Renowned Jewish Canadian historian Irving Abella spoke about the Jewish Canadian experience from the 1800s to modern day in a lecture at McGill on Thursday, January 25, organized by the Jewish Studies Students Association.
Abella began his 2-hour lecture by reminding the predominately Jewish audience that racism and bigotry is not unique to European history, but is part of Canada’s past, as well. While many view Canada as a country that has always been available to the masses of refugees Abella’s research shows this is not so.
Currently a professor at York University in Toronto, Abella taught for a year at McGill, and also served from 1992 to 1995 as the president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
In fact, Canada’s past immigration policies were “racist and exclusionary,” and Jews were at the bottom of the list of preferred immigrants to the country. In the past, the fact that the Canadian Cabinet did not hold a ministerial position for immigration shows how little respect was given to the issue, she said. Bureaucrats, who essentially carried out the functions of an immigration minister, aimed to “keep the doors of Canada as tightly closed as they could.” The “legally sanctioned discrimination” in Canada was not helpful to the “doomed Jews of Europe seeking to escape” during WWII, Abella explained. He said the rise of anti-Semitism surrounding World War II did not quell in Canada until the creation of Israel in 1948.
Abella outlined numerous differences between Canadian and American Jews. In Canada today, there are more Holocaust survivors than in the States; Canadian Jews are more philanthropic than Americans, more like to travel to Israel, more likely to send their children to day school, and less likely to assimilate. Canada has fewer Jews in the political sphere than the States, with a smaller number of Jewish cabinet ministers in Canada than America.
When his best-known book, titled None is too Many was published in 1983 in Canada, the story of Jewish immigration to Canada — or lack thereof — hadn’t received much academic attention. After the lecture, during the question and answer period, Abella was asked if he faced any criticisms from the media upon the publication of the book. He said that it was received warmly, except in Quebec, where Laval University students wanted to know why he was bringing up something that had already occurred in the past.