Five days before Christmas, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the small Albertan village of Beiseker burned to the ground. With a population of less than 1,000, Beiseker seemed an unlikely place for an arsonist to strike—but it was the fourth prairie church to burn in December 2023 alone. On the night of December 7, St. Mary Abbots Anglican church and St. Aidan’s Church went up in flames in Barrhead, with the arsonist apparently waiting for fire crews to arrive at St. Aidan’s before torching the second church; St. Gabriel Catholic Mission burned down on December 15 in the hamlet of Janvier (population, 140). The RCMP claims that, thus far, there is no evidence of a “concerted effort” against churches.
