Books, churches, what will Canadians burn next?

The Canadian flag.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

Most of us know book burning only as a scene from the Third Reich. In grainy footage, crowds of young men gleefully heap torn pages into the flames. It is among the nightmare images of the 20th century.

But book burning has also been practiced closer to us in time and place. On Tuesday, Radio Canada's French service reported a "flame purification ceremony" conducted by the Conseil scolaire catholique Providence, which includes 30 schools in Ontario. In 2019, 30 books were burned and their ashes used to fertilize a newly planted tree. A further 4,700 volumes have apparently been removed from the schools' shelves and designated for destruction or recycling.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Samuel Goldman

Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.