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Rochelle Wilner |
Frank Dimant |
Prof. Stephen Scheinberg |
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Rochelle Wilner |
Frank Dimant |
Prof. Stephen Scheinberg |
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In 1999 there was a significant increase in reported antisemitic incidents in Quebec, although none of it was of an extremely violent nature. There were 37 reported incidents in Montreal up from 20 in 1998, and 4 in regional Quebec, where there were none reported last year. The increase in reporting was related in part to a series of incidents involving the Chassidic community in the Montreal suburb of Outremont. For the many years that the League has recorded antisemitic incidents, it has been extremely rare for members of the Chassidic Jewish community to come forward to report incidents. A controversial issue in Outremont this past year, however, created a climate where many in the community felt a sense of desperation. Therefore, for the first time, many Chassidic Jews turned to B’nai Brith for support in order to ease their concerns. This dialogue confirmed what had been suspected for a long time, that because these groups rarely choose to go beyond the confines of their own community to report antisemitism, the annual numbers reflected by B’nai Brith over the past several years were much lower than reality. As "visible Jews" Chassidim encounter antisemitic incidents and slurs much more frequently than what has been previously reflected by B’nai Brith’s statistics. For example, many claimed that it is extremely common to have coins thrown at them, or to have a passing car slow down for its passengers to hurl antisemitic epithets, make references to Hitler or give the Nazi salutes. B’nai Brith’s support of the Chassidic community created increased exposure across Quebec for the anti-hate work being done by this organization. This in turn resulted in increased reporting from all sectors of the Quebec Jewish community including the Chassidic residents of Outremont.
In Outremont, an individual, Celine Forget, strongly opposed the presence of a synagogue in her apartment building and fought a zoning change that would have legalized it. The conflict mushroomed and sparked tremendous animosity. Forget began filing dozens of complaints, many of them trivial, to police and city authorities specifically targeting members of the Chassidic community. Members of the community felt harassed and their insecurities increased. She was subsequently elected to Outremont City Council, and her activities as a City Councillor will be closely monitored. After repeated requests, Forget has agreed to meet with B’nai Brith in February 2000 to discuss this problem.
A number of incidents highlighting negative Jewish stereotypes resurfaced in 1999 in Quebec. Falardeau’s film Elvis Gratton 2, panned by critics, had a number of disturbing ethnic caricatures, including a certain Mr. Goldenshitz. An article in Saturday Night Magazine made a careless and insensitive reference about telemarketing scams as having been “the almost exclusive domain of Montreal’s small Jewish mob”. And a local newspaper columnist in the small Quebec town of Victoriaville revived the canard of Jews as the killers of Christ. Insensitive stereotyping of this nature nourishes racism and unfortunately encourages a more generalized acceptance of very harmful antisemitic attitudes.
Other incidents that took place in Quebec in 1999 included racist and antisemitic graffiti (including swastikas) on the walls of Levitts kosher meat market and on several floors of the McConnell Residence at McGill University, where a number of Jewish students reside. Swastikas were also drawn in chalk on a few driveways of Jewish homeowners in the Montreal island municipality of Dollard des Ormeaux.
At West Island College in the western part of Montreal, swastikas were painted in washrooms and two students were suspended for making aggressive antisemitic remarks. At Lake of Two Mountains High School, northwest of Montreal, complaints were made about students being racist and antisemitic including a student showing off a swastika tattooed on his chest. Many reports of antisemitic slurs, written hate-messages and taunts were also received by Jewish students and teachers from different schools throughout Quebec. University campuses were also rife with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda as a number of guest speakers and exhibitions were organized by pro-Palestinian student groups. Often, anti-Israel initiatives are merely backdrops for a Holocaust denier or for the recruitment of antisemitic individuals. One such speaker accused American Jewish organizations of constantly "bribing" political candidates, Congress and the American Senate.
Distributors of antisemitic hate propaganda were also busy in Quebec in 1999, sending long-winded diatribes to unsuspecting recipients. A number of University professors and residents of two West Island communities in Montreal received a mail-order catalogue from the National Vanguard, published by the National Alliance containing over 500 of the most infamous books ever written, including Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
A few newer racist publications appeared and were distributed. These included Livre Jaune No. 5, a synthesis of antisemitic doctrines, and a journal entitled Michael: For the Triumph of the Immaculate which preaches the necessity of the immediate conversion of all Jews.
In order to help students counter the rise in antisemitic tendencies, the Quebec Region of the League for Human Rights again organized a series of workshops in Jewish day schools dealing with issues related to prejudice, and how to best deal with situations of conflict. The only way to get at the roots of racism is by a greater degree of understanding between groups. An enormous amount of work remains to be done in Quebec public schools as well.
The League will also be seeking intervenor status before the Quebec Court of Appeal in support of the October 15th decision by Quebec Court Judge Gilles Cadieux. At the trial, Judge Cadieux disregarded the crown’s recommendation, and instead, rendered more severe sentences to six neo-Nazi skinheads who attacked an antiracist group at a bar, ruling that their act was a hate crime within the meaning of the Criminal Code. The League supports the important message sent by the Judge to hate mongers that their crimes are not welcome in this country.
For the second consecutive year, the statistics from Quebec do not include additional incidents furnished by the Police, but only those reported directly to B’nai Brith. Since the recent transformation to neighborhood policing, the security division of the Montreal Urban Community Police Department does not break its statistics down into hate-crimes categories. Nonetheless, the Quebec Region of B’nai Brith maintains a close relationship with the MUC Police, and is in constant communication with them through the League’s co-chairing of the Montreal Jewish Community Security Committee.
The Atlantic Provinces, with their small Jewish population, have a concurrent small number of reported antisemitic incidents. The numbers increased this year with 3 incidents in 1999, up from 1 reported incident in 1998. The increase is likely due to a push by various white supremacist groups to move into P.E.I. A newspaper reporter from the Charlottetown Guardian was approached twice and handed hate propaganda from the "Alliance of Celtic Sons and Daughters" and the "Heritage Front". These incidents lead to his writing an exposé on white supremacist organizations trying to recruit young people to their cause. The League for Human Rights received two phone calls from teachers in Charlottetown requesting information on how to counter the recruitment strategies of these hate groups.
Another incident of note in the Atlantic Provinces took place on Remembrance Day in Halifax, Nova Scotia. When a rabbi started speaking at a municipal Remembrance Day service, an individual started yelling in the audience “Save the World. Kill a Jew.” Although Jews may not be as visible in Halifax as in Toronto or Montreal, this incident shows that when Jews are visible, they may be exposing themselves to antisemitic harassment.
According to the 1996 census, the Jewish population of the National Capital Region (Ottawa-Hull Census Metropolitan Area) was just over 12,000, constituting about 1.2% of the population. Jews work primarily in the public service, in local small businesses, in the professions and in the high-tech sector. The number of Jews laid off or taking early retirement has created a larger pool of individuals involved in self-employment and seems also to have contributed to the pool of those Jews who live below the low-income cut-off, as defined by Statistics Canada.
Poverty among Jews and in the general population is becoming a focus of attention in the Jewish community, as is the extra costs associated with Jewish education and participating in organized Jewish life. In general, Jews are relatively accepted and integrated into the mainstream; attacks continue from the fringes and from individuals and groups who feel aggrieved or threatened.
The number of antisemitic incidents reported to B’nai Brith’s National Capital Region office in 1999 was 32, showing a marginal drop from the 35 incidents reported in 1998.
A number of factors could have influenced this fluctuation, namely the absence of a graffiti war which marked 1998 and, as always, the willingness of affected parties to report. Many incidents reported to the office were not reported to the police, for instance.
Using stereotypes is a historically common form of discrimination. In this example, a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen, a former employee of the Department of Foreign Affairs, blamed the fact that Prime Minister Chretien missed King Hussein’s funeral on Eddie Goldenberg and the Prime Minister’s alleged preoccupation at being at a “Bronfman bar-mitzvah” in Montreal. This was another attempt to promote a political agenda by referring to antisemitic stereotypes. This despite the fact that the Jewish community in Canada had nothing to do with the Prime Minister’s missing of this event and that the Israeli government sent one of the largest and highest level delegations of any country to the funeral. The Ottawa Citizen article led to a number of exchanges in the newspaper, including a long letter from former diplomat, Ian MacDonald, claiming that he was fired because of the Jewish community. Another letter written to the Citizen, expressed the writer’s dismay at what he considered to be antisemitism. The writer subsequently received an angry letter at his home accusing him of not defending the white race. Ultimately, after it became clear that a number of letter writers on this theme were connected in the past to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs felt compelled to write to the paper that his department did not tolerate antisemitic views among its employees.
It was not always clear what the ultimate stimulus was for many local incidents. Swastikas and SS graffiti were painted on the door of a Nepean synagogue but were quickly removed. A woman had to be escorted from a bar in Ottawa when one of the patrons exploded in anger on learning she was connected to the local Jewish community. Verbal threats and expletives were directed at her even while others escorted her from the premises and helped her into a taxi.
A poster in a local synagogue was defaced with the inscriptions "Jew" and "$" punched in small holes around the burned face of an invited Israeli speaker.
Various comments and graffiti were reported in local high schools and work settings. Comments which are sometimes intended as jokes or simply off-hand observations often reveal a deeper level of acceptance of stereotypes and received opinion about Jews and money, in particular. One speaker, thinking to make a compliment, explained that he considered Jews to be “an intelligent race” and therefore had higher expectations of them. Another noted that the new volunteer, being Jewish, would obviously be of great assistance in fund raising.
One young student in a private school reacted to a lesson about the Second World War and the treatment of the Jews with the comment that “after all they deserved it. Everyone knows the bad things you hear about Jews are true.” It subsequently turned out she had learned this from her father and from visits with a group she called "the Afrikaaners" in South Africa.
David Icke, proponent of antisemitic conspiracy theories, visited Ottawa in October 1999. Earlier in 1999 he had lectured in British Columbia and met there with Glen Kealey another promoter of conspiracy theories in Canada. Someone claiming to be Kealey faxed a bizarre message to the Israeli Embassy claiming that the ancient name for the Hebrew God, when written in "runes" and folded onto itself, revealed a coded message that "the wise" are to control the world.
A locally produced newspaper, Discourse and Disclosure (since relocated to Nova Scotia), was originally developed as part of the Council of Canadians movement to look at multinationals and banks and how they influence the lives of Canadians. Over time a number of supporters of David Icke and Glen Kealey have written articles in this paper which is mailed across the country to a number of individuals with interests in these topics. One of the writers, Eldon Warman, wrote a defence of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the paper and has since surfaced as a promoter of antisemitism and Christian Identity on the Internet in discussion groups such as can.taxes. The editor of Discourse and Disclosure has since printed an article on the fraudulent roots of the Protocols.
During the Spring, the B’nai Brith Canada office in Ottawa received calls from Council of Canadians staff who reported that some individuals were trying to use their network of members to promote David Icke and the "International Jewish Bankers" conspiracy theory. The Council has since taken steps to ensure their organization is not used to promote these conspiracy theories.
The City of Toronto has the largest Jewish population in Canada. With 45.6% (approximately 162,500 residents) of all Canadian Jews living in Toronto, it is not surprising that this is the area in which there are the most incidents of antisemitism. In 1999, 44.7% or 119 out of the total 267 incidents in Canada occurred in Toronto. Incidents run the gamut from name calling to assault to systemic discrimination to vandalism to cemetery desecration. No matter what the nature of the incident, the cumulative effect is that Jews are still uncomfortably aware that they are targets of ignorance at best and hatred at worst.
Very little shocks a population more than the desecration of its holy places. This year both a Jewish cemetery and a number of synagogues were targets of vicious vandalism. In Roselawn-Lambton Cemetery, located in Etobicoke in the west end of the City of Toronto, several tombstones were damaged and spray-painted with antisemitic slurs. A Holocaust monument in the cemetery was defiled with hateful slogans such as “Soap Byproduct” (sic) and “Die Burn Pigs”. If anything good could come out of such an act, it happened when an experienced art restorer and sculptor, Mr. Duguid - a Mohawk Native from the Six Nations community - volunteered to repair the damage. Volunteers in the Aboriginal community donated the equipment and labour for this venture. Mr. Duguid acted partly due to his understanding of the sacredness of burial places and partly because of the bond that he has formed with the Jewish community in the past year as a board member of NaMeRes, a Native Men’s Residence in Toronto. Ve’ahavta, a Jewish humanitarian group, sponsors some of the residencev’s nightly street patrols and has enabled the patrol van to expand its services.
Consistent with the upsurge in vandalism, synagogue outbuildings and playground equipment were vandalized. Scrawled swastikas and slurs such as “Jews Suck” were also reported in 3 separate incidents.
Because Toronto is home to the national headquarters of many Jewish organizations, reported incidents of hate mail (coming via post, e-mail, and fax) and hate phone messages add significantly to the incidents of harassment. On the other hand, several major organizations do not report their occurrences and therefore they are not included in the Audit unless the incidents receive public press coverage. Samples of antisemitic hate mail received by B’nai Brith include exhortations to “Burn in Hell”, and statements of “lousy Jewish bastards”. Penny donations have been received, as well as regular antisemitic missives from a few persistent individuals. [Note: Repeat letters from the same individuals are counted as one incident for statistical purposes.] Unfortunately, even charitable good works, such as B’nai Brith’s help for the Kosovar refugees, initiated a spate of racist and antisemitic diatribes targeting the Jewish organization.
Hate mail and messages are not limited to organizations. A number of private individuals also received death threats and antisemitic slurs through the mail slot. Whether an individual is told “You should have burned like the rest of them” or “You missed your appointment at Auschwitz” or is subjected to stereotypes about Jews such as “You Jews expect special treatment, you should expect it when people hate you.”, the result of such messages being received at one’s own home address is often a sense of violation and fear for personal safety.
The Toronto police are taking incidents of repeated threatening hate mail very seriously. With the introduction of the Divisional Hate Crime Co-ordinators program, there is now an officer in each division who is specially trained to recognize and react to hate crimes. They recently charged an individual for sending over 100 antisemitic faxes to a man’s home. This act has been classified as a hate crime. The League will be monitoring this case and hopefully the sentencing enhancement provisions in the Criminal Code for hate motivated crimes will be utilized.
The threat of violence continued in Toronto with a spate of vandalism where “Kill all Jews” was scrawled on bus shelters and on private businesses in a predominately Jewish area of Toronto. Once again, these threats were taken seriously by the Toronto Police Service and were considered hate crimes.
Unfortunately, it was not only the threat of violence that affected Toronto’s Jewish community in 1999. Real violence was also reported on a number of occasions. Notably, in 2 separate incidents, a visibly Jewish man walking home from synagogue and 2 Jewish students walking home from their Hebrew day school were pelted with eggs. These incidents occurred during the same time period in which several individuals were targeted on their way to or from synagogue by antisemitic slurs and Nazi salutes from youths in passing cars. Threats, graffiti, harassment, and assault in Toronto are a shocking reminder that the most cosmopolitan and diverse city in Canada also houses intolerance and hatred.
Much antisemitism exists today under the auspices of "scholarly pursuits". Holocaust deniers perpetrate their lies in academic looking journals, books and websites. The veneer of scholarship tries to mask the propagation of stereotypes such as those proposed by David Icke. Icke, who lately is hiding behind a New Age approach, is a proponent of the stereotype that Jews control the world. He uses the well documented, virulently antisemitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as evidence for his theories. Icke did an extensive tour of Ontario in October. His first stop was Ottawa where the efforts of B’nai Brith and the Green Party succeeded in the cancellation of his lectures in three different venues. He eventually spoke to a tiny crowd that managed to track him down. His next stop was the University of Toronto, where the administrators relied on an unshakeable platform of academic freedom (apparently without the concurrent academic responsibility) and refused to cancel his talk. The students convened a large demonstration with the assistance of members of the Jewish community, the Green Party, and other activist and anti-racist groups. Handouts were distributed which outlined the antisemitic foundation of Icke’s writings. His travels to Windsor, Ontario (370 kilometres west of Toronto) met the same fate as his earlier dates in Ottawa, when both the Windsor Casino and the Cleary International Centre cancelled his lectures as soon as they became aware of his antisemitic beliefs.
Harassment continued in 1999 with the increased activities of Messianic Church groups. For more information on this topic, please see "Conversion Craze" on page 37.
London (a city 200 kilometres west of Toronto) has become one of the centres of organized hate activity in Ontario. Recently, the London Police department has made public the work they are doing around a racialist gang known as the "Northern Alliance". This group, headed by Raphael Bergman, has connections to WCOTC (World Church of the Creator), the Heritage Front and the Ku Klux Klan. The police have stated “If you are someone they hate, I would suggest they are a significant threat to you - These people are basically urban terrorists.” The London Police Department sent out individual letters to known members of the group requesting their attendance at a meeting to find out more about the Northern Alliance’s activities. A flurry of protests ensued, led by Paul Fromm and Doug Christie, claiming that the police had no jurisdiction to make such a request and that this was in contravention of their rights of freedom of speech. The London Police continue to work hard at keeping on top of the Northern Alliance’s activities. The loss of anonymity for recruits to hate groups hopefully will discourage overt acts of discrimination.
Another hate group related activity was reported as an ongoing problem in a major bookstore in London. Individuals with obvious ties to white supremacist organizations had been placing New Order (a Wisconsin based hate group) business cards in books and magazines in the store. These cards bear the slogan "Save the White Race", a swastika, and calls for “a rebirth of racial idealism”. These racist calling cards were strategically placed in history related materials. In another incident in London, swastikas were carved into the lawn of a local synagogue. This act was particularly shocking as it occurred just before the High Holy Days and was witnessed by many during this especially busy time.
A number of antisemitic incidents have been reported from the University of Western Ontario, also in London. These include antisemitic and racist graffiti in residence dormitories. In one case a professor made a reference to “jewing down” when describing economic transactions. The League for Human Rights offered support to the student complainant who ultimately received a full apology. The Equity Co-ordinator and instructor accepted the League’s offer to send a guest speaker. The National Director of the League travelled to London and spoke to the class about the history and impact of antisemitism in Canada today. The high number of reported incidents in London could also be a reflection of the strong presence of the Jewish Student Union and the good work that they are doing in this location.
Antisemitism seems to exist in all parts of Ontario - large and small. In Kitchener/Waterloo, 100 kilometres west of Toronto, a Jewish man and his 9 year old daughter were physically and verbally assaulted by a cook in a restaurant when the father tried to change his order. There was a rash of antisemitic graffiti in a public recreational centre in Vaughan, a city just north of Toronto. Swastikas alongside “Jews die” and “It will happen again” horrified patrons of the centre. In the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Regional Ontario, with continued co-operation from the police services, the City of Toronto Access and Equity Centre, and activist groups combatting hatred and discrimination, the fight against antisemitism is getting stronger and more sophisticated.
Although numbers of reported antisemitic incidents were down 29.4% from 17 in 1998 to 12 in 1999 in British Columbia, hate activities in B.C. remain alarming. The British Columbia Attorney General, the BC Hate Crime Unit and the BC Human Rights Commission acknowledge that the harms caused by hate crime and hate activity are among the most serious human rights issues facing society today. Anti-immigrant prejudices, fuelled by the media hysteria over the migrant Chinese boat people, might have focussed the acts of white supremacists away from the Jewish population to other racially identifiable groups.
The inevitable link between hate expression and hideously violent hate-motivated actions themselves was starkly underscored this past year in the wake of the manslaughter trial of 5 Vancouver-area skinheads who beat to death a Sikh temple caretaker, Nirmal Singh Gill, in 1998. Trial evidence included the fact that at least one of the convicted murderers was in possession of a selection of propaganda materials produced by Canadian "anti-immigration" proponent, dismissed Ontario schoolteacher Paul Fromm. The sentencing trial in the fall of 1999 exposed a "Plan B" put together by the skinheads and their organization "White Power" in which they discussed killing 100 Indo-Canadian children at an elementary school. The high-profile sentencing hearing gave rise to racial violence in schools where brawls and graffiti were reported. On the positive side, the skinheads received sentences ranging from 15 to 18 years. On the negative side, we have been receiving reports of increased racist activity (Aryan Brotherhood, White Aryan Resistance and Aryan Nations) in correctional facilities. The presence of the five racist skinheads in the prison system will most likely exacerbate this problem.
On February 2nd 1999, a human rights verdict was handed down by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal against Doug Collins and the North Shore News. The Tribunal found that, collectively, four columns written by Collins were likely to expose Jews to hatred and contempt and thereby violated the anti-hate provisions in the British Columbia Human Rights Code. The newspaper and Collins were ordered to pay the complainant, Harry Abrams of Victoria, B.C., $2,000 in compensation. Collins is attempting to appeal the decision to the B.C. Supreme Court. He is being represented by Doug Christie who represented Holocaust deniers Ernst Zundel, James Keegstra and Malcolm Ross. In the wake of this decision, Harry Abrams was subjected to an increase in antisemitic hate-mail and harassment.
Those who spew anti-immigration vitriol or who present themselves as "free speech" advocates while defending hate propagandists continued this year to make progress mainstreaming their prejudices by using public facilities, such as libraries, to spread their messages at tax payers expense. For example, Paul Fromm, a former school teacher from Ontario, held meetings in Prince George, Victoria, and Vancouver. One of the most publicized of these meetings was held by Doug Christie’s Canadian Free Speech League (CFSL) at the Vancouver Public Library in the fall of 1999. The meeting attracted the former head of the British Columbia KKK. Also present were Jud Cylorn, author of the racist book Stop Apologizing; Marc Lemire, the Ontario webmaster for racists; as well as the now retired antisemitic columnist for the North Shore News, Doug Collins. The Library Board was adamant about the right of the CFSL to hold meetings in the library, despite the approximate $30,000 price tag for providing security and policing for the event. The community reaction to this situation in 1999 is that the public protest and response to hate groups in taxpayer funded facilities has become more demonstrably radicalized compared to previous years. It has now become more of a public safety issue. The rise in policing costs, liabilities, and potential for serious damage and injury has added to the seriousness of the problem.
In April 1999, it was revealed that the Canadian headquarters of the white racist and neo-Nazi Aryan Nations had located in Prince George, B.C. The Canadian Aryan Nations website announced its political platform (the establishment of an Aryan National State under which only white Aryans will be allowed citizenship; Jews will be deported and their assets seized and non-whites will be permitted to remain within the State, but without citizenship rights and only under the "custodianship" of an Aryan citizen) amongst other antisemitic and racist platforms. This website also encourages individuals to print up AN business cards with the logo “Help Save The White Race” and to put these cards into magazines and books in stores. This distribution of propaganda has been reported to us both in Prince George, B.C. and in a large book store chain in London Ontario. Almost as soon as the Canadian headquarters of the AN was announced, the AN Canadian leader, 20 year old Marty Olsen, resigned his position. This will obviously leave a power vacuum in Canadian AN leadership which may well be difficult for the organization to fill in the short run. As David Lethbridge, an expert in the study of fascism stated: “It should also be noted that the willingness of AN headquarters to allow a mere 20 year old to fill such an important role in Canada probably indicates that AN in Canada is in serious trouble.”
Although the reporting of antisemitic activities in Alberta remains low, a serious incident occurred when the Calgary chief of police, Christine Silverberg, was sent a potentially lethal letter bomb. Criminologists point to two factors for targeting Silverberg - she is a woman and she is Jewish.
The decision in what has become known as the Saskatoon School Prayer Case has left a trail of antisemitic incidents in its wake. After a complaint launched 8 years ago by a multifaith group of parents, the hearing was held in July 1999. The subsequent Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission decision that exclusively Christian prayer in school is discriminatory was a positive step towards inclusivity in Canada generally and in Canadian schools in particular. After the decision, Jewish organizations reported an increase in antisemitic telephone calls. “Fuck the Jews” was spraypainted on a highway overpass in Regina, Saskatchewan, as was “Kill all Jews”.
While things have been relatively quiet in 1999 in terms of overt hate activity in Manitoba (3 incidents reported in Winnipeg), past experience shows that we should never let our guard down, since incidents can occur quickly and may involve sources other than the known players in Manitoba neo-Nazi or Klan groups. There were two cemetery desecrations in August of this year, both within the Hebrew Sick Benefit Cemetery. A total of 228 headstones were toppled or damaged leaving the Jewish community in Winnipeg reeling. The League for Human Rights submitted some ideas for probationary conditions on request of the Crown in this case. Community service, in additional to jail time, is hoped to counter some of the negative beliefs the perpetrators may have already or may be developed during incarceration, as white supremacist influences in correctional facilities have been noted. Another incident included a plethora of swastikas found at the Winnipeg Bus Depot and around the University of Winnipeg campus. A swastika accompanied by the words “Aryan Nation” was also found on the door of the Imperial Veteran’s Legion in downtown Winnipeg. These activities could lead us to believe that even though organized hate groups may not be active, recruitment of individuals (often by Internet) is often enough to give hate-mongers and white supremacists the impetus to act in a more public and offensive way.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
| INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
| DEFINITIONS AND DATA COLLECTION
| SUMMARY OF DATA
ANTISEMITISM IN CANADA — REGIONAL CLIMATE AND TRENDS
| HATE IN CANADA: AN OVERVIEW
ANTISEMITIC BIAS AND SYSTEMIC DISCRIMINATION
| CONVERSION CRAZE — MILLENNIUM MADNESS?
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST ANTISEMITISM AND HATE
| APPENDIX A: The Jewish Community in Canada — A Brief Overview
Table 1: NATURE OF ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS BY YEAR
| Table 2: GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF INCIDENTS
Figure 1: Nature of Antisemitic Incidents by Year
| Figure 2: Three Year Average of Incidents
| Figure 3: Antisemitic Incidents by Region