THE CANADA I KNEW GROWING UP

 

 

Sunday Supper Family Tradition

Canada’s Moral Timeline: From “One Day Set Apart” to “My Body, My Death, My Truth”

When I was a kid in public school in the 1950s, Canada wasn’t “neutral.” Not even close.

We opened with the Lord’s Prayer. We heard the Bible read. Sunday wasn’t treated like an optional hobby—it was a cultural pause. Most businesses shut down. Workers got a real day off. Families ate together. Churches were full. Even people who didn’t call themselves devout still lived inside a Christian-shaped rhythm.

That Canada is gone. And it didn’t vanish overnight. It was dismantled step-by-step—mostly through law.

Here’s the arc, in plain English:

1906–1907: Ottawa passes the Lord’s Day Act—Sunday commerce is restricted. This isn’t just “no shopping.” It enforces a shared rest day that protects families and workers from the seven-day grind.

1969: Parliament cracks open abortion law—therapeutic abortion becomes legal in limited circumstances. This is the first major federal shift on the sanctity of life in law.

1982: The Charter arrives—rights language becomes the new national vocabulary. (Ironically, it still opens by referencing the “supremacy of God,” but the direction of travel is already changing.)

1985: The Supreme Court strikes down the Lord’s Day Act. The shared pause day begins to die. Sunday becomes another consumer cycle. And once the culture loses a common day to breathe, families get scattered into work schedules, sports schedules, shopping schedules—anything but worship and rest.

1988: The Supreme Court strikes down the abortion restrictions in Morgentaler. In practical terms: abortion stops being a Criminal Code offence. Parliament later fails to replace the law. Canada becomes a country where abortion is legal by default—because there is no federal criminal framework left.

1994: Parliament changes the long-standing opening prayer that explicitly named Jesus Christ. Another symbol is removed. Another public confession fades.

2003–2005: Courts begin recognizing same-sex marriage provincially, then Parliament passes the Civil Marriage Act (2005), redefining marriage nationwide. A civil institution that once mirrored a Christian moral consensus is rewritten under a new one.

2015–2016: The Supreme Court’s Carter decision triggers legalization of assisted dying. Parliament enacts MAiD (2016). Canada crosses a line: death is no longer merely something that happens; it becomes something the system can provide.

2021 onward: MAiD expands. Eligibility rules broaden. Debates shift from “should we?” to “how far should we go?” The frame is no longer “life is sacred,” but “autonomy is supreme.”

So what’s the pattern?

Canada didn’t just “get more diverse.” It adopted a new highest value: self-rule. Not God’s authority. Not the moral order that once anchored public life. Not the family as the basic unit worth protecting. The new anchor became the sovereign individual: my choice, my definition, my exit.

And once a country makes that shift, the outcomes are predictable:

• A shared day of rest becomes a shopping day.

• Prayer becomes “not appropriate here.”

• Marriage becomes a flexible contract.

• The unborn become optional.

• The suffering become eligible for death.

You can call it progress. But it looks a lot like replacement: one religion is removed from the public square, and another takes its place—the religion of autonomy.

And that religion has sacraments too: abortion at the beginning, euthanasia at the end, and a constant national insistence that no authority stands above the self.

That’s the story Canada has been writing for sixty years.

The question is whether we’re finally willing to read it out loud.