By Jerry Grafstein, JNS
In 2024, they made up about 14% of Canada’s active Armed Forces, even though they represent less than 1% of the country’s population.
Per capita, Canada has become a leader in antisemitic incidents in the Western world. An antisemitic incident takes place 1.4 hours every day, according to police statistics.
Jews have been central to the origins and development of the country since the 16th century in every part of Canada. Yet their contributions have often been overlooked and neglected.
On Nov. 1, 1697, King William III of England issued a Royal Proclamation granting Joseph la Penha, a Jewish sea captain who defended the English coast off Dunkirk, all rights to Labrador in perpetuity for his distinguished service protecting England. His descendants believe that he helped establish a Jewish community of artisans to improve the economic prospects on that desolate, unoccupied land.
The oldest fort in North America—Fort Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island, established in 1713—had a street called “Jews Street.
In 1739, Britain encouraged Jews to settle in British North America by a statute that offered them citizenship to a degree not enjoyed by those in the colonies who were not Anglicans or even by Jews in England itself.
Jews were among the founders of Halifax in 1749, when Britain moved the government offices on its “Acadian Peninsula” from Port Royal to its new settlement. In the “Halifax Allotment” of grants of building lots, three of the first 10 names on the list were of Jewish settlers.
Jews were continuous inhabitants of Nova Scotia from 1749 to the present. They were among the British forces that landed in Quebec in 1759, with Maj. Gen. James Wolfe changed the ownership of the colony of the Province from France to Britain.
In 1761, a consortium of five Jewish fur traders moved from Albany, N.Y., to Montreal in Quebec. They were instrumental not only in filling the void left by the departing French Empire, but relying on Métis cooperation and organizing the Great Lakes fur trade (then known as “the Upper Country”) as the model for what was the first of Canada’s transcontinental trade systems.
In 1768, John Franks, who had settled in the Town of Quebec, was appointed to a high office normally reserved for members of the Church of England, by swearing an Oath of Allegiance on the basis of the 1739 statute the substitution of the words “on the true faith of a Jew” instead of the usual “on the true faith of a Christian.”
Aaron Hart, a Jew who had settled with his family in Three Rivers shortly after 1760, was appointed as its postmaster in 1763. Three Rivers, or in French Trois Rivières, was one of the three towns in Quebec at the time. It now has a Chabad House.
Simon Solomon was appointed the first postmaster of Newfoundland in 1805.
Ezekiel Hart, born in Trois Rivières in 1770 to Aaron and Dorothea Hart, was elected by the voters to the Assembly of Lower Canada in 1807, only to refuse the offer, refusing to make an oath as a Christian. Elected again in 1808, he was again not seated, as the majority in the Lower Canada Assembly refused to allow him to amend the oath. After failing to take office in Lower Canada, he served in the War of 1812 against the Americans, later becoming the colonel of his regiment in 1830.
Several Jews served with distinction in the War of 1812. The efforts of John Franks, a fur trader at the Sault, played a major role in winning the first battle of the war. Others were officers, among them the David brothers, Moses of Sandwich (now Windsor), Upper Canada, David and Samuel of Montreal, Lower Canada.
George Benjamin, who founded the Belleville Intelligencer in Upper Canada in 1832, was appointed in 1847 as Warden of Victoria District, which included Belleville. In 1850, he was elected Reeve of Hungerford Township -the first Jew to be elected as reeve or mayor of any Canadian municipality. In 1851, he was elected Warden of Hastings County, which had been divided from the Victoria District, and as a culmination, in October 1856, George Benjamin was elected to the Assembly of Lower Canada representing the riding of North Hastings, thereby becoming the first Jew to be elected to a Canadian Parliament.
Benjamin was followed shortly after by Selim Franklin, who was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Vancouver Island in 1860. His brother, Lumley Franklin, became Victoria’s second mayor in 1866.
William Hyman, a Jew, was mayor of Cap-des-Rosiers in the Gaspé Peninsula from 1858 to 1892.
In 1871, Henry Nathan Jr. was the first Jew elected as a Member of Parliament of Canada after Confederation. Before that, he was elected and served as mayor of Vancouver.
The founder of the Métis Nation, Louis Riel, is reported to have called himself a Jew in the 1860s. By 1868, Victoria’s Jewish population, with 200-plus people, was the largest in Western Canada. They helped develop both Victoria and Vancouver.
More than 35 Jewish farming colonies were established across the Canadian prairies between 1884 and 1912.
By the year 2025, there will have been more than 120 Jews who have served as mayors or reeves in Canadian municipalities, particularly in Western Canada.
More Jews per capita than any other group served in the Canadian Armed Services in World War I and World War II, winning more distinguished awards for bravery than any other group.
In 1950, Fanny “Bobbi” Rosenfeld, a Jewish immigrant from the Russian Empire, brought up in Barrie, Ontario, began to excel in many sports, including women’s softball, basketball, hockey, and track and field, where she set numerous Canadian records. In 1928, she attended the Olympics in Amsterdam and won a gold medal and a silver medal in track and field for Canada. In 1950, she was awarded the top woman athlete in Canada for the first half of the 20th century.
In 2024, Jews, who make up less than 1% of the population, made up about 14% of Canada’s active Armed Forces.
Jews have always contributed to medicine, science and the arts in Canada (especially in music, theatre, sculpture, poetry, comedy and film), well out of proportion to their per capita number.
The ideal of how Canada was developing was expressed by Hon. Joseph Curran Morrison, M.P., in a speech to the Parliament of the Province of Canada on July 24, 1851. He said that Canada is “peopled as it is with persons from all creeds and from all nations and equally entitled to the favour and protection of the Government.”
The puzzling question is why Canadian history has neglected the Jewish fact in Canada, or perhaps willfully ignored Jewish contribution in every aspect of civil society. They are among its founders and deserve to be treated as such.
