Blasphemy Day Across Canada: Freedom Party Prez Speaks,Satanic Verses Thrown in the trash& much else

October 1, 2009

You were warned: Next week,blasphemy gets its own holiday ,said the Religion News Service in advanced feature coverage. Why do the heathens rage? , asked the Christian Post just days before.  Free Speech Advocates Rally for Blasphemy went online on the Toronto Star’s website the morning of the event.
This is just a sample.  There was, in short, a lot of buzz surrounding International Blasphemy Day leading up to its launch.  Looking back, the following day, on this first annual event, I think it was a job well and provocatively done.  The day was quite international but I’ll comment  on the Canadian contribution specifically.

Centre for Inquiry Montreal hosted a relaxed social event and discussion at a local restaurant.  Durham Region Freethinkers had a special guest speaker, Paul McKeever , who leads the Freedom Party of Canada .  CFI Saskatoon/Saskatoon Freethinkers pulled out all the stops, including a Debaptism Ceremony


and several denials of the holy spirit

They received considerable attention, including an article in the Star Phoenix:  Group touts questioning of religion , featuring an interview with student leader Rebekah Bennetch and then one of the off campus group leaders George Williamson was on the radio this morning (Oct 1) with interviewer John Gormley who is apparently Saskatoon’s answer to Rush Limbaugh:  News Talk 650 CKOM (should be available to download shortly).

Finally, in Toronto, we had an awesome time right in the middle of the university on the patio of Sidney Smith hall.  Our University of Toronto Secular Alliance did a great job introducing hundreds of students to the Blasphemy  Challenge but this time encouraging people to write absolutely anything on a big board and then yelling their name and their comment to the crowd.  Meanwhile, videos like Mr. Deity were playing in the background. To professionalize the activities, Greg Oliver, Vice President of the secularist lobby group the Canadian Secular Alliance, was on hand passing out policy papers on free speech and blasphemy, and government sponsored religion like religious charity status and publicly funded religious schools, and engaging on these important issues with students and the public.

We put a few comments to start the Challenge:

By the end of the day the comment board looked like this (it’s still sitting here at CFI):

The Toronto Star, the EyeOpener, the Varsity, the U of T magazine and several freelances were all out covering the event.

Highlights included a verbal altercation about the limits of free speech based on the misunderstanding that our efforts were to offend rather than to courageously show that we were unafraid to speak our mind.

The gentleman involved noticed we had a copy of Rushdie’s Satanic Verses as an

example of a banned book and censorship.

Claiming we represented a satanic cult and refusing to even open the book to see what it was really about, he proved the necessity of blasphemy day by throwing the book in the trash.  Later the book magically (miraculously?) re-appeared on our table.  There are sacrifices people are willing to make for free speech.

Also fun was watching Preacher Mitchell Gerskup, leader of the U of T Secular Alliance, attract a crowd.  The whole event took  place under the watchful eye of the Canadian atheist bus campaign banner which was interesting to hear people comment on.  We attracted a good size crowd over the course of the 3 hours.  We then had an important discussion back at CFI about the meaning of Blasphemy Day and how to improve upon it in following years.  2009 was after all the pilot project and we look forward to many more activities in the Campaign for Free Expression.

If you happened to miss out, not to fear.  Our McMaster Association of Secular Humanists tells me they did too, and will make up for it with an event on October 6th.  So get check it out