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

e followed by “shiploads” of other refugees. No nation could accept the number of real
or potential forced émigrés and the “line must be drawn somewhere.” 88
Likewise, Under-Secretary of State Dr. Oscar Douglas Skelton feared pressures
from the Evian Conference would subject Canada to internal demands for the country to
do something “for the Jews,” risk the generation of domestic anti-Semitism and influence
other nations (primarily Eastern Europe) to solve their own Jewish Question by forcibly
exiling Jews. 89 The ultimate and oftentimes pre-determined position of Canada and other
nations was reflected in an undated and unsigned document filed among the records of
the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa:
We don’t want to take too many Jews, but, in the present circumstances particularly, we don’t
want to say so. Certainly, we don’t want to legitimize the Aryan mythology by introducing any
formal distinction for immigration purposes between Jews and non-Jews. The practical
distinction, however, has to be drawn and should be drawn with discretion and sympathy by the
competent Department without laying down any formal minute of policy on the matter. 90
Hume Wrong, the Canadian Envoy to the League of Nations, was selected by
King to represent Canada at the Conference; an assignment he did not relish. Wrong
advised Skelton that he expected the meeting to be a “most unpleasant affair” as it sprung
from one of Roosevelt’s “sudden generous impulses” and was not a “well thought out”
88 Blair to Skelton, June 8and June 16, 1939 cited in Irving Abella and Harold Troper, “’The Line Must
Be Drawn Somewhere’: Canada and Jewish Refugees, 1933-1939,” Paula Draper, Franca Iacovetta, Robert
Ventres, eds., A Nation of Immigrants: Women, Workers and Communities in Canadian History (Toronto,
ON: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 413.
89 Skelton to Mackenzie King, March 25, 1938 cited in Abella, None Is Too Many, 17. Skelton was
Undersecretary of State for External Affairs (appointed April 1, 1925 by King; anti-imperial and
isolationist worldview) and former Professor of Political and Economic Science and Dean of Arts at
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
90 Public Archives of Canada RG 25 D1, vol. 779, file 382, External Affairs memorandum cited in Paul
R. Bartrop “Drawing the Line Somewhere: The Dominions and Refugee Immigration in the 1930s,”
presented at ACSANA Canadian Studies Conference’88 Canberra, Australia, June 22-24, 1988, 9.
186