The Sunday-Law Movement in Canada
By Editor
We note in the Sabbath Recorder the following regarding the present status of the Sunday-law movement in Canada, which has for a number of years been pushed by the Lord’s Day Alliance of that country. The writer, Mr. Robert St. Clair, is a resident of Listowel, Ontario:— It will be recalled that in the summer of 1903 the privy council of England declared the “Lord’s Day Act” of Ontario ultra vires of the province to enact; that the “Lord’s Day Alliance” people promptly set at work to secure Dominion (federal) legislation for the protection of the venerable day of the sun. Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his minister of justice received them cordially, and promised (as the Dominion election was approaching) them everything in sight. We called attention to the fact that the Roman Catholics of Quebec, while desiring Sunday legislation, did not wish it to consist of the Puritanical requirements advocated by the Alliance, and that therefore, if the law was eventually passed, the statute would not be one which would be as strict as the former Ontario ordinance. The “Lord’s Day Alliance” prepared a draft bill, which the supreme court treated in a most contemptuous manner, and the matter then went, on appeal, to the privy council. A dispatch from London, England, dated July 26, reads:— “In the privy council to-day, the petition of the Dominion of Canada for leave to appeal the Lord’s day case was refused. Deputy Minister of Justice Newcombe said the matter was one of great public interest in the Dominion, and that the provinces should know their respective jurisdictions. The court declined to hear Mr. R. M. McPherson, for the Lord’s Day Alliance of Canada, which supported the petition. There were three objections to the appeal; it was unauthorized by the supreme court of British North America; second, it was merely academic, there being no legislation yet passed which would be affected, and it did not follow that there would be any, if their lordships held it within the power of the provinces to pass it; third, all the questions had already been decided by their lordships’ previous judgment.” . . . We shall now remain under the Upper Canada Act of 1845, and “farmers” are free to do as they like on Sunday until further notice. The following from an editorial in the Toronto News, August 2, will both explain the 1845 Act and make more clear our distinction between Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) regarding Sunday legislation:— “It appears that Ontario is far from being without a Sunday observance law, is still under the bonds of ‘Consolidated Statutes Upper Canada,’ chapter 104, which is a consolidation of an act passed by the legislature of Canada in 1845. It applies to Upper Canada only, a restriction which is found in many of the old Canadian statutes, and which gave to the union something of a federal character. The religious basis of observance is plainly set forth in the preamble, declaring that ‘it is expedient to enact a law against the profanation of the Lord’s day, which day ought to be duly observed and kept holy.’ It forbids buying and selling, and the doing of any worldly labor, business, or work, except the conveyance of travelers and mails, the sale of medicines and works of charity. . . .” “The fact that the application of the law was restricted to Upper Canada shows that the question was one on which Upper and Lower Canada agreed to differ, their ideas of the observance of Sunday being irreconcilable. In Upper Canada sixty years ago public opinion favored a much stricter observance than is found to-day. The railway era had hardly begun. To-day we have Sunday travel on the railways, a Sunday street-car service in Toronto and other places, and summer resorts in which the prohibition of Sunday bathing is not even attempted. In practise the strictness of Sunday observance has been very much relaxed, and the day is regarded very largely as one of relaxation and recreation, if not of amusement. The advocates of strict observance, having a law that is stronger instead of weaker than public sentiment, are probably not averse to leaving things as they are.”