Millions of Diaspora Jews owe a huge debt of gratitude to Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the Jewish magnate, banker and philanthropist who built the Orient Express railroad from Vienna to Constantinople, for assisting our Russian ancestors to reach the United States, Canada, Argentina and other hospitable shores. According to his biographer, Samuel J. Lee, Hirsch…
Tag: anti-semitism
Insurers promise to treat Jew and Gentile alike (1931)
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From the Toronto Star, April 29, 1931 Jews and Gentiles will have their automobile insurance risks underwritten on exactly the same terms by 85 per cent of the automobile insurance companies in Ontario, it was announced last night by E. Fred Singer, K.C., M.P.P. (St Andrews). The information came as a result of a questionnaire…
Saturday Night casts a low eye upon the Jew, 1904
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◊ Saturday Night, the staunch Canadian magazine, did us a service by preserving in prose the naïve, native prejudicial stereotype of the day. This article from 1904 paints a disgustingly dark portrait of the ugly foreigner, particularly the Jew, who was then collectively making Toronto a cosmopolitan city for the first time. Anti-semitic in its purest…
Rabbi Schild’s memoir of an ‘uncertain passage’
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From Books in Canada, 2002 One evening some months ago, a crowd of about 600 people gathered in Toronto’s Adath Israel Synagogue for the launch of Rabbi Erwin Schild’s latest book, The Very Narrow Bridge: A Memoir of an Uncertain Passage. The hall in the synagogue was packed (standing room only) as the rabbi delivered…
Furor over United Church pastor-editor (1969)
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Can’t See the Forrest for the Trees Editor’s note: In July 2012 the United Church of Canada is considering a boycott of Israeli goods, a proposal that nine Canadian senators have condemned. This is only further evidence that, when it comes to relations with Israel and the Jews, the Church has had a long and…
Publisher has strong ideological mission
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Nearly a decade after he founded a publishing company with a strong ideological mission, Howard Rotberg may take his place among that small and proud group of Canadians who operate successful small publishing houses. Although Mantua Books started off slowly, it now publishes one new title each month. Some of the books sell tens of…
Passover 1911: Assailing yacht club prejudice
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In the spring of 1911, just before Easter and Passover, members of the Toronto’s Queen City Yacht Club considered a motion to exclude “Jews, negroes and people of other undesirable nationalities” from becoming members. This article focuses on Rabbi Solomon Jacobs’s response, which he articulated in a rousing sermon in Holy Blossom Synagogue during the…
Jew-baiting goes on in Victoria Street
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In this brief item, which appeared in the Toronto Star of October 28, 1910, a woman is brought into police court in connection with an episode in which she came to the defense of a Jewish mother and daughter who were being “stoned” on Victoria Street. Such incidents were certainly not unique in the Toronto…
B’nai Brith Toronto Lodge was founded 1919
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The Toronto Lodge of B’nai Brith was founded 1919 and had as many as 2,400 members in its heyday in 1948, according to a Canadian Jewish News article on March 27, 1980, marking the Lodge’s 60th anniversary. Sixty-eight Jews banded together to form Toronto Lodge of B’nai Brith in 1919, and one of them was…
Wartime anti-semitic Iron Guard active in Ontario
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“Look at Judah’s claws, deeply penetrating my body! Look how my blood is running, look how the Jews are drinking it!” These are lyrics to a song. They were excerpted from a songbook found at Romanian Camp, a 50-acre compound in Flamborough, Ontario, outside Hamilton, where a group of sympathizers of the Iron Guard —…
