In this year of looking back, many on both sides of the Atlantic might think that there is nothing of great religious significance in the 150th anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, to be marked on July 1, 2017. Perhaps its inclusion here is just special pleading by a Canadian writer?
Not so. Canada’s history is often told as the working out of French and English colonial competition in the frozen half of North America, a sort of sideshow to the main event of the American Revolution. Canada has not had the impact on world affairs of that revolution, but its own development constitutes a distinctive history of religious pluralism, toleration and liberty.
