zoziw

Census

The reality is that most of the people that I have met who claim a religious affiliation are marginal at best with only a few non-traditional types (ie. evangelicals) taking it seriously (and they make up about 2% of the population).

It is kind of interesting because Calgary along with Central and Southern Alberta are often thought of as a Canadian Bible Belt.

Of course, religion in Canada is somewhat different than in the US with the largest protestant denomination being The United Church of Canada which tends to occupy the political left in Canada (I think the American equivalent would be communists ) is neutral on abortion, has been pro-gay rights for over 20 years and rarely tries to convert anyone.

At any rate, I thought that census figure was kind of interesting.

zoziw

It looks like the province of BC beat that number:

The Yukon had 37% reporting no religion but it isn't as populated as BC or Alberta.

FoE

Nuts. This province got screwed in comparison:

At the same time, the number of Ontario residents who reported that they had no religion increased 48% to more than 1.8 million. They accounted for 16% of the population in 2001, compared with 12% in 1991. After Roman Catholic, no religion was the second most frequent religion response in 2001.

never been there

I think people in different provinces interpret the question "what religion are you" differently. When the alternative is evangelicalism or worse, you get pretty conscious of your atheism.

In Quebec, "what religion are you" used to mean "which school board do you pay your taxes to". Of course, there are no more religious school boards in Quebec, but it's still more like ethnicity than acutal conviction. I remember my father answering some census taker "none" to that question, and they said, "Oh, you mean Protestant". There were only two choices - Catholic or Protestant, and the latter included everyone else. It's the school taxes thing. In fact, once you became an adult and had your name on the tax rolls, you actually had to swear an affidavit to change your affiliation.

Shake

I've linked to a similar article over in GRD. The thread is here.