July 14, 2020: From Charlotte Whitton and Lionel Groulx to Oscar Peterson

By Michael Regenstreif

In the spring of 2011, the City of Ottawa cancelled plans to honour Charlotte Whitton by naming the city’s new archives facility for the first woman in Canada to serve as the mayor of a major city. Whitton was Ottawa’s mayor from 1951 until 1956 and again from 1961 until 1964.

The plan to name the new facility for Whitton was abandoned following a campaign against the move led by the Jewish Federation of Ottawa and the Canadian Jewish Congress (which was soon to be absorbed by the newly restructured Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs) because of Whitton’s antisemitism.

During the Second World War – as millions of Jews were being murdered in the Holocaust – Whitton was director of the Canadian Council on Child Welfare and lobbied the federal government to keep Jewish war orphans out of the country. Later, as mayor of Ottawa in 1964, Whitton refused to accept a $450,000 donation from supermarket chain owner and philanthropist Bertram Loeb to establish a medical research centre at the Ottawa Civic Hospital. “Some observers suspected that Ms. Whitton cringed at the thought of seeing a Jewish name on a city facility,” noted the Globe and Mail in its obituary when Loeb died in 2006. (In 1988, long after Whitton’s death, the Loeb Research Centre opened at the Civic Hospital following a $14 million fundraising campaign spearheaded by Loeb in honour of his parents.)

I was recently reminded of the effort to fight bestowing that honour on Whitton because there is currently a grassroots campaign in Montreal to rename the Lionel-Groulx metro station in honour of legendary jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. An online petition to that effect has currently has more than 22,400 signatures.

Lionel Groulx (1878-1967) was a Catholic priest and historian whose writings on language and Quebec nationalism have influenced Quebec politics for generations. Claude Ryan, the former editor of Le Devoir who was leader of the Quebec Liberal Party from 1978 to 1982 and the province’s minister of education from 1985 to 1989, has referred to Groulx as “the father of modern Quebec.”

However, Groulx, as well documented by historian Esther Delisle in her 1993 book, The Traitor and the Jew: Anti-Semitism and the Delirium of Extremist Right-Wing Nationalism in French Canada from 1929–1939, was an unrepentant antisemite. Delisle found hundreds of antisemitic and pro-fascist quotations attributed to Groulx during the period in question, many of them from articles he wrote under verified pseudonyms. Groulx’s antisemitism persisted well after the period of Delisle’s book. For example, in an article about the current effort to rename the metro station, the Globe and Mail notes that Groulx in 1954, wrote that Jews have a hunger for money which he described as “an often monstrous passion which lacks all scruples.” A counter-petition by Groulx loyalists who want to retain the station’s name has received over 10,600 signatures.

I lived in Montreal until I moved to Ottawa in 2007 to work at the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin and (notwithstanding restricted travel during the COVID-19 pandemic) I return there frequently. As a metro user, I have passed through the Lionel-Groulx station countless times over the years (it’s one of the two transfer points between the metro’s two most important lines) and every time I’m in that station I am reminded of Groulx’s antisemitism and the influence it had on Quebec society. So, changing the name of the station is something I strongly support.

This current campaign is at least the third effort to change the name of the Lionel-Groulx station. In 1990s, after the revelations published in Delisle’s book, Jewish community activists unsuccessfully petitioned the city to change the station’s name. And a previous effort to change the name to honour Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) was launched after his death.

Peterson would be a most-worthy figure to honour with the name of the metro station. Peterson, who I would argue was Canada’s most significant jazz musician – for that matter, one of the world’s greatest – grew up in the very neighbourhood where the station is located (while Groulx had no connection to the area). I had the opportunity to see Peterson perform numerous times over the years – he was always brilliant – and I still enjoy his many recordings.

It’s also worth noting that although visible minorities comprise 31 per cent of Montreal’s population, not one of the city’s metro station’s bears the name of a person from a visible minority background. Renaming the station for Peterson, a celebrated Black Canadian, would begin to address that failing.

The Jewish community was right, almost a decade ago, to fight the City of Ottawa’s efforts to honour a historically-important former mayor because of her antisemitism. In many ways, it was about the soul of the city. And now, the campaign to rename a Montreal metro station to honour a most-worthy Montreal musician rather than the most influential Quebec antisemite of his era, is also very much about the soul of that city.

February 24, 2020: IHRA definition of antisemitism needed

By Michael Regenstreif

Last June, the federal government adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism as a component of its anti-racism strategy. At the time, Canada was the 17th country to adopt the definition.

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) – the advocacy agent for Jewish federations in Canada, including the Jewish Federation of Ottawa – has been encouraging provincial and municipal governments across the country to endorse and adopt the IHRA definition as well.

In an era when, sadly, antisemitism and antisemitic hate crimes are on the rise, it is important to have a common definition of antisemitism that can guide law enforcement officials, the courts, the educational system, and all of us. The IHRA definition does that by defining both classic antisemitism and pointing out examples of how criticism of the State of Israel can and does cross the line into antisemitism. However, the IHRA definition of antisemitism explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

The line is crossed, though, by “applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” or “using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis,” or “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis,” or “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

In other words, criticism of specific Israeli government policies or Israeli politicians are as legitimate as criticism of specific Canadian or American policies. For example, as I write, environmental protest actions by several Indigenous nations in Canada have stopped Via Rail service across the country and it is not anti-Canadian to criticize the government on how it has handled the protests or even how it has handled the totality of relations – and reconciliation – with Canada’s Indigenous peoples. But it would be anti-Canadian to say that Canada has no right or legitimacy to exist as a country because of how it has acted on the protests specifically, or even on Indigenous relations generally.

Bill 168, a private member’s bill introduced by Ontario Conservative MPP Will Bouma, would make Ontario the first province to adopt the IHRA definition. The bill passed first reading at Queen’s Park two months ago and is now at committee.

At the municipal level, few cities have yet taken any action on adopting the IHRA definition. On January 28, the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the city of Vaughan, a Toronto-area suburb became the first city in Canada to adopt the definition.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a motion was presented at Montreal’s city council calling for the city to adopt the IHRA definition. The motion was presented by Councillor Lionel Perez, an observant Jew, who told the Canadian Jewish News that he “believes the city should take this position because of the increase in hate crimes against Jews.”

However, when the matter came before the city council, Perez withdrew the motion when Mayor Valèrie Plante said defining antisemitism was “far from a black and white issue” and suggested sending the issue of antisemitism to a council committee which could devise a “Montreal model” to define antisemitism.

The following week there was no such hesitation when the city council of Westmount – the suburb next to downtown Montreal where I lived for 27 years before moving to Ottawa in 2007 – unanimously adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

I hope Ottawa City Council will also soon act to adopt the IHRA definition.

March 9, 2015: Canada takes a strong stand against global rise of antisemitism

By Michael Regenstreif

There were a couple of disturbing stories out of Montreal late last month as we worked on this issue of the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin. The first involved a swastika attack, February 23, on four cars in the garage of an apartment building in the west end neighbourhood of Notre Dame de Grâce – more popularly known by its initials, NDG – an area and building with many Jewish residents. Not only were the cars defaced by crudely painted Nazi swastikas, envelopes were left at the scene with single bullets and the message, “You Will Die.”

“This was not just an act of simple vandalism, but a crime targeting the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Reuben Poupko, speaking on behalf of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

To their credit, Montreal police are investigating the attack as the hate crime it clearly was – at press time, there had yet to be any arrests – and Quebec’s provincial legislature, the National Assembly, unanimously passed a motion condemning the crime.

Incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise globally in recent months, most spectacularly in Europe where four Jewish shoppers were murdered in a terrorist attack on a kosher supermarket in a Paris suburb and a Jewish volunteer guard was murdered outside a synagogue in Copenhagen.

In Ottawa, this rise in global antisemitism has not gone unnoticed by our political leaders. On February 24, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion condemning the “alarming increase in antisemitism worldwide,” noting “the firebombing of synagogues and community centres, the vandalizing of Jewish memorials and cemeteries, incendiary calls for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people, and anti-Jewish terror.”

The motion, which followed a four-hour discussion introduced by Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney and Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, a former justice minister, noted, “This global antisemitism constitutes not only a threat to Jews but an assault on our shared democratic values and our common humanity.”

Our parliamentarians also recognized the role of delegitimization efforts against the State of Israel in promoting antisemitism by reaffirming the statement in the 2010 Ottawa Protocol on Combating antisemitism that “criticism of Israel is not antisemitic, and saying so is wrong. But singling Israel out for selective condemnation and opprobrium – let alone denying its right to exist or seeking its destruction – is discriminatory and hateful, and not saying so is dishonest.”

The other disturbing story from Montreal involved Judge Eliana Marengo of the Quebec Court refusing to hear the case of Rania El-Alloul, who was trying to get her impounded car returned, because she was wearing a hijab, the headscarf worn by many Muslim women.

“Decorum is important. Hats and sunglasses, for example, are not allowed, and I don’t see why scarves on the head would be. The same rules need to be applied to everyone,” the judge explained.

While the appropriateness of the niqab – which covers the face – may be debatable in court proceedings, there is nothing about a hijab, which does not cover the face or hide a person’s identity in any way, that should have been called into question. So far as I know, this was the first time a judge in Canada has made such a ruling.

From this judge’s statement, a Sikh wearing a turban or a Jew wearing a kippah would be similarly barred from court. This should not be an issue in our multicultural society.