People walk in the parliamentary district in Ottawa on March 10, 2025. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick
Commentary
In July 1940, the federal government banned Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs). As William Kaplan explains, it became “illegal for Jehovah’s Witnesses to worship God as they wished—and the law was vigorously enforced. Beatings, mob action, police persecution, as well as state persecution, were the order of the day as Jehovah’s Witnesses ignored the ban and continued to go about their work, spreading the word of God.”
