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 20, 2017: Threats and attacks can also bring us together in solidarity

By Michael Regenstreif

I’m writing this column in the Ottawa Jewish Bulletin office, which is located within the Soloway Jewish Community Centre (SJCC). I also attend programs at the SJCC and swim in the pool. In other words, I spend a lot of time in the building.

The SJCC is a welcoming place. It really is my second home, and I enjoy coming here almost every day – despite levels of security that are much tighter than when I started here almost a decade ago. The front doors are locked now, and SJCC members and staff swipe their membership cards in barcode readers to enter the building. Non-members are buzzed in after showing photo ID and telling the front desk staff the reason for their visit. Uniformed security guards are always on duty, and there are cameras in strategic locations throughout the Jewish Community Campus.

Even though the security is tighter than it used to be, the security measures are handled in a welcoming and friendly manner, so the experience of coming to the building is not really very different than it was 10 years ago.

The need for these security measures has been painfully obvious in recent months.

In November, there was a rash of antisemitic, racist and Islamophobic graffiti attacks in Ottawa that targeted four Jewish locations – including a building here on the Jewish Community Campus, two synagogues, and a private home used as a prayer and study centre – as well as a church, where the minister and many of the parishioners are African Canadian, and a mosque.

(One person was responsible for all of those graffiti attacks and he was apprehended in large part thanks to security measures in place here on the Jewish Community Campus.)

And, since January, there have been more than 120 bomb threats called and emailed to Jewish institutions in North America – mostly to JCCs, but also to Jewish day schools and offices of Jewish organizations. While the vast majority of the bomb threats have been at JCCs in the U.S., there have been several here in Canada. One that hit particularly close to home for me was the bomb threat at the JCC of Greater Vancouver, a JCC where I spent much time during the four years I lived in Vancouver as a kid, and have visited on numerous occasions since.

All of the bomb threats to date – this column is being written on March 10 – have been hoaxes. Although there have been no real bombs, and no one has been physically harmed and no property has been damaged, we can’t become complacent and treat a bomb threat as routine. Each must be taken seriously in co-operation with law enforcement officials. These bomb threat hoaxes are affecting the Jewish community. A JTA article on pages 1 and 2 of this issue discusses – among other things – the effect of bomb scare evacuations on very young children. Jewish institutions are reviewing security procedures, and the effects of publicly manifested antisemitism are many. And, to be sure, these bomb threat hoaxes are antisemitic in their intent.

Recent manifestations of antismitism have not been limited to bomb threat hoaxes. I’ve mentioned the graffiti attacks we experienced here in Ottawa, and there have been other communities where similar attacks have taken place. Great numbers of tombstones have been overturned at several Jewish cemeteries in the U.S. A bullet was fi red into a (thankfully unoccupied) Hebrew school classroom in a synagogue in Indiana, and many Jewish journalists have been subjected to vicious antisemitic social media campaigns after writing critically about the new president of the United States.

The intent of all of these antisemitic incidents – and you can say the say the same for other forms of racism and bigotry – is to instil fear and insecurity. Sadly, and understandably, many people do become fearful in response.

One of the consequences of these incidents is that they can embolden bigots to act on their prejudices. At this point, we don’t know who is responsible for the vast majority of the recent bomb threats. Is it one person? Is it a small group acting in concert? Or is it a bunch of copycats taking inspiration from previous threats? So far, only one man, linked to eight bomb threats in the U.S., has been arrested – and law enforcement has determined that he was a copycat who had nothing to do with the vast majority of the incidents.

But these antisemitic incidents can also have unintended consequences. One consequence that perpetrators don’t intend is that they bring people and communities together. Those graffiti attacks here in Ottawa resulted in people from different faith and cultural communities gathering together in solidarity.

Political leaders at all levels of government and from across the ideological spectrum have expressed their support for communities under attack and, as Barbara Crook notes in her My Israel column, desecrations at Jewish cemeteries in the U.S. spurred a successful fundraising campaign in the Muslim community to help repair the damages.

To be sure, attacks or threats aimed at intimidating or preventing the full participation in society of any religious, racial or cultural community, is an attack or threat aimed at all of us. But to see individuals and communities responding in solidarity is inspiring.