An Immigrant Story, A Jewish Story, A Canadian Story

As we approach Canada Day, I find myself thinking about my 80 year old father, Gerry, and about words he once wrote describing his arrival in this country. His story is personal. But it is also deeply Canadian and, in an important way, deeply Jewish.

My father began simply:

Canada is a country of immigrants from all over the world. I expect that everyone’s immigration story is unique. Mine had before, during and after components. I was just 10 years old. Coming to Canada was the pivotal moment of my life.

There is something powerful in the phrase the pivotal moment of my life. It was not simply a move from one country to another, but it was a turning point and a moment when the future opened in a new direction.

He left behind postwar London, still marked by the scars of war. He wrote of a close Jewish family nearby, with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. But there was also food rationing and limited opportunity. Then came the dream of Canada, carried first in stories:

People were already leaving England for more opportunities. Friends of my parents had moved to a strange-sounding place called Toronto and they regaled us with tales of their success.

How many immigrant journeys begin that way? A rumor of possibility. A letter. A place with an unfamiliar name that slowly begins to sound like hope.

Then came the crossing. In June 1956, my family left Liverpool aboard the Empress of Britain, newly launched by the young Queen Elizabeth. Any romance attached to that voyage quickly gave way to seasickness in the North Sea. But calmer waters followed. 

My father remembered sailing up the St. Lawrence past Quebec City and on to Montreal, then taking the train to Toronto’s Union Station. He recalled the turquoise carriages, the glossy magazines, and the sense that he was entering a world brighter and more full of promise than the one he had known.

Soon came school, friendship, and the beginning of belonging. He was placed ahead a grade and warmly welcomed by his classmates. He never forgot that reception.

And then came the line that says everything:

I loved this new country, despite leaving my birth family behind. I had educational and career opportunities here that I could not have had in England – and I was even more satisfied by creating a new family which is now in its 4th generation.

That is an immigrant testimony in its purest form: what was left, what was risked, what was gained, and what was built for those who came after.

It is also, to my mind, a profoundly Jewish story. In this week’s Torah portion, God says to Moses:

“Take for yourself Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom there is spirit, and lay your hand upon him.”
(Numbers 27:18)

This is not only a story of succession. It is a story of faith in the future. Moses, who will not cross into the Promised Land, is asked to place his hands upon Joshua, affirming that what he began will continue in the next generation.

That image carries deep spiritual power. There is a hand laid upon the future. A gesture of trust. A transmission of courage, purpose, and possibility.

In many ways, that is what immigration is. Parents cross oceans so their children may live lives they themselves can barely imagine. Families leave behind language, familiarity, livelihood, even extended family, in order to create what does not yet exist. They act without guarantees. They build in uncertainty. They place their hands, as it were, upon a future they may never fully see, but in which they nevertheless believe.

My father’s journey was one such act.

That is why his story feels especially resonant on Canada Day. Canada is not only a nation. At its best, it is a moral promise that people can arrive from elsewhere and still belong. Courage can be met with opportunity and sacrifice can open into blessing.

For Jews in Canada, that promise has been especially meaningful. Jewish Canadians have helped build Canada in extrordinary ways: in business and labour, medicine and law, science and education, literature and the arts, public service, philanthropy, and the defense of human dignity. Jewish communities built synagogues, schools, charities, hospitals, and cultural institutions that enriched not only Jewish life, but Canadian life as a whole.

The Jewish contribution to Canada is not incidental to the Canadian story. It is woven into its fabric.

And yet this Canada Day arrives in a time of rising antisemitism. That cannot be treated as an aside, and it cannot be softened by patriotic language. When Jews are harassed, threatened or made to feel unsafe in this country, this is when we see  Canada failing its own promise. A society that has benefited so deeply from Jewish presence and Jewish contribution has a particular obligation to confront antisemitism clearly, publicly, and without equivocation.

To love Canada honestly is to demand better from it. It is to demand that Jews, like all Canadians, be able to live openly, safely, proudly, and without fear.

My father’s story reminds me of the Canada so many immigrants encountered and helped create: generous, aspiring, open-hearted, and full of possibility. His gratitude for this country was never abstract. It was lived in school, in friendship, in work, and above all in family, now four generations deep.

So on this Canada Day, I think of his words and of the journey they describe. I think of a 10-year-old boy leaving England, crossing the ocean, arriving in Toronto, and discovering a future larger than anything he had known. I think of Moses placing his hand upon Joshua. And I think of the ongoing Jewish story in Canada: a story of resilience, contribution, memory, and hope.