The Hon. Jody Wilson-Raybould, minister of justice and attorney general of Canada (MP for Vancouver Granville), at the Canada Day celebration in Douglas Park, which is in JI publisher Cynthia Ramsay’s neighbourhood. (photo from twitter.com/puglaas)
When Canada belatedly opened its door to Jewish refugees – to some of the surviving remnant after the Holocaust – it did so not out of an abundance of humanitarianism but because of economic necessity, the need for skilled and unskilled workers in a booming economy.
Regardless of the motivation, that influx of refugees redefined Jewish identity in Canada. The increased Jewish population and the institutions they spawned essentially built the community we know today.
As former Vancouverite Adara Goldberg described in her book Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947–1955, the institutions that we now see as the organized Jewish community were created for and by the refugees and immigrants who came after the war. By contrast, those who came to the United States after the war were greeted by and largely assimilated into a strong Jewish community already in progress.
This has had several corollaries. The worldview of Canadian Jewish institutions – and, though not easily verifiable, probably a majority of Jewish Canadians individually – is imbued with the understandable anxieties imprinted on those who witnessed the rise of fascism and lived through it.
On the flip side, the Canadian Jewish community as we know it can be said to have been born almost contemporaneously with the state of Israel. Again, while Zionism is entwined with the American Jewish community, that community had many other preexisting cultural and political dimensions. In Canada, the rebirth and survival of the Jewish state occurred at the most impressionable period in the community’s history. As well, the idea of Jewish self-determination as the surest path to individual and collective security resonated powerfully with a community disproportionately made up of survivors of the Shoah. Moreover, Canada’s approach to multiculturalism, especially after 1967, differed from the American “melting pot” and suspicion of “dual loyalties.”
So, the nature of Diaspora-Israel relations is different for Canadians versus Americans. Yet, some of the challenges are the same.
A new essay by David Hazony, editor of the American Jewish magazine The Tower, takes a new tack on the topic of American Jewry’s existential challenges. The Jewish population is not only declining, he notes, but changing. The only demographic that is flourishing is the Orthodox, which is not necessarily reflective of what would have been recognized as “American Jewry” in the 1950s and ’60s. The two most-recognized paths to avoid assimilation, he says, are currently orthodoxy and aliyah – but he suggests a third way.
Hazony posits that the answer to challenges facing American Jews right now is a little more Israel. The essay reviews concerns that American (read: Diaspora) Jews and Israelis are talking across a widening divide. Hazony’s suggestion is that Americans, who have for generations viewed Israel as a political cause, begin to integrate Israeliness as a cultural characteristic and embrace it as the future of their Diaspora identity. For instance, he says, Diaspora Jews immersing ourselves in Israeli cinema, even with subtitles, will give us a remedial entry point into the culture.
Language – not an easy thing to learn, particularly for notoriously unilingual Americans, Hazony acknowledges – is another important entry point.
“Without Hebrew,” he writes, “any approach to Israeliness will be like walking into an enormous library in a foreign language but relegated to the tiny English-language section.”
He suggests a network of Hebrew language and culture centres modeled on the French example. How many times have you driven by the Alliance Française building south of Oakridge?
Finally, travel. Just 27% of Americans have visited Israel more than once, he notes. To understand a place, you have to go there.
The essay is fascinating and offers ideas that could both strengthen Diaspora communities and narrow the gap between us and our Israeli cousins.
As Canada Day festivities unfurl in the coming days, we will see the familiar dictum “The world needs more Canada.” In some ways, we can proudly say, the world would indeed be a more peaceful, cooperative and respectful place if Canadian models were emulated elsewhere. Like any country, we have our flaws, our oppressive history and current inequalities. But, as countries go, we’re pretty good.
Hazony is taking a similar tack, arguing that Diaspora Jews need a little more Israeliness.
In Vancouver, we are very fortunate that our Jewish community centre has, for longer than we can remember, recognized the vital importance of connections with Israel. A plethora of other Israel-related organizations keep these bonds strong.
While pondering what is great about Canada in the coming week, we might also reflect on the value of integrating more Israeli culture into our lives. It can enrich us individually and enhance Canadian multiculturalism, too.
Pierre Trudeau once compared living next to the United States to sleeping with an elephant. “No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt,” Trudeau told the Washington press in 1969.
The former PM’s son, current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to be recognizing that, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the beast is as uneven-tempered as it has been in living memory.
The United States is currently led by a man whose foreign policy compass swings from tweet to tweet. There is no way to predict what position he will take next, having repeatedly besmirched NATO and other agencies of internationalism. The European powers have explicitly or implicitly taken the once-unthinkable position of deeming the United States no longer a dependable ally.
In successive major policy speeches last week, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland and Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan laid out somewhat new directions for the Canadian government, both seeming to concur, at least implicitly, that the United States is not the reliable ally it once was.
Sajjan promised a $62 billion boost to defence spending over 20 years, which would seem to be good news for Trump, who has criticized NATO member-nations for not pulling their weight. However, it came on the heels of Freeland’s speech a day earlier, in which she expressed concern that Americans seem prepared to “shrug off the burden of world leadership.”
It is easy to criticize American leadership – under any administration – and, admittedly, while the possibility of U.S. intervention might have given some dictators and oppressors cause for pause, American power has also strengthened dictators and oppressors when it has been in their interests. Nonetheless, the abdication of American leadership creates a frightening vacuum.
Jewish tradition includes the value of lo ta’amod al dam rei’echa, the prohibition against passivity in the face of violence to others. This rather universal concept seems likely to be diminished under the Trump presidency.
“The fact that our friend and ally has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership puts in sharper focus the need for the rest of us to set our own clear and sovereign course,” Freeland told MPs. “To say this is not controversial: it is a fact.” She added: “To put it plainly: Canadian diplomacy and development sometimes require the backing of hard power.”
This is a stark shift in Canadian policy of the past 40 or so years. Without openly saying so, Canadians have been happy to keep military budgets low, knowing that our neighbour would have our back if push came to shove. Canada has little to fear in the form of foreign invasion, although our sovereignty in the Arctic could come under threat by Russia (or even the United States) at almost anytime.
More immediately, what our deflection of military might has created is a limited ability to act in ways on the world stage that reflect Canada’s stated values, which include the pursuit of justice (in Jewish tradition, bakesh shalom v’rodfehu) and the protection of human dignity. Again, when faced with Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Middle East, or with the barbarity of ISIS, or civil war in Syria, or countless other tragic flashpoints globally, Canada has been satisfied to allow our closest ally to set the terms on the ground.
We have been able to have our cake and eat it, too, for many years, calling our approach “soft power,” which means moral suasion based on a degree of global respect Canada has achieved, while leaving “hard power” to our NATO allies. Our role in Afghanistan is an exception, and a source of pride for those who believe that the people of that country should live free from oppressive entities.
This is an imperfect example, of course, since Afghanistan remains riven by terrorism and political division. That average Afghanis, particularly women and minorities, are better off now than under the Taliban is unquestionable. While our presence there has had tangible results, in the global context, it is a somewhat symbolic engagement. Our military has limited capacity to engage similarly in another theatre and would certainly be stretched to the limit if we were to be called into two or more conflicts.
Canada does not – and should not – aspire to be a global military powerhouse. But to maintain self-defence capabilities and to act on our values in a difficult world – at a time when the great power we counted on to do this on our behalf is recanting – requires us to make financial commitments.
We must balance these commitments with our ability to fund social programs and other policies of national pride. Any increased international role should be focused on trying to prevent conflicts, supporting peace efforts and on providing humanitarian and other economic aid.
On May 24, Israelis celebrated the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem in the streets around the Jerusalem Great Synagogue. (photo from Ashernet)
Everything changed in 1967. Fifty years ago, Canada celebrated its 100th birthday, hosting an Expo in Montreal and, at least in the narrative we like to tell ourselves, came into our own as a country.
We became a country in 1867, “came of age,” historians tell us, at Vimy Ridge, in 1917, gained full autonomy from Britain’s Parliament in 1931, and adopted our very own constitution in 1982. But 1967 is when we stopped being a baby-country and became a confident, adult-like state on the world stage.
It’s possible that few Canadians pinpoint 1967 as a particular turning point. The various measures of Canadian pride – the U.S. exchange rate, hockey titles, military engagements, pop cultural contributions – have ebbed and flowed in the successive decades. National unity saw multiple flashpoints, from the October Crisis just three years after the euphoria of the Centennial, to the referenda of 1980 and 1995, the latter of which almost ended the nation. Free trade and globalization altered us once again.
“Canadianness” itself changed dramatically in this half-century, from a concept rooted in British heritage to a recognition of “two founding nations” to celebrating multiculturalism and a belated recognition of the rights and tragic history of indigenous peoples resulting directly from our national project. In this time, too, Canada has gone from a staid, comparatively conservative place to one of the most liberal countries in the world. Institutionalized antisemitism, which was still rife in the Canada of 1967, has become almost entirely absent (although incidents and acts of antisemitism, like much else, continue to occur).
While nothing really substantive changed overnight, 1967 is a symbolic moment in Canadian history.
For Israel, 1967 had symbolism but, in very real, tangible and irreversible ways, it was a year when everything changed. While it didn’t happen overnight, it did take a mere six days. The Six Day War, which began June 5, 1967, literally and figuratively reshaped Israel, the Middle East, Diaspora Jewry and global diplomacy.
In its early years, Israel experienced exponential population growth like almost no country on earth has seen. It went from the proverbial desert to a blooming success, first through innovations in agriculture and, later, in technology and almost every other sector of human endeavour. A successful nation was born. But the Jewish state was never accepted by the neighbours it defeated in 1948-’49 and, in 1967, war came again.
Yet the result was so quick and so decisive that some viewed it as a sign of Divine intervention or evidence of chosenness. More realistically, it was a people holding their ground because there was no alternative.
The experience affected not only Israelis but Jews everywhere. Canadian Jews and others in the Diaspora volunteered, sent money, prayed and organized. Less than two decades after it had begun, Jewish self-determination in the ancient land and modern state of Israel hung by a thread. And then victory.
The anxiety before and jubilation after transformed into something new and unexpected. The control by Israel over the West Bank (formerly part of Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (which had been under Egyptian control) led to a new dynamic in Israel – and in the world’s approach to Israel. Having been seen as the underdog, Israel in 1967 transformed – in the eyes of the world and, to an extent, in the eyes of Israelis themselves – into a powerful regional force.
The occupation has been the defining foreign policy concern for Israel for half a century now and affects the way Israel is treated on the global stage. Jerusalem, reunified under Israeli control during the war, is a flashpoint of local and international conflict over competing claims. Israelis will likely be forced to reckon with the legacy of 1967 for many years to come, as it seeks to protect both the democratic and Jewish natures of the state, as well as reaffirming its commitment to minority rights and to pluralism.
Despite this overarching conflict and its associated violence and threats, Israel has developed an economy and culture that is a human-made miracle of the modern world. The list is familiar and endless: scientific and academic achievement, technological innovation, global emergency response, lifesaving medical advancements. Even Israel’s intelligence capabilities, born of necessity, are so advanced that the president of the United States foolishly can’t help bragging to adversarial foreign despots that he has insider intel.
Amid all these challenges and hard work, Israelis self-report in international studies to be among the happiest people on the planet. (Canadians also rank high.) Even with room for improvement, this reality is perhaps the greatest achievement of all.
The Grade 1-3 class of Israeli dancers from Richmond Jewish Day School who participated in Festival Ha’Rikud on May 14. See more photos below. (photo by Lauren Kramer)
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In every community, and ours is no exception, there are folks who frequently capture the spotlight for their work while others quietly get things done behind the scenes, flying below the media radar. In our Kibitz & Schmooze profile, we try to highlight members of our community who are doing outstanding, admirable and mention-worthy work out of view of the general public. If you know of profile subjects who fit this description, please email [email protected].
For Victoria resident Ed Fitch, the Canadian Armed Forces did more than make him a major-general. It made him more of a Jew.
Growing up in Montreal, Fitch says he took his Judaism for granted. At 17, when he joined the armed forces, it was a wake-up call. “I realized if I didn’t respect my own religion, how could I expect anyone else to? It was the beginning of my journey to become more Jewish,” he says.
Fitch was open about his Judaism and, over the course of an illustrious career that saw him rise high through the ranks, he helped create institutional change that would benefit other Jews, too. There had last been a Jewish chaplain in the forces in 1945, and Fitch was determined to change that. “I made a proposal to the armed forces’ governing body for chaplains in 2003, and I asked them, do you want to be followers or leaders? Build it, and they will come!”
The result was the appointment of Rabbi Chaim Mendelsohn to chaplaincy and, a few years later, the succession of Rabbi Captain Lazer Danziger. “Rabbi Danziger will be leading Shabbat services at Alberta’s Area Support Unit Wainwright (one of the country’s busiest army bases) … with a full minyan!” Fitch says with delight.
Fitch’s proposal didn’t just benefit Jews in the armed forces. Today, there’s a Muslim chaplain serving, as well.
Fitch served Canada for 43 years in a career that spanned from 1966 through to his semi-retirement in 2006. During that time, he received the Meritorious Service Medal for his work in the former Yugoslavia, facilitating NATO’s entry. He was also appointed an Officer of the Order of Military Merit in June 1999, the military equivalent of the Order of Canada.
As a colonel in the mid-1990s, Fitch was in the former Yugoslavia when the United Nations’ peacekeeping force, of which he was part, was contracted out to NATO. “It was an astounding change that had never happened before: an in-place transition from a UN command to a NATO command,” he reflects. “It was December 1995 when we all removed our UN badges and rolled over to this NATO force, with a completely different set of rules. As a combat engineer on the land force, I was the guy on the ground preparing for the incoming 50,000 troops who needed minefields cleared, bridges built and accommodations created.”
At 50, Fitch was promoted to brigadier general and was in command of a division of 12,000 members of the military and civilians, and a land mass that stretched from Thunder Bay to Vancouver Island and up into the Arctic. “My staff enjoyed telling me that it was the largest military district in the world – happily, a fairly benign one,” he jokes. The division’s responsibilities were domestic – attending to forest fires and tornadoes – as well as deployed operations, and Fitch regularly prepared troops of 1,000 to 2,000 to fly to Bosnia, Afghanistan and other countries where they were needed.
In 2001, Fitch was appointed major-general, a rank third from the top in the Canadian Armed Forces, and relocated to Ottawa. Here, he supervised planning the restructuring and modernization of Canada’s army reserves.
Fitch had just relocated to Victoria when, in 2006, he was called up from the Supplementary Reserve in support of Operation PODIUM, the Canadian Armed Forces’ support to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics. His primary duty was the leadership of the Games Red Team, a project in which he and his team synthesized a terrorist cell and created practice scenarios to prepare Olympics planning staff for a potential attack.
“Our goal was to improve the capacity of the armed forces to deal with some potentially devastating situations,” he explains. “The model behind it is, train hard, fight easy. We disciplined ourselves to be real and started giving Olympics planning staff gentle problems, upping the ante to present them with tougher and tougher problems.”
When asked if he ever experienced antisemitism in the armed forces, Fitch says that his rise through the ranks is evidence there is none. “What the forces did with me proves there is no antisemitism,” he says. “I think the Canadian Armed Forces is the purest meritocracy in this country.”
After the Winter Olympics, when his full retirement came into effect, Fitch dedicated himself to community work. As a qualified civil engineer, he was instrumental in helping with the construction of the Centre for Jewish Life and Learning (Chabad), the first new synagogue to be built on the island since 1863. He volunteers with the Victoria Jewish Cemetery Trust and the Vancouver Island Chevra Kadisha, and serves as chair of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ national community security committee. He’s been house committee chair and treasurer of Congregation Emanu-El and a board member of the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia.
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The 14th annual Festival Ha’Rikud took place at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver May 12-14 and Israeli dancers from Richmond Jewish Day School (RJDS), Vancouver Talmud Torah, Temple Sholom, Or Chadash, Orr Ktanim and a group from Miami entertained a packed house in two performances. The theme for this year’s festival was friendship and a celebration of Israeli culture in its Canadian context, in honour of Canada’s 150th birthday. Dancers delivered polished performances that testified to many hours’ practice and a great fondness for Israeli folk dancing.
Marianne, left, with her father, Otto Echt, and sister Brigitte. (photo from Canadian Museum of Immigration [CMI] at Pier 21)
Marianne Ferguson’s family missed the train that was supposed to take them to Montreal from Halifax. Just 13 at the time, she and her sister were mostly excited at the prospect of something new, although they were sorry to leave friends and family behind in Europe. Their parents, however, were apprehensive, worried about starting a new life in a foreign country. And that was before they got stuck in Halifax – where, almost eight decades later, Ferguson, née Echt, still calls home.
In Europe, the Echts had lived in a little resort town called Brosen, just outside of the Free City of Danzig, which is today the Polish city of Gdansk. Ferguson’s father, Otto, was a pharmacist and a hobby farmer, and they lived well. Her mother, Meta, had multiple maids; the children – Marianne, Brigitte and Reni – had a nanny, and every spring and autumn a dressmaker would come into their home for a week to create new wardrobes for the upcoming season. When Adolf Hitler came to power, Ferguson’s family was relatively unaffected in the beginning. Even so, her parents saw what was coming and began making contingency plans.
Ferguson’s father kept homing pigeons on his farm. He would go to Poland to deposit money, and send the pigeons back home with coloured ribbons tied to them for Ferguson’s mother to decipher. A yellow ribbon meant he had arrived, for example, while a red ribbon meant he had deposited the money. He was able to get away with this scheme because the guards at the Polish border assumed he was entering his pigeons into competitions.
The Echts continued living in Brosen as the situation deteriorated for Jewish families. When the fair-haired Ferguson traveled to Hebrew school in Danzig with her sister, Hitler Youth would yell at her to ‘Stop walking with that Jew!’ When the Jewish children in the region were no longer allowed to attend school with their peers, the Jews of Brosen opened their own school on a local estate. The estate was at the end of a long street inhabited by Nazis, and it was understood the Jewish children all had to be in school and off the street by 8 a.m.
One day, when Ferguson was about 11 or 12, her streetcar to school was late. As she was walking alone down the long street to her school, a man sent his police dog after her. The dog attacked her, biting her on the elbow.
“And all of a sudden, somebody raised me up. Must have been an angel, really,” said Ferguson in a recent interview with the Independent from her nursing home in Halifax.
It was the milkman. He put Ferguson in his wagon, drove her to school and deposited her inside the gate. Ferguson said that man saved her life.
For her parents, it was the last straw. They decided they had to get out. A member of the Canadian consulate informed them that the country was not accepting pharmacists. Fortunately, though, the consulate worker saw their little farm and suggested sending them as farmers. And so it was that the Echts found themselves coming through Pier 21 in Halifax on March 7, 1939.
When they arrived at the pier, someone called their names and frightened Ferguson’s father. How did people here know who they were? But the woman calling them was Sadie Fineberg, from Jewish Immigrant Aid Services (JIAS). When the Echts missed their train, Fineberg put them up in a boarding house run by a Yiddish-speaking woman, and many Jewish families came to visit them.
“My parents said, ‘The people were so nice to us, and how do we know what it’s going to be like in Montreal? Maybe we should stay in Nova Scotia.’ And then they helped us with finding the farm, they drove us out … and we moved over there,” said Ferguson.
The farm was in nearby Milford, about a 45-minute drive from downtown Halifax. The Echts had to stay and work the farm for seven years as a condition of their immigration and, after their term ended, they moved to Halifax. Fineberg became a close family friend, and her nephew Lawrence became Ferguson’s husband.
Ferguson’s extended family was not so lucky. Her parents had applied to bring 11 of them over to Canada, and they were supposed to arrive later in the year. Cutting through all the red tape took time, but the process seemed to be progressing. Ferguson’s 11 family members went to meet their boat in Hamburg – but it wasn’t there. That day was Sept. 1, 1939, and the Second World War had just broken out.
“My father had bought a second farm. We were so lucky, it was right next to our farm. We thought we would all be together in the two farms. But it wasn’t meant to be. They were all killed,” said Ferguson.
When the war ended, Ferguson began volunteering with JIAS, helping Jewish refugees find their way in Canada. Many of the displaced persons were children traveling alone. Ferguson remembers one 17-year-old boy in particular who came through Pier 21 in 1948 and needed money to get to Montreal. Ferguson and her mother gave him $20 and some food. They also told him that he would become a good citizen, and he should work hard and make something of himself. Meanwhile, Ferguson continued to volunteer at Pier 21 until it closed in 1971. She began volunteering there again when it reopened as a museum in 1999.
Unbeknownst to Ferguson, the boy listened to her. His name was Nathan Wasser, and he had survived multiple camps in the Holocaust, including Auschwitz. He was trained as an electrician in Munich after the war, so that’s the work he first did after arriving in Montreal. In 1952, he met his wife-to-be, Shirley, at a parade for Queen Elizabeth, who was still a princess at the time. Together, they started a family, having a daughter and a son, and he ventured into the business world. Wasser eventually came to own his own shopping centre.
Through it all, Wasser – who passed away in 2015 – kept in mind the two women who had helped him when he first came to Canada as a scared and overwhelmed teenager.
“So I said to him, ‘You know, you have this vision of two volunteers. Would you like to go back to Pier 21?’” said his wife Shirley Wasser in a phone interview with the Independent. “And he said, ‘Well, I’ll never find anything.’”
Despite his doubts, Wasser contacted the Atlantic Jewish Council in 2003. The council connected him to Ferguson (her mother had already passed away), and they arranged to meet when the Wassers visited Halifax later that year.
On the appointed day, Ferguson and her granddaughter waited in the lobby of Pier 21 for a man with a blue shirt. Unfortunately, it seemed as if every man was wearing a blue shirt that day. Finally, a couple entered. The man was wearing a blue shirt and carrying flowers.
“My granddaughter said, ‘I think that’s for you.’ And, you know, he recognized me,” Ferguson recounted as she started to tear up.
Ferguson and Wasser stayed in touch until Wasser’s death, and she is still in contact with his wife. Whenever the Wassers came to Halifax, the Fergusons would have them over for Shabbat dinner on the Friday, then the Wassers would take out the Fergusons for dinner on the Saturday. Every birthday and holiday, Nathan Wasser would send a bouquet of flowers to Ferguson.
“He had no words for her, how grateful and how appreciative he was to the pier and the volunteers,” said Shirley Wasser. “I think [Ferguson] was one of the finest ladies I’ve ever encountered.”
“He did save his money and he listened to what we were saying. He said he owed it to us to do well. He was so grateful,” said Ferguson, speaking of her late friend somewhere between laughter and tears.
Alex Rose is a master’s student in journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax. He graduated from the same school in 2016 with a double major in creative writing and religious studies, and loves all things basketball. He wrote this article as part of an internship with the Jewish Independent.
דונלד טראמפ משנה דעתו כל הזמן: מתנגד להסכם הסחר עם קנדה ומקסיקו, תומך בו, מתנגד לו ותומך בו. (צילום: Gage Skidmore)
נשיא ארה”ב, דונלאד טראמפ, ממשיך לשנות את דעתו בכל נושא ונושא גם במלאת מאה ימים לכהונתו. אף אחד ממקורביו, בממשלו, ממשלתו ובקרב חברי הקונגרס מטעם מפלגתו, לא יודעים מה ילד יום וממה לצפות מטראפ שמעורר מבוכה רבה. לכן גם לא מפתיע במיוחד שטראמפ שהודיע כי הסכם הסחר הצפון אמריקני של ארה”ב עם קנדה ומקסיקו – נפט”א “הוא גרוע ביותר בהיסטוריה”, לאחר מכן אמר כי יוכנסו בו רק תיקונים קטנים בכל הנוגע לקנדה. אחרי כן הודיע טראמפ בשבוע שעבר כי הוא יבטל את הסכם נפט”א (ואף כבר הכין טיוטה של צו נשיאותי לסגת מההסכם), ולאחר יום חזר בו והודיע כי הוא כי ימשיך לתמוך בו, תוך הכנסת תיקונים מסויימים. זאת לאחר ששוחח בטלפון עם נשיא מקסיקו, אנריקה פנייה וראש ממשלת קנדה, ג’סטין טרודו, שביקשו ממנו להשאיר את הסכם הסחר על כנו, כי אחרת יגרם נזק גדול יותר לשלושת הצדדים, ולפעול במשותף במטרה לשפרו. טראמפ ציין כי אם הוא מסוגל לעשות עיסקה הוגנת עבור ארה”ב במקום לבטל את ההסכם המדובר, זה מה שהוא יעשה. נשיא ארה”ב הוסיף: “אנחנו מתכוונים לתת הזדמנות טובה למשא ומתן מחודש לשיפור תנאי ההסכם, שהתחיל ממש כבר בימים אלה”.
טרודו מצידו אמר לעיתונאים לאחר ששוחח עם טראמפ בטלפון, כי השיחה בין השניים הייתה מוצלחת. בשיחה הוא הבהיר לנשיא ארה”ב כי יציאת ארה”ב מההסכם תגרום כאב גדול לשתי המדינות. שני האישים סיכמו ביניהם לשפר את תנאי ההסכם לטובת שלוש המדינות השותפות בו. טראמפ אישר לאחר מכן כרגיל באמצעות טוויטר כי הסכים לבקשתם של טרודו לשנות את תנאי הסכם הסחר במקום לבטלו.
הסכם ליצירת אזור סחר חופשי של צפון אמריקהי בין ארה”ב, קנדה ומקסיקו – נפט”א – נולד בשנת 1994. אז חתמו עליו ראשי המדינות: נשיא ארה”ב ביל קלינטון, ראש ממשלת קנדה, בריאן מלרוני ונשיא מקסיקו קרלוס סאלינס. אגב מלרוני השמרני נחשב למקורב לטראמפ במשך שנים, ולכן הוא משמש כיום כיועץ לממשלת טרודו הליברלית שמנסה ללמוד כיצד לנהוג במגעים מול הנשיא האמריקני הבלתי צפוי לחלוטין.
נפט”א נועד לביטול רוב המכסים בין שלוש המדינות וכן להסדיר את מעבר כוח האדם והסחורות בין ארה”ב למקסיקו. ההסכם יועד בעיקר לשפר את מצבם של ענף החקלאות, ענף ייצור המכוניות וכן ענף הטקסטיל. ההסכם שנחשב למבורך בעיני רבים בהם גם מומחים בתחום הכלכלה, שילש את כמות המסחר וההשקעות בין ארה”ב, קנדה ומקסיקו. במונחי שווי כוח הקנייה של התוצר הלאומי הגולמי של החברות בהסכם, הוא יצר את גוש הסחר החופשי הגדול בעולם. ובמונחי תמ”ג נומינלי נחשב נפט”א להסכם הסחר השני לאחר הסכם איגוד הסחר החופשי של הגוש האירופאי המאוחד.
הסכם נפט”א הביא לכך שהתגבר סחר החוץ בין שלוש המדינות וכלכלן צמחו במהלך התקופה מאז נחתם. כלכלת קנדה צמחה בקצב הגבוה ביותר, אחריה כלכלת ארה”ב ואחרונה כלכלת מקסיקו. לפי משרד המסחר של ארה”ב: מאז חתימת ההסכם רמת האבטלה במשק האמריקני ירדה, בו בזמן שנרשם גידול מתמיד בשכר העובדים הריאלי לשעה. כן נרשם גידול בשכר העובדים של מקסיקו ואף גידול ביצוא החקלאי של ארה”ב לקנדה ומקסיקו. המומחים מציינים כי נפט”א הזיק לתעסוקה בארה”ב הרבה פחות מהתחרות עם סין ומדינות אחרות, ודווקא ביטולו עלול לפגוע בתעשיות האמריקניות.
The ribbon-cutting at the launch of the Canadian Jewish Experience exhibit. From left to right: Dr. Mark Kristmanson of the National Capital Commission; Supreme Court Justice Michael J. Moldaver; Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau; Rabbi Reuven Bulka of Machzikei Hadas Synagogue; Catherine Bélanger, widow of the late member of Parliament Mauril Bélanger; Tova Lynch of CJE; Linda Kerzner of Jewish Federation of Ottawa; and Cantor Daniel Benlolo of Congregation Kehilat Beth Israel. (photo from CJE)
A new exhibit opened in Ottawa on April 2, to mark the contribution of Jews to Canada and to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Confederation. The Canadian Jewish Experience: A Tribute to Canada 150 is on display in the lobby of 30 Metcalfe St., just two blocks from Parliament Hill, and is open to the public daily from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
The Canadian Jewish Experience is composed of specially created, bilingual exhibit panels illustrating nine major themes, such as contributions in war and diplomacy, public service, human rights, business growth, arts, culture and sport. A traveling version of the CJE exhibit will be available for display in other cities in Canada.
A parallel website has also been created to present more detailed information about the CJE exhibit topics and about many extraordinary Canadians. The website will provide information about venues for the lecture series and locations where the traveling exhibit can be viewed.
The Canadian Jewish Experience will also present a speaker series to highlight the contributions of Jewish Canadians to the development of Canada.
CJE has produced a special exhibit panel called Remembering Louis Rasminsky, which describes the work of Rasminsky, who was the first-ever Jewish person to be governor of the Bank of Canada. This will be on display at the Bank of Canada headquarters in Ottawa.
At the exhibit opening, CJE committee head Tova Lynch thanked donors from across Canada for the financial assistance they provided. In particular, she acknowledged its major donors: the Asper Foundation and Bel-Fran Charitable Foundation (Samuel and Frances Belzberg) from Vancouver.
“The CJE is an example of the tremendous love which Canadians have for our country,” Lynch added, praising the National Capital Commission for its cooperation. “Through our partnership with the National Capital Commission, CJE has an excellent downtown facility at the centre of events celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday.”
Lynch also noted, “Excitement is building as we approach Canada Day 2017. CJE will tell Canada’s Jewish story to many thousands of visitors to Ottawa in 2017.”
She pointed out that “Jewish Canadians have played a key role in all facets of life in Canada. Their accomplishments reflect the challenges and successes experienced by Canada in its first 150 years.”
The Jewish connection to Canada dates back to the mid-1700s. “The first Jewish Canadians arrived more than 100 years before Confederation,” noted Senator Linda Frum. “We’ve been here for a quarter of a millennium, but many Canadians don’t know the role we’ve played to make our country strong and vibrant. The Canadian Jewish Experience will help to change that.”
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said that the national capital is the appropriate home for the Canadian Jewish Experience. “In 2017, Ottawa will be at the centre of celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday and Jewish people have played a key role in all facets of life in the city. In fact, their accomplishments here reflect all the themes of the Canadian Jewish Experience, including being elected mayor.”
Other Jewish leaders and organizations who have assisted the Canadian Jewish Experience project include Victor Rabinovitch, former president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History); the leaders of Jewish federations across Canada; and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. CJE is also supported by members of Parliament from all federal parties, Senator Frum, former senator Jerry Grafstein and Rabbi Dr. Reuven Bulka. Sandra Morton Weizman of Calgary is the curator of the CJE exhibit and virtual exhibit.
The CJE website is cje2017.com.
There should be a word for the phenomenon where an individual comes to mass public attention only when their reputations are imploding due to impolitic remarks on social media. Milo Yiannopoulos, a former editor of the far-right Breitbart news, was just cresting his 15 minutes of fame as a flamboyant right-wing provocateur when he discovered that words can still get one in hot water. Only as his credibility, such as it was, flamed out did his name become anything close to a household word.
Likewise, a Canadian figure few of our readers had probably heard of until he melted down in an online video is Gavin McInnes. A comedian, online commentator, co-founder of Vice Magazine and – here’s that term again – right-wing provocateur, McInnes is also a contributor to Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media.
On a trip to Israel with other members of the Rebel outfit, McInnes posted a lengthy spiel about his reaction to a visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre. He apparently felt the visit was an exercise in Jewish propaganda and declared that, far from making him sympathetic to Jewish history, it had the opposite effect.
The Israelis he met, he said, “assume we’re going to listen to all this s–t we get fed.… That’s having the reverse effect on me: I’m becoming antisemitic.”
He added: “I felt myself defending the super far-right Nazis just because I was sick of so much brainwashing.”
Israelis, he said, have “a whiny, paranoid fear of Nazis,” and “it’s a Jewish thing” to dwell on the past.
“This whole nation-state is talking about ‘Seventy-five years ago, my people were killed,’” McInnes said. “Always the Jews, always killing us, we are the scapegoats.… God, they’re so obsessed with the Holocaust. Yes, I know it was bad – don’t get me wrong, I’m not pro-Holocaust.”
He went on to accuse Jews of perpetrating the Holodomor, Stalin’s deliberate Ukrainian famine that killed between seven and 10 million people in the 1930s.
As McInnes was getting more than his share of attention, another Canadian was receiving a mixed reception from campus crowds in Ontario.
Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist and a tenured professor at the University of Toronto, gained some notoriety last fall when he posted video reflections on aspects of human rights law that he said could potentially infringe on free speech. Most notably, he refuses to use non-gendered pronouns (such as zhe, instead of he or she) in his classroom. Peterson is a critic of what he calls “compelled speech.”
Peterson is hardly as inflammatory as Yiannopoulos or McInnes. Agree or disagree, his positions are intellectually rooted and debatable, not beyond the pale of civil discourse. Yet he never really got a chance to speak at McMaster University because he was drowned out by a chanting group of students who shut down his event. That his message was one of free speech is an irony, though one apparently lost on some university students these days.
In any event, he was met with a far more amenable crowd the next day at the University of Western Ontario. According to media reports, even some who came to protest were pleasantly surprised to find themselves agreeing with Peterson once they heard what he had to say.
Regardless of what these men had to say, though, the idea that their ideas should be silenced, rather than contested, is a societal problem in itself. Things would be different if we did not have a diffuse media universe; if every individual did not have more access than ever before to express themselves; if, as some conspiracists allege, the channels of communication were truly limited to a powerful few. But they’re not.
Every Canadian can participate in the national discussion. First, we can listen, like the students at Western and unlike those at McMaster last week. Second, we can express our own views when we hear ideas that challenge ours. (We have a right to do this as vociferously as we wish, but we have a complementary responsibility to do so civilly.) Third, we can defend the right of those with whom we disagree to speak and be heard – within the limitations Canadians have broadly consented to acknowledge as appropriate to peace, order and good government.
These three steps are about as simple a description of civil discourse as can be distilled. While there is much discussion about free speech, it is valuable to bear in mind that we, as Canadians, have it. This should not be taken for granted, of course, because these freedoms were hard won and should be defended. But rights must also be exercised to be valuable.
The response to disagreeable ideas is not less speech, but more speech. Listen, express, defend. Never in history has an individual had more accessible avenues to sharing their opinions and ideas. Free speech has never been freer. Please use it for good.
Mykhailo Chomiak edited a Ukrainian-language Nazi newspaper in occupied Poland. It happens that Chomiak was the maternal grandfather of Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister.
This fact is a matter of historical record, but apparently Russian operatives were shopping the story around as if it were fresh – and as if they believe Canadians will hold Freeland, and perhaps by extension the Liberal government, responsible for Chomiak’s past.
A writer on the Canadian online media outlet rabble.ca went so far as to accuse Freeland of a cover-up, which is nonsense, since she was acknowledged for her help editing an article on the subject that was written 20 years ago by her uncle, John-Paul Himka, an historian.
Freeland called it “public knowledge that there have been efforts, as U.S. intelligence forces have said, by Russia to destabilize the U.S. political system.… I think that Canadians, and indeed other Western countries, should be prepared for similar efforts to be directed at us.” She is absolutely correct. Russia almost certainly was involved in the U.S. presidential election and may indeed be responsible for the fact that Donald Trump is now in the White House.
Nevertheless, it seemed like a missed opportunity for Freeland not to use the chance to acknowledge some of the complexities and complicities around her grandfather’s history.
Let’s step back for a moment and realize that Canadians are relatively fortunate that, whatever enormous sacrifices Canadian families made during the Second World War, the war itself never reached our shores. For families in Europe at the time, many of whose descendants are, through immigration, now Canadians, the war impacted every aspect of civilian life. Possibly millions of people are responsible for acts of heroism or betrayal that are lost to history. Had it not been for the writings of a member of her own family, Freeland’s grandfather’s story might have been another largely forgotten piece of that war’s far-encompassing awfulness.
Who can estimate how many Canadians have ancestors who engaged in complicity (or worse) with Hitler’s regime, or with Stalin’s, or with any number of less-renowned tyrants and bad ideologies worldwide? We do not rest from seeking redress for the worst crimes during history’s worst times, but behaviours that do not constitute war crimes have rarely received the full attention of the media and public that Chomiak’s case has garnered in the past days. And we certainly do not – and should not – place any blame at the feet of grandchildren for events that took place before they were born. Freeland has done absolutely nothing wrong.
Still … she could have done something better. She could have (and perhaps by the time you read this, she will have) turned this into a teaching moment for Canadians.
The parents or grandparents of some Canadians may have chosen to, or been forced to, engage in actions we see as abhorrent. We cannot change the past. But we can potentially make a better future by acknowledging it, openly identifying wrongs and committing ourselves to better actions than that exhibited by some of our forebears. As examples, present-day Canadians have begun a process of reconciliation around the genocide perpetrated against indigenous Canadians, and Canadian governments have apologized for actions against Japanese-Canadians and the passengers of the Komagata Maru and the MS St. Louis.
In Freeland’s case, she is right to warn Canadians that Russia is attempting to undermine the credibility of our country’s foreign minister. But she should go further and insist that no Canadian – whether the country’s top diplomat or a new Canadian who was sworn in as a citizen yesterday – is guilty of acts undertaken by their grandparents. A few words about the complexity of historical memory could also be helpful. And it would be valuable for the federal government to make a firm public declaration that blackmailing or smearing a Canadian based on the acts of an ancestor will fail in its mission.
