A hundred years later, the Canadian Jewish Congress’s legacy lives on GlobeDebate
Irving Abella is the past president of the Academy of the Arts and Humanities of the Royal Society of Canada and a former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
The 204 men and five women who gathered in Montreal in 1919 at the founding plenary of the CJC knew very well that Jews were the pariahs of what was then an exclusionary culture: despised, demeaned, discriminated against, the targets of abuse from their “host” society, barred from most professions, kept out of most universities, restricted from many occupations, prevented from living or vacationing in a wide swath of Canada.They arrived in Montreal at a propitious moment in Canadian history.
Each of these delegates had a vision of an open, better and more tolerant Canada, and they created an organization to work toward that new day. They wanted an association that could speak on behalf of Canadian Jewry, that would preserve a Jewish heritage here, that would help rebuild a Jewish homeland in Palestine, that would be an advocate for human rights and dignity and that would advance a flourishing sense of Canadianism among all its citizens.
The CJC was Canada’s first national ethnic organization, and for many years the only democratic one in North America; its leaders were elected by representatives of all the Jewish communities and organizations from coast to coast. It became the model for successive waves of immigrants from places like Italy, Poland, Hungary, China and Japan to create their own organizations.
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