George Heyman

Learning his family’s history

George Heyman, ninth from the right, with family members in Poland last year. (photo from George Heyman)

Like scores of other British Columbians, George Heyman owes his life to Chiune Sugihara.

Heyman, who was reelected Saturday as MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, was born after the Second World War. But his parents escaped Poland via Japan thanks to the assistance of Sugihara, who was the vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania. At risk to his career and probably his life, Sugihara betrayed orders of the Imperial Japanese government and issued transit visas that are credited with saving the lives of at least 6,000 European Jews.

Heyman, who was minister of environment and climate change strategy in the last government, was sketchy on some of this family history. So, at the urging of a distant cousin who is “a ferocious researcher,” Heyman, his sister and other family members from around the world convened in Poland last year.

“[The cousin] found others as well and he started communicating with us and sending us snapshots of things that he’d found in archives and going back a couple of hundred years,” Heyman said of the cousin, who is a retired professor in Denmark. “He found information about the village that our ancestors had once lived before they migrated to Warsaw.”

The diverse group of family members spent about 10 days together in the summer of 2019.

“We met in Warsaw, we had an initial family dinner of 20 people, three generations,” he recalled. “Everybody said a little bit about what it meant to them to be back, as well as where their lives had taken them.”

The cousin had prepared a family tree and presented each guest with a scroll outlining their genealogy. They then traveled as a group to Praszka, the village where the family had originated but left for Warsaw, probably in the late 1700s or early 1800s.

Both of his parents, Stefan Heyman and Marta Eliasberg Heyman, were born in Warsaw and they were family friends with the noted pedagogue and child advocate Dr. Janusz Korczak.

“My grandmother had been a volunteer working with him and my grandfather, who was a doctor, had also worked with him,” said Heyman. “We visited the site of the orphanage, which is now a commemorative museum. We went to the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.… I was so pleased to see that so much had been done to rehabilitate much of the cemetery. People had been working on it since the end of the Second World War, but work continues. We wandered, we found gravestones of relatives and people we thought might be relatives. We talked to people we met there.”

They also visited the remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto, where Heyman’s maternal grandmother had been confined but from which she was rescued before the ghetto was liquidated, in 1943.

His maternal grandfather had died before the war and his grandmother, Stella Bernstein Eliasberg, had remained behind when Heyman’s parents fled. She was incarcerated in the ghetto, but was rescued in a scenario of which Heyman knows only the barest details. The ghetto wall abutted the side of a church and someone – friends of his grandparents, he thinks – brought clothing as a disguise and smuggled her out through the church and into hiding for the rest of the war. Heyman does not know whether there was any communication during this time between his mother and his grandmother. But, shortly after the war, Heyman’s parents were able to bring his grandmother to Vancouver, where she lived with them and played an important role in his life, until she passed away just before Heyman’s bar mitzvah.

Nothing is known of the fate of Heyman’s paternal grandparents.

“I often wonder what it must have been like for my father,” he said. “It’s hard enough when we remember a loved one who has died and we know the circumstances of their death. It’s horrific, as it has been for so many, many, many people … they are left only to imagine what their loved ones went through in their final days and hours. That was my father.”

The trip refashioned Heyman’s conception of his family.

“I always thought of my family as being very small,” he said. “In fairness, I didn’t know that some of these people even existed…. It gives me a sense of continuity and history.”

The trip also helped emphasize for him the lessons of the past for the politics of the present.

“We see right-wing violence, we see the beginnings of fascism appearing in many countries,” he said. “We don’t have to look far to see what happens if we take things for granted.”

He brings that experience back into his current work.

“That’s one of the reasons that our government, after 16 years of its elimination, reinstated the B.C. Human Rights Commission,” he said, “because it’s not enough to just deal with racist behaviour, hate behaviour, after it happens, we need a commission that will be responsible for educating people and recommending programs to raise people in an atmosphere of tolerance and love, not suspicion and hate. So that is also a very significant and often unnoticed achievement of our government, and we did it very early.”

He reflected: “The trip was meeting a family that I never knew I had and having more of a sense of being grounded in my family history, as well as the terrible recent history of what happened to our and so many other families, just dispersed, another diaspora all over the world.”

NDP proud of their record

Selina Robinson (photo from Selina Robinson)

Premier John Horgan sent Selina Robinson a message: “A mensch is a good thing, right?”

Robinson, the NDP government’s minister of municipal affairs and housing, is seeking reelection in the riding of Coquitlam-Maillardville. She sees herself as the Jewish maven around the cabinet table.

“I said yes, who called you a mensch?” Robinson recalled. “He just wanted to double-check.”

As she and other New Democrats campaign toward the Oct. 24 provincial election, Robinson and fellow cabinet member George Heyman spoke with the Jewish Independent. (In this issue, we also speak with Jewish candidates and spokespeople for other parties.)

As minister of housing, Robinson takes pride in the development of a major initiative called Homes for B.C.: A 30-Point Plan for Housing Affordability in British Columbia. Her ministry engaged with housing groups, renters, developers, economists, local government officials, planners and other thinkers. Then they convened people in a “World Café,” an engagement exercise in which people from different perspectives sit at a table and must come to agreed-upon recommendations on a topic.

“It was from that that we picked the best ideas and so it really came from all sides of the housing sector rather than pitting them against each other,” she said, acknowledging that she had to convince some to buy into the process because bureaucracy is not always amenable to novel approaches.

She cited two particular areas that she wants to “kvell about.” BC Housing, the agency that develops, manages and administers a range of subsidized housing in the province, is building housing on First Nations land.

“The feds, I don’t think, are building a lot of Indigenous housing and they’re supposed to,” she said. “No other province has stepped up to do that.… You’re a British Columbian and you need housing … if it’s land on reserve, it’s land on reserve – we’ll build housing.”

By providing housing in First Nations communities, it also helps people remain at home, rather than moving to the city, where housing is even more expensive and possibly precarious, she said.

“I’m very proud of that,” Robinson said.

The other point of pride is, Robinson admitted, “a geeky piece of legislation.” When she stepped into the role as the government’s lead on housing availability and affordability, she recognized that there is no data on what kind of housing exists and what’s needed.

“Local governments are responsible for land-use planning and deciding what kind of housing goes where – this is going to be multifamily, this is going to be single-family – but, if you were to ask them, how much do you have, how much more multifamily do you need, they couldn’t tell you, because nobody was collecting the data.”

She brought forward legislation that mandated local governments to do a housing needs assessment every five years to identify whether more housing options are needed for different age groups and types of families.

She also cited the government’s development of social housing, through the allocation of $7 billion over 10 years to build 39,000 units. So far, 25,000 units are either open, in construction or going through the municipal development process.

“My biggest worry is that the Liberals [if they are elected] will cancel all of those that are still in the development stage because they did that in 2001 when they formed government,” she said. “We’re so far behind the eight ball because they did that. I’m not saying it would have fixed everything, but, if there were another 5,000 units of housing out there, it wouldn’t be as bad as it is because there would be another 5,000 units.”

Every Friday, Robinson lights Shabbat candles and then shares a reflection on social media about her week.

“Lighting the Shabbat candles just grounds me in my identity,” she said. “I make myself take 10 minutes on a Friday at sundown to stop and to clear my head and to remind myself why I do the work. It’s not for the pay. It’s not for any of that; it’s not worth it. It’s who I am, what are my values and what’s important to me? What did I hear this week that reminds me of why this work is important?”

Robinson admitted she’s being partisan in saying that she believes NDP values are Jewish values.

“From my perspective, taking care of the world – whether it’s the environment, the people and all that’s within it – is our collective responsibility,” she said, adding with a laugh: “I think all Jews are New Democrats who just don’t know it yet.”

* * *

George Heyman, minister of environment and climate change strategy, is seeking reelection in the riding of Vancouver-Fairview. He is a son of Holocaust refugees, who escaped the Nazis with the help of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who illegally issued visas to about 6,000 Jews, many of whose descendants now live in Vancouver.

photo - George Heyman — George Heyman *(photo from George Heyman)*

In 2019, Heyman took a family trip to Poland, which broadened his awareness of his family’s history and where he met family members he never knew he had. The Independent will run that story in an upcoming issue.

Speaking of his record in government, Heyman expressed pride in bringing in CleanBC, which he calls “a very detailed, independently modeled set of measures to get us to our 2030 target and beyond.”

He also said the government “completely revamped the province’s Environmental Assessment Act, incorporating the principles of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”

Collaborating with the First Nations Leadership Council, the government adapted the legislation to bring in affected local communities at the beginning of a project, before a proponent spends millions of dollars then has to go back to the drawing board due to local concerns.

“We’ve been investing in clean technology, we’ve approved transit plans that were stalled for years that the mayors of Metro Vancouver thought were critically important,” Heyman added. “We’re going to see the Broadway [SkyTrain] line commence to relieve the tremendous congestion on the Broadway corridor, both on buses and on the roads. And we’ll be working on ultimately being able to work with UBC and the city and the federal government to extend that to UBC.”

The government, he said, updated the Residential Tenancy Act to address tenants who were being threatened with eviction for suspect renovations and that saw people getting notices of rent increases as high as 40% because of loopholes in the act.

“We closed those loopholes, we held rent increases to the cost of living unless there is a legitimate demonstrated need to do renovation and repair and it’s fair to receive some compensation rent to pay for that,” he said.

Like Robinson, Heyman cited the construction of affordable housing, as well as supportive housing, to get homeless people off the street and provide them with services they need. He said the government has created 20,000 childcare spaces in the province “with significant fee reductions for families as we work our way toward a $10-a-day program.” Increased staffing in schools, mandated by a Supreme Court decision during the previous regime, is also an accomplishment, he said, as well as adding more investments in new schools for seismic upgrades, fire safety and heating and ventilation systems.

On the opioid crisis, Heyman acknowledged a surge in deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. “While there is much more to do, we managed to flatten the level of deaths up until COVID hit,” he said.

Also parallel to the pandemic was a realization of “the terrible state of many of our long-term-care homes.”

“We saw that deteriorate under the previous government,” he said. “With COVID, we saw the results of that. We saw people dying because workers were having to go to two or three different care homes, increasing the risk of infection, simply to cobble together a living. We took measures to allow our healthcare workers to work in one institution without suffering the loss of pay and we’re also investing in more beds and more equipment for long-term-care homes.”

New Democrats have been governing in a minority situation with the support of the Green party since 2017. Horgan called the snap election on Sept. 21, facing criticism for breaking fixed election date legislation and going to the polls during a state of emergency.

Funding for new equipment

Left to right are Louis Brier Home and Hospital staff Jennifer Belen, Nicole Encarnacion, Carol Bucknor, David Keselman (chief executive officer) and Rozanne Kipnes with MLA George Heyman and Louis Brier resident Roberta Gilmore (holding the cheque). (photo from Louis Brier)

Louis Brier Home and Hospital is one of 88 care homes across British Columbia to receive funding to purchase new safety equipment, as part of the Seniors Safety and Quality Improvement Program (or SSQIP, pronounced “SKWIP”) initiative. The Brier will receive $60,576 of the total $2.6 million in provincial funding allocated.

SSQIP is managed by B.C. Care Providers Association (BCCPA), who process applications from all residential care homes that receive public funding for new equipment intended to improve safety and quality of life for residents. Oversight of SSQIP is provided by representatives from the Ministry of Health, BCCPA, Denominational Health Association and SafeCare BC. Approved applicants may receive up to $500 for each publicly funded resident.

“Our government is proud to invest in thisprogram, which will go towards purchasing new beds to help improve safety andquality of life for those living in residential care homes,” said GeorgeHeyman, MLA for Vancouver-Fairview, who presented the cheque at the Brier onDec. 6. “It’s great to see that Louis Brier Home and Hospital and seniors inVancouver will benefit from new equipment.”In addition to beds and mattress purchases,care homes are investing in new shower chairs, tubs, mobility equipment (suchas floor and ceiling lifts), lighting and visual aids, sensory rooms, musictherapy and ergonomic furniture. Preventative and urgent response systems arealso funded to promote both resident and employee safety.For more information, visitbccare.ca/programs/ssqip.

MLA seeks out positive solutions

George Heyman is the member of the B.C. legislative assembly for Vancouver-Fairview. (photo from George Heyman)

George Heyman is one of numerous British Columbia residents who owe their lives to the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara. Though born after the Second World War, Heyman is the son of a Polish Jewish couple who were among the estimated 6,000 Jews aided in fleeing Nazi Europe by the acts of Sugihara, who was the vice-consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania.

“That’s a story my parents didn’t spend a lot of time telling me about, which I’ve since found out is actually very common – parents don’t tell their story,” Heyman told the Independent. “But I learned much about it in recent years and it has been well-documented with a number of exhibits telling the story in Vancouver and the United States and other parts of Canada and in Japan.”

Sugihara risked his career – and his life – issuing transit visas to Jews. An estimated 40,000 descendants of “Sugihara Jews” are alive today because of his actions.

Once they had escaped Europe, Heyman’s parents were sponsored by family in Vancouver.

“Canada was certainly not falling over to welcome Jewish refugees,” said Heyman. “But they had distant relatives who were from Austria, who had already established here before the war started, seeing the writing on the wall. They sponsored them. My dad enlisted in the reserves, worked as a machinist in a boiler factory – even though he had an engineering degree – until he could get his credentials recognized in Canada, and eventually went on to work in the profession in which he had been trained.”

Heyman was born at Vancouver General Hospital, in the riding he now represents in the B.C. legislature, Vancouver-Fairview. The New Democrat says his family’s experience – and his own experience with casual antisemitism – helped shape his approach to the world and politics.

“I think, as a young child growing up in Canada, I just wanted to be what most children wanted, which was to be accepted,” he said. “I remember the normalization of what we would now recognize as clearly antisemitic jokes or comments or generalizations or characterizations. As a young boy, I had a hard time speaking up against it. It took a lot of courage to say, ‘you can’t talk about Jews that way’ or ‘why are you using the term Jew, my religion, in that way that is clearly not a good one?’”

These experiences, Heyman said, helped him recognize injustice and learn to value other people regardless of their economic class, ethnicity or religion, “to embrace people, not categorize them or shun them.”

“As part of that, I was also learning to stand up for who I was,” he said. “Like many young Jews, I was torn between looking for my identity and wanting to fit in. It’s been a lifelong journey.”

These experiences also helped lead him to careers in the labour movement and public office. Heyman served as head of the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, then executive director of the Sierra Club of British Columbia, before being elected to the B.C. legislature in the 2013 election.

One of the reasons he has taken the opportunity over the years to speak up about his own experiences, Heyman said, has been “to try to deepen understanding and let people know what casual and thoughtless racist comments do to people who are the recipients of them.”

Antisemitic rhetoric and threats in North America and the murder of six Muslims in a Quebec mosque have had a range of unintended consequences, he said. They have ensured that people do not take security for granted and they have caused a coming together of disparate religious and ethnic groups.

“When Muslims at prayer in a mosque in Quebec are murdered, members of the Jewish community stood with Vancouver Muslims at the mosque and expressed their own solidarity as well as horror at the actions,” he said. “And Muslims have come to the [Vancouver Jewish Community] Centre for peace circles, to express their solidarity.… What makes us strong is when we work together, understand each other, support each other, build institutions together; not when we live in isolation or fear, because then we just give encouragement to those people who thrive on creating fear and hatred because it’s the only answer they have for what’s missing in their lives. I’d rather find a positive, constructive answer to those things that are missing in people’s lives, whether it’s spirituality, faith or some measure of economic equality, and build community solidarity that way.”

Heyman said he and the rest of the NDP caucus want to see the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report implemented, including educational components about the history of First Nations.

“The commission talked about ensuring that there is a healthy education component in schools, right from the earliest stages, about the history, what was wrong with it, how we can grow beyond it and heal,” he said. “The same is true of the racist laws that existed in Canada that impacted Chinese, South Asian, Japanese and other immigrants, who actually did the hard labour, in many cases, of building this country that other people weren’t willing to do. The same is true of understanding the history of the Holocaust that happened in Europe, which obviously was overwhelmingly targeted to Jews, but not only. How that connects to other aspects of racism, hatred and genocide, [and to] recognize the genocides that have happened in other parts of the world, as Jewish speakers at Holocaust memorials in the legislature have consistently done.

“We need to educate young people, both about the horror of the past and what it leads to, about the impact of thoughtless words or actions that promote or embody racist thought, but also about the benefits to us all when we live and work together and appreciate each other and embrace each other.… Government has the resources and the authority to both legislate against hatred and racism, but also to animate the actions that can ultimately, if not wipe it out, shrink it to the minimum amount that we would hope.”

On the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Heyman said he supports a two-state solution and does not support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“I’ve never chosen to personally support or even quietly implement on my own behalf a boycott of Israeli products,” he said. “I also think it’s important in this context that we distinguish between tactics that some people choose to make a political point and whether or not that tactic is synonymous with antisemitism. I think, for instance, there are antisemites who express their views through a variety of mechanisms, and I also think there are Jews and other people who are legitimately concerned about government actions and want to find a two-state solution and peace that brings an end to the conflict and brings security to both Palestinians and Israelis who may support that tactic without being antisemitic. Personally, while I support a two-state solution, I very much want to see the hatred and conflict in the Middle East solved and that means, for me, opposing terrorism as well as opposing actions that block the road to peace.”

He added: “I think it’s important for people to recognize that those who call for a just peace and a two-state solution may be calling for justice for Palestinians and justice for Jews and Israelis, and they are not incompatible.”

As voters prepare for the May 9 election, Heyman said there are plenty of topics on the agenda.

“There are issues of affordability, issues of fairness and services for communities, for people needing healthcare, for seniors, for children, for working families, issues of housing and very important issues of, how do we build a modern, diversified economy that doesn’t threaten our children and grandchildren with an unliveable future due to climate change?” he said. “We can’t put off the choices of transitioning to a supportive society, a society that takes care of seniors and kids, as well as a society and economy that employs people productively while respecting and protecting the environment – those are the choices we need to make today.”

The Jewish Independent’s provincial election coverage continues with interviews with other candidates in future issues.