Anti-Semitism


During the early years of the Peterborough Jewish community, Jews tended to keep to themselves. Adeline Rogow Levine, one of the daughters of community founders Ben and Mary Rogow, told Ed Arnold of the Peterborough Examiner that in the early 1900s until several decades later, Jews were “segregated”.

Mixed attitudes towards Jews existed in the Peterborough area in the late 1930s, when an urgent need arose to find a safe haven for Europe’s endangered Jews. In November of 1938, at a special meeting at St. Andrew’s United Church, the Rev. Dr. E. W. Young expressed a view sympathetic to the Jewish plight. The next month, the Peterborough City Council clearly articulated its distaste for this open door plan. Its view was expressed in a headline in the Peterborough Examiner in December, 1938: “County Council Opposes Jewish Immigration; Want Laws Tightened.”

One place where Jews and non-Jews did mix regularly was on George Street and in the downtown area. Here, both business and personal relations between Jews and non-Jews were generally good. However, as Frank Gishman commented, it would be a mistake to see the picture as one of complete equality. Gishman had a successful watch and jewellery store on George Street. His view was that although business was brisk, “as Jews, you were tolerated, not loved.” Jews were not admitted to the Golf Club and he also recalled seeing signs at Ennismore in the Kawartha Lakes cottage country region that read “No Jews or Dogs”. Signs like these were fairly prevalent in Canada during this period.

Anti-Semitic prejudice affected some community members personally. Such was the case for Laura Petersiel Bowman, when she first went out to work as a young teacher in the early 1950s. After graduating, she was offered a job by the Catholic School Board in Campbellford, over 50 kilometres away. She took the job, despite the fact that she didn’t have transportation. Someone at the school suggested she travel with a man who made the journey daily. It turned out to be an ordeal for her, since she had to put up with someone who smoked cigars with the windows up while ranting against the Jews.

In later years, the Peterborough community supported its Jews, despite the fact that certain individuals had negative attitudes which were often expressed in subtle ways. One community member commented that anti-Semitism remained not blatant, but latent.