I Love Canada, But Stories Like This....

I've said it before and I'll say it here again--Canada is culturally much closer to Europe than it is to the United States, despite our sharing a couple-thousand-mile border. 

I can't believe anyone would think this is OK:

According to a release from the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, the case at hand regards a situation from 2015  where students from John Howitt Elementary School were required to sit through a Native American (First Nations) “smudging ceremony.”

This ritual features “smoke from burning sage […] fanned over the classroom,” and in a letter sent to parents the school noted the purpose is to “cleans[e] the children’s spirits of negative energy.”

Later that year, a prayer was recited at a (mandatory) student assembly...

The school district contended the smudging was “cultural,” not religious, in nature. Witnesses for the defendants even agreed  it’s not “consistent with First Nation’s practice” to force anyone into a smudge ceremony, and that the ritual is “unnecessary” to teach about Native cultures.

Opting out was not allowed.

You'd think a lawsuit would be a 1st Amendment slam dunk in this country, right?  Not so much up north:

The Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled last week that schools can require students to attend religious and/or spiritual ceremonies which may be contrary to their beliefs.

Cool.  Now do Mass.  Or a bris.