I was there, along with 45 other Canadians selected from coast to coast, on a week-long think-tank session entitled "Conversations on Canada" - an exploration of issues relating to Canadian nationhood.

Our host, Chief Snow of the Stoney Tribe, announced over our first dinner together that a brief spiritual ceremony would be held outside, conducted by the tribe's medicine man, to seek inspiration for the week-long deliberations. Four persons were randomly selected to symbolically represent the group in the ceremony. I happened to be one of them.

The entire crowd emerged from the lodge and gathered on the grass outside. It was still daylight. It felt like we were in Eden. The crystal-clear lake. Towering mountains all around us, still snow-capped from the recent winter. The sky vied with the lake in producing different hues of blue and green.

The Chief and the medicine man asked the four of us to follow them into a tepee standing a few feet from the water. There was no room for more inside, so the rest stood outside, encircling the tepee.

Inside, we sat in a circle, cross-legged on the ground. The medicine man began a chant. The Chief whispered a translation for our benefit. The medicine man first lighted some sweet-grass. He retrieved the components of a pipe from a bag. He took out tobacco - I recognized the smell immediately - from a pouch, and sprinkled some of it on the smouldering sweet-grass. He then began to fill the bowl of the pipe with the tobacco. The Chief whispered that once the pipe was lit, it would be passed around to each one of us to share.

We watched all of this in fascination. My mind, however, was elsewhere - galloping at 100 miles an hour, desperately looking for some quick answers.

Sikhi, my faith, has very few rules, or dos and don'ts. But one is clear and unequivocal: Tobacco for all Sikhs is taboo. There are no if's and but's - a Sikh is never to use tobacco, in any form, for any reason.

I quickly reminded myself that I had, to that day, never even touched a cigarette box, leave alone a cigarette - yes, touched - in my entire life. Or a pipe. Or tobacco. Of course, I had never smoked it either.

And here I was, a few seconds away from being handed a pipe. In a religious ceremony. There was no time to explain. Who would I talk to? The Chief was busy whispering a translation. The medicine man was chanting. The other three were understandably mesmerized. And here I was, at theng ceremony, symbolically representing the group. Could I let everybody down by precipitating an incident?

But then, could I compromise my religious beliefs? Could more than four decades of discipline be discarded on a moment's notice? How would I face my daughter next time we discussed smoking? But who would know anyway - in 7 days, all of us would part and go our different ways, and who knows, never see each other again? And the other three were going to do it anyway. But how would I face myself in the mirror that night?

I just didn't know what to do. And I did not want to offend or insult. I fully realized that tobacco had spiritual significance within Native beliefs - albeit in complete juxtaposition to the Sikh belief. I respected their belief unequivocally. And I respected mine.

The medicine man lighted the pipe. Once it was ready, he drew hard on it; his eyes were closed. I could see it was like a sacrament. He then held it out, the stem in one hand, the shank in another, and the Chief took it from him. He took a deep puff from it and passed it to the next person. He too placed its tip between his lips, drew lightly, and passed it to my neighbour. She took a whiff, and turned to me.

Instinctively, I leaned back a bit, put my right hand on my heart, and slowly, respectfully, gestured with my left hand that it be given directly to the next person.
She did so without missing a beat, as if we had rehearsed it a dozen times. I looked up and searched for clues on the faces of the Chief and the medicine man. Both smiled gently and nodded their heads.

That's it. The crisis was over. When I explained my dilemma to the Chief and the medicine man later that night, they appreciated what I had done.

It wasn't an earth-shaking decision, but it was one of the toughest personal decisions I have had to make in a long time. I often think of that evening - especially when I read of more "religious" strife.

The clash between my belief and the Native one on the use of tobacco, ideologically, is total.

Similarly, there is no dearth of examples where each one of us believes in things, which others oppose vehemently. But what is sad is that people are killed, neighbourhoods destroyed, communities wiped out, for religious "disputes" of far less significance. I shudder to think what may have happened if something similar to my Nakoda incident had happened in, say, India. Or Bosnia. In the American South. Ireland.

Not infrequently, I also think of Gulliver and his travels in Lilliput. He recorded "two struggling parties", under the names Tramecksan and Slamecksan". One believed in wearing only high heels on their shoes; the other was adamant that low heels are the right way. "The animosities between these two parties run so high that they will neither eat, nor drink, nor talk with each other".

Gulliver also describes the wars between the Big Endians and the Small Endians. The Big Endians, you see, supported the "primitive mode of breaking eggs", that is, from the larger end of the shell. But, the Small Endians, unfortunately, insisted that their way was the Chosen way.

You know, there isn't a single religious war, conflict, dispute or argument anywhere in the world today - and there are so many of them - which is over anything of greater profundity than the issues that divided the Lilliputians.

The creator of Gulliver and Lilliput, Jonathan Swift, was also the Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland. You should read some of his opinions on human beings.

That was three centuries ago. Will we ever learn?