1995 Audit of
The 1991 census published by Statistics Canada reported that
356,315 of the 27 million people in Canada were Jewish.
This amounts to only 1.3% of the entire population of the
country. In 1991, Toronto and Montreal were reported to
have 162,605 and 101,210 Jewish residents respectively, and
no other locale had more than 20,000 Jewish residents. In
fact, Jews comprise less than one half of one per cent of
the population of Canada outside of the two
aforementioned cities. The fact that Toronto and Montreal
have the two largest Jewish communities in Canada (three
quarters of the Jews in this country live in these two
urban areas , with 45.6% in Metropolitan Toronto, and 28.4%
of Canada's Jews living in Greater Montreal) accounts for
the fact that the overwhelming majority of reported cases of
anti-Semitism occur in these centres.
Vancouver, the third largest Canadian city, has 19,375
Jewish residents (5.8% of the Jews in Canada), 1.3% of the
total Vancouver population of 1,584,115. The Ottawa-Hull
area, known as the National Capital Region, is home to
nearly 12,000 Jews, 3.3 % of the Jewish population in
Canada. Winnipeg, with 15,000 Jewish residents, has the
highest concentration of Jews (2.3%) of any city other than
Montreal (3.3%) and Toronto (4.2%). In no other Canadian
urban area do Jews make up more than one per cent of the
total population.
Jews have lived in Canada since the 18th century. However,
the first significant waves of Jewish immigration from
Europe started in the 1870's. Eastern European Jews often
moved to Winnipeg or to rural areas to work as farmers - one
of the few occupations for which immigrants were allowed
into Canada.
During the Second World War the Canadian government refused
to allow Jewish immigrants fleeing the Holocaust to enter
this country, with one government official stating that
"none is too many" when asked how many Jews would be let
into Canada. However, thousands of Jewish war survivors
were permitted entry in the late 1940's and 1950's. The
impact of post-war emigres on the Canadian Jewish community
is perhaps the most significant difference between patterns
in American and Canadian Jewish immigration. Holocaust
survivors who came to Canada comprise a more significant
percentage of the total Jewish community here than in the
United States, largely because the Canadian government had
restricted Jewish immigration earlier.
Until the 1970's Montreal was regarded as the principal hub
of Canadian Jewry. Although other cities had Jewish
communities, Montreal was the oldest and largest, and was
considered the most important Jewish centre in Canada.
However, the threat of Quebec separation in the mid-1970's
was a frightening prospect for many Jews, the vast majority
of whom were Anglophone. Thousands of Montreal jobs were
relocated to Ontario, as were tens of thousands of
Montreal's Jews. Although the new census data will not be
available until late in 1996, a recent study conducted by J.
Torczyner, D. Brotman, and J. Brodbar (1995) entitiled
"Rapid Growth and Transformation: Demographic Challenges
Facing the Jewish Community of Greater Toronto" suggests
further shifts in the Jewish population, particularly in the
wake of the ongoing Quebec Referendum debate and the
increase in nationalist rhetoric. Today, Toronto is
considered the Jewish capital of Canada, with approximately
165,000 people in the community.
Canadian Jewry tends to be more traditional than the
American Jewish population. In 1990, forty per cent of
affiliated Jews identified themselves as Orthodox, another
forty per cent as Conservative, and twenty per cent as
members of the Reform movement. As well, in recent years
Reconstructionist congregations have opened in Toronto and
Montreal.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
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Anti-Semitic Incidents
The Jewish Community in Canada - a brief overview