Sam Margolis

Sokoloff releases new album

Recorded in Nashville, Carol Sokoloff’s latest album, Change in the Weather, went live on several streaming platforms in late May and the CD was launched to a packed house at the Coda in Victoria on May 30. (photo from Carol Sokoloff)

Recorded in Nashville, Carol Sokoloff’s latest album, Change in the Weather, went live on several streaming platforms in late May and the CD was launched to a packed house at the Coda in Victoria on May 30. The album represents a new musical direction for Sokoloff, who has played everything from folk rock to children’s music, jazz to new age and devotional, to musical theatre.

“Change in the Weather offers a collection of engaging, affirmative, original songs, reflecting various moods and places or stations on my songwriting journey,” Sokoloff told the Independent. “The title song evokes the optimism of spring but also hints at the changing undercurrents of the times we have lived through.”

Among the other songs are the rocking anthem “Free Spirits,” the honky-tonk dance tune “Sweet Wind” (an anniversary present to her husband), the “Hotel California”-flavoured “You Can Lead a Horse to Water,” the Gordon Lightfoot-inspired “That Sound” and the Dylanesque ramble “Walk Together Again.”

Of the time in Nashville, Sokoloff said, “The experience more or less blew my mind. It all happened so quickly and easily, and the result was so professional and engaging that I was immediately hooked and wanted to come back and record more songs.”

She praised the seasoned Nashville musicians featured on the album, led by Eli Beaird, an Academy of Country Music award nominee. The CD highlights the musicianship of players on acoustic and electric guitar, pedal steel, keyboard, drums and bass, all of whom have performed on recordings of top country stars, such as Shania Twain, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton and Tim McGraw.

Sokoloff’s musical roots go back to her early days in Toronto, where she was exposed to all types of genres: classical, musical theatre and singers like Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Sammy Davis Jr.

“My two older sisters studied piano and, at 4 years of age, I demanded to also take lessons. I learned left from right at the piano keyboard,” she said.

Singing, too, was part of her daily life. With her sisters and father, who had “a powerful, magnetic voice,” said Sokoloff, they often sang multi-part harmony. Her older sisters introduced her to various types of music, including rock and roll and folk music. A guitar found its way into the house, and Sokoloff used her babysitting money to learn how to play it.

“By 15, I was writing songs. I’d been writing poetry, and guitar gave me a way of writing, singing and playing my own songs,” she said.

As a university student, Sokoloff created and performed music for several theatre productions, including at the University of Manchester, England, while a visiting student. She later worked in Toronto theatres and freelanced for CBC Radio, where she gravitated to music-related topics, such as a 90-minute documentary on composer Harold Arlen.

A hankering to go west took hold in the 1980s. First, to a communications job at the Banff Centre, where she was exposed to vocal jazz by singer Jay Clayton, who invited Sokoloff to the final session of her workshop.

“I was enthralled,” Sokoloff recalled. “In 1986, I moved to Victoria and raised children with my husband, poet and playwright Richard Olafson, publisher of Ekstasis Editions. We had met in Banff, drawn together by mutual interest in poetry and theatre.”

In Victoria, she purchased an old piano, hoping to approach the instrument in a different, more improvisatory way, not reliant on reading and memorizing sheet music. For 20 years, she studied with local jazz musician George Essihos.

“I was privileged to study with him,” Sokoloff said. “The understanding of jazz harmony gained enabled me to start writing songs in the style of the great songwriters of the American Songbook standards. At the same time, I realized my greatest interest was in singing my own and others’ songs, with piano a way to accompany myself.”

Sokoloff sang in and then took over the artistic direction of Victoria’s Jewish Community Choir, which gave her the opportunity to arrange and compose choral and prayer music, such as “Lament for Kristallnacht” and a version of “Adon Olam.”

“The choir performed songs I had written, including ‘The Music of the Earth,’ ‘Together and Free’ and a choral version of Karel Roessingh’s ‘Cedars,’ featuring my lyrics,” she said.

At the launch of Change in the Weather, Sokoloff performed with a new group of musicians, the Island Dream Band, which features Sokoloff (rhythm guitar and vocals), Chris Coey (lead guitar), Alex Olson (bass), Martina Peladeau (flute), Dave Pretty (drums) and Kenny Seidman (piano).

Over the summer, Sokoloff is sharing the music widely throughout Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland. In the fall, she wants to return to Nashville to complete a second album, which is two-thirds recorded.

“I’m excited by this next batch of songs, which features an old country-style ballad as well as some jazz tunes given an infectious Nashville treatment,” she said.

Additionally, Sokoloff, who has written several books of poetry, will release a middle-grade novel, Kayla’s Song, based on her experience as a girl who loved songs and singing. It is scheduled to come out this fall.

Change in the Weather was released on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp and YouTube. The CD comes with a list of the players and their tracks and a booklet with all the lyrics. For more information, visit carolsokoloff.com/music/change-in-the-weather.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Defying expectations

The story of Aloha Wanderwell, an early 20th-century adventurer raised in Qualicum Beach, BC, the first woman to drive around the world – at age 18 – is captured by Victoria Jewish community member Laurel Corona in her newly released novel, Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel.

“I guess I’ve always been a bit of a rebel at heart, and I love stories of women who defied expectations and went off and lived an exciting life on their own terms. Aloha Wanderwell is certainly one of those,” said Corona. “I ran across her in a little book about interesting women in Vancouver Island history. By the time I got to the end of that little three-page profile, I was hooked.”

Born Idris Hall in Winnipeg, Man., in 1906, the family moved to Vancouver Island then to England, Belgium and France. She ran away from her French boarding school in Nice at age 16, changed her name to Aloha and joined the around-the-world automobile expedition of Walter “Cap” Wanderwell. She and Cap eventually married and continued their travels, driving the length of Africa and, on another expedition, across South America, managing to cross the Andes in cars with engines the same size as a ride-on lawnmower today – in an era where there were rarely any defined roads.

The couple intended to continue their adventures by boat, but just before they were set to sail, Cap was murdered aboard their yacht, ending 10 years of travel across five continents.

“But it’s not just about the travel, which was arduous, painful and often terrifying,” Corona said. “My novel is about a teenager coming into a full realization of her power as a woman in the most remarkable of circumstances.”

According to Corona, the key dynamic in the book is Aloha’s relationship with Cap. Ten years older at 26, he was charismatic and wily in how he got around any difficulty that stood in the way. Cap made money for the expedition by making films of their travels and showing them for the price of admission as they went from place to place.

“She was beautiful and statuesque (almost six feet tall) and, over time, it was Aloha the audiences came to see. Over the 10 years they were together, they became quite famous, and she grew from a teenager into a woman confident of her own capabilities and powers,” Corona said.

“She and Cap married a few years into their relationship, mostly to provide legitimacy to their traveling together, but, for me, I think her desire to be wanted, protected and safe left her feeling disappointed with him. The book goes into her issues with abandonment and betrayal by the people closest to her, and I don’t think she was ever sure enough of his love to give hers fully to him.”

Cap, Corona said, could not see beyond his own desires to concern himself with anyone else’s. Their life together ended with his murder in Long Beach, Calif.; how the relationship would have worked out is something that will never be known.

Though she achieved fame a century ago, the story of Aloha Wanderwell is not widely known. When Corona retells the story, audiences express shock that they had not heard about her adventures. Yet, Corona is not surprised.

“History is loaded with women who were out doing amazing things and doing them as well or better than the men around them,” she said. “This has always been inconvenient to those committed to a male-dominated telling of history, and it is only in recent decades that this limited view of history has been enthusiastically rejected by women historians, writers and other thinkers and doers, not all of whom are female.

“In Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel, I decided to mix into a narrative that is mostly in the third person two first-person narrations, one by Aloha’s sister, and one by the detective assigned to the murder investigation of Cap,” Corona said. “I also structured the book around two time frames. The first-person narrations are the way the story of the murder through the verdict in the trial of the suspect is told. The third-person narration provides the backstory of Aloha’s adventures, which forms the bulk of the book.”

Corona is the author of four other historical novels – The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi’s Venice, Penelope’s Daughter, Finding Emilie and The Mapmaker’s Daughter – focusing on women forgotten or misrepresented in history. She has written one work of non-fiction: Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance.

Corona believes her next book, The Intuitive, coming in April 2027, will be of particular interest to Jewish readers. Set in New York in the 1910s and 1920s, the character is a socialite who has lost her husband and son in an accident and is non-functional with grief.

Thinking it may help her recovery, she accepts an offer to go to Ellis Island with renowned eugenicist Henry H. Goddard, to assist in identifying “feebleminded” people, so they can be deported before (presumably) they bring inferior genes into the United States.

“She quickly develops moral qualms about what she has done and, in her efforts to atone for one Jewish family she harmed, she becomes aware of all the social issues her wealth has insulated her from,” Corona said. “The book is the story of her growth from the snobbery, bigotry and antisemitism of her social class into a remarkable woman making genuine contributions to causes affecting women, like suffrage, unions and birth control, and filling her life with love again.”

Corona encourages readers to buy books from independent bookstores to help keep them in business.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Group buying platform wins

The Ben-Gurion University student team of BeeShop receives the top prize from Dana Gavish, left, and Gadi Bahat, right. (photo from BGU)

Palpably exuberant crowds, both in person in Be’er Sheva and virtually, assembled on June 24 to watch and vote in Leaders’ Spark Night, a live-pitch session featuring six student teams from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Yazamut 360° entrepreneur program. The teams presented startup venture concepts they had been developing throughout the year.

Originally planned as a live RBC Lions’ Den competition in Vancouver in April, travel disruptions in Israel led to the postponement of the event. In the interim, the students continued building, and last month’s Leaders’ Spark Night showcased the culmination of their work.

Dana Gavish, founder of Yazamut 360°, began the event by offering thanks to the Friends of BGU organizations in the diaspora, making special mention of those in New York, Boston and Vancouver for “pushing the program forward.”

“The past year was extremely challenging for all of us, and especially for our dear students. Yet, even after all the uncertainty that we experienced, here we are today showing you their amazing and incredible work,” Gavish said.

“As the world is transformed by AI, big data and automation, the pace of change often exceeds our ability to predict it. In this reality, the most valuable skill is the ability to adapt. This is exactly what we try to instil in our students – the confidence to navigate uncertainty, embrace it and lead it.”

Before introducing the teams, Gadi Bahat, head of academic programs at Yazamut, said, while the program fosters the development of ideas into fruition, its objective is also to promote leadership, to get students through difficult situations, such as standing on a stage or hearing the word “no” when pitching their ventures.

Each student group had five minutes to pitch their concept. Industry experts from North America then asked questions. Afterwards, audiences in Israel and abroad scanned a code to vote. The three teams with the most votes won cash prizes to help them continue to develop their startups.

The pitches reflected the times, with an emphasis on computer and cellphone applications, as well as harnessing the positive potential of artificial intelligence.

DEXO, an online platform that connects customers and skilled designers to create precisely customized products, led off the proceedings. According to the student entrepreneurs, the venture has already launched in the United States, aims to complete 100,000 projects in 2028 and expand to other countries.

NightLine, a tele-health service linking new mothers with professional consultants for personalized, accessible and immediate parenting support, followed. The group, which will use AI to triage urgency, addressed the universal need for postpartum care and the market it represents.

In the third slot was BuilDEER, whose goal is to change the construction industry through an AI plugin that analyzes design codes and past solutions to generate the engineering fix that is compliant with building regulations, thereby reducing delays and costs.

Heedly, a service that prevents phone scams in real time – before damage is done – came next. Such scams are a problem worldwide, with elderly people most likely to fall victim. Heedly representatives said their fraud detection alerts the victim, a trusted family member and the financial institution when a scam call is taking place.

BeeShop, a group buying platform that hopes to leverage shared demand to lower prices, was the fifth to pitch. The concept behind the venture is that the more people who want a particular product and shop in bulk will force a supplier to reduce the cost of an item, whereas a single shopper is forced to pay a higher markup.

CourtX concluded the pitches. The startup focuses on sports, particularly basketball. Their service analyzes data in real time – i.e., during a game and using AI – to help coaches make quicker decisions than pen and paper allow. Capitalizing on basketball’s popularity internationally, the group plans to market its product in Europe initially and later in North America. They also intend to branch out into other sports.

The atmosphere online and in the Negev turned electric after the pitches wrapped up and voting began on the question: Which venture would you invest in? A screen appeared with the logos of all six teams, and the attendees could watch the results as the votes were tallied.

In the end, BeeShop was the convincing winner with BuilDEER in second and CourtX a close third. The three top finishers received cheques to invest in their ventures.

The three Vancouver industry experts who were slated for the April competition took part virtually, asking questions of the teams. They were Wendi Campbell, president and chief executive officer of Junior Achievement of British Columbia; Ryan Benn, CEO of Alive Publishing Group Inc.; and Shuli Gortler, CEO of SimplyAsk and a BGU alumnus.

Since its establishment in 2018, Yazamut – which means entrepreneurship in Hebrew – has seen more than 240 startups and ventures, with more than 2,000 program participants, 11,000-plus members of its entrepreneurial community, and more than $45 million in funds invested in its companies.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Indigeneity and Zionism

Pat Johnson and Dr. Sheree Trotter at the University of Victoria on June 14, hosted by the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island. (photo by Janet Dirks)

“What we’ve seen happen in New Zealand with our indigenous movement is that Palestine has been held up as a way to fight against what’s happening in our country with our indigenous people,” New Zealand writer and academic Dr. Sheree Trotter told those gathered at the University of Victoria on June 14.

“So, what we do is that we identify with the Palestinians and we see them as brown, oppressed indigenous people; we see Israel as the Western foreign colonizers.” In this context, she said, the antizionist argument is reduced to one of settler colonialism, despite the differing histories of places like New Zealand, Canada and Palestine.

At the Victoria event, which was hosted by the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island, Trotter, who is of Te Arawa iwi origin, spoke on the topic Indigeneity and Zionism Versus Settler Colonialism.

“Each of these topics could be a whole university course,” Trotter acknowledged at the outset. Before talking about Zionism, she explained its standard definition: the right of self-determination and statehood for Jews in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.

Trotter said there have been several streams of thought that have led to the current antizionist movement, including the views of the Nazis, who saw Jews as conspiratorial subversives, and Soviet antizionism, which depicted Zionism as a global and racist conspiracy. Added to the mix, Trotter said, are Arab nationalist and Islamic movements and, more recently, Western settler-colonial theory.

Settler colonialism, Trotter said, is an ideology that has developed within academia as a particular kind of colonialism. The key feature of it is an imperial power that has sent its people to a foreign land to settle permanently.

“In this way, you create this binary that you’ve got two classes of people. You may call it the oppressor and the oppressed, the colonizer or the colonized, these sorts of ideas. This binary erases complexity. It’s not accurate. It’s not true to history,” Trotter said.

Using the example of the Māori in New Zealand, Trotter explained some of the problems in the settler-colonialist argument.

“There’s no room for nuance or complexity, no room for indigenous agency – the fact that, in my case, Māori embraced many of the new things that came, new technologies, modernity, certainly literacy,” she said. “In embracing Christianity, Māori turned away from tribal warfare, from cannibalism, from slavery, because they adopted a new way of thinking. Under settler colonialism, you don’t get to hear any of the good things that might have happened. It’s all just labeled as oppression and bad.”

More broadly, she argued, the settler-colonialist theory does not fully consider that many of the people who arrived in places like Canada and New Zealand were poor immigrants who do not fit the settler-colonialist power paradigm.

Regarding Israel, the settler-colonial standpoint is a tremendous stretch, said Trotter, because Jews, with more than 3,500 years of continuous connection to the land, are not foreign to Israel.

“In Māori thinking, we have a concept called ahikā, which means keeping the fires burning. If a tribe wanted to keep their connection to a piece of land, it would keep a fire on that land. It’s symbolic of the idea that somebody stayed on the land, even in small numbers,” she said. “Now, we’re finding the fact that there’s always been a Jewish presence in the land. Even though very small at times, they’ve kept ahikā, they’ve kept the fires burning, they’ve kept a continuous connection.”

Trotter is the co-founder, with former member of New Zealand’s House of Representatives Alfred Ngaro, of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem and the Indigenous Coalition for Israel, nonprofits established to provide representation in Jerusalem for indigenous peoples from around the world. Her latest book, Zionism at the Ends of the Earth: A Story of Humanitarianism and Identity, chronicles the social history of the Zionist movements in New Zealand to 1948.

Following her talk, Trotter sat down for an interview and to answer audience questions with journalist Pat Johnson, a member of the Jewish Independent editorial board and founder of Upstanders Canada, an organization working to encourage non-Jewish Canadians to take a stand against antisemitism and antizionism.

The event attracted some protest. According to organizers, the technician who was scheduled to work that evening walked off the job before the event started because of their objection to the subject matter. And, in the middle of Trotter’s talk, a few members of the Jewish Faculty Network of Vancouver Island held up signs rejecting claims of Jewish indigeneity in the Middle East and protesting Israel’s military actions; the group was escorted out of the auditorium without incident.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Football and its roles

On June 24, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre hosted The Dual Role of Football During the Holocaust, an online conversation with Paul Salmons, Kevin E. Simpson and Liz Berger, three scholars on sport and its place in modern Jewish history.

photo - Paul Salmons — Paul Salmons *(photo from vhec.org)*

Salmons, an historian and curator, began with a grim chapter in football’s story: the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Upper Austria, where, from 1938 to 1945, some 200,000 prisoners were held and 100,000 died.

Immediately outside the camp, said Salmons, a football (soccer) field was constructed through the labour of the prisoners. SS soldiers formed a team that played league games on the pitch from 1943 to 1945.

Players, fans and officials would have had a clear view of the camp’s infirmary, where sick and dying prisoners were quarantined to prevent the spread of disease. There are reports, Salmons said, that the dead were taken out of the infirmary, past the field while a game was being played and up a pathway towards the gates of the camp. Additionally, he said, there were reports that the stench of burning bodies from the crematoria permeated the surrounding areas for the period of the camp’s existence.

“This is a very visible picture of the atrocities that are going on while they are cheering on their team, while they are celebrating those goals,” Salmons said. “What does that do in terms of the attitudes or the opinion of the footballers themselves? These members of the SS, this team of murderers, are being cheered on by the local people. Maybe in the pub that night they’re being bought a drink, maybe people are patting them on the back for the goals that they scored.”

photo - Kevin E. Simpson — Kevin E. Simpson *(photo from vhec.org)*

Simpson, an author and professor of psychology at John Brown University, discussed the prisoner experience at Terezin, north of Prague, a camp that housed Jews prominent in science, the arts and sports, and was used by the Nazis to deceive the outside world into thinking prisoners were treated well.

Football participation at the camp was so widespread that prisoners were able to create a league, Liga Terezin, and teams were formed by the nationality of the player or the particular job they were assigned, explained Simpson.

Female prisoners at the camps would design kits for the players; games were wildly popular and tickets were highly in demand, as photos from the camp illustrate. Hundreds of matches were played during a season, he said. With the liquidation of Terezin in October 1944, many of the players, like the rest of the prisoners, would be sent to Auschwitz, where they would die.

Among the professional players who were imprisoned at the camp was a standout Czechoslovakian goaltender, Jirka Taussig. Simpson cited an interview with Taussig, a survivor who later moved to the United States and would also be known as George Tesar. Of the games, Taussig said, “We were the stars of Terezin. Every Sunday afternoon, 3,500 fans came to watch the league matches. The youth saw us as a model to imitate.

“We gave them hope, and we represented life. In all the misery and suffering, hope was a rare thing,” said Taussig. “We played for them because we knew that shortly they would be sent east, and we felt that we gave them a little spark of light before their death.”

photo - Liz Berger — Liz Berger *(photo from vhec.org)*

Berger, a research consultant with UNESCO, spoke about the postwar period to the present, examining what sport has meant to Jewish communities and what the consequences are when that meaning is denied or weaponized.

“Sport is never just athletic competition. It’s one of the main domains through which societies talk about and express and sometimes form their deep values,” she said. Sport is a powerful tool for “communal recovery, identity transmission and the assertion of continued presence and vitality,” she noted.

At the same time, sport can be used as a venue for antisemitic or racist expression. Antisemitism in sport can be viewed as an indication of a society’s broader tolerance for antisemitism.

“Antisemitism in sport is not a lesser form of antisemitism. It’s not minor. It’s a manifestation of how a society relates to their Jewish communities if they have them or their concept of who Jews are if they don’t,” she said.

Berger pointed to football fandom, particularly in Europe, which is organized around tribal loyalties, class identities and historical memories. Fan support in Europe is frequently an expression of who a person is ethnically, historically and politically.

Meanwhile, Berger said, some European clubs, such as Tottenham Hotspur in England or Ajax in the Netherlands, are seen as Jewish teams, despite what might seem at times tenuous connections to the Jewish community. These teams have been the target of antisemitic hostility from the opposing fans and, conversely, demonstrate a form of solidarity with the Jewish community from supporters.

The day of the VHEC webinar happened to be a notable one in Canadian football. A few hours earlier, the men’s national team advanced beyond the preliminary round of the World Cup for the first time in its history. They were eliminated later in the tournament.

The VHEC will host two more football-related events: Football, History and Society, an online discussion with journalist Simon Kuper, on Aug. 25, and Holocaust Education in the Modern Stadium, a conversation at the Italian Cultural Centre, on Oct. 27. To watch the June 24 webinar, go to vhec.org/football_during_the_holocaust.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Upstanders’ first live event

Editor-in-chief of the National Post Rob Roberts, left, in conversation with journalist Dave Gordon at Upstanders Canada’s May 24 Media Bias event at Temple Sholom. (photo by Anna-Mae Wiesenthal)

Media Bias: How Media has Mainstreamed Antisemitism and What to Do About It was the first live event held by Upstanders Canada. It featured a conversation between journalist Dave Gordon and National Post editor-in-chief Rob Roberts, and took place in Vancouver on May 24 and in Ottawa May 26. Roberts was honoured with the inaugural Upstander of the Year Award.

Upstanders Canada, founded by Pat Johnson, encourages Canadians, particularly non-Jewish Canadians, to take a stand against antisemitism and antizionism. He started the event hosted at Temple Sholom by highlighting that Canada, which, until recent years, had been viewed as a nation of decency, fairness and pluralism, is now an international hotspot of antisemitism.

Janet Dirks, a retired CTV National News reporter who worked for a time in Jerusalem, wondered, in her introduction of the featured speakers, why most newsrooms in the country have been reluctant to delve into the barrage of antisemitic incidents in Canada.

“Is there fear of angering those who identify as antizionist, anti-Israel? Is there a dread of covering something that might be too controversial? The fear of getting too many emails criticizing the story treatment from both sides? Is there a narrative I’m not understanding?” asked Dirks, who is a member of the Upstanders board.

Citing a May 9 Toronto Sun editorial, she said, “The problem with appealing to our governments and, indeed, to civil society to combat the unprecedented rise of hatred against Canada’s Jewish citizens is that they were the ones who enabled it. By failing to punish countless examples of Jew-hatred ever since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, they have normalized antisemitism in Canada.”

The Media Bias event took place on the heels of a May 11 opinion essay by veteran New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof, which accused Israeli prison guards and others of sexually abusing Palestinians. The Netanyahu government has subsequently sued the newspaper for defamation.

Roberts faulted the Times for not researching the allegations and examining if they withstood scrutiny.

“It’d be my opinion that every human institution is going to have some problems, but you look at that report and you look at the nature of the allegations, and they just don’t hold the ring of truth,” he said. “The other thing I’ll say is this, you don’t have to publish everything that’s submitted to you, even by the marquee columnists.”

Gordon led the discussion towards the National Post and what he called its decidedly pro-Zionist stance, distinguishing it from other papers in Canada, with the possible exception of the Toronto Sun. Roberts said his newspaper has sought to be “fair and balanced” – not inherently pro-Israel.

The editor spoke about the paper’s decision to drop the Associated Press and the Canadian Press. The decision wasn’t made based on the organizations’ reports from the Middle East, said Roberts, but rather the Post’s preference to not run the same material as other papers. Nonetheless, he did not express a high opinion of the AP’s reporting from the region.

“We all know the story about the bomb that Israel dropped in the hospital – except they didn’t. That was AP, and it took them several hours to fix it,” Roberts said. The Post did not post that AP story, he noted, saying, “… we can’t simply trust even this venerable old wire service to do the job properly.”

Roberts maintained that the Post’s policies of fact-checking and fostering open debate have served the paper well at a time when other publications are struggling.

“We try to be very responsible,” he said. “The fact that people are asking whether journalism is dead is really good for us because we’re thriving at the moment,” adding that the Post is currently hiring.

photo - Pat Johnson, founder of Upstanders Canada, announces the launch of Ask a Jew, an initiative inspired by Selina Robinson, who accepted the honour at the Vancouver event — Pat Johnson, founder of Upstanders Canada, announces the launch of Ask a Jew, an initiative inspired by Selina Robinson, who accepted the honour at the Vancouver event. *(photo by Anna-Mae Wiesenthal)*

Following the conversation, Brandon Lu, an Allied Voices for Israel student ambassador at the University of British Columbia, spoke briefly on the importance of a free press and an informed, discerning public.

At the end of the program, Johnson announced the creation of a new initiative – inspired by Selina Robinson – called Ask a Jew. Modeled on the Human Library concept, Ask a Jew promotes dialogue between curious, open-minded people and Jewish individuals for one-on-one online conversations. The hope is that such conversations will help build understanding and human connection.

Robinson, the author of Truth Be Told – about her experiences with antisemitism, notably within the BC NDP government, in which she was a senior minister for years – has been donating revenues from book sales to Upstanders Canada and the Parents Circle-Families Forum, a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization that advocates for peace. Robinson joined the Upstanders event in Vancouver, presenting Johnson with another cheque in addition to revenues from the book donated previously.

Iddo Moed, ambassador of the state of Israel to Canada, attended the Ottawa event and addressed the audience, emphasizing the importance of allyship.

For more information about Upstanders Canada, visit upstanderscanada.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Road to independence

The 96-year-old history of the Jewish Independent, which serves as a continuous record of Jewish communal life in British Columbia, was the topic of the second lecture in the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture’s 2026 Doikayt Speaker Series.

In a webinar titled “A Labour of Love: A Brief History of the Jewish Independent,” publisher Cynthia Ramsay discussed how the paper might even be more than 100 years old.

In 1925, there was a mimeograph – copies were printed using a hand-cranked machine – called the Vancouver Jewish Bulletin. Its connection to the 1928 mimeograph called the Centre Bulletin, the known origins of the JI, are unclear. Regardless, it wasn’t until the newspaper, by then called the Jewish Western Bulletin, was launched in tabloid form in 1930 that the clock on its history began.

image - Dr. JI Gorosh (pictured here in the Jewish Western Bulletin in 1952) was the first printer and editor of a local Bulletin, in 1925. That publication’s connection to the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the JWB, first published in tabloid form in 1930, is unclear — Dr. JI Gorosh (pictured here in the Jewish Western Bulletin in 1952) was the first printer and editor of a local Bulletin, in 1925. That publication’s connection to the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the JWB, first published in tabloid form in 1930, is unclear.

In its early years, the paper had to compete for local readers with a few other publications, both in English and Yiddish. Volunteers from the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Council, a precursor to the Jewish Federation of BC, initially oversaw the running of the paper.

“In 1937, one of the sales guys, Harry Musikansky, had the idea that the paper’s costs could be shifted over to a publisher, and the publisher could get all the advertising and keep all of the revenue, while the council kept editorial control,” Ramsay said.

This model, despite facing continual monetary challenges, endured into the 1960s. While David Sears took over as publisher for a year, in 1939, Musikansky took over the position and held it until 1945. There were several different editors during the publication’s early decades.

One subsequent publisher, Goodman Florence, demonstrated his frustration with trying to please the community in a 1949 editorial, shortly before he resigned. Florence observed that though “readers want everything under the sun and up to date, I have yet to be able to completely sell the simple fact that to do all of this requires considerable revenue.”

In 1949, Abe Arnold took over the reins of the paper as publisher, while his wife, Bertha, handled advertising. “As is the case in the newspaper in the early years, the male counterpart is front and centre. [Abe] Arnold ran the paper, but Bertha was in the background doing a hell of a lot of stuff,” Ramsay said.

The couple stayed on until 1960. Their 11-year tenure was filled with issues concerning revenue and salary, criticisms over the direction of the newspaper’s coverage, and debates on editorial partiality and council’s control over editorial decisions. In the 1950s, the main controversies seem to have been the United Jewish People Order’s expulsion from council (Zionist/right versus left) and kashrut-related letters/ads (orthodoxy versus other forms of Judaism), said Ramsay.

In 1960, Sam and Mona Kaplan came in from Winnipeg to steer the paper, and they would remain at the helm for 35 years. By 1962, the couple were able to turn down the decades-old community subsidy.

“The Kaplans really didn’t want to be at all connected financially to the council. There continued to be a publications committee; however, its role seemed to be reduced. The council still was able to put pretty much any advertising and event listings into the paper, but it seems like they really didn’t have much control over the paper,” Ramsay said.

The Kaplans used this independence to advocate for Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jews, Israel, Jewish education and other Jewish causes and institutions.

Ramsay’s history with the paper started in the summer of 1998, when she arrived as a proofreader. (For a short time in the late 1990s, an American publishing company managed the paper after the Kaplans retired.)

An economist by training, Ramsay’s intention was to return to Ottawa after her temporary position had ended. However, the lure of journalism proved too strong, and she decided to stay. In 1999, she, along with Pat Johnson and Kyle Berger, purchased the paper.

Johnson and Berger eventually moved onto other work, and Ramsay became the sole owner. In 2005, she chose to change the name, for several reasons. (See jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/july05/archives05july22-11.html.)

“We had a contest for names,” she told the Peretz audience. “I didn’t like any of the names, so I picked the Independent. I had wanted to do the Optimist, but found out there was the Delta Optimist already.”

Ramsay shared a quote from the initial manifestation of the community publication, when Dr. JI Gorosh penned an editorial on July 15, 1925. He said the Bulletin would “work steadfastly and faithfully for the welfare of the Jewish community as a whole.” The aim then, as it is now, was to be the medium through which the Jewish community can express its ideals and announce its activities.

“We will strive not to deteriorate into a mere social gossip sheet, but to be a real service paper with a definite place in the life of the community,” Gorosh wrote.

Echoing that sentiment, Ramsay wrote in an editorial for the 95th anniversary issue of the paper: “While not ignoring the hurtful, the divisions, the controversies in our community or the larger universe, we try to cover stories in a way that doesn’t depress and paralyze action, but rather opens the door for solutions or at least positive attempts at change. We don’t want readers to put down the newspaper in despair, but rather to think about what they can do to contribute to a better world, whatever that means to them.”

The Independent may be the longest continually running Jewish newspaper in Canada, as countless other publications across the country have come and gone, or merged, over the last 96 years.

Ramsay said she would like to pass the paper on to another owner or owners after the paper celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2030, when she’ll be 60 and ready to retire.

“I’d like to get it to that point,” she said. “I truly think it is a treasure. I do want its future to be long, so I’ll be very careful with who I pass it on to. Hopefully someone wants it, because it is a labour of love at the end of the day.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Supplying healthy food

Left to right: Larry Vinegar, Stan Shaw, Lloyd Baron, Michelle Dodek, Steve Schacter and Marcy Schwartzman. (photo from Marcy Schwartzman)

There are roughly 1,200 people who rely on Jewish Family Services food hubs in the Greater Vancouver area, and much of the fresh produce they receive is due to the efforts of Larry Vinegar and Marcy Schwartzman.

Each month, JFS delivers approximately 2,500 bags of groceries to its clients, which include families with children, seniors, new immigrants, people with disabilities and other individuals in need. In 2021, during the pandemic, JFS established the food hubs, in partnership with synagogues and other organizations. The food is collected and distributed, with the help of a team of volunteers, at a central hub in Vancouver on 3rd Avenue called the Kitchen.

photo - JFS hubs, situated in various parts of Greater Vancouver, offer fruit and vegetables — JFS hubs, situated in various parts of Greater Vancouver, offer fruit and vegetables. *(photo from Marcy Schwartzman)*

The hubs, situated in Vancouver, the North Shore, Burnaby, Surrey, the Tri-Cities and Richmond, offer fruit and vegetables. The program does not provide any meats, poultry or shellfish, and ensures that items are available for clients who follow a kosher diet.

“Most of the clients are people who are struggling to make ends meet, and your rent has to get paid. It often takes primary resources to pay your rent, and then food and other necessities come second. A lot of people are at a point where, at the end of the month, they don’t have money to put food on their tables, so they’re looking for assistance for that,” Schwartzman said.

She added that, if people do not have enough money, they choose the least expensive options, which are often not the healthiest. Thus, a community kitchen that supplies nutritious produce can be vital to a person’s well-being, she said.

The Independent caught up with Schwartzman and Vinegar on a spring afternoon. They were about to prepare the ground for planting on a Lower Mainland farm, the produce from which would be distributed by JFS.

photo - Maxwell (Moishe) Vinegar — Maxwell (Moishe) Vinegar. *(photo from Marcy Schwartzman)*

On Dec. 31, 2020, the couple suffered a tragedy, losing their 31-year-old son, Maxwell (Moishe) Vinegar, in a skiing accident. Prior to his passing, the family had had a conversation about food security, which reflected on a period when their son was young, and the family would deliver food for the food bank for Hanukkah.

“We had a lot of conversations with our kids about what it means to be a member of your community and be responsible and look out for our other community members,” Schwartzman said. “That December, around Hanukkah time, we were saying to him, ‘Hey, you should go help at the food bank.’ And he said, ‘I’m busy working, Dad, you’re retired, you should go do it.’”

In trying to come out of their grief, Vinegar and Schwartzman started their food efforts with donations people made after Max’s death, which they requested be directed to JFS. A friend of theirs who owned a farm in the Okanagan planted an acre of squash – a sign notes that all the squash growing on the acre is for JFS in Moishe’s memory.

photo - A friend of Larry Vinegar and Marcy Schwartzman, who owns a farm in the Okanagan, plants an acre of squash for JFS in memory of their son, Maxwell (Moishe) Vinegar — A friend of Larry Vinegar and Marcy Schwartzman, who owns a farm in the Okanagan, plants an acre of squash for JFS in memory of their son, Maxwell (Moishe) Vinegar. (photo from Marcy Schwartzman)

“We went up to help look after that for a couple of weekends that first summer, and that sort of got us thinking that maybe we can find somewhere to grow food to provide it to Jewish Family Services,” Schwartzman said.

The next summer, Vinegar spoke to a blueberry farmer in Richmond, who put the couple in touch with a family that lets them use their half-acre backyard, at no cost, to grow vegetables for the food bank.

“We’ve grown a variety of things over the years, but what grows the best there is zucchini and squash, butternut and acorn, and we also have green beans,” Schwartzman said. “We’ve been generously supported by West Coast Seeds.”

Further efforts include growing 300 plants at Richmond Jewish Day School last year, building relationships with local farmers, and spreading the word about tax benefits for those who donate excess crops to bolster food security.

“Larry has been quite instrumental and not afraid to go talk to different farmers around the Lower Mainland, just at the end of the season, to say you didn’t sell your crop, we’ll be happy to come pick it up,” Schwartzman said.

Vinegar has also developed a relationship with Costco after he walked into one of their stores and spoke with a manager about supplying unsold goods to food banks instead of disposing of them. All Costco stores give away food that is getting close to its stale date, said Schwartzman. “They donate to a different organization each day.”

In 2024, Vinegar and Schwartzman were recipients of the inaugural JFS Lighting the Way Award. At the presentation, they were described as “embodiments of JFS’s values, demonstrating innovation in their commitment to social good.”

“We are grateful for the help of many friends and volunteers who help us plant, tend and harvest,” said Schwartzman. “We couldn’t do what we do without their help!”

For more on JFS’s food and other services, go to jfsvancouver.ca.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Yellowknife seder a first

Yellowknife held its first community-wide Passover seder, with support from the Jewish Federation of British Columbia, at the Sundog Trading Post on April 1. (photo from Jewish Federation Facebook page)

Yellowknife held its first community-wide Passover seder, with support from the Jewish Federation of British Columbia, at the Sundog Trading Post on April 1. Now, the small Jewish community in the Northwest Territories capital is planning more events.

Jewish celebrations are not unknown in the Northwest Territories, of course. Rosh Hashanah dinners, Hanukkah gatherings and seders have been held in various homes over the years. Yet, according to a community member interviewed by the Independent, there has never been an effort to identify and bring together the larger community in a more formal way. That changed in December 2025, when seven Yellowknifers formed the NWT Jewish Cultural Society.

“We are still in infancy and working to create a website, but right now we have a WhatsApp group with 30 adults in town. People have been added in from word of mouth,” said a Yellowknife organizer who wished to be identified by only her first name, Sari.

When the group thought about hosting the first community seder, there were talks of having it at a home; yet, in the end, due to the growing interest, that option was not possible. Two weeks before Passover, in an effort to find a venue, they reached out to Sarah Mackenzie, associate director of community engagement at the Jewish Federation, for support, which came through shortly after the request.

The seven-member board scrambled to organize everything, bringing in seder plates and setting up the tables. They used the PJ Library Haggadah. For food, there was a potluck. Decorations were ordered, Passover crafts were arranged for the children, and wine and juice were placed on each table.

“All the Jewish people I’ve met in town grew up with a connection to their culture. I think it has just fallen to the wayside without the opportunities to gather,” said Sari.

“One Jewish person hadn’t been to a seder in decades. This was my second in the 18 years I’ve been in Yellowknife. It was definitely the first seder for some of the young kids and probably only the second or third for some non-Jewish partners.”

Sari added that several people in Yellowknife are part of multi-faith households. After the Oct 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel, she explained, there had been feelings or questions from parents of how are we going to share Jewish identity with our kids here?

A crucial moment for the more formalized Jewish community in Yellowknife happened earlier though, in August 2023, when an out-of-control wildfire caused the city to be evacuated. At the time, Sari was in Edmonton, where she visited Temple Beth Ora and picked up a copy of the Alberta Jewish News. In it, she found an article about another Jewish resident of Yellowknife.

“While I was evacuated, PJ Library reached out to me and asked me if I needed anything and provided a bunch of support. You can always count on the Jewish community,” said Sari.

“When I returned home, I had a new Jewish connection in town, and having another person to connect with nearby was a lifesaver. In the months that followed, we knew we needed more community. Our Jewish identity, which was a small piece of ourselves, suddenly skyrocketed to a top concern in our lives.”

They decided to take part in a one-week Momentum Canada trip to Israel. This presented a challenge because, typically, one must do so through a Jewish organization, but there were none in Yellowknife.

In her efforts to raise funds for the trip, Sari emailed contacts who had supported her during the evacuation in Edmonton, and they suggested reaching out to the Jewish Federation in British Columbia.

“There, Sarah Mackenzie took it upon herself to become a champion for our little community. We just happened to reach the right person,” Sari said. “She related to the experience of being disconnected from large cities with high numbers of Jewish people. She offered to take Yellowknife under her wing and do the same for us in the Northwest Territories.”

For her part, Mackenzie said, “Jewish Federation … is honoured to come alongside the Yellowknife Jewish community in alignment with our mission of creating vibrant, caring and inclusive communities, together.”

Looking to the future, the goal of the NWT Jewish Cultural Society is to organize community gatherings for the Jewish holidays. They have started an informal Hebrew school that meets once a month; it is currently in members’ homes, but they are looking for a space.

“We hope to also do small things – maybe a Purim mishloach manot (Purim basket) exchange. It will depend on capacity and resources,” said Sari, noting that many of the people who live in Yellowknife are transient.

“Two of our board members will be leaving this summer,” she said. “Grassroots events definitely depend on the efforts of a small group of determined people.”

In his weekly message on April 17, Jewish Federation chief executive officer Ezra Shanken had this to say about the Yellowknife seder: “For those involved, it was described simply as a powerful beginning for Jewish communal life in a place where opportunities to gather are few and deeply appreciated.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Sharing her testimony

Consolee Nishimwe, a Rwanda-born author, motivational speaker and survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi, spoke from New York on April 21 to an online audience as part of the In Conversation with a Survivor series hosted by Toronto’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Every year, between April and July, Rwandan communities around the world commemorate the tragic events of 1994 in a period known as Kwibuka, the Kinyarwanda word for “remember.” April 7 is International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, a time set aside to remember the victims, honour the survivors and reflect on the importance of preserving truth and memory.

From April 7 to July 19, 1994, 800,000 Tutsi, moderate Hutu and Twa were murdered by Hutu militias. According to the United Nations, between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped during this period of extreme violence.

photo - Consolee Nishimwe spoke to an online audience April 21 as part the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s In Conversation with a Survivor series — Consolee Nishimwe spoke to an online audience April 21 as part the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s In Conversation with a Survivor series. *(photo from Consolee Nishimwe)*

“As a survivor, it’s not very easy to talk about it because what happened to us was painful. It’s not easy for any survivor to share their personal experience of what they have endured,” Nishimwe said.

“Even though it’s been many years, it still lives within us. For me, when I share, I always think about those who are not ready yet to share their testimonies, and I carry them within me.”

The daughter of schoolteachers in the western part of Rwanda, Nishimwe described her childhood as a happy one, with a large coterie of friends and family nearby. Nonetheless, life for the Tutsi was never easy, said Nishimwe, who was 14 years old when the genocide started.

In elementary school, teachers humiliated Tutsi students by having them stand up before the class to identify themselves as Tutsi. Later, the RTLM radio station and Rwandan newspapers would broadcast and publish propaganda aimed at dehumanizing Tutsi.

On April 6, 1994, a missile shot down a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, both of whom were Hutu. The Tutsi were blamed generally for the assassinations, RTLM radio said all Tutsi must be killed, and widespread violence ensued.

“It was very scary for all of us where we lived in our villages. As Tutsi, we had to run to seek refuge mostly with the Hutu, our neighbours, the people who were around us, the people we grew up with – my parents used to teach some of their children – and the people we went to church with,” Nishimwe said. “You never knew who was going to be kind. You never knew who was going to help because everyone changed, completely changed.”

On the run, with roadblocks all around managed by Hutu with clubs and machetes ready to kill Tutsi, her family – Nishimwe, her parents, three brothers and a sister – like other Tutsi, hid in the bushes and sought refuge in what they hoped would be friendly Hutu homes, not knowing how long they would be able to stay or if their hosts might turn on them. The potential consequences for harbouring Tutsi were severe.

Eventually, Nishimwe’s father thought it best that he separate from the family. Killers would find him on April 15, 1994. Shortly afterwards, her three brothers were also murdered.

Nishimwe, her mother and sister were captured by Hutu. While in captivity, Nishimwe was brutally raped and considers it a “miracle” that she survived.

Nishimwe talks of her mother as a true hero.

“She went back to teach [after the genocide]. She was able to remind my sister and me, and all of us around her, that we should never carry hatred within us, which was not going to be easy because of the pain we carry within ourselves. I’m grateful for her,” Nishimwe said.

“Going back to school, there was a lot of trauma and nightmares. But I had friends who had lost their entire families. I have friends who don’t even have anybody in their family. I’m one of the few survivors, at least, who has a parent.”

After moving to the United States in 2001, Nishimwe went to therapy. With that help, she began writing about her experiences, which, she said, enabled her to find some means of expressing what she had endured.

“It helped me to start journaling every painful experience that I’ve gone through and allowed me also to find words. Because, sometimes, when you have gone through extreme trauma, you don’t even have words to describe the pain you carry within yourself,” she said.

In 2012, Nishimwe published Tested to the Limit: A Genocide Survivor’s Story of Pain, Resilience and Hope, an account of her experiences during the 1994 events and her life afterwards.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.