Many people would be surprised to learn that the small town of Raymond in southern Alberta for a time served as the centre of Buddhism in Canada. Although Buddhism is now more strongly associated with urban areas, the tradition took root in rural Alberta long before more recent waves of immigrants settled in Canada's largest cities.
Pioneer Japanese families established the first Buddhist temple in this area by purchasing a former school that had also been used as a Latter Day Saints (Mormon) meeting house. This purchase indicated reasonable relations with the dominant religious group of the area as well as the financial commitment of more than 120 Buddhist community members during difficult economic circumstances.
The group's initiative to establish a temple also demonstrated a shift from single workers at the Knight Sugar Company, Canadian Pacific Railway, or local coal mines - including many who planned to move on or return to Japan - to established families from Raymond, Hardieville and Coalhurst who were willing to combine their resources to establish this communal hub.
The Raymond Buddhist Church was founded 80 years ago in 1929. Technically a "temple," the term "church" was used by Jodo Shinshu - "True Pure Land" - Buddhists along with "minister" and other terms and forms that blended into Canada's primarily Christian religious landscape. Raymond's temple also became the cultural and social centre of the community. For example, some of the strong presence of judo in southern Alberta is linked to instruction at the Raymond temple. Many influential ministers and some scholars of Buddhism have ties to this Raymond community. The first two ministers, Shinjo Nagatomi and Yutetsu Kawamura, each had a son who became a renowned scholar of Buddhism with the rise of Buddhist studies at Western universities since the mid-1900s.
It is impossible to note this community's centrality to Buddhism in Canada without reference to the Second World War and the discriminatory policies that forced Japanese and Japanese-Canadian residents of British Columbia's West Coast to relocate to the interior of B.C. or to Alberta. Items from Buddhist temples in British Columbia, including the ashes of deceased members of those communities, were sent to Raymond. The government relocated approximately 3,000 residents to southern Alberta at a time when there had been fewer than 600 Japanese residents in the entire province. Many worked on sugar beet farms during the war.
After the war, quite a few stayed in southern Alberta in part due to the well-established community anchored by the Raymond Buddhist Church, which in 1946 became the headquarters for the Buddhist Foundation of Canada (BFC). The policy of forced relocation had the unintended result of spreading Buddhism in Canada. Temples were established in Picture Butte, Coaldale, Taber, Rosemary and Lethbridge as well as in larger cities to the east such as Toronto and Montreal. Typically at least some members in these newer temples were closely linked to Raymond's temple.
Yutetsu Kawamura came back to the area with the forced relocation. Although now deceased, his involvement spanned even the 75th anniversary of the Raymond temple held on July 4, 2004. Two years later, the temple's building was sold and the Raymond community amalgamated with other local Jodo Shinshu groups. The combined membership now gathers at the new Buddhist Temple of Southern Alberta in Lethbridge. Use of "temple" rather than "church" reflects greater openness to diversity in the pluralistic and multicultural policies of Canada today. Raymond is no longer the centre, but the tale of its old church was formative to the new temple and to Buddhism in Canada.
John Harding teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lethbridge.
