“The main thing that she’s been asking for is to order this company to stop discriminating.” Trotter is asking the tribunal to send “a really strong message” that “it is not acceptable to discriminate based on what somebody believes or where they went to school. That it is not ‘open season’ on Christians in Canada.”

A Trinity Western University graduate says she was “attacked” over her religion by a Norwegian wilderness tourism company, just for applying for a job.

Bethany Paquette claims her application to work in Canada’s North for Amaruk Wilderness Corp. was rejected because she’s Christian.

“It did really hurt me and I did feel really attacked on the basis that I’m a Christian,” Paquette said.

In her complaint to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, Paquette outlines a series of emails from executives from Amaruk Wilderness Corp.

Paquette, an experienced river rafting guide, applied to be a wilderness guide for Amaruk’s Canadian operations in the North.

‘It did really hurt me and I did feel really attacked on the basis that I’m a Christian’- Bethany Paquette, rejected job applicant

She says she was shocked when she read the rejection email from Olaf Amundsen, the company’s hiring manager.

He wrote that she wasn’t qualified and “unlike Trinity Western University, we embrace diversity, and the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want.”

Trinity Western is the Christian university in Langley, B.C., wherePaquette earned her biology degree.

All students must agree to a covenant prohibiting sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage, under pain of possible expulsion, which has led to controversy over the university’s new law school.

Paquette was furious and told CBC, “My beliefs have developed who I am as an individual, but they don’t come into play when I am doing my job.”

In the rejection email, Amundsen also wrote: “The Norse background of most of the guys at the management level means that we are not a Christian organization, and most of us actually  see Christianity as having destroyed our culture, tradition and way of life.”

Paquette wrote Amundsen back defending her faith, saying “your disagreement with Trinity Western University, simply because they do not support sex outside of marriage, can in fact be noted as discrimination of approximately 76 per cent of the world population!!! Wow, that’s a lot of diverse people that you don’t embrace.”

She also wrote that the Norse people chose Christianity.

“I signed it God Bless, probably partially because I knew it would irritate them,” Paquette said.

It clearly irritated Amundsen, who wrote back, describing himself as “a Viking with a PhD in Norse culture. So propaganda is lost on me.”

He explained why graduates from Trinity Western are not welcome in the Norwegian company.

“In asking students to refrain from same-sex relationships, Trinity Western University, and any person associated with it, has engaged in discrimination.”

He ended the email writing, “‘God bless’ is very offensive to me and yet another sign of your attempts to impose your religious views on me.

“I do not want to be blessed by some guy… who has been the very reason for the most horrendous abuses and human rights violations in the history of the human race.”

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