MONTREAL — Just 49 voters in a rural Quebec municipality will cast ballots in a referendum Sunday to decide whether a parcel of land should be turned into a Muslim-run cemetery for people in the Quebec City area.

The voters in Saint-Apollinaire, which is located about an hour southwest of the provincial capital, will decide whether to uphold or overturn zoning changes needed to turn a plot currently used to bury ashes contained in funeral urns into a cemetery that operates in accordance with the Islamic faith, according to town officials.

But the results risk sending a strong message across Canada and outside the country’s borders, said resident Sylvain Roy.

“My opinion is that the municipality risks being a symbol of social exclusion in all of Canada, in North America and perhaps further away than that,” said Roy, who is director of the Harmonia funeral home that is selling the land to the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec.

The crucial zoning change is the result of a discussion that began in October 2016 when Roy met a Muslim family that had no local options for burying their loved one in accordance with their religious customs. The only Muslim-run cemetery in Quebec is 250 kilometres away in Laval, a suburb immediately north of Montreal.

But the issue came to wider public notice this winter after a mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque that killed six men and injured a number of others during Sunday evening prayers. One of the six victims was buried in Laval while the others were returned to the countries they were born in.

The tragedy spurred members of the mosque to complete the transaction for the land in Saint-Apollinaire in February, reportedly worth $215,000. Mayor Bernard Ouellet and the municipal council followed through on May 1 with unanimous approval of the necessary zoning changes.

But plans were already underway to challenge the changes with a referendum that allows neighbouring residents who might be affected by the project to have a vote on council’s decision. Seventeen signatures were enough to call the referendum. A simple majority of the 49 eligible voters will be enough to uphold council’s changes or overturn the zoning amendment.

The leader of the group contesting the change, Sunny Létourneau, said they proposed the creation of a multi-confessional cemetery, a co-operative with the Muslim community and a privately run business with separate plot for Islamic burials.

“They told us that it was contrary to their beliefs,” Létourneau said of the Muslim community. “But when we consulted other imams and other mosques, they said there is nothing in the Qur’an that prevents that.”

One example is the recent opening last Sunday of a 500-plot section reserved for Muslims that is contained in a larger cemetery, located 30 kilometres from Quebec City.

Mélijade Rodrigue, a spokesperson for the Lépine Cloutier/Athos Funeral Home, said the Muslim section in the company’s Saint-Augustin- de-Desmaures, Que., cemetery is the latest example of religious cohabitation, but there are others in the province.

But the Centre Culturel Islamique du Québec wants the certainty and security that will be guaranteed by owning the land outright.

“When you have land that you own, families have a plot for eternity,” Mohamed Kesri, the organization’s secretary, told The Canadian Press.

Létourneau said she has other concerns if the project goes ahead, from the maintenance and care that the cemetery grounds will receive to the financial effects to the municipality from tax breaks granted to religious groups in Quebec.

But her biggest problem is that cemeteries run by religious groups, be they Muslim, Catholic, Jewish or another denomination, keep people out.

“It’s all religions that pose a problem,” she said, noting that her mother is Catholic but she was never baptized into the faith.

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“I have no religion and I refuse to submit to a religion. I respect peoples’ faiths but it means that I won’t even be able to be buried in the same cemetery as my parents ... It’s a problem that will only grow in our society.”

No one will hazard a guess as to the outcome of Sunday’s referendum. Roy, the Harmonia funeral director, said there are about 10 people who are stridently in favour of maintaining the zoning change, 10 people stridently against it and roughly 29 people somewhere in the middle whose leaning will decide the outcome.

Voting closes at 8 p.m. Sunday night. Results are expected to be announced a few minutes later.

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