Population
The first Jews to arrive in St. Catharines were Nathan Hoffler and his wife around 1854. Though they left in the late 1860s, by 1871 there were 10 Jews in town. Most were from Russia and were landsmen who brought their families from the old country to help them out with their work. Very few of the early arrivals remained in town for more than a few years, with the exception of Alfred Levi, who stayed for approximately 15 years.
By 1881, the Jewish population was around 24 people. That figure rose slightly in 1901 to 30. However, between 1902 and 1909, a huge wave of Jewish immigrants arrived from Russia, pushing the Jewish population to 109. By 1921, the population had more than doubled to 225 and increased again by more than a third to 313 in 1931. Over the next few decades, St. Catharines’s Jewish population grew significantly so that by 1961 there were 582 residents, likely attributable to the strong local economic growth that the town enjoyed during this period.
