What isn’t as well known is that blasphemy is also a crime in Canada. The penalties aren’t as severe as those meted out in, say, Saudi Arabia. But in Canada, you can still go to jail for up to two years for expressing what the Criminal Code calls blasphemous libel. At least one person has suffered that fate. He was a Toronto atheist named Eugene (Ernest) Victor Sterry. In 1927, he was jailed and then deported to England for the offence of insulting Christianity. Sterry’s particular crime was to call God an “irate Old Party who thunders imprecations” and prefers the smell of roast cutlets to that of boiled cabbage. He also called God a “frenzied megalomaniac.”
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 06:09:25 +0000