Quebec distinct, even in Jewish history book

It was almost a Montreal equivalent to The French Connection: The year was 1934. Mobsters Harry Ship (né Chaskel Lazarovitch), “Pinky” Brecher and “Fat” Charlie Feigenbaum were set to smuggle a cache of drugs from Paris into the Port of Montreal. But the RCMP got wise to the operation and managed to convince Fat Charlie to sing like a canary in return for a reduced sentence. Alas, Fat Charlie paid the price stoolies often pay, and met his maker after being shot six times in the head and chest on Esplanade St. Of course, it would have provided Fat Charlie some consolation that his funeral, drawing thousands, was then one of the largest ever held in the city’s Jewish community. Yup, as has been the case with Montreal’s political, entrepreneurial and literary elite, its Jewish gangsters, of that and other eras, also have stood out from their co-religionists in the rest of Canada. It turns out that all of these Quebecers have been — and still are — as distinct as the province in which they toiled and frequently flourished. In his exhaustively researched, fascinating new opus, Seeking the Fabled City (McClelland & Stewart), Winnipeg author Allan Levine chronicles the Canadian Jewish experience — one that goes back nearly 250 years to the Hart family of Trois-Rivières and which therefore should qualify its members as Québécois vielles souches. Canada’s Jewish population, according to the 2011 census, numbers about 400,000, making it the fourth-largest behind Israel, the U.S. and France. Toronto has close to half that number of Jews, with Montreal’s population about 90,000. It wasn’t always thus. Montreal had been a major port of entry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Montreal also had been the country’s epicentre for much of the 20th century. That was to change dramatically in the 1970s, when the spectre of separatism resulted in head offices and a chunk of the anglo population here — including about 13,000 Jews — bolting for Toronto. Yet while Toronto was to become Canada’s most economically vibrant and populous city, Montreal had and continues to have a cachet for its Jewish population. It is and always will be home for myriad reasons, probably more than for simply religious ones. Writers Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton and A.M. Klein — from whose poem Autobiographical, Levine’s “fabled city” title is taken — have sung the city’s praises as well as satirizing its foibles and delving into its dark sides. Yes, anti-Semitism has reared its head from nearly the very beginnings of the Jewish community here. As far back as 1806 and 1808, Ezekiel Hart was twice elected to the National Assembly for the Trois-Rivières riding, but prevented from occupying his seat because he wasn’t Christian. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany, anti-Semitism was particularly pronounced here in the 1930s. But Levine is quick to observe in his book that anti-Semitism in Canada has hardly been limited to Quebec. Furthermore, anglo Christians here have played a role on that front. Many of a certain age can recall McGill University imposing restrictions on Jewish students. “I tried to be inclusive in covering the Jewish communities throughout Canada, but I probably didn’t succeed as much as I wanted, because Montreal, along with Toronto, really do dominate the conversation,” says Levine, author of 13 books including Toronto: Biography of a City (2014) and King: William Lyon Mackenzie King (2011). Seeking the Fabled City is a warts-and-all account. The inclusion of Montreal’s Jewish mobsters is not necessarily something the community would want highlighted, but their presence cannot be ignored. “Certainly, the larger Jewish community was so embarrassed by the notoriety of these guys and by how many showed up to their funerals,” Levine says. Not that he had a criminal past, but Levine points out how Richler ran afoul of many in the Jewish community for allegedly painting an unflattering look of it. And, of course, Richler was later to antagonize Quebec nationalists for his critical essays of them in the New Yorker. “I think that was unfair, but people don’t like criticism of their own communities. And he thought it was unfair that he was being identified as a Jewish writer, when someone like Michel Tremblay wasn’t being identified as a Catholic writer. “My book identifies a little more clearly how un-multicultural and intolerant Canada was. OK, it wasn’t the American South of the past, but anti-Semitism was so ingrained all over this country. It’s still a little scary, because Trump has brought back 1920s America in his anti-immigration stand. Could that spill over here? I’d like to think not.”

Certainly, the larger Jewish community was so embarrassed by the notoriety of these guys and by how many showed up to their funerals. ALLAN LEVINE, author