The Battle of Quebec

While the religious freedom of Jehovah’s Witnesses was now respected in most parts of Canada, there was one exception—the French Catholic province of Quebec. This province had been directly controlled by the Roman Catholic Church for more than 300 years. Schools, hospitals, and most public services were either run by the clergy or controlled by them. There was even a throne for the Catholic cardinal beside the speaker’s chair in the Quebec legislature!

The premier and attorney general of Quebec, Maurice Duplessis, was a dictator who, according to Quebec historian Gérard Pelletier, inflicted upon the province “a twenty-year reign of lies, injustice and corruption, the systematic misuse of power, the sway of small minds and the triumph of stupidity.” Duplessis consolidated his political power by working hand in glove with Roman Catholic Cardinal Villeneuve.

By the early 1940’s, there were 300 Witnesses in Quebec. Many, including my brother Joe, were pioneers from other parts of Canada. As the preaching work increased in Quebec, the local police, under pressure from the clergy, retaliated by harassing the Witnesses with repeated arrests and by misapplying commercial bylaws to our religious activities.

I was traveling between Toronto and Quebec so often that I was eventually assigned to move to Quebec to assist non-Witness lawyers who were representing our Christian brothers and sisters. Every day my first job was to find out how many had been arrested the day before and hurry to the local courthouse to arrange bail. Fortunately, a well-to-do Witness, Frank Roncarelli, supplied bail in many of these cases.

From 1944 to 1946, the number of prosecutions for alleged bylaw violations soared from 40 to 800! Not only were public authorities arresting and harassing Witnesses continuously but unruly mobs, incited by the Catholic clergy, were also attacking them.

On November 2 and 3, 1946, a special meeting was held in Montreal to address this crisis. Brother Knorr gave the last talk, entitled “What Shall We Do?” All in attendance were delighted to hear his answer—he read aloud the now historic document Quebec’s Burning Hate for God and Christ and Freedom Is the Shame of All Canada. It was a sizzling four-page tract—a detailed exposé with names, dates, and places of clergy-instigated riots, police brutality, arrests, and mob violence against Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec. Distribution began across Canada just 12 days later.

Within days, Duplessis announced publicly a “war without mercy” against Jehovah’s Witnesses. But unwittingly he worked in our favor. How so? By directing that anyone distributing Quebec’s Burning Hate be charged with sedition—a very serious crime that would lead us out of the Quebec courts and into the Supreme Court of Canada. In his rage, Duplessis recklessly ignored that consequence. Then he personally ordered the cancellation of the liquor license of Frank Roncarelli, who had been our main source of bail. With no wine available, Brother Roncarelli’s fine restaurant in Montreal was closed in a matter of months, and he was financially ruined.

Arrests multiplied. Instead of 800 prosecutions, we soon faced 1,600. Many lawyers and judges complained that all these cases of Jehovah’s Witnesses were clogging the Quebec courts. In response, we would suggest an easy remedy: Let the police arrest the criminals instead of the Christians. That would solve the problem!

Two courageous Jewish lawyers, A. L. Stein of Montreal and Sam S. Bard of Quebec City, assisted by acting for us in many cases, especially before I was admitted to the Quebec bar in 1949. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, later prime minister of Canada, wrote that Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec had “been mocked, persecuted, and hated by our entire society; but they have managed by legal means to fight Church, government, nation, police, and public opinion.”

The attitude of the Quebec courts was manifest in the treatment of my brother, Joe. He was charged with disturbing the peace. Recorder Jean Mercier sentenced Joe to the maximum penalty of 60 days in jail. Then, losing control completely, he shouted from the bench that he wished he could send Joe to prison for life!

One newspaper said that Mercier gave orders to Quebec police to “arrest on sight every known or suspected Witness.” Such behavior only proved the truthfulness of the accusations in our tract Quebec’s Burning Hate. The following are some typical headlines of Canadian newspapers outside Quebec: “The Dark Ages Return to Quebec” (The Toronto Star), “Return of the Inquisition” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto), “The Stench of Fascism” (The Gazette, Glace Bay, Nova Scotia).

Defending the Charge of Sedition

In 1947, I assisted Mr. Stein in our first sedition case to be tried, that of Aimé Boucher. Aimé had distributed some tracts near his home. At Aimé’s trial we proved that Quebec’s Burning Hate contained no falsehoods but that it only used strong language to complain about atrocities against Jehovah’s Witnesses. We showed that no charges had ever been laid against those who had committed these atrocities. Aimé had been convicted simply for publicizing them. The prosecution’s position came down to this: It had become a crime to tell the truth!

The Quebec courts had relied upon a vague, 350-year-old definition of “sedition,” which suggested that anyone criticizing the government could be convicted of a crime. Duplessis too relied on that definition in order to suppress criticism of his regime. But in 1950 the Supreme Court of Canada accepted our submission that in a modern democracy, “sedition” requires incitement to violence or insurrection against the government. Quebec’s Burning Hate contained no such incitements and was therefore a lawful form of free speech. With this one momentous decision, all 123 sedition cases evaporated! I saw firsthand how Jehovah gave the victory.

Battling Censorship

Quebec City had a bylaw that prohibited distribution of literature without a permit from the chief of police. This was direct censorship and therefore a violation of religious liberty. Laurier Saumur, then serving as a traveling overseer, had been jailed for three months under this bylaw and faced several other charges under it.

In 1947 a civil suit was filed in Brother Saumur’s name to enjoin Quebec City from enforcing its bylaw against Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Quebec courts ruled against us, and again we appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. In October 1953, after a seven-day hearing before all nine judges of that Court, our request for an injunction was granted. The Court recognized that the public distribution of printed Bible sermons is a fundamental part of the Christian worship of Jehovah’s Witnesses and therefore is constitutionally protected from censorship.

Thus the Boucher case decided that what Jehovah’s Witnesses were saying was lawful; but the Saumur decision established how and where it could be said. The victory in the Saumur case led to the dismissal of over 1,100 bylaw charges in Quebec. More than 500 charges in Montreal were also withdrawn for total lack of evidence. Soon the slate was clean—there were no prosecutions left in Quebec!

Duplessis’ Final Attack

Having no laws left to use against Jehovah’s Witnesses, in early January 1954, Duplessis introduced into the legislature a new law, Bill No. 38, which was described by the media as the ‘anti-Jehovah’s Witnesses law.’ It provided that those who suspected that any person intended to make a statement that was “abusive or insulting” could file a complaint without the need to provide any evidence. As attorney general, Duplessis could then get an injunction to prohibit the accused person from making any public statement. Once the injunction was issued against one individual, all members of that person’s church were equally prohibited from speaking. In addition, all the Bibles and religious literature belonging to that church would be seized and destroyed, and all of its places of worship would be closed until the case was decided, which might take years.

Bill No. 38 copied a law devised in the 15th century during the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada. The accused person and all his associates lost all civil rights without any proof of wrongdoing. Regarding Bill No. 38, the press announced that the provincial police had been instructed to close all the Kingdom Halls of Jehovah’s Witnesses and to seize and destroy their Bibles and other literature. Faced with this monstrous threat, Jehovah’s Witnesses removed all their religious publications from the province. They did, however, continue their public preaching work but with just their personal copies of the Bible.

The bill became law on January 28, 1954. On January 29, at 9:00 a.m., I was at the courthouse door to file an action on behalf of all of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the province of Quebec, seeking a permanent injunction against this law before Duplessis could even use it. The judge did not grant a temporary injunction because Bill No. 38 had not yet been used. But he said that if the government tried to use it, I could come back to him for protection. The judge’s action thus had the same effect as a temporary injunction, for as soon as Duplessis even tried to use this law, he would be stopped!

During the next week, we waited to see whether the police would take any action under this new law. Nothing happened! To find out why not, I arranged a test. Two pioneers, Victoria Dougaluk (later Steele) and Helen Dougaluk (later Simcox), went from house to house with literature in Trois-Rivières, Duplessis’ hometown. Again, no reaction. While the sisters were so engaged, I sent Laurier Saumur to telephone the provincial police. Without identifying himself, he complained that Jehovah’s Witnesses were preaching and that the police were not enforcing Duplessis’ new law.

Sheepishly, the officer in charge said: “Yes, we know that the law was passed; but the next day Jehovah’s Witnesses got an injunction against us, so there is nothing we can do.” Immediately, we moved our literature back into the province, and during the ten years that this case worked its way up through the courts, our preaching work went ahead successfully.

In addition to the injunction, we also sought to have Bill No. 38 declared unconstitutional. To prove that this law was aimed squarely at Jehovah’s Witnesses, we decided on a bold move—to send Duplessis himself a subpoena, compelling him to attend the trial and give evidence. I cross-examined him for two and a half hours. I repeatedly confronted him with his public declarations of “war without mercy on the Witnesses of Jehovah” and his statement that Bill No. 38 would be the end of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec. Enraged, he attacked me personally: “You are a very impertinent young man!”

“Mr. Duplessis,” I replied, “if we were discussing personalities, I might have a few remarks of my own. But since we have business to attend to, would you please explain to the court why you did not answer the last question.”

In 1964, I argued the Bill No. 38 case before the Supreme Court of Canada. But they declined to rule on its constitutionality because the law had never been used. However, by that time Duplessis was dead, and no one cared about Bill No. 38 any longer. It was never used against Jehovah’s Witnesses or anyone else.

Shortly before Duplessis died in 1959, he was ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada to pay damages to Brother Roncarelli for having illegally canceled his liquor license. Since that time many of the people of Quebec have become very friendly. The number of Witnesses there has grown from 300 in 1943 to over 33,000 today, according to a government census. Jehovah’s Witnesses are now listed as the fourth-largest religious group in the province. I do not regard these legal victories or the success of the ministry of Jehovah’s Witnesses as achievements of any human. Rather, it has proved to me that Jehovah gives the victory, for the battle is his and not ours.—2 Chronicles 20:15.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, later prime minister of Canada, wrote that Jehovah’s Witnesses in Quebec had “been mocked, persecuted, and hated by our entire society; but they have managed by legal means to fight Church, government, nation, police, and public opinion.”