IRVING ABELLA IS a professor of history at York University in Toronto, and the author or co?author of six books: Nationalism, Communism and Canadian Labour (University of Toronto Press, 1973); On Strike (Lorimer, 1974); The Canadian Worker in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1977); The History of Canadian Labour 1902 to the Present (Canadian Historical Association, 1978); Twentieth?Century Canada (McGraw?Hill, 1984); and (with Harold Troper) None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews in Europe 1933?1948 (Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1982), which won the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize in Canadian History and the American National Jewish Book Award. His new book, A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada, is published this month by Lester & Orpen Dennys. He spoke with Norman Sigurdson in Toronto. BiC: You have just finished writing a history of Jewish life in this country over the last 200 years. Why now? Did you think that this was a particularly significant time for a summing up, for this story to be told? Irving Abella: Well, quite frankly, the reason it is being told right now is that there is an exhibition of photographs and artifacts with the same title as the book, "A Coat of Many Colours: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada," opening at the same time. It is opening in Ottawa and then travelling across the country. It will be in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum, in Montreal at the McCourt, it is going to the New York Museum and then ending up at the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv. But apart from that, I think it is important that Canadians realize that the Jews are not newcomers. Jews have been here longer than the British, for God's sake. In fact, when the British first landed in Louisbourg there was a Jewish family there to greet them. I really think it is important to recognize the roles played by minorities and ethnic groups in the founding of this country. If Canadians want to learn about their country they should know about everyone, not just the "two founding races." BiC: You open the book with an amazing story about the first Jew to arrive in Canada, Esther Brandeau in 1738, a story with a bit of a twist. Abella: The first Jew to arrive was ?a young man named Jacques La Forge who didn't look like a settler, and when the government officials took a closer look they discovered that "he' was really a she. Not only was he not a man but he was not a Catholic ?? she was Jewish. She turned out to be a 19?year?old French girl in search of adventure. Knowing full well that Jews were not allowed in Quebec under the French she pretended to he a Catholic male. They didn't know what to do with her, since Jews weren't allowed. (Women were, of course: there was a shortage of women in colonial society.) They told her that if she converted she could stay. For a whole year they tried to convert her. They put her in jail, in hospital, the priests went after her, but she refused. So after a year she was sent back to France and disappeared into history. BiC: That story and other sto Irving Abella ries you tell in the book about the importance of Jewish traders in the St. Lawrence trade are fascinating, but to most people they are unknown. You said that part of your mission was to make people more aware of the Jewish contribution to colonial life. Does this suggest that historians in the past have downplayed or ignored these stories? I don't want to use the word "conspiracy," exactly . . . Abella: No, well, I don't think there has been a conspiracy. I think what happened is that the Jews really arrived with the British. That is when there begins to be some record of them. Jews were not allowed to come to Canada under the French because the French decreed that only Catholics and only French could live in the new colony. But, there were Jews who did come, some like Esther Brandeau by hiding who they were; others, in Louisbourg in particular, who were traders but who didn't tell anyone they were Jewish. So, there were Jews here as early as 1750. The arrival of the British in 1760 after the defeat of the French at the Plains of Abraham opens up a new era for Canadian society and for Jewish life in this country. Many of the Jews who came with the British were suppliers from the United States and the old country who supplied the British army. They came at the same time as the French seigneurial system was falling apart. French society was in turmoil and they saw great opportunities and many settled here. The fur trade was no longer under French control so they set themselves up in the fur trade. They formed consortiums and managed to make deals with the Indians and to negotiate with all sorts of tribes and to travel thousands of miles into the interior. The first settler into Michigan was a Jew, there were trading posts in the upper Great Lakes run by Jews, and we find traces of Jews around Lake Superior and Lake Huron in the 1750s. The reason that most people don't know about them is that most of them didn't remain Jewish. Because there was such a paucity of women many of them married native women or French?Canadian women. Their children were brought up as Catholic or what have you, so whatever vestiges of Jewishness remained were lost in the first generation. Some did remain Jewish, though. They are now doing archaeological excavations at Michilimackinac and they are discovering Jewish graves, Jewish stores, and various materials that show an active Jewish presence. BiC: Openly Jewish? Abella: Openly Jewish, yes. BiC: Given what you say about many of the first Jewish settlers converting and their children being brought up as Catholics, how did you go about researching their lives, how did you find them? You say at one point that the Jews in the 18th century were "legally nonexistent" of the official records of births, deaths, and marriages were kept either by the Anglican or Catholic churches. Abella: Well, a lot of the major players did keep diaries. So, I the historians who have done this work before me looked at their diaries and the records that were kept by the first Jewish synagogue. BiC: The "Spanish and Portuguese" in Montreal? Abella: Thats right. It was a matter of looking at diaries and records and matching names against names of people who applied for licences and things. Or newspaper stories of the time, because there was a great interest in the exoticness of the Jewish merchants. But you are absolutely right, it is not possible to trace everybody so it probably means there were even more Jews at the time than we know about. But at least we've been able to trace some, and interestingly most of them didnt convert although they raised their children as Catholics. They still kept Jewish customs and still went to synagogue, they insisted on being buried in Jewish cemeteries and they often wrote using Hebrew letters. All the time their wives and children were Catholics, so it's quite a paradox, quite an anomaly. But we do have enough records to see that there was a fair number of them, growing and succeeding with very little discrimination. BiC: Are there many of the descendants of these first settlers still around who did remain Jewish? Abella: Yes, especially in Quebec. The Hart family and the Joseph family in particular. These families can trace their ancestors back to the 1750s. But for the most part, no heritage is left. We know, for example, that there was a handful of Jewish settlers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia who took up land, but they disappeared into the landscape. There were Jews in small towns in Upper Canada at that time as well, but little trace of them remains, only written documents. BiC: You said a moment ago that there was very little discrimination at that time; this comes across in the book, despite stories like Ezekial Hart being denied his seat in the legislative assembly because he refused to swear the oath of office on a Christian Bible. Abella: There is a chapter in the book entitled "The Golden Age of Canadian Jewry." If one looks at the book in abstract one might think that the golden age of Canadian Jewry would be the present ?? the successes that the Jews have achieved, the open society. But in fact Canadian society was far more open, I think, in the period before Confederation, the decades, let's say, from the 1840s through the 1870s when, for example, there were Jewish bank presidents, there were Jewish banks. Jews could not be on the boards of directors of banks in this country throughout the 20th century until the past decade or two. Jews founded canals and railways and were involved in the country's economic life, which is shocking to people given that until the 1960s and '70s Jews were kept out of most of the really important economic sectors of this country. Yes, politically there was discrimination because it was a Christian society and for the Jews to sit in the House they had to swear an oath on the Christian Bible and most wouldn't. But that oath was forgotten when Jews took up other positions. So we had Jewish police chiefs and fire commissioners and Jewish magistrates, all of whom did not swear the necessary oath but none the less were appointed. BiC: You are making the point that Jews were emancipated in Canada long before they were anywhere else in the British empire. Why was that? Abella: Yes, there were Jews holding commissions in the militia, Jews in the judiciary, holding elected positions long before anywhere else. I think there is a very good reason for it. Britain wanted the "fabled" (as they saw them) talents of the Jews in the New World. Sol both in the Thirteen Colonies and in British North America Jews were encouraged to come because they were people who could bring commercial success to an area that was looking for an economic underpinning. So, Britain allowed these people to become naturalized in the colonies long before they could become citizens in Britain. Of course, new colonial societies, frontier societies, don't usually have the same strictures and traditional constraints as old societies, so it was possible for them to gain access to positions that they could never attain at home. It was amazing for British Jews in this period to get letters from their cousins and sons in the New World signed "Captain Levy" or "Magistrate Cohen," when the British Jews couldn't even vote. BiC: This golden age ended about the time that the mass immigrations of Russian Jews and eastern European Jews began to arrive. These poorer immigrants caused a lot of tensions for the more settled, assim ilated Jews already here. Was this the reason the golden age ended? You seem to imply in the book that things were fine for the Jews as long as they were a tiny minority . and not very visible. Abella: I think thats part of it. This is a country of immigrants that hates immigration. As Canadians looked at the arrival of so many immigrants in the 1880s and '90s, not just Jews, but millions of illiterate aliens with many different languages and customs, the Anglo leadership worried about what kind of country this would become. A Jew, being highly visible because many of them settled in urban areas, became a butt of this anti?immigration attitude. This is largely the cause of the anti?Semitism that began to appear in dramatic fashion at the beginning of the 20th century. BiC: The book ends on a mostly positive note, but in the last few paragraphs you talk about the problems facing the community now: assimilation, intermarriage, a falling birth rate that you call a "demographic nightmare." Abella: One of the great ironies of Jewish life in Canada at the present time is that for the first time Jewish leaders are more concerned with the rate of assimilation than with the rate of anti?Semitism. There has been a remarkable opening up of Canadian society. in the past few decades, a real absorbency, with more assimilation, more intermarriage. If you couple that with a falling birth rate, community leaders worry about the long?term trends. What is going to happen to a Jewish community whose birth rate is static? On the other hand, the paradox is that at the same time the ultra?Orthodox community is growing at a phenomenal rate. The ultra?Orthodox birth rate is very high, the parochial school system is growing by leaps and bounds, in fact there is a higher enrolment in Jewish schools in Canada than there is in any other country except Israel. So at the same time that people worry that the community is being threatened and constricted there is also a vibrancy and excitement. I ended it on a mixed note because that is what the future is. On the one hand, the future has never looked brighter in terms of opportunities available and almost all the barriers have been knocked down, but it also threatens the community by allowing Jews to assimilate and lose their traditions. BiC: The community has been too successful? Abella: This is quite anomalous. The community can look back on 250 years of trials and tribulations and see that it has managed to break down most of the barriers and open up most of the sectors of society and knock down most of the restrictions. At the same time that makes it more difficult for young Jews who are not faced with anti? Semitism, are not restricted to certain areas of occupation or habitation, to remain Jewish. It is a challenge to the community to come up with something new and different, to maintain its vibrancy and its connection to a generation that will never know what it was like to be a Jew in this country 50 or 60 years ago. BiC: You are saying that there are fewer constraints and that most young Jews are never confronted with anti? Semitism, but the B'nai B'rith just yesterday released a report that said that anti?Semitic acts were up by 57 per cent over last year. Abella: I think there is a fundamental racism in Canadian society and there always has been. Jews bore the brunt of it up until the end of the Second World War, now other immigrant groups are bearing the brunt of it. There is still a considerable number of anti?Semites out there, but one has to put it in context. Compared to what feelings were about the Jews 50 or 60 years ago things are quite different. Okay, the B'nai B'rith report says anti?Semitism is up by 57 per cent but that takes it up to something like 140 from 100 anti?Semitic incidents. So it's hard to judge. I'm sure there is still a certain number of people who are anti?Semitic but we now have legislation, education, human rights commissions, equity bodies ... BiC: So people like Mackenzie King and Frederick Blair, whom you wrote about in None is Too Many, wouldn't have the same capacity to do damage now. Abella: Thats right, they could never do now what they did then. This is not to deny the existence of anti? Semitism. Education works with glacial slowness. We have been working oil educating the Young ?? and the old ?for generations now. BiC: In a book like this you have to pick and choose what to include and what to emphasize. Is there a particular "moral" to the story you wanted to tell? Abella: I guess the moral would be how a small group of people arrived in this country and managed to overcome all the obstacles and expand and grow. Of course, there is much more to tell. The book is something like 150,000 words long. Now, you can't tell 250 years of history in 150,000 words. One of the major themes I wanted to emphasize was the lost world of Canadian Jewry. People don't realize that the world of Canadian Jewry was the world of the garment worker, the small?town storekeeper, the farmer, the trade?union organizer. Those have all disappeared. I also wanted to show that not only were the Jews pioneers in eastern Canada, they also made a significant contribution in western Canada. BiC: Yes, the chapter on the early Jewish community in Victoria really surprised me. I grew up in Winnipeg and like everyone else I knew all about the Jews in the North End, but the chapter on Victoria was new to me. Abella: Well, I mean, that's the point. Victoria had the largest Jewish Population in Canada outside of Montreal in the 1850s and '60s. It was a community that was drawn largely from the gold rush in California, but the Victoria community was as prominent in its way as the Montreal Community was a hundred years before. Some of the early Jews ended LIP as mayors, bankers, members of parliament. People who laid down some of the foundations of some of the important institutions of Victoria and Vancouver were Jewish. For example, Stanley Park was bought by a mayor of Vancouver who was a Jew. Another area people don't often think of is sports. When YOU think of the Montreal Canadiens, the great French? Canadian symbol, you don't realize that it Was C040Linded by a Jew, Cecil Hart, who coached it for many years ?the Hart Trophy is named after him ?? and he is the descendant of the original Jewish settler of Quebec, Aaron Hart. To sum up, I think people really have to see that Jews have been an important part of this country's history and institutions right from the beginning.