History of the Jews in Canada
Encyclopedia : H : HI : HIS : History of the Jews in Canada
Canada has the world's fourth-largest Jewish population.[#endnote_jppistudy] According to the Canada 2001 Census, there are about 351,000 Jews currently living in Canada. The true number may, though, well be over 400,000 persons (2004 estimates).
Though a small minority, Jews have been important in shaping Canadian culture and identity and have had an open presence in the country since the arrival of the first Jewish immigrants after the British Empire took possession of nearly all of New France after the 1763 Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years' War.
Early history (1760-1850)
Before 1760, there were officially no Jews in New France because when King Louis XIV made Canada officially a province of the Kingdom of France in 1663, he decreed that only Roman Catholics could enter the colony. The earliest documentation of Jews in Canada are British Army records from the French and Indian War, the North American part of the Seven Years' War. In 1760, General Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst attacked and seized Montreal, winning Canada for the British. Several Jews were members of his regiments, and among his officer corps were four Jews: Emmanuel de Cordova, Aaron Hart, Hananiel Garcia, and Isaac Miramer.The most prominent of the four was Lieutenant Aaron Hart, who after his service in the army had ended, settled in Trois-Rivières. Eventually he became a very wealthy landowner. He had four sons, Moses, Benjamin, Ezekiel and Alexander, all of whom would become prominent in Montreal and help build the Jewish Community. One of his sons, Ezekiel Hart, was elected to the legislature of Lower Canada in the by-election of April 11, 1807, becoming the first Jew in an official opposition in the British Empire. When he was sworn into office, he took the oath on the Hebrew Bible instead of on the Christian Bible. The Protestant population of Upper and Lower Canada was outraged and Ezekiel was expelled from the legislature. Sir James Henry Craig, Governor-General of Lower Canada at the time, dismissed Hart from the legislature in both 1808 and 1809. E. Hart's French constituents saw this as an attempt of the British to undermine their role in Canada. They protested this so fiercely that Ezekiel was eventually reinstated to his office.
Revolts and protests soon began calling for responsible government in Canada. The law requiring the oath "on my faith as a Christian" was amended in 1829 to provide for Jews to not take the oath. In 1831, male Jews were extended full political and religious rights, the first colony to do so in the Commonwealth and 25 years earlier than England.
Most of the early Jewish Canadians were either fur traders or served in the British Army troops. A few were merchants or landowners. Although Montreal's Jewish community was small, numbering only around 200, they built in 1768 Canada's first synagogue, Shearith Israel. In 1832, partly because of the work of Ezekiel Hart, a law was passed that guaranteed Jews the same political rights and freedoms as Christians. In the early 1830s, German Jew Samuel Liebshitz founded Jewsburg (subsequently renamed German Mills), a village near Markham in Upper Canada. By 1850, there were still only 450 Jews living in Canada, mostly concentrated in Montreal.
The first Jew known to have resided in Quebec was Abraham Jacob Franks, who settled there in 1767. His son, David Salesby (or Salisbury) Franks, who afterward became head of the Montreal Jewish community and an officer in the Continental Army, also lived in Quebec prior to 1774. Abraham Joseph, who was long a prominent figure in public affairs in Quebec, took up his residence there shortly after his father's death in 1832. Quebec's Jewish population for many years remained very small, and early efforts at organization were fitful and short-lived. A cemetery was acquired in 1853, and a place of worship was opened in a hall in the same year, in which services were held intermittently; but it was not until 1892 that the Jewish population of Quebec had sufficiently augmented to permit of the permanent establishment of the present synagogue, Beth Israel. The congregation was granted the right of keeping a register in 1897. Other communal institutions were the Quebec Hebrew Sick Benefit Association, the Quebec Hebrew Relief Association for Immigrants, and the Quebec Zionist Society. By 1905, the Jewish population was about 350, in a total population of 68,834.
Growth of the Canadian Jewish community (1850-1939)
-->However, with the beginning of the pogroms of Russia in the 1880s, and continuing through the growing anti-Semitism of the early 20th century, millions of Jews began to flee the Pale of Settlement and other areas of Eastern Europe for the West. Although the United States received the overwhelming majority of these emigrants, Canada was also a destination of choice due to Government of Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway efforts to develop Canada after Confederation. Between 1880 and 1930, the Jewish population of Canada grew to over 155,000.
Jewish immigrants brought a tradition of establishing a communal body, called a kehillah to look after the social and welfare needs of their less fortunate. Virtually all of these Jewish refugees were very poor. Wealthy Jewish philanthropists, who had come to Canada much earlier, felt it was their social responsibility to help their fellow Jews get established in this new country. One such man was Abraham De Sola, who founded the Hebrew Philanthropic Society. In Montreal and Toronto, there developed a wide range of communal organizations and groups. Recently arrived immigrant Jews also founded landsmenschaften, guilds of people who came originally from the same village.
Most of these immigrants established communities in the larger cities. Canada’s first ever census, recorded that in 1871 there were 1,115 Jews in Canada; 409 in Montreal, 157 in Toronto, 131 in Hamilton and the rest were dispersed in small communities along the St. Lawrence River. There was also a community of about 100 that settled in Victoria, British Columbia to open shops to supply prospectors during the Cariboo Gold Rush (and later the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon). This led to the opening of a synagogue in Victoria, British Columbia in 1862.
When British Columbia sent their delegation to Ottawa to agree on the colony’s entry into Confederation, a Jew, Henry Nathan, Jr., was among them. Nathan eventually became the first Canadian Jewish Member of Parliament. By 1911, there were Jewish communities in all of Canada's major cities.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, several attempts were made to establish Jewish farming settlements on the prairies. However, few of the colonies did very well. This was partly because, the Jews of East European origin were not allowed to own farms in the old country, and thus had little experience in farming. One settlement that did do well was Yid'n Bridge, Saskatchewan. The people who started this town were from South Africa and had been farmers there. Eventually the community grew larger as the South African Jews invited the Jewish families originally from Europe to join them. The settlement was such a success that eventually it became a large town. The name of the city was later changed to the Anglicized name of Edenbridge.
At this time, most of the Jewish Canadians in the west were either storekeepers or tradesmen. Many set up shops on the new rail lines, selling goods and supplies to the construction workers, many of whom were also Jewish. Later, because of the railway, some of these homesteads grew into prosperous towns. At this time, Canadian Jews also had important roles in developing the west coast fishing industry, while others worked on building telegraph lines. Some, descended from the earliest Canadian Jews, stayed true to their ancestors as fur trappers. The first major Jewish organization to appear was B'nai Brith. Till today B'nai Brith Canada is the community's independent advocacy and social service organization.
By the outbreak of World War I, there were approximately 100,000 Canadian Jews, of whom three-quarters lived in either Montreal or Toronto. Many of the children of the European refugees started out as peddlers, eventually working their way up to established businesses, such as retailers and wholesalers. Jewish Canadians played an essential role in the development of the Canadian clothing and textile industry. Most worked as labourers in sweatshops; while some owned the manufacturing facilities. Jewish merchants and labourers spread out from the cities to small towns, building synagogues, community centres and schools as they went.
As the population grew, Canadian Jews began to organize themselves as a community despite the presence of dozens of competing sects. The Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) was founded in 1919 as the result of the merger of several smaller organizations. The purpose of the CJC was to speak on behalf of the common interests of Jewish Canadians and assist immigrant Jews. The First World War halted the flow of all immigrants to Canada, and after the war there was a change in Canada's immigration policy. It restricted the people who were allowed to immigrate to Canada: people from "non-preferred nations", i.e., those not from the United Kingdom or otherwise White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, found it extremely difficult to gain admission to Canada. The 50,000 Jews who moved to Canada during the inter-war years were almost exclusively from Great Britain and the United States.
As a response to the unemployment created by the Great Depression, the Canadian Government imposed even more severe restrictions on immigration in 1930. Racial and religious prejudice was still an all too common feature of Canadian society and Prime Minister Mackenzie King's cabinet. When Samuel Bronfman became president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, he worked nonstop along with the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (a social democratic political party) to make Canada a refuge for the increasingly desperate Jews of Europe.
World War II (1939-1945)
Despite mass demonstrations throughout the depression and war years, like most other Western nations, Canada denied entrance of Jews to the country. Canada took in proportionately fewer Jews than other western countries before and during the Holocaust. Between 1933 and 1945, only five thousand Jews were allowed into Canada. Tens of thousands of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust might have escaped safely to Canada if it was not for the politicians at the time. Almost twenty thousand Jewish Canadians volunteered to fight for Canada during the Second World War. B'nai Brith organized military cadet groups.Post war (1945-)
After the war, Canada liberalized its immigration policy. Roughly 40,000 Holocaust survivors came during the late 1940s, hoping to rebuild their shattered lives. Later in the 1950s, tens of thousands of Jews left French colonial North Africa, as those countries sought independence from France. Most of these Jews, moved to Montreal and Quebec City, where their French language helped them quickly adapt. (Two of the most beloved culinary traditions of Montreal - Montreal smoked meat and Montreal bagels - were brought by Jews at this time.) From 1941 to 1961, the population of Jewish Canadians grew from 170,000 to 260,000.Unlike in previous generations, the Canadian Jewish peoples of the postwar period became more integrated into Canadian life. The breakthrough for all minorities and all the people of Canada came when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau introduced the 1971 federal policy of Multiculturalism. Later, this policy was integrated into the Canadian Constitution.
Jewish Canadians today
Today the Jewish culture in Canada is maintained by both practising Jews and those who choose not to practice the religion. Nearly all Jews in Canada speak one of the two official languages, although most speak English over French (even those who live in Quebec). There is also an increasing large number who speak Hebrew, other than for religious ceremonies, while a few keep the Yiddish language alive.Canada is now home to the fourth largest Jewish community in the world, less than the United States, Israel or France, but more than Russia or the United Kingdom.[#endnote_jppistudy] Most of Canada's Jews live in Ontario and Quebec, followed by Manitoba, British Columbia and Alberta. While Toronto is the largest Jewish population centre, Montreal played this role until many Jewish Canadians left for Toronto, fearing that Quebec might leave the federation following the rise during the 1970s of nationalist political parties in Quebec. Presently, 175,000 Jews live in Toronto, 80,000 in Montreal, 30,000 in Vancouver, 15,000 in Winnipeg, 12,000 in Ottawa, 7,500 in Calgary, 5,000 in both Edmonton and Hamilton, and 500 in each of Saskatoon and Regina.
Canadian Jews are generally more religious than those in the United States. Of those who are religious, about 40% are Orthodox, 40% Conservative and 20% Reform. Canadian Jews also seem to have lower intermarriage rates than the American Jewish community. The population of Canadian Jews increased by 15% between 1990 and 2000, although due mostly to immigration.
Recently, anti-Semitism has become a growing concern, with reports of anti-semitic incidents increasing sharply over the past two years. This includes the well publicized anti-Semitic comments by David Ahenakew. The League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith monitors the incidents and prepares an annual audit of these events.
Famous Jewish Canadians
See List of Jewish Canadians
Some of Canada's leading figures are Jewish, and many have become household names. Many of Canada's leading scientists, doctors and researchers are Jews. Jewish Canadians have also been important in music and the arts, with many finding success internationally as well as at home. Canadian Jews have also won seats in all of the provincial legislatures, served as mayors of Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg and have been judges in Canadian courts at all levels. In 1970, Bora Laskin became the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, followed by Morris Fish in 2003, Rosalie Abella in 2004, and Marshall Rothstein in 2006. Some famous Canadian Jews who have made important contributions to Canada and the world are Izzy Asper, David Barrett, Leonard Cohen, Irwin Cotler, Victor Goldbloom, Herb Gray, Lorne Greene, Mel Hurtig, Eugene Levy, David Lewis, Stephen Lewis, Peter C. Newman, Mordecai Richler, William Shatner, Joe Shuster, William Weintraub and Moses Znaimer.
Bibliography
- Mercantile Recorder, 1828
- Jacques J. Lyons and Abraham de Sola, Jewish Calendar with Introductory Essay, Montreal, 1854
- Le Bas Canada, Quebec, 1857
- People of Lower Canada, 1860
- The Star (Montreal), Dec. 30, 1893.
References
- Abella, Irving. A Coat of Many Colours. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1990.
- Tulchinsky, Gerald. Taking Root. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1992.
- Godfrey, Sheldon and Godfrey, Judith. Search Out the Land. Montreal: McGill University Press, 1995.
- Leonoff, Cyril. Pioneers, Pedlars and Prayer Shawls: The Jewish Communities in BC and the Yukon. 1978.
- Canada. The Shengold Jewish Encyclopedia. Schreiber: Rockland, Md.: 2001. ISBN 1887563660.
- [Jewish Agency Report on Canada]
See also
External links
Jewish news and information
Jewish organizations
- [Canadian Jewish Council Website]
- [Bnai Brith Canada]
- [Kosher Food Authorities in Canada]
- [List of Synagogues in Canada]
History
Anti-Semitism
- [Perspectives on Racism: Anti-Semitism in Canada]
- [2004 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents in Canada]
- [CBC Toronto News Article: Gravestones damaged in anti-Semitic spree]
Notes
- ↑ Data based on a [study] by Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI).
- ↑ Data based on a [study] by Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI).
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