They descended on Ottawa in the thousands, under the slogan "The Siege has begun!" At a rally in July, more than 6,000 people in the nation's capital, most of them in their teens and 20s, waved Canadian flags and cheered for nationalistic riffs. It was the type of turnout that political parties pray for in their youth-voter drives.

But the organizers of this event—4 MY Canada: Motivated Young People for a Strong Canada—aren't part of any regular political party: Rather, they may be Canada's first modern, politicized Christian-youth movement.

"We're concerned about where Canada is going, what type of crazy track it's on and what Canada's going to be like for my kids," says director and founder Faytene Kryskow, a 31-year-old Simon Fraser University graduate who conceived the idea while researching a book about Canada's Christian heritage. "The decisions [Pierre] Trudeau and his generation made are being felt now. The impact of the decisions made now will only be known in 20 or 30 years."

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