The large Jewish community in Montreal’s diverse Outrement quarter has become involved in a conflict with the also-large secular population. The Globe and Mail featured an article on November 8th about a recent religious clash: the windows at the YMCA’s gym were frosted last spring to respond to requests by members of the Orthodox Jewish synagogue and school next to the gym. The glass was made opaque in order to prevent the Hasidic teenage men from “being distracted by the exposed flesh of women doing their Pilates, aerobics and other activities.” Recently, members of the YMCA have become angered not only by the lack of light in the gym, but because they claim this act “went too far to accommodate a minority,” and has allowed “a religious group to impose its ways on the majority.”
The Hasidic synagogue paid the $3 500 bill to tint the windows in the YMCA in an effort, they claim, not “to stop women from exercising the way they like,” but “to find a way to maintain their strict traditions in a secular world,” with opaque windows as a “reasonable solution.”
From the article:

The Yetev Lev synagogue serves about 300 families from the Satmar sect. The religious school, or yeshiva, educates about 120 boys 16 to 19 years old. About half of them, nearly all from New York, board at the school.
Serge St-André, director of the YMCA branch, said the Hasidim’s request had been submitted to an advisory committee, which judged it to be reasonable. The Y had rejected a separate request by the Hasidic community to rent the Y pool but use only lifeguards of the same sex as the bathers.

The article in the Globe refers to other conflicts between religious minorities, including the prayer space issue the Muslum Student’s Association has been facing at McGill. The outcome of the tinted windows conflict will be discussed by the director of the YMCA branch with the Hasidic community “to consider whether the Y’s decision should be reviewed.”