Many Canadians assume that only Muslim fanatics view blasphemy as a crime.

That assumption was bolstered after last week’s attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by two Islamic terrorists.

The pair said they were avenging what they called Charlie Hebdo’s insults against Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.

What isn’t as well known is that blasphemy is also a crime in Canada. The penalties aren’t as severe as those meted out in, say, Saudi Arabia.

But in Canada, you can still go to jail for up to two years for expressing what the Criminal Code calls blasphemous libel.

At least one person has suffered that fate.

He was a Toronto atheist named Eugene (Ernest) Victor Sterry. In 1927, he was jailed and then deported to England for the offence of insulting Christianity.

Sterry’s particular crime was to call God an “irate Old Party who thunders imprecations” and prefers the smell of roast cutlets to that of boiled cabbage.

He also called God a “frenzied megalomaniac.”

Jeremy Patrick, a law professor now teaching in Australia, tells the tale of the Sterry case in a scholarly article published five years ago by the Annual Survey of International and Comparative Law.

It’s a tale that reminds Canadians not to be too smug.

Blasphemy was first written into Canada’s Criminal Code in 1892. At the time, it was seen as a skilful compromise.

Criticizing religion in a “fair-minded” way that used “decent language” was deemed legal. But using language intended to insult the religious convictions of the majority was not.

Put simply, it was okay to challenge religion as long as the critique was made in a manner that did not offend too many voters.

Sterry’s Christian Inquirer magazine, however, was the Charlie Hebdo of its day. Its aim was not to just to make the point but to attract attention.

To achieve this end, Sterry hand-delivered copies of his tract to senior Ontario officials, including the provincial premier and the local Crown prosecutor.

The response was quick. Sterry was soon under arrest for blasphemous libel.

As Patrick recounts, the case became a cause célèbre across North America — in part because Sterry was defended by one of Canada’s few black lawyers, E. Lionel Cross.

Some Toronto newspapers, such as the Globe (now the Globe and Mail), bayed for Sterry’s blood.

The Star was more circumspect. While it declined to offer an editorial opinion on the case, it did print reports that, in Patrick’s view, favoured the defendant.

Oddly enough, Sterry didn’t try to argue that the blasphemy law was wrong or outdated. Instead, he maintained that he was not insulting Christians when he took on the God of the Old Testament. He was merely insulting Jews.

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None of this swayed the prosecutor, the judge or the jury.

The prosecution was particularly incensed by Sterry’s suggestion that God preferred roast cutlets.

“Were the Crown to tolerate and permit such a wicked and profane libel of God to go unnoticed, it would deal a death blow to the state as a Christian state,” the prosecutor said.

The judge told the jury that if they concluded Sterry had written in a manner designed to outrage “all our God-fearing people” then it had no choice but to convict.

The jury took just 25 minutes to find Sterry guilty.

He was sentenced to 60 days in jail and, apparently as part of a plea bargain, deported to the country of his birth, England.

Throughout the provincial government trod carefully. The attorney general confided that he wished the blasphemy charge had never been brought. But given the political sensitivity of the case, he declared himself unwilling to stay the charge.

Over the decades, politicians chose not to eliminate the law. But they did become more adroit at handling it.

In 1980, a theatre in Sault Ste. Marie was charged with blasphemous libel for showing the Monty Python film, Life of Brian — a spoof on Jesus Christ.

Local Crown prosecutors had laid the charge following a complaint by an Anglican vicar.

But Ontario’s then-Conservative attorney general moved swiftly to stay the charge.

The story was buried. The blasphemy law remains.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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