The rhetoric over the niqab in the federal election campaign is proving reminiscent of another furor, more than 20 years ago, around the Sikh turban and its compatibility with Canadian values and the country's dearest institutions.What was allegedly at stake in that debate in the 1990s was the very fabric of the nation, and the sanctity and perhaps survival of an important historic symbol of the country -- the Stetson of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Baltej Singh Dhillon, a young Sikh-Canadian, wanted to become a Mountie. But his application to the force led to a kind of turban turmoil and an eventual intervention in Parliament by the Progressive Conservative government of the day. [The ‘Progressive Conservatives’ were a completely different party from today’s ’Conservatives/Tories’; the latter, now led by Stephen Harper, is merely the reincarnation of the racist Reform Party which then led the fight to ban the turban.]