Fundamental Freedoms and Jehovah's Witnesses
Description
Contains Bibliography, Index
$14.95
ISBN 1-895176-06-9
DDC 323'.0971
Author
Publisher
Year
Contributor
Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.
Review
“[A] most unpopular people” is how a Quebec barrister, Frank R.
Scott, characterized his clients even as he undertook to protect them
from arrest and persecution for their religious beliefs.
It was the late 1940s. Although the Jehovah’s Witnesses had a long
history of persecution in other parts of the country, they had lived in
relative peace in Quebec until they began distributing religiously
provocative literature to their fellow Quebeckers. Almost immediately,
the Duplessis government began systematically harassing and arresting
Jehovah’s Witnesses for street preaching and distributing their tracts
and magazines.
Rather than back off, the Jehovah’s Witnesses took their persecutors
to court. Thus began a series of trials that eventually won the
Jehovah’s Witnesses the right to say, print, and distribute anything
they wished; their victory helped define many of the most fundamental
legal rights for all Canadians. Gary Botting has already produced one
book on the subject of Jehovah’s Witnesses, written from his
perspective as a former member of that sect; now, as a lawyer, he brings
Canadians up to date on its contribution to the Canadian Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.
Although the text sometimes bogs down in repetitious legal discussion,
there is much to absorb and reflect upon. What is the legal definition
of sedition? How far are we willing to tolerate someone else’s freedom
of speech and expression? Who defines the limits?
This is a timely work, because much of the ground won by the
Jehovah’s Witness trials in the earlier part of this century is now
being claimed by other “persecuted minorities.” Pornography, Sunday
bowling, hate literature, and Quebec’s Bill 101 are just new spins on
the same question. Botting’s book is a challenge to all Canadians to
examine what “freedom” really means. As John Diefenbaker once said,
“A bill of rights has to protect everyone, or it will protect no
one.”