He named the area of the peninsula as Avalon, after the legendary spot where Christianity was supposedly introduced to Roman Britain in ancient times.
[12] Paragraph IV of the Treaty reads: ...His Britannick Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholic religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will, in consequence, give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit...[13]In 1851, the Parliament of the Province of Canada enacted the Freedom of Worship Act.
[14] The Act gave legal protection to the "free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference" in what is now Ontario and Quebec.
This guarantee originally applied primarily in Ontario and Quebec, but subsequently provided similar protections in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland.
The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights provided express statutory protection for the exercise of freedom of religion, in matters coming within provincial jurisdiction.
The federal Parliament followed up by enacting the Canadian Human Rights Act in 1977, to prohibit discrimination on a wide range of personal characteristics, including protecting religion.
(See below for photo text of the 1906 Lord's Day Act) The Lord's Day Act, which since 1906 had prohibited business transactions from taking place on Sundays, was struck down as unconstitutional in the 1985 case R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd. Calgary police officers witnessed several transactions at the Big M Drug Mart, all of which occurred on a Sunday.
Under Henri Bourassa's leadership, Quebec argued for the rights of conscience and provincial autonomy in the Lord's Day debate of 1906.
Quebec Roman Catholic members of parliament sponsored an amendment that gave the administration of the 1906 Lord's Day Act to the Attorney-General of each province.
Just before the federal Act came into effect in 1907, Quebec passed a provincial law that guaranteed individuals such as Jews and Seventh-Day Adventists the right to work on Sunday if they observed some other day.
In English Canada, the Presbyterian Church led the way in advocating laws supporting Sunday as a strict, religious day of rest.
Wholesale and retail merchants had little desire to expand their work week to seven days and thereby run the risk of increasing costs by spreading the same volume of sales over a longer period of time.
The commission gathered about 7,000 statements from residential school survivors through public and private meetings at various local, regional and national events across Canada.
In 2015, the TRC concluded with the establishment of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and the publication of a multi-volume report detailing the testimonies of survivors and historical documents from the time.