The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

granted preferential treatment in the admission process. 75 The Prime Minister, William L.
Mackenzie King, reacting to the U.S. announcement of the Evian Conference, feared that
alien Jews would contaminate Canada's “bloodstream,” adversely affect national unity
and embolden the anti-Semitic separatists of the Quebecois. Why create, he asked, an
“internal problem” in the process of solving an “international one.” Canada had to be
protected from the “unrest” of the Continent and avoid the “intermixture of foreign
strains of blood.” Admission of stateless Jews would lead to “riots” and to strife between
the central Government and the provinces. 76 The paper Le Devoir asked why Canada
should admit Jewish refugees. “The Jewish shopkeeper on St Lawrence Boulevard does
nothing to increase our natural resources.” French-Canadian Members of Parliament
opposed Jewish immigration. H.E. Brunelle, for example, accused Jews of creating “great
difficulties” wherever they settled. Members of the St. Jean Baptiste Society, with the
support of MP Wilfrid La Croix, presented a petition to Parliament vigorously objecting
to “all immigration” and particularly the admittance of Jewish refugees. Such opposition
represented the “instinct of self preservation [of the Christian religion and French
culture]. 77
75 The Canadian population in 1938 was approximately 10,000,000 in an area exceeding the size of the
United States.
76 Mackenzie King Diary, March 29, 1938, 256.
77 Irving Abella & Harold Troper, None Is Too Many (Toronto: Lester & Orpen, 1982), 18. St. Jean
Baptiste Society (Société Saint-Jean Baptiste) was a French Canadian patriotic society founded on June 24,
1834 by Ludger Duvernay who sought to instill Franchophonic nationalism among the French speaking
population. “St-Jean-Baptiste Society” The Canadian Encyclopedia 2010 available from
http://thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0007080; Internet;
accessed August 15, 2010. Brunelle opposed Jewish immigration because of the “deplorable” state of
“thousands of [his] fellow citizens.” He believed that “charity begins at home.” While having “no brief
against the Hebrew race [and] deep sympathy” for those facing persecution at the hands of the Nazis Jews
had been the “cause, justly or unjustly of great difficulties in various countries” and since “history repeats
itself” Canada must avoid creating its own Jewish problem. Hamerow, Why We Watched, 157.
182