For Canada's Sake: Public Religion, Centennial Celebrations, and the Re-Making of Canada in the 1960

In 1967, Canadians cheered and ate cake on Parliament Hill, spent millions on outlandish modern buildings, and flocked to the World Expo in Montreal. In his groundbreaking book, Gary Miedema uses Canada's centennial celebrations to illustrate how religion informed nation-building and national identity during the 1960s.

Breaking away from the traditional analysis of church policy, sermons, and clerical scholarship, For Canada's Sake presents an exemplary analysis of the meaning behind religiously informed public celebrations and rituals such as centennial hymns and prayers and Expo pavillions. Miedema argues that the 1967 celebrations reveal the continued importance of religion to Canadian public life, showing that a waning "Christian Canada" was being replaced by an officially "interfaith" country. The author throws into bold relief the varied attempts of government officials and religious leaders to come to terms with new Canadian and global realities, as well as the response of Canadians to their own increasing religious diversity.

In a post-9/11 world where public religion has become hotly contested, Miedema's valuable study sheds light on how Canada has been reconstructed through a greater recognition of religious pluralism.