The Two Worlds of Toronto

No, this isn’t another post on how horribly greedy Toronto’s largest municipal government is. Rather, it’s about the provincial election…and this blog…and the problem that secularism as a moral guide is endowing on this province (and nation, by extension. This whole schools debate going on right now is just the latest chapter in how those of us outside of the secularist infrastructure see those inside as being purely adolescent when it comes to describing their vision of Canada. The flaw that opponents to organized religion always commit these days is to flip principles at the drop of a hat as their blatant battle to eliminate all alternative morality from our society rages on. At least Quebec has the concept of “reasonable accommodation”; what do the Liberals, or the NDP have to offer in return?

To illustrate my point, let me draw upon two areas: downtown Toronto and Scarborough. If you bring a Charter-loving secularist to Scarborough, they point out the diversity contained in the city and how one can (for example) by a Sikh who wears a turban while on duty, or how a Muslim has special washrooms to accommodate their ritual washings before prayer. It’s all about rinsing off our imperialist, anglo-Christian beginnings which, honestly, were barbaric by today’s standards and instead embracing all the different social norms that we could learn so much from (since, you know, I want to have ethnic wars like they do in in southeast Europe, or women oppressed like they do in the Middle East!).

Move down to Toronto Centre, or Parkdale Highpark though and secularism is now about the separation of church and state, a cliche that is more overused than the comparison to Hitler/Nazis and horribly, horribly misunderstood. Here in central Toronto, it’s about assimilation; we all go to the same schools where we learn the same values about how our religious beliefs are shameful, private affairs that dare not be uttered in polite society. It also gives us socialized medicine, where it’s about suffering equally rather than adhering to our basic instinct for survival. Immigrants, if they be openly religious, would be expected in these parts to put away the prayer books, the opposing views and the open expressions of faith since that only leads to differences, and differences are bad.

Incidentally, John Tory is running right in the middle of these two geographic areas — in Don Valley West. I’m not saying that the two notions expressed are invalid necessarily (although I believe they are); nor are they incompatible (as Quebec is discovering). Rather though, they are both currently being expressed as extremes in Ontario by the same political/religious group who is so self-assured of their collective wisdom that they haven’t caught on to this obvious paradox. The only thing that these two schools of thoughts share in common (well, besides their shared ability to marginalize our Christian foundations) is that any attempt to challenge either world is met sharply with furious panic by secularists everywhere. Such a reaction is to be expected though — nature often observes that an animal confronted with a threat and unable to fend off an attack will often resort to any desperate attack it can…simply because it’s scared!