“Socially Disruptive Actions … Have Become as Canadian as Maple Syrup”: Civil Disobedience in Canada, 1960–2012

Abstract

Civil disobedience has deep roots in Canadian history. Focusing on the period from 1960 until Quebec’s “Maple Spring” protests of 2012, this article examines the practice of civil disobedience by a diversity of dissenting individuals and groups in Canada. Considered collectively, the examples of peace, anti-nuclear, and civil rights protests; defence of English-language minority rights in Quebec; corporate resistance to Sunday shopping restrictions in Ontario; pro- and anti-abortion advocacy; and the often overlapping activism of Indigenous and environmentalist groups illustrate how civil disobedience endeavoured to influence, whether by conversion or coercion, public opinion on some of Canadian society’s most complex and divisive issues. In defining civil disobedience, the article emphasizes that non-violence is an essential descriptor. Some observers continued to express concerns well into the 1990s that growing instances of civil disobedience did not bode well for Canadian social order and the rule of law. But as civil disobedience became increasingly normalized, particularly following the introduction of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, and widespread social disorder did not ensue, non-violent civil disobedience aligned with a national political culture commonly associated with deference and compromise. Civil disobedience had become “as Canadian as maple syrup.”