Jews and French Quebecers by Jacques Langlais

Author:Jacques Langlais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS000000
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Published: 2010-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Nation-Wide Anti-Semitic Propaganda

During this period, many elements of the Canadian press persisted in proclaiming the merits of Hitler and Germany. In the background was an echo of anti-Semitism, which took different forms from one province to another. In the 1930s, for example, Toronto witnessed its Swastika Clubs as well as violence at the beaches and parks; signs bore messages such as “For Gentiles Only” or “No Jews Need Apply” and hotels and clubs catered to “Restricted Clientele.” Manitoba and British Columbia experienced similar phenomena.

Winnipeg had its Whittaker and Toronto its Joseph Farr, a member of Adrien Arcand’s party. A cemetery was desecrated in Kitchener; in Toronto, the Goel Tzedeck synagogue was vandalized.

English Protestantism had its British Israel movement, affiliated with the British Israel Society of England which distributed the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in Canada. On August 29, 1934 M.J. Finkelstein of Winnipeg intervened on behalf of Vancouver’s Jewish community in response to Reverend Springett, the secretary of the movement in Canada:

. . . there is no question in the minds of most of us here that he is strongly anti-semitic. He delivered a lecture here in a packed church to an audience of over two thousand people, and reliable Jewish citizens who were there reported that it was crammed full of anti-semitism along the lines of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.106

Finkelstein went on to report that the Protocols was being sold at a local British Israel bookstore: “In justice, however, to the rank and file of the British Israel Society here, I may state that the majority of them here in Winnipeg are opposed to anti-Semitic propaganda and a good many of them are personally hostile to Mr. Springett’s actions.”107 In 1938 Winnipeg City Council once again protested against this hate propaganda and The Tribune provided some details:

The quantity of propaganda material circulated here and throughout the Dominion — circulated more or less surreptitiously but most persistently— is amazing. Most of it, though not all by any means, is anti-Semitic. Most of it originates in Montreal, though Winnipeg is also responsible for a share of it. It is circulated in such quantities as to suggest that the propaganda has quite extensive financial backing. . . . In origin, much of the material is made up from anti-Jewish, anti-democratic literature issued by the Nazi party in Germany.108

At its first meeting at Toronto in 1934, the Canadian Jewish Congress noted the growing distribution of anti-Semitic propaganda by Hitler sympathizers, as well as the customary social repression that followed in its wake. “There is not a single Jewish school principal or vice-principal in any western Canadian city.”109 The Congress also noted that Jews had been refused admission to nursing schools. In Ontario, a number of qualified Jewish teachers could not find teaching positions in the schools.

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