00:00:01 Preaching in the province of Quebec was a real challenge.
00:00:05 The Catholic Church
00:00:07 was present in every sphere of public life.
00:00:12 In the early ’40s, the persecution
00:00:15 took on quite a bit
00:00:17 of emphasis.
00:00:19 Many Witnesses were being arrested.
00:00:21 Any excuse was used.
00:00:24 Peddling without a license
00:00:26 —this was a favorite excuse.
00:00:28 Jehovah’s Witnesses were put in prison
00:00:31 whenever they were seen with religious literature.
00:00:34 It had got so bad in Quebec
00:00:37 that it was decided to circulate a petition,
00:00:41 and this petition was circulated throughout Canada.
00:00:45 And it called on the government of Quebec
00:00:48 to put an end to this persecution.
00:00:50 And interestingly,
00:00:52 some 600,000 people signed the petition.
00:00:57 The Witnesses distributed
00:00:59 a very fiery tract
00:01:02 called the Burning Hate of Quebec.
00:01:04 And in this tract,
00:01:06 they showed what was really happening
00:01:09 —the actions of the policemen,
00:01:11 the illegal arrests, the mob action.
00:01:15 Within four months,
00:01:17 there were 800 new court cases.
00:01:20 So here, for 400 Jehovah’s Witnesses,
00:01:23 you had 1,600 court cases.
00:01:27 The seriousness
00:01:29 of the court cases increased, in that now
00:01:32 they were accusing the brothers of sedition.
00:01:36 If convicted, it was more than 10
00:01:38 —maybe 12 or 15— years in prison.
00:01:41 We had one brother, Aimé Boucher,
00:01:43 who was arrested and charged with sedition.
00:01:47 Aimé Boucher was a very poor brother,
00:01:51 who lived in a rural part of Quebec.
00:01:53 And he actually
00:01:55 went to court with his ox and buggy.
00:01:59 And on the way to court,
00:02:01 he was preaching, so he was arrested again.
00:02:04 They had the court hearing, and he was condemned.
00:02:07 He was found guilty of sedition.
00:02:10 And his case went up to the Court of Appeal
00:02:13 —and at that time, the Court of Appeal of Quebec was very hostile—
00:02:17 and he lost on appeal,
00:02:19 so it went up to the Supreme Court of Canada.
00:02:23 And by this time,
00:02:24 there were several other brothers and sisters
00:02:27 also charged on sedition,
00:02:30 which meant that if he lost his case,
00:02:32 we had several going to prison
00:02:34 for very lengthy prison terms.
00:02:38 When Brother Boucher’s case
00:02:40 came before the Supreme Court,
00:02:42 he lost by a majority of one.
00:02:46 The Catholic judges all ruled against him,
00:02:49 and they found that the tract
00:02:52 the Burning Hate of Quebec was seditious.
00:02:55 Our lawyers looked at the situation,
00:02:58 prayed about it, and thought:
00:03:00 ‘What can we do? We can’t lose this battle.’
00:03:03 And they realized that in Canada
00:03:05 there was a very rarely used provision
00:03:08 of asking the Supreme Court for a rehearing.
00:03:11 At the rehearing, one of the Catholic judges
00:03:14 was willing to discuss further
00:03:16 the issue of sedition.
00:03:19 And to be guilty of sedition,
00:03:21 you have to incite to violence.
00:03:25 So our attorney asked them:
00:03:28 “Please, look at the record.
00:03:30 “Show the court where Jehovah’s Witnesses
00:03:33 incited to violence.”
00:03:35 And finally, they were able to convince a court they were wrong.
00:03:38 And so they overturned their initial decision,
00:03:41 and Brother Boucher’s case
00:03:44 was victorious.
00:03:46 This dealt with all the accusations of sedition
00:03:51 and really brought to an end the vicious opposition,
00:03:55 because that case was the one the government
00:03:58 was hoping would work out for them.
00:04:01 There is one case that’s quite noteworthy in Quebec.
00:04:05 And it’s a case of the priest
00:04:08 calling up the federal police
00:04:11 to come and interrupt
00:04:14 a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses
00:04:16 and expel the speaker from the province of Quebec.
00:04:21 The police obeyed the priest.
00:04:24 They went to the meeting, they took the brother,
00:04:26 and they escorted him out of the province into Ontario.
00:04:31 And to disrupt a religious meeting was a criminal act.
00:04:34 For the first time —and it’s at the level of the Supreme Court—
00:04:38 they found that the three policemen
00:04:41 had to pay moral damages to the brothers
00:04:44 for intercepting, or interrupting, the meeting.
00:04:47 This has never happened before.
00:04:49 And when it came up to the Supreme Court,
00:04:52 they unanimously ruled
00:04:54 against the province of Quebec.
00:04:56 The section on religious freedom
00:04:59 is the result of these court cases.
00:05:02 Every lawyer in Canada (whether in Quebec or in English Canada),
00:05:07 when he studies law, must review these cases.
00:05:10 They are the fundamentals of religious freedom.
00:05:14 And they represent the different areas
00:05:17 —police action, government action, criminal action—
00:05:22 and they lay a very nice basis
00:05:25 for our freedoms today.
00:05:29 Our purpose is to be able to preach the good news
00:05:32 and to direct people’s attention toward the Bible.
00:05:36 But our court cases have helped governments,
00:05:39 courts, judges,
00:05:42 and officials to have the right point of view
00:05:46 on the issue of religious freedom.
