In the mid-1990s, Quebec was shaken by tragic events centered around the Order of the Solar Temple, a group that blended New Age spirituality and survivalism. The group’s leaders promised a spiritual enlightenment that would be dispensed off-planet on the star Sirius for survivors of a global apocalypse on Earth, but believers were told they had to begin that journey through death. The cult’s teaching resulted in suicides and mass murders that in the end claimed 74 lives in Quebec, Switzerland and France.
In 2011, Quebecers were again shocked to discover that a young mother had died after being “cooked,” encased in plastic wrap and soil, as part of a so-called therapy promoted by a New Age guru.
While no similar high-profile deaths have been reported in Quebec since then, the province has played host to a number of cults and alternative religions over the years, from the Ant Hill Kids, the cruelly abused followers of Roch Thériault, known as Moïse, to the U.F.O. believers of the Raelian Church.
Other sects that have found a physical and civic space in Quebec have been the Jewish ultrafundamentalist followers of Lev Tahor; Aumists, a syncretic sect based in Hinduism founded in France; the Society of Saint Pius X, a Catholic schismatic fraternity founded in Switzerland; and, from the United States, the Children of God movement and the Church of Scientology.
Sociologists of religion say the emergence of new religious movements is a common phenomenon in the contemporary West; but it takes on a unique characteristic in Quebec, shaped by the province’s distinctive history and socio-cultural context.
A rapid shift
Just a few decades ago, the majority French-speaking Canadian province was a stronghold of the Catholic faith, where the church “had absolute authority” and priests could even “instruct farmers to have more children,” according to Susan J. Palmer, a sociologist and scholar at Concordia University in Montreal.
The church’s grip began to loosen during the 1960s amid widespread changes in the church begun by the Second Vatican Council and the swift social changes encouraged by the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. That period of drastic transformation is comparable to the civil rights movement in the United States in terms of impact, but the changes set in motion by the Quiet Revolution focused mainly on secularization and modernization of society, as well as Quebec nationalism. This period also opened the door to international immigration, while a counterculture movement embraced Eastern philosophies.
“When the power of the church collapsed suddenly, it created a major culture shock,” said Ms. Palmer. “In the wake of the Catholic Church’s decline in Quebec, new religions rushed in opportunistically to fill the vacuum.”
The people of Quebec may no longer accept a dominant religion and no longer prefer Christian models of faith, says Megan Bédard, a researcher in popular culture at the Université du Québec à Montréal, but “clear spiritual needs” remain all the same. “It’s emblematic of our times—people create their own spirituality from what resonates with them, whether it’s Wicca, druidism or something else.”
Years after the end of the Quiet Revolution, contemporary Catholic parishes and churches in Quebec, once at the heart of community and civic life, face closure, demolition or transformation into community spaces like libraries, gyms, dairies and distilleries. In rural Quebec, crosses and Virgin Mary shrines and statues remain standing, but they act merely as reminders of the church’s former influence on education, health, politics and daily life.
As Quebecers distanced themselves from the church, sociologists report that organized religion came to be seen as a symbol of oppression. Religion became a taboo subject in public spaces.
A “social invisibility” emerged around religion, according to Ms. Meintel, as many Quebecers came to avoid discussing their faith. A growing civic antipathy toward displays of religiosity was an accompanying phenomenon that has continued for years.
In 2019 the Quebec provincial government passed the “Loi sur la Laïcité de l’État,” which prohibits the wearing of religious symbols and clothing by public service employees, including school teachers. The law limits displays of crosses, Stars of David and Sikh and Muslim clothing by civic employees while performing their duties, but it does not target alternative spiritualities, often perceived as outside the structures of traditional religions.
A new religious landscape
In urban centers like Montreal, small churches, evangelical groups and spiritual wellness centers pop up in humble, often inconspicuous locations. But Quebec’s rural communities offer privacy and isolated gathering places for non-mainstream expressions of faith—like druids, Wiccans and New Age practitioners.
The village of Rawdon in the Lanaudière region may have only 10,000 residents, but the small community hosts nearly 60 religious groups, including Orthodox Christian and Mennonite churches, a Baha’i community—even a Catholic survivalist group. The everyday tally of such groups is not stable, however, according to cult studies. Their numbers are believed to be constantly changing, given the informal nature, rapid birth and disappearance or the speed at which schisms arise within such groups.
Some new religious movements in Quebec maintain elements of traditional Catholic ideology. Among them are the Apostles of Infinite Love, which includes a self-proclaimed founding pope who perceives Vatican II as a “maelstrom of the great apostasy” and who leads his disciplines to emulate the community life of Jesus and his apostles. Followers of the Mission of the Holy Spirit, meanwhile, believe in reincarnation, eugenics and the Hollow Earth Theory.
Other groups, distancing themselves from traditional Judeo-Christian values, develop syncretic beliefs that blend esoteric traditions, Eastern religions and pseudoscience. In Quebec, the New Age movement has gained significant popularity, combining elements like neopaganism, alternative healing and personal development as well as channeling, a supposed method of communication between humans and otherworldly entities.
“In the 1980s, there was a demand for exorcisms in Quebec,” according to Alain Bouchard, lecturer at Laval University’s Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and coordinator of the Resource and Observation Center for Religious Innovation. “There have been investigations into the presence of the New Age in Quebec. Many will associate these techniques with the devil, with turning people away from God’s message.”
It is difficult to estimate the number of people in Quebec who hold beliefs or engage in practices associated with new religious movements. Observers of the phenomenon like the religious anthropologist Nicolas Boissières acknowledge the imprecision of measurement tools like surveys of religious affiliation. But a decade-long study led by the anthropologist Deirdre Meintel, documented in La Pluralité Religieuse au Québec, inventoried 230 religious and spiritual groups in Quebec.
For many, contemporary esoteric spiritual practices are tied to environmental concerns and sciences, according to Mr. Boissières, who has studied the province’s druidic community. “The druids of antiquity were scholars and judges, knowledgeable in astronomy, mathematics and medicine,” he said. “For many modern druids, spirituality is intertwined with rituals in nature.”
Most followers of the province’s new religious movements are not straying into potentially dangerous practices or expressions of new faiths. They attend workshops, spiritual retreats, consult astrology or tarot content online or buy products related to spiritual well-being, like New Age books. Serge Larivée, a professor at the University of Montreal and a researcher on human intelligence, in his book Quand le Paranormal Manipule la Science, reports that in some stores, works on paranormal phenomena represent more than half of all book sales.
In recent decades, the church, distracted by other existential institutional challenges, has lost interest in confronting non-mainstream religious groups. “New religions have fallen down the priority list of the church, which has been overwhelmed by scandals associated with pedophilia and residential schools,” Mr. Bouchard said. “It’s not merely a matter of the church losing members and trying to reclaim them,” he said. “It must rather address the broader issue of declining engagement within the population.”
Today, new forms of spirituality are thriving online, reaching new adherents in the Western world. A new generation coming of age in Quebec is embracing identities as feminist witches, foraging for medicinal herbs, reading tarot cards and studying their astrological charts. Many are also drawn to online communities where New Age ideas intersect with conspiracy theories, creating a new landscape of “conspirituality.”
Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are flooded with hashtags like #Witchtok and #Astrology, racking up millions of views. Popular tarot readers and spiritual influencers, like Emma Bossé, who has over 280,000 YouTube subscribers, have a greater following than many conventional Quebec media outlets.
While the quest for meaning remains central, the ways in which people fulfill their spiritual needs are evolving once again at a rapid pace.
