By Jerry Grafstein, JNS
While Canada's earliest prime ministers were defenders of the Jews, others were not so welcoming restricting where Jews could live.
For many long years, there were no Jews in senior leadership roles in the Canadian government, save for Louis Rasminsky, who was appointed the governor of the Bank of Canada in the 1950s.
That changed in 1968 when Pierre Trudeau became prime minister (a role that his son, Justin Trudeau, now occupies) and began appointing Canadian Jews as diplomats, justices and more. Until Trudeau’s appointments, the lack of Jews in leadership reflected a country that was systemically antisemitic. Sadly, that hate continues.
Toronto has the highest per capita hate incidents against Jews in the Western world, based on statistics from B’nai Brith Canada and the Toronto Metro Police statistics. Montreal is vying for second place.
Antisemitism in Canada, however, predates the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. In the 1880s, Jews immigrated to Canada escaping pogroms raging across Europe. Canada’s first prime minister, John MacDonald, welcomed Jews, and the first Jewish rural settlement was New Jerusalem in 1884. Sir Wilfred Laurier, who followed MacDonald as prime minister, was a staunch defender of Jews and continued to welcome them to the country.
At the same time, the modern Zionism movement was picking up steam in Europe. Recognition for a Jewish state spread throughout the Jewish Diaspora like wildfire, and in the 1890s, there were more than 250 Zionist clubs across Canada.
While leaders like MacDonald and Laurier welcomed the Jews, others were not as welcoming, and antisemitism both overt and subversive followed. For instance, before 1910, Jews in Toronto were prohibited from living north of Bloor Street, instead settling around Kensington Market, like my maternal grandparents. Until the 1950s, areas east of Spadina Road and Rosedale in North Toronto were also restricted against Jews.
Laurier spoke out against European “pogroms,” and The Toronto Star was a staunch critic of antisemitism; yet Jews were held as the “other,” and limited from places to live and work. Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, started in 1917 in Yorkville as a Jewish hospital since Jewish doctors were prevented from working in other Toronto medical centers.
There were some attempts at changing the role of Jews in Canada. In the 1920s, David Croll, a Jewish immigrant, became mayor of Windsor. He was also the first Jew elected to the Ontario legislature and eventually became the country’s first Jewish senator, though that would be several decades later.
MacKenzie King was elected prime minister in the 1930s and used his pulpit to praise Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He refused to allow the passengers of the doomed SS St. Louis to land in Canada. He also recognized the antisemitic Vichy government in France. From the 1930s to 1945, only 4,000 Jews were allowed into Canada. (In my own family, 63 of my cousins were in Europe during World War II. Only three survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Canada.)
Slowly, things began to change. In the 1950s, Rabbi Abraham Fineberg of Toronto’s Holy Blossom Temple became a leader for civil rights in Canada.
Also in the 1950s, a Jewish man named Bernard Wolf decided to buy a cottage in the London, Ontario area of Wasage Beach. It was known to have a restrictive covenant with no Jews or dogs allowed. Wolf appealed to the Supreme Court of Ontario. That restrictive covenant was upheld by both the Superior Court and the Court of Appeal. It was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Private clubs in Toronto would not admit Jewish members. Lou Ronson, a former president of B’nai Brith; Sol Littman, an American civil-rights activist; and I started a public campaign to change things. The Granite Club was the first private club to open its doors in the early 1960s. Others followed. Jews also grew active in cultural activities. My wife, Carole, became the first Jew to head the Canadian Women’s Opera Committee and was elected to the boards of several hospitals.
In recent years, however, it feels as if Canada has taken a step back.
Dr. Ayelet Kuper published a report in 2022, “Reflections in Addressing Antisemitism in a Canadian Faculty of Medicine” about antisemitism at the University of Toronto Medical School and problems with the school administration’s handling of Jew-hate. No one was chastised.
The hatred of Jews at universities is rampant today. Islamist extremists, a sliver of Islam, populate our universities, despite theologian Cardinal John Newman’s “idea of a university” as a place of tolerant exchanges. Victoria University, for instance, invited an iman who advocates the eradication of Jews to speak and Ottawa University hired an Islamist convicted in France for bombing a synagogue—imagine his classes.
Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and her cohorts in City Hall have not done nearly enough to combat antisemitism and hate across the city. During her administration, a rampage of pro-Palestinian protestors blocked the entrance at Mount Sinai Hospital, and Jewish schools and synagogues have come under gunfire.
What caused this antisemitic surge? Islamists and far-left radicals. The Muslim Brotherhood is alive in Canada with its aim to eradicate Jews and Christians.
In 1988, Toronto hosted the Group of Seven Summit with leaders from around the world. Then Mayor Art Eggleton appointed me co-chair of the Toronto Preparatory Committee where I liaised with Royal Canadian Mounted Police and then-Police Chief Bill Blair. More protesters were arrested in the four days of the summit than from all the violent, anti-Jewish protests that have taken place in Toronto since Oct. 7. Police today are overworked and underfunded.
Chow fails to protect Jews or curb antisemitic protests. No doubt there is a correlation between the lack of movement on fighting Jew-hatred and the overall criminal spike in Toronto that is affecting the entire city. She is the uncrowned queen of lawlessness, the modern Ninevah. Violence against Jews begets violence against all citizens. The cost of crime is Chow’s latest tax on all taxpayers.
Appeasement erodes democracy, and that’s what we are witnessing today in Toronto and across Canada.
My father, a wounded war veteran in the Polish War of Independence, who received an award for gallantry, fell in love with my mother and settled in London, Ontario, in 1930. During World War II, he would pour over the London [Ontario] Free Press, pointing out where Canadians gave their lives for liberty. My brain was branded with Canada’s love of liberty. Today, I live with high expectations that the Canada my father loved will re-emerge.
