Canada has a wide mix of religions, it has no official religion and support for religious pluralism is an important part of Canada's political culture. However, it is still mostly a Christian country, and this is reflected in many aspects of life there.
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According to the 2001 Canada Census [1] (http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/analytic/companion/rel/contents.cfm), 72% of the Canadian population list Catholic or Protestant as their religion. By far the largest denomination is Catholicism, which accounts for 43% of total respondents. The United Church of Canada is the largest Protestant denomination accounting for 9.7% of total respondents, with the Anglican Church only somewhat smaller with 6.9%. Other religious groups listed in the census are: Christian Orthodox 1.6%; other Christian 2.6%; Muslim 2.0%; Jewish 1.1%; Buddhist 1.0%; Hindu 1.0%; and Sikh 0.9%. Those who listed no religion account for 16% of total respondents.
Non-Christian religions in Canada are more concentrated in the metropolitan cites such as Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa. A possible exception is Judaism, which has long been a notable, minority even in smaller centres. Much of the increase in non-Christian religions is attributed to changing immigration trends in the last fifty years. Increased immigration from Asia, the Middle East and Africa has created ever growing Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, and Hindu communities.
The majority of Canadian Christians only attend church rarely, if at all. Many who describe themselves as Christian are agnostic. In general Canadian Christians are far less fervent that those in the United States but are still more overtly religious than those of Europe.
As well as the large churches, Canada also has many smaller Christian groups from Eastern Orthodoxy to Mormonism. The concentration of these smaller groups often varies greatly across the country. The Maritimes have large numbers of Lutherans who were deliberately imported by the British. Southwest Ontario saw large numbers of German migrants, including many Mennonites and Hutterites. The large Ukrainian population of Manitoba and Saskatchewan has made many in that region followers of the Uniate or Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. Alberta has seen considerable immigration from the American plains creating a large Mormon minority in that province.
Canada today has no official church and the government is officially committed to religious pluralism. In some fields Christian influence remains.
Christmas and Easter are nationwide holidays, and while Jews, Muslims, and other groups are allowed to take their holy days off work they do not share the same official recognition. The French version of "O Canada", the official national anthem, contains an overtly Christian reference to "carrying the cross". In some parts of the country Sunday shopping is still banned, but this is steadily becoming less common. There was an ongoing battle in the late 20th century to have religious garb accepted throughout Canadian society, mostly focused on Sikh turbans. Eventually the RCMP, the Royal Canadian Legion and other such groups were forced to accept members wearing turbans.
Canada remains a country in which the British Monarch is head of state. The British monarchy forbids Roman Catholics from occupying the throne, and the reiging monarch is also Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Within Canada, the Queen is also given the titles "By the Grace of God" and "Defender of the Faith."
While Canada has only a few marginal relics of its commitment to Christianity, it more overtly recognizes the existence of a god. Both the Canadian constitution and the anthem in both languages refer to an unspecified god.
Before the arrival of Europeans, the First Nations followed a wide array of mostly animistic religions. . The first Europeans to settle in great numbers in Canada were French Catholics, including a large number of Jesuits dedicated to converting the natives; an effort that provided limited success.
The first large Protestant communities were formed in the Maritimes after they were conquered by the British. Unable to convince enough British immigrants to go to the region, the government decided to import continental Protestants from Germany and Switzerland to populate the region and counter balance the Catholic Acadians. This group was known as the Foreign Protestants. This effort proved successful and still today the South Shore region of Nova Scotia is largely Lutheran.
This pattern remained the same after the British conquest of all of New France in 1759. While originally plans to try to convert the Catholic majority were in place, these were abandoned in the face of the American Revolution. The Quebec Act of 1774 acknowledged the rights of the Catholic Church throughout Lower Canada in order to keep the French-Canadians loyal to Britain.
The American Revolution brought about a large influx of Protestants to Canada. United Empire Loyalists, fleeing the rebellious United States, moved in large numbers to Upper Canada and the Maritimes. They comprised a mix of Christian groups with a large number of Anglicans, but also many Presbyterians and Methodists.
In the early nineteenth century in the Maritimes and Upper Canada, the Anglican Church held the same official position it did in Great Britain. This caused tension within English Canada, as much of the populace were not Anglican. Increasing immigration from Scotland created a very large Presbyterian community and they and other groups demanded equal rights. This was an important cause of the 1837 Rebellion in Upper Canada. With the arrival of responsible government, the Anglican monopoly was ended.
In Lower Canada, the Catholic Church was officially pre-eminent and had a central role in the colony's culture and politics. Unlike in English-Canada French-Canadian nationalism became very closely associated with Catholicism. During this period, the Catholic Church in the region became one of the most reactionary in the world. Known as ultramontane Catholicism the Church adopted positions condemning all manifestations of liberalism, to the extent that even the very conservative Popes of the period had to chide it for extremism.
In politics, those aligned with the Catholic clergy in Quebec were known a les bleus. They formed a curious alliance with the staunchly monarchist and pro-British Anglicans of English Canada to form the basis of the Canadian Conservative Party. The Reform Party, which later became the Liberal Party, was largely composed of the anti-clerical French-Canadians, known as les rouges and the non-Anglican Protestant groups. In those times, right before elections, parish priests would give sermons to their flock where they said things like Le ciel est bleu et l'enfer est rouge. This translates as "Heaven/the sky is blue and hell is red".
By the late nineteenth century, Protestant pluralism had taken hold in English Canada. While much of the elite were still Anglican, other groups had become very prominent as well. Toronto had become home to the world's single largest Methodist community and it became known as the "Methodist Rome". The schools and universities being set up at this time reflected this pluralism with major centres of learning being established for each faith. One, King's College, later the University of Toronto, was set up a non-denominational school.
The late nineteenth century also saw the beginning of a large shift in Canadian immigration patterns. Large numbers of Irish and Southern European immigrants was creating new Catholic communities in English Canada. The population of the west brought significant Eastern Orthodox immigrants from Eastern Europe and Mormon and Pentecostal immigrants from the United States.
Domination of Canadian society by Protestant and Catholic elements continued until well into the twentieth century, however. Up until the 1960s, most parts of Canada still had extensive Lord's Day laws that limited what one could do on a Sunday. The English-Canadian elite were still dominated by Protestants, and Jews and Catholics were often excluded. A slow process of liberalization began after the Second World War in English-Canada. Overtly Christian laws were expunged, including those against homosexuality. Policies favouring Christian immigration were also abolished.
The most overwhelming change occurred in Quebec. In 1950, the province was one of the most dedicatedly Catholic in the world. Church attendance rates were extremely high, books banned by the Papal Index were difficult to find, and the school system was largely controlled by the Church. In the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, this was spectacularly transformed. While the majority of Quebecois are still professed Catholics, rates of Church attendance are today extremely low, common law relationships, abortion, support for same-sex marriage, are all more common in Quebec that in the rest of Canada, and than in almost any other area of the world.
English Canada has seen a similar transition, although less extreme. The United Church of Canada, the country's largest Protestant denomination, is one of the most liberal major Protestant churches in the world. It is committed to gay rights including marriage and ordination, and to the ordination of women. The head of the church even once commented that the resurrection of Jesus might not be a scientific fact. There is still, however, a strong current of evangelical Protestantism, especially in Western Canada comparable to what is seen in the United States.