Mostly everyone spoke English, same as me, with a smattering of other languages here and there. Mostly everyone was some version of Christian, even if it just meant "nice person" or "yeah, I go to a church at Christmas". I didn't know any people of distinctly different faiths, to my recollection. I don't think I even knew anyone who hadn't been born in Canada.
Maybe I did, idk.
I DID know people of other ethnicities, and ... shrug ... it just didn't matter. We were living in small towns. We all got along, more or less. From my perspective (admittedly, a subjective one), it was all a non-issue.
Now it's *ahem* a number of years later.
I live in downtown Montreal, a tremendously multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-levels-of-Canadian-status, multi-socio-economic-status city. Montreal is in Québec, a French-speaking province with a complicated history. Oh my goodness, we love this city.
But it's a different world from my small-town Ontario growing-up years.
In those growing-up years, my faith was tremendously important to me, as it is now. And for that reason, I mostly chose to not wear "Christian" stuff. Because sometimes it was kinda lame. And sometimes it was expensive. And it seemed like an empty symbol in an everyone-is-sort-of-a-Christian world.
Plus I'm not that bling-y at the best of times.
I want to be clear that in no way was I ashamed of my faith. It was important to me. I didn't want to dumb it down to a cute piece of jewelry that - to my mind (admittedly a subjective thing) - was worn by lots of people that maybe didn't seem to care what it meant.
But it's a different world from my small-town Ontario growing-up years.
You've likely heard of Bill 21. A law passed in Québec a few months ago, making it illegal for any government employees (including teachers) to wear any religious anything. Because, separation of religion and state, basically. And the idea that if someone who works for the government happens to wear a religious something, it somehow compromises the government's neutrality. Therefore, no hijab. No kippah. No cross.
And this bothers me, for a number of reasons.
I'm a Canadian. I've grown up valuing the rights of people to be who they are, whoever they are. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, no discrimination, that kind of thing. Separation of religion and state meant religion shouldn't be controlled by the state; and religion shouldn't be running the state either.
I don't know about other faiths,
but mine - Christianity - historically tends to become
side-tracked and off-track
by too much power.
Which may be true of humanity in general.
I'm also a feminist, by some (not all) definitions. When the government legislates that women must remove clothing they prefer to wear in public, it makes my head explode.
And I like to think I'm logical. This is not. What if a Christian wears a headscarf? For most of us, it's not a religious thing, so can Christian women cover their heads, but Muslim women cannot? And for some Muslims, it's not a religious thing either, so can those women wear a headscarf? Makes no sense.
Nonetheless, here we are.
Suddenly, for the first time in my life,
it became important to me to wear a cross.
Because in this context, in my world now, it matters.
So I thought about it for awhile, looked at some online.
And then this week I met a young woman. A refugee. From a country in which it is illegal - and dangerous - to be a Christian. She told me some of her story. In parts of it, the tears choked off the words, and I didn't force her to say what was unspeakable.
She showed me the small gold cross around her neck, with no idea of what was going on in my own mind. She had worn a cross, even there in that country, albeit under her clothing. Yes, it was dangerous to do so, but ... "Jesus said we don't hide our light. So I wanted to wear it."
And now she is wearing it here.
In Canada.
Where she is (sort of) free to do so.
My parents sent me a birthday card with a cheque inside, as they do every year. This time, I knew exactly what I would do with it.
I went to a small, locally-owned Christian bookstore, out on the West Island. She had a selection of exactly three sterling silver cross necklaces, and one was too fancy for me. I tried on the remaining two, and bought one of them.
I am a Canadian. And I am a Christian. I don't work for the government, so no one cares, but I will quietly wear this symbol of my faith.
And quietly welcome the right of anyone else to do the same.
