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

Dagenais, the chief spokesman of Jeune-Canada, declared that the soul of Canada was
threatened by the “Jewish element,” an entity more “powerful than the voice of blood.”
The Jewish “plutocracy” was influential enough to elicit “condolences” from
Government officials against the Nazi treatment of German and Austrian Jews but these
same bureaucrats remained silent at the discriminatory treatment of French Canadians
within their own country or the persecution of Catholics in Mexico, Spain and the Soviet
Union. Similarly, Gilbert Manseau of Jeune-Canada claimed that Jews sought “special
treatment” in Canada, seeking the status of an ethnic minority awarded the same national
rights as other Canadians. Jews, he believed, could not be accorded such a status as the
Constitution recognized only two national identities: British and French. 82
Charles Frederick Blair, the Director of the Immigration Branch of the
Department of Mines and Resources, was convinced that the European refugee crisis
would inundate Canada with stateless Jews destined to become permanent public charges.
Citing the Government’s post-Great War policy of excluding homeless refugees who
were likely to “go on the rocks” and become dependent on government support Blair
increased the landing fees from $5,000 to $15,000 and attached the stipulation that the
émigrés be farmers. 83 He advised the Prime Minister that Jewish pressure to enter Canada
had reached new heights but he was proud to admit that after “thirty five years of
platform supported the rights of French speaking Canadians and the preservation of Quebec’s Catholic,
rural, agricultural and Francophile roots. “Jeune-Canada” The Canadian Encyclopedia available from
http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0004127; Internet,
accessed August 15, 2010.
82 “’Nefarious Power’ of Jewry Attacked,” The Montreal Gazette, April 21, 1933, 10.
83 Blair to T.A. Crerar, March 28, 1938 cited in Gerald E. Dirks, Canada’s Refugee Policy: Indifference
or Opportunism? (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977), 56. See also Abella, None is Too
Many, 35.
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