Last month I wrote about the Jewish community’s fear and rage around the shooting up of synagogues. I said… “If someone fired shots in the night at St. James Anglican Cathedral or St. Michael’s Catholic Basilica, the hue and cry would be long and loud.”
One reader wrote to me to say he doubted anyone would notice at all. He then encouraged me to look into the shocking rise in arson at Canadian churches since COVID.
Shocking rise in arson? In churches? In Canada? What was he talking about?
It seems we’ve been watching churches burn for five years now and, somehow, we still don’t see the flames.
A new study from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute found that arsons at religious institutions in Canada more than doubled in 2021 compared with the 2011–2014 baseline and “have not significantly declined since then.” Indeed, the rate of arsons against religious sites almost doubled compared to all arsons in the country.
Since May, 2021, thirty-three churches have been burned to the ground, 24 of them are confirmed arsons, with the rest suspicious or still under investigation. About half of thosedestroyed buildings were Catholic, the rest a mix of Anglican, Evangelical, and United churches that dot the small towns and reserves of the country. Arrests have been made in only nine of those fires, and in none of them has police identified a clear motive. None is a very small number.
The geography is as damning as the raw numbers. Many of the worst fires have taken place in Western and Northern Canada, often in communities already living with the trauma of Residential Schools. In the four provinces where most of the high‑profile “unmarked graves” announcements were made — Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia — arsons at houses of worship rose from 33 incidents in 2011–2014 to 78 in 2021–2023. British Columbia alone saw a spike from 42 to 67 arsons at religious sites across those same years.
Some of these churches were torched and scarred but survived; others — often the wooden, century‑old buildings that anchored Indigenous and settler communities alike — simply vanished overnight. The pattern is eerily similar to a broader international trend: in the United Kingdom in the past five years, there have been nearly 200 arson incidents affecting churches.
Across Europe investigations have documented several hundred serious church fires over the past three decades, including in Italy and France.
It’s pretty clear the shooting up of synagogues is about antisemitism. But what’s behind the torching of Catholic and Protestant churches?
The Canadian data suggest it’s tightly linked not to anti‑Christian sentiment, but to public reaction to the residential school revelations and the symbolism of church buildings in that narrative. The “Scorched Earth” report notes that many arsons cluster in time and space around announcements of suspected graves at former residential school sites, most of them connected to Catholic orders. When anger, historical injustice, and social media outrage meet old, often poorly protected wooden structures, the result can be as much opportunistic vandalism as organized hate.
COVID also plays a quieter role. The pandemic hollowed out congregations, reduced onsite staff, and tightened church budgets, leaving more buildings half‑empty, poorly maintained, and easier targets. At the same time, police services and fire departments are all stretched by changes in building codes, community risk, and staffing, which makes protecting religious infrastructure harder. In this environment, a lone arsonist, a copycat, or someone acting out their grievances can do a lot of damage before anyone notices.
Still, unlike attacks on synagogues that are instantly reported and called out as hate crimes, attacks on Christian churches are labelled “vandalism”, “protest”, “unrest”, “colonial re-adjustment”, and “tragic loss of heritage.” Still, European monitoring agencies have documented over a hundred arson attacks on churches, explicitly classifying many as hate crimes against Christians.
Back in Canada, we suffer from moral hesitancy and our trademark pathological politeness: how do you condemn the burning of a church that was once part of the machinery of cultural genocide without seeming to excuse the institution that ran it? Our answer, so far, has been to change the subject — to let churches burn as a sort of background noise to our reconciliation debates, acknowledged in passing, rarely examined in depth.
If you think churches don’t matter because you don’t darken their doors, consider that they are often the last public building standing in places where the bank, the school, and the post office (especially the post office!) are long gone.
I think we Canadians should insist on three things:
● Data: We should press Statistics Canada, police services, and provincial fire marshals to publish regular, disaggregated figures on fires at religious institutions, broken down by province, faith tradition, cause, and outcome. Right now, the numbers are elusive and opaque.
● Security: Ottawa and the provinces already fund security upgrades for mosques and synagogues. Those programs should be extended and targeted to Christian and Indigenous sacred sites that are at demonstrable risk, from BC mission churches to prairie parish halls.
● Narrative: political leaders, Indigenous leaders, and church leaders must say two sentences in the same breath — that the harms of residential schools were real, and that burning down churches today does nothing to repair them.
In the end, stopping these fires is not about restoring Christian privilege; it is about I we can hold two ideas at once: that some ibuildings carry painful histories, and torching them in the dark is not justice but rather a failure of imagination.
Meanwhile…
1. Compulsory reading (I). The clearest view of Canada’s new prospects and America’s blindness to it, by Canadian George Froehlich, who publishes American Pulse, about Canada, for Americans.
Compulsory reading (II). AI danger and AI capability have finally met. The new AI service Mythos is so good that it can uncover and weaponize hidden software flaws. This allows AI‑scale cyberattacks that could cripple defense infrastructure and destabilize global financial networks. Start here.
2. Arc de Trump. The White House released the drawings for the new triumphal arch in Washington, D.C. Here also are drawings of a similar design, age, nation and leader.
3. Feelings. Brian Eno’s remedy for burnout and despair. Plus sexting with Prince Harry. Speaking of Harry, things are getting gooey with the charity he founded. Plus fighting our perpetual state of alarm, and Arthur Brooks on not wasting your suffering. Plus odd animal friends and our wonderful dreadful world.
4. Pink Flamingoes. Here are 3 million of them, which may get you to wonder how flamingoes got their pink. Speaking of birds, this AI birdfeeder identifies, collects and downloads clips of them eating and fighting. Plus, the latest in airports and in driving to one of them. Plus three different New Yorks and Rachmaninov on the future of broadcasting.
And finally…fuck…no shit…and eh?
5. Power plaguers. Meryl Streep meets Anna Wintour and both wear Prada. Plus theAssistant Economy. Plus, if victims of other crimes were treated like rape victims.
6. Big Nights Out. Soulpepper Theatre just announced its new season of 12 productions and four major city initiatives, with discounts for buying your tickets early.
Also, on Tuesday May 5, Schmaltz & Schumann comes to Hugh’s Room, in a heady mix of Eastern European Jewish folk music, plus one of the world’s great string quartets. Presented by Concerts in Care who bring great music to vulnerable seniors.
And on May 16, the Toronto International Festival of Authors serves up An Evening With Louise Penny and Melissa Fung with a new co-authored thriller, The Last Mandarin.Tickets here.
7. Oft thought, rarely spoken. Some contemporary heresies. Plus, how the Mossad gets its man. Plus, the Gamer’s Dilemma, i.e. “Why is virtual killing morally acceptable in computer games while virtual child sex abuse is not, given that no real person is harmed in either case?”
8. Just a few spaces left on these trips to the edge of your world..There’s still room to join us at The Canada Summit, the four-day heli-hiking trip from Aug. 30 to Sept. 3, where four leading Canadians (StevePaikin, Dr. Heather Ross, Ron Deibert and Cynthia Wesley- Esquimaux) will discuss where we’re headed aroundpolitics, healthcare, cyber and AI, and Indigenous relations. If you can walk around your kitchen table, you can heli-hike. Details here.
Join us also on a Turkish gulet along the ancient Carian coastline (Turkey’s “Turquoise coast”), and at The Kardamyli Festival in Greece this Fall with the entire front page of British public intellectuals.
9. Tips for Life. How to find the cancel page when you want to…cancel your subscription. Plus the Friday round-up written by our friend Dan O’Connor, Chief Security Officer for FEMA, on how to navigate life and work…Plus perfecting fake kindness, and finding more space in your basement and your backyard.
10. Are you MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+? It’s a new acronym to describe Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people, along with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual and other gender- and sexually-diverse people. And speaking of which, what exactly are your pronouns? And don’t miss this new White House Report that says (surprise, surprise) DEI hurts America’s economy. (See Chapter 10, the Economic Consequences of DEI, from page 207.)
11. Why be big when you can…Be Giant! That’s the odd name of the Weston Family’snew online publication about the “people, places and ideas driving Canada forward.” The Liberals’ muscular new majority suggests perfect timing to launch this.
12. A final note on Artemis II. Its safe landing last week was a “Where were you when” moment for us 8 billion earthlings. The most emotional description? Roberta Bondar onher 1992 launch, and this astounding National Geographic video of Artemis’ 7.5-second takeoff…in ultra- slow-motion.