pick myself up and gasp when I see where my sleepwalking has carried me this time.

Victoria Sunady sits before me, on Her perfect circle of dirt. A heady perfume seeps down from Her tree’s white blossoms, filling up the empty temple. Her smile seems even more radiant than I remember. In this quiet, moonlit place, Her whole body seems to glow with soft, orange luminescence.

I try to stand but my feet are too tender. That’s what comes of walking for hours with no shoes. At least the marble is cool and soothing against my swollen skin.

I wonder how I even got into the dome. I thought they’d have security, or acolytes performing midnight rituals. But it’s just me and the Madonna.

I crawl over to Her shrine, under the branches of the mighty tree. The offerings are all gone, as is the glass barrier. I could reach out and touch Her bare feet if I wanted to. She exerts a mesmerizing magnetism, like staring into the embers at the heart of a bonfire.

Out of nowhere, a violent impulse urges me to strike the smug smile off her face, shake her by the shoulders until she admits that she’s no better than the rest of us. This feeling races through me, a wildfire of envy and hate.

Before I know it, I’m on my feet, bearing down on her, an inch away from her lustrous golden skin. But just as I’m about to destroy Victoria Sunady and her false promise of peace, something stays my hand.

She breathes.

One long, deep, constant inhalation. Her eyes stay shut, Her smile stays wide, but Her chest expands, drawing in gallons and gallons of air.

It’s only when Her deep breath ends that I realize I’ve been holding my own. I let it out, and I’m surprised by how deeply I can dig, how much stale dry air is lurking around the back tunnels of my lungs.

As the air leaves my lungs, it carries some dark spores of resentment up out of my body. The Madonna of Musidora smiles a little wider.

I imagine Her using whatever strange power She found buried out here on the random prairies—or maybe just found buried deep within Herself—to draw out my despair and share her tranquility. Not some zen bullshit from a fake memoir, but an earthy presence from her body.

I’m going to leave my husband. I’m going to quit my job. I’m going to breathe out all these noxious memory fumes. And when they’re gone, I’m going to pause and reflect in emptiness. And then I’m going to breathe in.

Bruce Cinnamon lives in Edmonton. His stories have appeared in various journals. He is working on his first novel.

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The post Breathe In appeared first on Alberta Views.

However, optimism has been a little hard to come by lately. The strength of Canada’s multicultural fabric is being tested, and Muslims’ religious and cultural beliefs are at the centre of the debate. The Toronto “terror trials” revealed the presence of fanatical, potentially violent Islamist Canadians. Some conflate this small group with the majority of peaceful Canadian Muslims. Other court cases, such as the Ontario Supreme Court’s allowing of niqabs in the witness box, are challenging Canadians to confront the tricky implications of freedom of expression, conscience and religion. These issues, and others, seem to be straining Canadians’ famous tolerance.

It’s been a rough decade for multiculturalism all across the world. In particular, some non-Muslims have become more afraid of Muslims following 9/11, despite worldwide Muslim condemnation for the perpetrators of those terror acts. Animosity between Muslims and non-Muslims, however, has actually been building since before 9/11—since al Qaeda first set out to dupe the good people of the world into fighting each other instead of joining together against al Qaeda. Too many of us have now fallen for it. In Canada, I’ve watched rational people on both sides of the imaginary Muslim/non-Muslim divide become progressively polarized. 

Alberta has a long and storied history of an Islamic presence. This province isn’t perfectly tolerant, of course; discrimination and prejudice exist here just as they do everywhere. But given Islam’s long history here, might this be as good a place as any for Muslims and non-Muslims to begin to sort out our differences, learn what we have in common and set an example for the rest of the world?

So, what’s the “Muslim” perspective on Albertan multiculturalism The old French adage “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” comes to mind. Most of us wouldn’t say this in French, of course, but we likely wouldn’t say it in Arabic either; only a fifth of Alberta’s Muslims are of Arabic descent. And since the time of turn-of-the-century fur trader Sam Jamha (who spoke Arabic fluently—but also English, French and Cree) we’ve generally been multilingual. Most of us are either of South Asian or African background. A growing number of local Muslims are fair-skinned Europeans, or North American-born. A growing proportion of us are converts to Islam, like me.

Many Lebanese immigrants became fur traders in the north in the 1930s. (Finne/NWT Archives/N-1979-063-0039)

Peter Baker, one of Alberta’s earliest Muslims, likely hoped he’d faced down discrimination for good over a century ago. Although his birth name was Bedouin Ferran, Peter Baker was given an anglicized name by a friendly Catholic priest to help him fit in before coming to Alberta, where he opened a store. This forethought was only partially effective, as Baker describes in the story of a conflict with a Fort Smith, NWT, fur trader: “When (Willy) Lyall moved over he started talking nasty and mean… he told people all about the ‘Jew’ and made up a name for my place, the ‘Jew’s store.’ The people—Indian, Métis and whites—came and told me that he was spreading false propaganda about me. Along with Lyall, a young Scotch policeman, McIvor, was also annoying me. Before Lyall came to (Fort) Smith I had never heard anybody mention such a word as Jew… In those days, when anybody was called a Jew, it meant ‘outcast and despised,’ because a Jew was a ‘Christkiller.’ I was called that most often.”

In Baker’s day, prejudice wasn’t restricted to ordinary people confusing Islam with Judaism; it even reached to the highest levels of Canada’s government. In 1926, when Baker confronted federal Minister of the Interior Charlie Stewart over his modification of the Territorial Trading and Trafficking Laws (which restricted Baker’s right to trade with the Aboriginal population), Stewart replied, “It wouldn’t be necessary for the new rule if it was not for those damned Syrians and Jews going around fooling the poor Indians!” 

Yet Baker proved his commitment to Canada’s highest values when he went on to represent a mostly Aboriginal constituency in the legislature of the Northwest Territories. He is buried in the graveyard of Edmonton’s Al-Rashid mosque, opened in 1938, the oldest mosque in Canada. It’s not surprising that Alberta’s Muslims are inspired by stories such as Peter Baker’s. Encouraged by his example, we have unquestionably thrived. And through it all, our best and brightest—from Larry Shaben, Canada’s first Muslim cabinet minister, who represented the riding of Lesser Slave Lake, to Moe Amery, the current MLA for Calgary–East, to Calgary’s new mayor, Naheed Nenshi—have continued to serve Alberta and show the rest of the country how multiculturalism can work.

Given our history in Alberta, one point on which every Muslim will likely agree (and believe me, there aren’t many—we’re as diverse a community as they come) is that we’re wary of the title “newcomer.” Mahdi Qasqas, director of Muslim Youth Services in Calgary, finds the label problematic because it can connote a weak commitment to Canada. Sitting in his office at the back of a converted exercise centre (where the “Love My Curves” logo now reads simply “Love MY,” the “MY” standing for “Muslim Youth”), Qasqas explains, “Even our newest arrivals just want to work and raise their children like everyone else.” In other words, Muslims come to Canada to be Canadians, to enjoy the much-envied freedoms and opportunities of Canadians—not to make this country resemble the place they left.

In truth, “newcomers” is perhaps a designation we all share—Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Canadian history didn’t begin with John Cabot in 1497 when he claimed what is now Newfoundland for God and England. The first ocean voyagers to come to Canada’s shores were the Vikings, bringing All-Father Odin. The next explorer to make it here was Chinese-Muslim admiral Zheng He. However, the distinction of being the “first-discoverer” will always belong to the first man, woman or child who crossed the Bering Strait land bridge from Siberia over 40,000 years ago. According to the Huron Carol, which I learned way back in grade school in Ontario, the people who discovered North America were partial to Gitchi Manitou.

The thing is: God, Odin, Allah and Gitchi Manitou are all understood by their worshippers as being inadequate names for the same God-concept: the one who made us all and wants us to treat each other with respect. Rather than being the name of some “foreign” non-Christian God—as portrayed by non-Muslim preachers such as evangelical leader Franklin Graham—Allah is even the word that Arabic-speaking Christians use when they’re talking either to or about God. 

Ever since Islam began under Muhammad (after which name Muslims respectfully add “peace be upon him,” as they do after naming every prophet, including Jesus, peace be upon him) people who live by Muhammad’s example, regardless of their language, have revered and protected the path to worship of other believers, whether Muslim or not. Muhammad’s society in Medina promised equivalent status, rights, roles and responsibilities for all, regardless of race or religion. Muhammad’s Islam affirms women as the equals of men. Muhammad appointed a woman named Um-Waraqah an imam. 

When the first Muslims took over Jerusalem, they hallowed the Western Wall of the Old Temple and even allowed the Jews—who’d been evicted by the Christians—back in. And a Christian monastery still sits at the foot of Mount Sinai, where they cherish a document in which Muhammad promises religious freedom and Muslim protection to “all those who adopt Christianity both near and far,” and in which Muhammad makes his promises binding on all other Muslims until the end of time. 

In the earliest and best Muslim civilization, Muslims, Jews and Christians lived together in peace. And despite Islamophobic claims to the contrary, our greatest regret isn’t that Muhammad’s legacy of civilized living didn’t become a worldwide empire under Muslim domination, it’s that the legacy of peace that he left the world didn’t last.

I grew up as a Lutheran, became a Baptist when I decided I needed to take God’s Word more seriously, and then became a Muslim when I realized I should take my faith more seriously yet. I’ve made and held close friendships with people of every religious faith, and one thing I’ve learned is just how similar we all are no matter what we believe. 

Sitting in Alberta’s mosques, whether under an elaborate crystal candelabra on carpet designed to arrange worshippers in rows or in a converted school gymnasium under mercury vapour lamps with cardboard in place of carpet, you’ll find—as I have—that Muslim sermons sound more or less identical to those heard in Christian churches or Jewish synagogues. How do you have a happier home (Answer: Treat your spouse as your equal.) How do you raise children to be good to their parents (Answer: Treat them with respect yourself.) How should you show your love for God in heaven (Answer: Love your neighbour here on earth.) Imams such as Jamal Hammoud, a member of the Canadian Council of Imams and senior leader of all Calgary imams—teach that Islam promotes religious pluralism, gender equity and individual freedom of choice. Gratitude for Canada’s freedoms figures strongly in all our imams’ messages: Imam Hammoud has been particularly vocal about the need for all of us to help Canada’s Muslim immigrants integrate and make Canada their home. 

So, given these indications that Islam’s and Canada’s values are closely aligned, what’s the reason for any lingering suspicion of Muslims in Canada Alberta-born and -bred Nagah Hage, leader of the Muslim Council of Calgary, thinks it has to do with Muslims’ growing population and increasing visibility. 

“Before mosques were here, I don’t think many people noticed us,” Nagah says while sitting in his grocery store in the Trans-Canada Mall. “But every mosque we’ve built has made us harder to ignore.” Hage’s Mideast Foods & Halal Meats is the social centre of Calgary’s Muslim community. Decorated with pictures of pilgrims circumambulating the Kaaba in Mecca, Arabic inscriptions from the Quran, and hookahs, and smelling of cardamom, tea, fried chicken and pizza, here you can find a representative slice of our multi-ethnic population any time of the day. Food and groceries are sold to women garbed in everything from burkas to miniskirts, and to men wearing everything from prayer shawls to tractor caps. It’s an interesting place to hang out—and so, many of Calgary’s Muslims do. 

Nagah pauses to pour tea. “Mosques are a focus for anti-Muslim feeling anytime there’s conflict with Muslims in the rest of the world,” he says. “Interestingly enough, we didn’t see much right after 9/11, but we had to deal with anti-Muslim graffiti and vandalism after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and after Israel invaded Lebanon and Gaza.” 

Where does that sort of prejudice originate In my experience, a small but vocal group of politically or religiously driven people attempt to fan the flames by referring to mosques such as the one in southwest Calgary as “The Wahhabian Mosque” (a word commonly associated with the most repressive and extreme interpretations of Islam) and by claiming such buildings are built with Saudi money. Let’s be clear: the last time Calgary’s Muslims got any money from Saudi Arabia was a congratulatory gift of $50,000 from King Faisal in the early 1970s. And Calgary’s mosques are far from being hotbeds of Saudi Arabia’s brand of Islam. 

Most Albertans seem to understand this. Last year, when Angus Reid commissioned a survey of Canadians’ attitudes toward Islamic people, Albertans responded with the most favourable attitudes toward Muslims of people of any province in Canada. On a question about whether or not Islam is a mostly peaceful religion, Albertans again offered the most favourable response in the country.

Mayor of Calgary Naheed Nenshi. (Naheed Nenshi)

Yes, it’s true that some radical and politically motivated Muslims—and non-Muslims—strive to draw extreme interpretations from 1,000 years of Muslim history in order to manipulate credulous Muslims—and non-Muslims—to their own ends. Rest assured that in Canada’s mainstream mosques, under Canada’s mainstream Muslim leaders, Muhammad’s multicultural example reigns supreme. The Canadian Council of Imams’ declaration that our mosques promote pluralism, gender equity and individual freedom is specifically designed to starve those extremist perspectives of support.

This past Ramadan (Aug 11–Sep 9), Canada’s scholarly imams declared Islam to be completely in line with the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms—because when Islam is practised the way Muhammad practised it, it is in line with the Charter. That’s the Islam taught in Canada’s mainstream mosques.

Yes, extremist members of all faiths—including Islam—exist in this country. But it’s important that we don’t conflate the few with the many. The vast majority of Canada’s Muslims have all along stood up for Canada and everything good Canada stands for. Just as have the vast majority of Canada’s Christians, Jews and members of other faiths.

Yes, many Muslims are angry about various Canadian governments’ support for Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people, the half a million orphans the war with the Taliban has created in Afghanistan, the way Muslims are more and more treated with suspicion by Canadian government officials. Frankly, we expect that most Canadians, Muslim or otherwise, would share our anger and recognize the inherent contradictions between what Canada stands for and how it sometimes acts. 

If optimism is going to spring from anywhere, however, it would seem to be Alberta. Muslims have been part of Alberta’s history for over a century. Alberta has struggled with—and for the most part overcome—the challenges of multiculturalism, and Alberta’s Muslims have been part of that overcoming from the very beginning.

Islam and Canada are both powerful symbols to those who believe in them, promising justice, equal rights and responsibilities for all, regardless of race, creed or gender. And far from being antagonists in a war for world domination, that makes Islam and Canada each other’s strongest ally in the struggle to make the world a better place for everyone.  

David Liepert, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Calgary, is author of Muslim, Christian and Jew: Finding a Path to Peace (2010).

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The post Life on the Colony appeared first on Alberta Views.

As it happens, Purdy and Kennedy have no particular desire to get married. They are happy with their 13-year arrangement and with the commitment ceremony they had at Calgary’s Metropolitan Community Church, in 1992. But, like many other gay couples, they want the choice. More importantly, they want others, who do want to get married, to have the choice. And given recent decisions of the Ontario and British Columbia Courts of Appeal, and the federal draft legislation and reference to the Supreme Court of Canada, they are beginning to wonder when that choice will be available in Alberta.

Tanya and Ana Paula Mullen are married. In their United Church ceremony, which many said was the most traditional wedding they’d ever attended, the brides wore white. The two women don’t feel any less married because they lack a state-sanctioned marriage certificate, but they would take advantage of a legal marriage, given the choice. They,  too, wonder when that choice will be available  in their home province.

While the question of who can marry is constitutionally within federal jurisdiction, the provinces control marriage licences and ceremonies. Although Alberta has new, far- reaching legislation granting rights to same- sex couples, it does not grant the one right that, to many, matters most: the right to be joined in a legal marriage. Today it seems that every province except Alberta is willing to follow the courts’ and federal government’s lead in legalizing same-sex marriage. If our government has its way, our province might be the only one that won’t.

The long road of changes to homosexual rights began with Canada’s adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in 1982. Section 15, the “equality” section, came into force in 1985, and barely four years later the Supreme Court began hearing equality-based challenges to existing legislation. The Charter’s guarantee of the right to equal protection and benefit of the law without discrimination is general, but a provision in section 15 lists specific prohibited grounds of discrimination: “race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” In 1989, the Supreme Court determined that section 15 applied to discrimination on the basis not only of the listed grounds but also analogous grounds. By 1995, the court had determined that marital status and sexual orientation were analogous grounds.

The Ontario Court defined marriage as “the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others,” and ordered authorities to grant licences to same-sex couples.

These rulings led the way to the Vriend decision in  1998, the first time Alberta was forced to deal with the Charter’s protection of gay rights. Delwin Vriend was fired from a teaching job at a religious college in  Edmonton because he was gay. Vriend’s complaint to the Alberta Human Rights Commission ended up in Alberta’s Court of Queen’s Bench, where his lawyers challenged the province’s Individual’s Rights Protection Act for not including sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination. The court ruled that the omission violated section 15 of the Charter and ordered that sexual orientation be read into the act. The Alberta Court of Appeal overturned this decision. It was satisfied that the legislature had considered sexual orientation as a prohibited ground in drafting the act. The Supreme Court, however, agreeing with the Queen’s Bench decision, found that the legislature should have included, and not merely considered, sexual orientation, and ordered that it be read into the act.

The Supreme Court decision led to an anti-gay backlash, fuelling the perception of Alberta as a redneck, homophobic province. Indeed, the response from the Klein government seemed predictable, with expostulations on the use of the notwithstanding clause to opt out of this reading of the Charter. “Initially, the right-wing politicians talked big, building fences with the right wing of the party,” says Stephen Jenuth, Calgary lawyer and president of the Alberta Civil Liberties Association, “but when it came right down to it, they backed off.”

The provincial government did, however, use the notwithstanding clause to make clear their stance on same- sex marriage: they announced their support of the existing federal law restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples and amended the Marriage Act, which governs the solemnization of wedding vows in the province. Declaring that the act “operates notwithstanding [certain provisions of] the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and…the Alberta Bill of Rights,” the legislation defined marriage as a union “between a man and a woman.”

In 1999, the year after the Vriend decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Ontario’s definition of “spouse,” in legislation that dealt with adoption, discriminated against same- sex couples and contravened the Charter. The federal government and the governments of Ontario, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick and Newfoundland all responded by bringing in new legislation or amending existing legislation to redefine the legal status of relationships—same-sex partner- ships, common-law partnerships, marriage-like relation- ships. Nova Scotia established the legal status of “domestic partnership,” Quebec the legal status of “civil union.” Couples in these relationships were granted rights and obligations similar to married persons and, in most cases, the same as those of opposite-sex common-law partners.

Omnibus legislation by the federal government included equal treatment for same-sex couples under income tax laws as well as survivor benefits under the Canada Pension Plan.

It was then Alberta’s turn to face the definition of “spouse” in its legislation. Prior to 1999, a person could not adopt a same-sex partner’s child. Two lesbian couples challenged the province’s Child Welfare Act, which provided for adoption of a child by the spouse of the child’s parent but did not define the term “spouse.” If “spouse” did not include a same-sex partner, the argument went, the act would be discriminatory under the Charter, just as the Supreme Court had decided in the Ontario case. A week before trial, according to Calgary lawyer Sandra Sebree, who frequently deals with these cases, the government “gave in.” But rather than deal with the issue of same-sex couples, the government amended the act by deleting the reference to “spouse” and replacing it with “step-parent,” without defining that term. Subsequently, “step-parent” was interpreted by the Court of Queen’s Bench to include a same-sex partner of the child’s parent. “So the government did not have to face the Charter argument,” says Sebree, “although we had done all the work and were prepared to argue it.”

How far will the Alberta government go in its stated intention of using the notwithstanding clause to prevent same-sex marriage in the province?

In 2000, the province’s definition of “spouse” was again challenged, this time with regard to the Intestate Succession Act, which governs estates. A gay man’s partner died without leaving a will, and under the act his estate would go to his former wife and children. The Alberta Surrogate Court found that the act’s limitation of benefits to only married persons contravened the Charter. In April 2002, a year after the court’s decision, the province amended the Act to extend benefits to an “adult interdependent partner,” while reinforcing the meaning of “spouse” as a married person.

Next came the challenge regarding health-care premiums and benefits. The Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission ruled in December 2002 that the government had discriminated against same-sex couples by forcing them to pay individual premiums, denying them family coverage. On the very same day, the government passed  the  Adult  Interdependent  Relationships  Act. (“They thought that by introducing the new legislation,    the case would go away,” says Purdy, “but they didn’t do it fast enough. If they had, we might have dropped our  case.”) This new act would not only replace the amended Intestate Succession Act but also extend benefits and obligations to same-sex relationships in other provincial legislation. The critical difference between this new act and    the older legislation, as explained by Edmonton lawyer Douglas Stollery in a paper he prepared for the Legal Education Society of Alberta, is that the new act no longer requires the relationship “to be conjugal in nature.” Under the new act, “conjugality would be a relevant but not a necessary factor.” And this, Stollery said, goes well beyond legislation found anywhere else in Canada. Same-sex partners, opposite-sex partners, roommates, family members—any of these could be determined to constitute an adult interdependent relationship, as long as criteria of duration, emotional commitment, economic and domestic interdependence and so on are met. The relationship can exist by written agreement, as provided in the act, or by ascription, which is similar to a court’s determination that, due to certain behaviours and the passage of time, a common-law relationship exists. In essence, Stollery explained, the legislation “extends rights and obligations traditionally limited  to marriage-like relationships not only to conjugal com- mon-law relationships but also to a much wider range of non-conjugal relationships.”

While the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act does grant many of the rights that same-sex couples have been fighting for, its provisions for almost every kind of relation- ship except same-sex marriage reflect the government’s unwillingness to move on this issue. It also grants rights  and obligations to those who don’t want them. “It gives a  lot of rights and obligations, which is great, but it may   have gone too far,” says Sebree. Many same-sex couples have no desire to be governed by such a regime. Others  may not even know they are, until it is too late. For example, if a couple decides to go their separate ways after being in a relationship for several years, and then one of them decides to apply for financial support, the other partner   may then have to pay spousal-type support. (An Ontario court has recently awarded interim support to a gay man under that province’s Family Law Act.) David Crosson, the editor of Outlooks, a Calgary-based national gay magazine, suggests that there are people who don’t like the idea of all those responsibilities. “I don’t think I’d want to be in a position where I would have to split my assets with some-body I had a relationship with,” he says. Still others say, “My relationship is different than a heterosexual relation- ship, and I don’t want to be governed by any of this.” Sebree cautions that couples should enter into a written agreement as provided by the act or a written agreement to opt out. Because the act will affect many other pieces of legislation, couples living in any domestic relationship out- side of marriage should consider how they will be affected.

The Alberta  Government’s unwillingness  to recognize same-sex marriage may now have become irrelevant. In May, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision and ruled that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violates the equality provisions of the Charter. It gave the federal government until July 2004 to change the laws to allow these marriages. In June, the Ontario Court   of Appeal went further: defining marriage as “the voluntary union for life of two persons to the exclusion of all others,” it ordered authorities to immediately begin granting licences to same-sex couples. (The first legal same-sex marriage in Canada was performed in Toronto just hours after the ruling.) This was followed, in early July, by the B.C. court lifting its moratorium, allowing same-sex marriages to proceed immediately.

Finally, the federal government stepped in. It did not consider the parliamentary justice committee’s report of its recently completed cross-Canada hearings on various options for marriage. It did not appeal the B.C. and Ontario rulings to the Supreme Court. Instead, in mid-July it drafted new legislation and sent it to the Supreme Court for review, by way of a “reference.” The legislation defines marriage “for civil purposes” as being the lawful union of two per- sons, and it specifies that religious groups can refuse to per- form marriages that are not in accordance with  their religious beliefs. The federal government asked the Supreme Court to answer three questions: Does Parliament have the exclusive legal authority to define marriage Is the proposed act compatible with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms Does the Constitution protect religious leaders who refuse to sanctify same-sex marriages The Supreme Court is not expected to respond for several months. When it does, the legislation will be presented to the House of Commons for a free vote.

(Before the government decided to draft legislation and refer it to the Supreme Court, legal experts had thought    the court would eventually hear and rule on same-sex marriage, and would rule in its favour. “The court finds the equality logic of the Charter very compelling,” says Miriam Smith, a political science professor at Carleton University. The “separate but equal” status of civil unions and interdependent relationships would be unlikely to satisfy the Supreme Court. In a recent case on property rights, the court ruled that it is not discriminatory to deny common- law partners the same rights as married people regarding equal division of property after a relationship breaks down. The decision to marry is personal, said the court, and couples have the freedom to marry or not. That gay couples do not have that freedom would be another argument in favour of same-sex marriage.)

Alberta has the reputation of being homophobic, but according to Jenuth it is no more anti-gay than other parts of the  country.

The question now is how far the Alberta government will go in its stated intention of using the notwithstanding clause to prevent same-sex marriage in the province—and how far it can go. David Hancock, the provincial justice minister, has stated the government will “try” to use the notwithstanding clause in attempting to refuse marriage licences to same-sex couples, regardless of the new federal definition of marriage. Whether this can be done may depend on the Supreme Court’s response to the reference. Today, the Alberta government could refuse to issue marriage licences and certificates and refuse to perform a marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple, but it could not refuse to recognize such a marriage lawfully performed in another jurisdiction. “A marriage performed in Saskatchewan or B.C. would be as valid in Alberta as it would be there,” says Jenuth. Patrick Monahan, a constitutional expert at Toronto’s Osgoode Hall Law School, has said, “You cannot use a province’s right to issue marriage licences to frustrate the operation of federal law.”

Lesbian couples often look at the historical underpinnings of marriage as “property, patriarchy, God,” and they don’t want to embrace that.

Will Premier Klein really persist in his attempt to invoke the notwithstanding clause Will the Alberta government refuse to register same-sex marriages, and take the issue to court if challenged, as Hancock has suggested Alberta often has the reputation of being a homophobic place, but according to Jenuth, it is no more anti-gay or homophobic than other parts of the country. He suggests there is a small constituency in Alberta, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of voters, who support the anti-gay view and who are pandered to by certain politicians, “until the going gets tough.” He says this percentage is no different in other provinces, except that the 10 to 15 percent in Alberta is a core support of these politicians and they can’t be seen to alienate those voters. Even Purdy, who has had his own legal encounters with government, does not believe that Alberta is any more anti-gay than other provinces. “In any area of the country, you have pockets of what I call ‘the redneck attitude,’” he says. “In Alberta, it’s primarily the rural areas, where there is a higher concentration of the religious aspect of society.” Purdy suggests that the cabinet and premier behave as though they agree with that vocal minority—until the point comes where they can say, “We tried.”

Tanya and Ana Paula Mullen, Who have been together  for 11 years and wedded for seven, are still hoping to be legally married. Their church wedding included communion and Tanya being walked down the aisle by her father. They have a six-year-old daughter, of whom Tanya is the biological mother and a gay friend is the biological sperm- donor father. Ana Paula is expecting their second child in January; the sperm-donor father is a childhood  friend.

The Mullens have never doubted that same-sex marriage would happen, either by a Supreme Court of Canada decision or by the federal government redefining marriage. When it does, the first thing they will do is apply to have each other declared the third legal parent of their children. As it is, they are concerned that only the father would  be considered a legal parent, should the mother die.  Everything is fine and agreeable today, they say, with the father of Tanya’s child recognizing that Ana Paula has been the day-to-day parent for all of the child’s life. But if Tanya should die “You never really know what would happen,” Ana Paula says. “We had our ceremony, and that’s our marriage, but that legal document gives you security. You don’t have to fight for your rights.”

Some gay couples have been looking for the “social authenticity” that marriage confers. “Gay marriage is a societal recognition of equality,” Crosson says. “More and more people are supportive of the idea because it’s one last fence to hurdle in terms of being accepted the same as everyone else.” Others, of course, have no interest in marriage, seeing it as an institution that belongs to the heterosexual community. Lesbian couples often look at the historical underpinnings of marriage as “property, patriarchy, God,” and they don’t want to embrace that. “The gay community doesn’t want to lose the things that make us unique and different,” says Crosson. When Sebree held an information session on the new act, and asked those present who would get married if they could, no one responded. “Nobody wants to get married,” she says. “It’s a dying institution!”

The Mullens disagree. They will marry as soon as it is possible “without a hassle”; they want to marry in Alberta rather than travel to B.C. or Ontario. Others are prepared for the hassle. Shortly after the Ontario decision, Purdy  and Kennedy marched back to the registry office. Again denied a marriage licence, they crossed the street and filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights  Commission.

Sandy Kalef is a freelance writer and a legal and policy analyst. She lives in Calgary.

The post I Would appeared first on Alberta Views.

The Speth family—still prominent in the area today—donated the 10-acre plot on top of the area’s highest hill, with Chief Mountain and the massive roll and thunder of the Rockies as a looming backdrop to the west and south, the black- topped Porcupine Hills to the north, and to the east—in a never-ending vista—the limitless prairie merging toward a diffuse horizon. Though a humble building, St. Henry’s is as awe-inspiring as Notre Dame in Paris or St. Peter’s in Rome. If you are among those who choose to believe God created this world, there

St. Henry’s has stood on its promontory for nearly a hundred years now, a beacon and landmark, a historical treasure that even in the words of the local Mormon congregation is “one of the most stunning sights in all of southern Alberta…one of those rare places that seem to belong to all of us.”

is no better seat from which to appreciate that creation. St. Henry’s has stood on its promontory for nearly a hundred years now, a beacon and landmark, a historical treasure that even in the words of the local Mormon congregation is “one of the most stunning sights in all of southern Alberta…one of those rare places that seem to belong to all of us.”

Not that any of this was enough to keep St. Henry’s open. In the summer of 2001, following the recommendations of the Calgary Diocesan Planning Commission, St. Henry’s was formally closed, though the property and graveyard will be maintained for possible future uses by, for instance, monastic orders. The parishioners of St. Henry’s must now travel to St. Michael’s in Pincher Creek to attend mass. St. Henry’s is no longer an active parish— that much is clear. Less clear is the validity and appropriateness of the manner in which the diocese arrived at its decision.

Lois Johnston is a vibrant, gray-haired woman, and she doesn’t seem at all bothered by the bitterly cold February wind knifing across the barren land as we step through the snow toward the St. Henry’s graveyard. Johnston lives in Hillspring, a few miles east of St. Henry’s. She’s been a lifelong member of the St. Henry’s congregation, despite having lived abroad for a time, and she is now a member of the Historical Society of St. Henry’s Church, a group that has been a mosquito buzzing in the ear of Calgary’s Bishop Frederick Henry. Family history relates that it was Lois’s grandfather, Fred Klunker, who camped on site in the summer of 1907 to help build St. Henry’s, and that when it was time to erect the steeple cross, he climbed to the top and secured it during a severe windstorm.

“How’s this for sad and ironic,” says Johnston through the wind, pointing first to the far corner of the cemetery and then to a fresh grave at the centre. “The first person ever buried in this graveyard was a Bonertz killed in a farming accident. That was 1907. The most recent,” she nods at the fresh grave, which has a calving rope laid across it, “just a few weeks ago…a Bonertz killed in a farming accident.”

Johnston’s partner, Gus, and their dog, Popcorn, come toward us through the snow and together we go into St. Henry’s. The door to this humble and beautiful church is unlocked, and always has been. “Can you imagine?” said Cyril Bonertz later that day. Bonertz is a shy, soft-spoken man of 80 years who was baptized in St. Henry’s, and whose now-deceased sister was baptized by Father Lacombe. It was the nephew of Cyril’s grandchildren who was killed in the recent farming accident. “Nearly a hundred years old, that church, and not once has there been a lock on that door. How’s that for respect?”

Early in 2000 the Diocese of Calgary embarked on its Diocesan Planning Commission. This was the first link in a chain of ill relations, because it was the first formal sign to the parishioners of St. Henry’s that the parish was on the diocese’s reformational radar. The planning commission’s mandate made that clear. The commission was formed to examine the issue of “parish transformation,” which meant taking a hard look at the “vitality and viability of each parish” and to then submit strategies to “restructure the diocese.” Relative to St. Henry’s, this meant the commission would ask whether there was enough activity—masses, marriages, baptisms, prayer groups, outreach programs etc.—to warrant maintaining it as an active parish. The commission’s answer to this question would eventually be No.

A commission document describes the phases to be undertaken. Phase II, entitled “Public Process,” was to “undertake a public information and discussion/input program on the research and the models and to incorporate as appropriate the input received from the Catholic community into the final report of the commission.”

Never mind the telling use of the phrase “as appropriate”; the more important point is the degree to which the diocese engaged in genuine consultation. “It was a done deal,” says Gus disgustedly as we sit in the kitchen of the home he shares with Johnston. A fish he caught that morning was jumping and wriggling in the sink.

“I think that’s right,” says Johnston, nodding. “There was no public consultation of any significance.”

“And  why?” says  Gus. “That’s  the  real  question. Why wasn’t there any real consultation?”

The answer was not forthcoming from the diocese, except through an acknowledgement of the swiftness of the process. Father Long Vu, the parish priest at St. Michael’s says: “It doesn’t do anyone any good to prolong the process. If we prolong the process, then it’s even more painful.”

The process may have been swift, but it was also conducted more in the spirit of the Soviet Politburo than of a free democracy. Shari Narine, a reporter with the Pincher Creek Echo, tried to attend a meeting at St. Henry’s in the fall of 2000 at which the parishioners were going to be apprised of the planning commission’s mandate and process. Narine was booted out. “It was a meeting specifically to talk about the whole process of church closures,” she recalls. “When (the parish priest) Father Vu saw me sitting in one of the pews, he came up and asked me to leave. I was shocked. I asked him why I had to leave and he said it was because I wasn’t a member of the congregation. I remember it being quite a hostile atmosphere.”

St. Henry’s parishioners were afraid St. Henry’s was going to suffer a fate similar to the church in Coleman, in the Crowsnest Pass, which the diocese had shut down and sold off, banishing it to a future as a café and trinket shop. Narine, writing in the Pincher Creek Echo, recorded Johnston as saying that many St. Henry’s parishioners simply wanted to see the church stay open, even if it meant going to one mass a month or having some sort of parishioners’ group purchase the building. “We could maintain the building and what’s inside,” said Johnston. “We could maybe have visiting priests or mass said on special occasions. We don’t want the property sold.

It means that much to us.”

Father Jack Pereira, who was on the Diocesan Planning Commission, suggested that such a sale might even be possible, though he was unable to say whether it would be for market value or for a token amount. It’s “beyond me” to determine it, said Father Pereira, adding that ultimately it was “Bishop Henry’s decision.” Another member of the planning commission, Father Schuster, told concerned parishioners in a letter that such a sale could not take place unless it was to a formal and recognized society. This hastened the formation of the Historical Society.

Ron Schmidt, now chair of the Historical Society, said at the time, “We’re grown people; we can accept that there are not enough priests. But the real issue here is the disposition of the property.” Schmidt had added that it is simply “out of respect to our forefathers that we need to keep that cemetery as ongoing.”

But then things took on a much different tone. People started saying ‘Not only do I not like what might get recommended, I don’t like the way they’re telling us about it, either.’

An instigating factor in the souring of relations was clearly the formation of the Historical Society of St. Henry’s Church. Between November 2000 and July 2001, relations between Bishop Henry and the parishioners of St. Henry’s (or at least those who were fighting to keep it open, which was the majority) went south. The recommendation for closure of the church had gone through according to the Diocesan Planning Commission, and the report of the commission was sitting on the desk of Bishop Henry, awaiting his ratification.

Dozens of concerned parishioners wrote the bishop throughout the fall of 2000 and the early months of 2001, expressing their fears for their parish. Some even expressed their doubts as to the diocese’s consultation and decision-making process. One parishioner wrote to the bishop, “It has been said that there was consultation with the people of the diocese. I have yet to talk to anyone who was consulted by the commission or their own priest. I was involved last fall in Calgary where I thought it was going to be a planning and brainstorming day for parishes. What it turned out to be was a talk on the process and what the bishop’s vision was. The way to make proper change is not to make the change and then consult, but the other way around.”

And it wasn’t just Catholic parishioners who were pleading with Bishop Henry to see the light during the Diocesan Planning Commission’s deliberations. The Mormons’ Hillspring ward wrote to the bishop suggesting that perhaps closing the church might be short-sighted, and that the current Catholic strategy of centralization— closing down smaller mission churches so that parishioners must travel long distances to attend mass—“does not make sense.” They go on to state that their own research has shown a direct correlation between “church activity and church proximity.” In other words, people go to church if they have a church nearby, but don’t go to church if they have to drive an hour to get there.

One correspondent, a St. Henry’s parishioner from one of  the  area’s  most  established  families, told  the  bishop, “God’s people built St. Henry’s. Please let God’s people decide its fate.”

The final report of the Diocesan Planning Commission was delivered to Bishop Henry sometime early in 2001. Among many other recommendations it stated in no uncertain terms that the “mission church” of Twin Butte, St. Henry’s, was to close, “with appropriate disposal of assets.”

Once the final report of the planning commission had been put on the desk of Bishop Henry, the direct communication between the parishioners and the bishop’s office took on an increasingly poisonous tone. Further raising the tension of the locals was the suspicion that Mr. Chan, the diocese’s financial officer in charge of disposal of church assets, had been on the site with the bishop to ascertain the sales potential of the parish and grounds. The concerned parties felt they hadn’t been listened to. The bishop felt that his will—which he necessarily interpreted as the will of the Church—wasn’t being obeyed with sufficient respect. The correspondence that followed between the society and the bishop is a sad admixture of authoritarianism and injured resolve. Lester Hochstein’s family homesteaded in the area at the turn of the last century, and St. Henry’s is visible from the road into their ranch. He’s a thoughtful, plain-spoken man, and he perhaps summarized it most accurately when he said of the whole affair, “It just brought out the worst in everybody.”

The first thing to happen, of course, was the formal closure of St. Henry’s. After mass at St. Michael’s on July 7 a decree was read out in which the bishop stated, “I hereby canonically suppress” the mission church of St. Henry’s.

Then, on August 9 of last year, Lois Johnston, writing as the vice-chair of the society, implored Bishop Henry not to sell the church and dispose of its assets as the planning commission had recommended. She apologized for pestering the bishop, but insisted on the uniqueness of St. Henry’s, not just as a Catholic church, but as a monument to the pioneering history of the area. She even suggested that, should the building in fact be stripped of its ecclesiastical purpose, the society would be honoured to maintain St. Henry’s at no cost to the diocese.

The response from Bishop Henry was swift. Four days later he wrote Johnston, informing her that he knew nothing about a Historical Society, and adding that she seemed to be “misinformed on a number of key points.” After reiterating that a proper process was, in his estimation, followed, he stated that although the church was to remain formally closed, “we will not be disposing of it or its contents at this time.” This was hardly the assurance St. Henry’s parishioners were looking for, especially given their nearly total lack of inclusion in the process and the swiftness with which it had been conducted.

Johnston wrote back to the bishop on August 17. In this letter she expressed her surprise that he had not heard of the society, since they had informed both Father Vu and Father Schuster of its formalization, and it had been formed at the suggestion of Father Schuster in the first place, who also happened to be Bishop Henry’s personal secretary at the time. She also informed the bishop that the society had been formed simply in “preparation for a possible ownership of this site,” (which they had discovered, she noted, was not possible due to the strict owner- ship regulations surrounding sites designated as cemeteries). On September 11, Johnston wrote the bishop another note to inform him that a group of 34 parishioners had gathered at St. Henry’s a few days earlier for a pot-luck lunch with the ostensible purpose of reading out the bishop’s previous letter stating the church was not to be sold at this time. She added that a work bee was planned for September 22 to mow the church grass, repaint the outside door and perform general cleaning.

Bishop Henry’s next missive, dated September 17, was less than enthusiastic about the activities of the society, though it’s important to note that the society members comprise only a fraction of the parishioners. “You appear not to have understood the substance of my previous letter,” said the bishop bluntly. “St. Henry’s Church is formally closed. The Historical Society is not to use the church for any purpose. The Historical Society does not own the church, nor is it to assume any responsibility for management.” He attached a copy of the canonical letter of formal closure for St. Henry’s.

Immediately, Johnston replied in a highly apologetic letter which explained the formation of the society and how Father Schuster had effectively endorsed the idea. She clarified the misunderstanding over any notion that the society “manage” the parish, and reiterated that she and her fellow society members and other concerned parishioners were merely trying to respond positively to a trying situation, and that they now viewed themselves as active members of St. Michael’s in Pincher Creek who simply wished to preserve the spirit and heritage of St. Henry’s.

Though the society and other concerned parishioners had to that point been less than impressed with the bishop’s ability to heal rifts, his response to Johnston’s letter of apology might stand forever in this area as an object les- son in how to drive away the faithful. “I do not acknowledge ‘The Historical Society of St. Henry’s Church,’” he wrote. “The formation of the same was both premature and ill-advised, as you seem to be operating not in concert with the diocese, nor with St. Michael’s, I would suggest that you disband, as the group serves no useful purpose. Again, I agree with you that communication has been and is a major difficulty. For some reason you’re still offside. Your group seems much better at talking than listening.” The bishop goes on to inform Johnston that he checked  up on them with Father Vu, who informed him that they hadn’t yet been active parishioners at St. Michael’s. “Given all of the above,” concludes the bishop, “I am surprised that you thought all of your activities were so positive and should have been welcomed by Fr. Long Vu and the Pastoral Council.”

This was too much for Johnston, who was so emotionally overwrought that Ron Schmidt, a rancher with long-time family history in the area, and the society’s chairman, had to take over communications with the bishop. In his long and passionate letter dated October 17 he asked the bishop how it was possible for him not to acknowledge something (the society) that his own office, through Father Schuster, had suggested. Schmidt then cuts to the core of the suspicions of the local faithful of St. Henry’s writing that perhaps it was premature of the bishop to suppose that the diocese “could sell a piece of property declared a cemetery, and that you could do so without opposition.”

On the topic of miscommunication, Schmidt goes on to say, “As my mother told me: ‘I had better have my own kitchen clean before criticizing someone else’s.’ I need to tell you that communication has not been the greatest from your direction also.” After subtly reminding the bishop of his, Schmidt’s, own record of faith, Schmidt closes by saying, “I assure you that we as a group are trying to demonstrate good stewardship. If you feel that we are failing, please lead us along the right path. However, like my cattle, we are more effectively led than pushed.”

In the final communication from Bishop Henry, a letter on November 2, the prelate chastised Schmidt from the start. “I would be less than honest if I said that I was happy with the tone and much of the content (of your letter). At times you protest too much and seem to be intent upon self-justification. Your aggressive style is uncalled for, counterproductive and changes nothing.” Then, ignoring most of the points Schmidt highlighted, Henry resorts to cross-examining Schmidt on his participation in the life of St. Michael’s parish, and finds him lacking. He closes with, “Wishing all the best, I remain, Sincerely yours in Christ. F. B. Henry. Bishop of Calgary.”

The locals suspect that the bishop intended to sell the church site to the highest bidder, for the rumoured sum of $300,000, but that the graveyard issue prevented him, since only a church, municipality or registered cemetery management group can own graveyards. This was the Diocesan Planning Commission’s major mistake: recommending selling a property that contained a graveyard. I asked Father Vu if the church ever tried to sell the church or intended to sell it. “It’s not my authority to say whether we ever wanted to sell it or not.” Bishop Henry is more sanguine on the question. “The planning commission recommended selling it, but I said no to that idea. It’s a superb site, and we would love nothing more than to have, for instance, the Carmelites or the Trappists come in and use it as a contemplative retreat.”

But it remains closed for use by the former parishioners of St. Henry’s and the Historical Society. Bishop Henry stated vigorously in a recent interview that St. Henry’s was simply not a viable parish. “It’s not just about mass,” he said. “It’s about many other things, about the various ministries of aparish—births, marriages, and so on. Mass is just one thing, and these people who wanted it to remain open, they just want mass, that’s all. They’re just consumers.”

After Bishop Henry’s letter of November 2, 2001, there has been no further communication between the parties. The community remains shocked by the behaviour of the diocese. Some members of the St. Henry’s congregation have simply moved on, have chosen to accept and stay out of it, but these are few and far between. “It’s hard to believe,” says Cyril Bonertz, in nearly a whisper. “I can’t imagine what this bishop is up to. We respected all the other bishops, but not this one.”

Yes, Bishop Henry was happy to go on record as saying that St. Henry’s will not be sold, and that the site will be lovingly maintained. And though he remains openly dismissive of the Historical Society, it seems clear that the society played a role in protecting the future of St. Henry’s. This is a victory of sorts for all those who love St. Henry’s, Catholic or not, though the word “victory” is best used sparingly when linked to a group in opposition to Bishop Henry. Such confrontational language might be precisely the spur required to

Hundreds of people were affected by the closure of St. Henry’s. A Diocesan Planning Council spent considerable time weighing the closure’s spiritual and actual meaning. Catholics and non-Catholics were involved. Everyone’s blood pressure was raised. And yet it boiled down to one man’s  decision.

change his mind, and this showdown style is not how the society and St. Henry’s former parishioners wish to continue. As one former St. Henry’s congregant said in language so emblematic of the southern Alberta ranch- er: “You’d better be careful whose toes you step on today, because they might be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.”

Hundreds of people were affected by the closure of St. Henry’s. A Diocesan Planning Commission spent, apparently, considerable time weighing the closure’s spiritual and actual meaning. Catholics and non-Catholics alike were involved. Everyone’s blood pressure was raised. And yet it boiled down to the decision of one man, Bishop Henry, a man who had never visited the parish prior to the planning commission’s deliberations on closing it. How can this be logical or right St. Henry’s might already have been scrap lumber had the planets not aligned fortuitously.

One might ask in the end, what is the point of a church And what is the role of a parish within its diocese Does a grouping of parishes create a diocese Or is a diocese created to impose a structure of worship for its members We know where Bishop Henry stands, and we know where the parishioners of St. Henry’s stand; it is not side by side. Though the Catholic Church has been attacked and vilified on many fronts, with varying degrees of justification, there can’t be much denying that the Church has always been and remains a deeply paternalistic institution: We know what’s best for you and you have to trust us when we tell you something.

Yes, faith will always be more than a building, but faith is also more than merely doing as you’re told. Blood, sweat, tears, history and ancestry must always inform the construction of the buildings in which we choose to house our religious observance. Not to acknowledge the various and valid claims of ownership to these buildings is worse than blindness. It’s bad faith.

Curtis Gillespie is an Edmonton writer published in many magazines, including Saturday Night. His new book, Playing Through, will be published by Doubleday this fall.

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