Canada

Historical Background

This has not always been the case. In fact, Canada's history has been greatly influenced by the churches, [Page 176]which have been present since the very beginning of the colonial period. Notwithstanding a settlement established and later abandoned by the Vikings in Newfoundland in the 11th century, the English laid claim to the northern half of North America when John Cabot reached Newfoundland and then Cape Breton Island in 1497. However, in an atmosphere of European colonial competition, it was the French who first established permanent settlements with the founding of Quebec City in 1608 by Samuel Champlain. The Catholic Church played a prominent role in these early settlements. It was granted control of large tracts of lands for which it found settlers who farmed under the seigneurial system; it set up monasteries and actively supported missionary outposts for the conversion of indigenous peoples.

After the defeat of the French forces by the British in 1759 in Quebec and the signing of the Paris Treaty in 1763, which gave control of French colonies in Quebec to the British, the Catholic Church became the central instrument for maintaining the French presence in North America. During the colonial period, the Catholic clergy maintained a close relationship with the British colonial administration, and the latter made major concessions to the former to gain their loyalty, concessions that included notably the freedom to practice their religion and to administrate Catholic schools (Quebec Act, 1774). This conciliatory policy was undoubtedly related to demographic realities, with the French Catholic settlers outnumbering the English, and to the need to ensure the loyalty of the French-speaking Catholics toward Great Britain in the face of unrest in the American colonies to the south. The British would later develop an official policy advocating the assimilation of the French Catholics (Durham Report, 1839). However, the Quebec Act can be seen as the beginning of a tradition of religious toleration between Catholics and Protestants, and the efforts to find a modus operandi between the two groups led to the creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.

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