During the 1930s and 40s, when anti-Semitism was rising throughout the North American Continent, the Catholic Church became increasingly outspoken about its intolerance towards Jews. According to Mark Charness, a Jew who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II, the seeds of anti-Semitism within the general public were originally planted by the clergy. As he describes:

At that time in their lives, the French Canadians were very influenced by the priests. They would tell their congregations, who were easily swayed by what the priests told them, specifically not to buy from Jewish stores.

Perhaps as a result of this spiritual encouragement, individual acts of anti-Semitism increased in number throughout the mid 20^th century. For example, in 1934, four interns at L'Hopital de Notre Dame, a Francophone hospital in Montreal, went on strike when hospital administrators hired a Jew to the staff. In Quebec City, a small Jewish population of 100 families successfully fought politicians for the right to erect a synagogue, only to have it burned down on the eve of its opening. Finally, and on a more practical level, the Catholic Church played an active role in preventing Jewish communities from creating their own education systems.

After World War II, the Quebec government severed many of its ties with the Catholic Church; however, it is undeniable that much of the anti-Semitism that the Church helped to fuel in the 1930s lingered amongst the population of the sixties. After the war, for example, resistance to Jewish immigration was considered much stronger in Quebec than in the other provinces, and anti-Semitic messages could be found in many widely read magazines and journals.

For many Jews, comments such as these were dismissed as radical, unsupported, and unworthy of any attention. However, for those in the Montreal Jewish community who had survived the Holocaust or whose families and friends had been victims of the European persecution of the 1930s and 40s, comments like Ryan's were highly provocative. This population of Jews constituted almost a third of Montreal's Jewish community, and all of them "understood the relation between economic boycotting and anti-Semitism." Professor Morton Weinstein, a professor of sociology at McGill University, has speculated that the experience of the Quiet Revolution might have had a stronger impact on the Montreal Jewish community in particular because of its high concentration of Holocaust survivors:

One possible effect of such a prior episode might be an oversensitivity to possible victimization, leading to continuing perceptions of prejudice and discrimination after a negative stimulus has been removed.

With such a large number of holocaust survivors—135 out of the 657 Jews in Weinfield's survey said they were in Europe during World War II–condensed into such a compact and vibrant community, it is hard to imagine that their heightened fears of nationalism and anti-Semitism would not have had some effect on the younger generation of Jews growing up in the same area.

VIOLENCE AND THE MARXIST SEPARATISTS

Another frightening aspect of the separatist movement that would directly impact Montreal's Jewish community was the rise of the Front de la Liberation de Quebec (FLQ), a radical activist group whose tactics often included public violence. During the early 1960s, the FLQ began a series of public terrorist attacks targeting English buildings and government officials. While most of the attacks targeted property rather than people, some of the incidents resulted in the injuries, and even deaths, of innocent civilians. One of their most infamous attacks was a bomb detonation at the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969 that wounded 27 civilians.

For Jews, the most traumatic of the bombings were those that occurred in the quiet, suburban, and predominantly Anglophone areas in which they lived. An account by Michael Charness, a Montreal Jew who experienced a mailbox bombing while attending elementary school, demonstrates the proximity of the FLQ's attacks to civilians.

One particular day I was playing in the school yard when, all of a sudden, we were evacuated by school officials. Supposedly someone had planted a bomb in a mailbox across the street from the school. As we were moved to the back of the building, we heard the bomb go off, supposedly as someone was attempting to dismantle it. Only later were we informed that the man attempting to diffuse the bomb was severely injured by the explosion.

While these attacks were certainly frightening for Jews, they were not the intended targets of these attacks. But as a part of the Anglophone society, the Jews were subject to all of the hostility that extremist French-Quebecers harbored towards Anglophones. Furthermore, Jews in particular had reason to fear the FLQ, as it was well known that the FLQ had a strong, anti-Jewish core that stemmed from its roots in Marxist separatist philosophy. Its Marxist followers, according to Stuart E. Rosenberg, a scholar on Canadian Jewish history, considered Levesque's Parti Québécois to be too tame, and that its innocence and lack of drive would be a threat to the successful separation of Quebec.

The Jews had two reasons to fear the Marxist separatists: first, they were a group that outspokenly supported Palestinian anti-Israel terrorists and even sent troops to Algeria and Jordan to train as guerilla fighters. Secondly, their literature, which was growing in popularity in Quebec, was riddled with anti-Semitic messages. Quebec's number one bestseller in 1971 was Un Petit d'Histoire du Quebec, by Leandre Bergeron, a political commentary that included the following:

Some say the Jews of Montreal are our worst enemies. By playing the capitalist game, a few of them managed to escape from the exploited class to become the owners of small businesses, factories, shops and grocery stores. They adopted the exploiters language—English, using French only to give orders to their employees in their shops and their maids at home.

The great popularity of this particular commentary must have served as a reminder to Montreal's Jews that many people in Quebec sympathized with its message. Yet scholars insist that the Jews of Montreal did not fear the rise of separatism when the movement was in the hands of peaceful, democratic and diplomatic leaders such as Rene Levesque. Rather, the Jews worried that a weak, separatist government would be vulnerable to a radical revolution and might be taken over by these outspokenly anti-Semitic Marxists.

LANGUAGE AND ITS EFFECT ON MONTREAL JEWRY

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Quebec separatist movement, both for Jews as well as for the entire Anglophone community, was the passage of bills by the radically evolving Quebec government concerning the new official language of the province. In 1972, René Levesque declared that "[this year] is the year of the French Language in Quebec." For the predominately French speaking population of Quebec, who for years had been forced into blue-collar jobs serving under the economically successful Anglophones, these words hinted at a dramatic cultural change that would have an immediate, positive impact on their roles in Montreal's society.

At first, minor changes that encouraged the preservation of the French language did not appear to pose an immediate threat for the Jews. For years, Montreal Jews had had an open attitude towards the French language, more so than their Protestant Anglophone neighbors. In 1948, Rabbi Solomon Frank and other leaders in the Jewish community founded Le Cercle Juif de Langue Francaise with the goal of encouraging a healthy working relationship between Jews and French-Quebecers. Moreover, according to a 1961 census figure, 36.5 percent of Quebec's Jewish population spoke both French and English. Jacques Langlais describes how, "In the entire province, Jews ranked highest among its bilingual residents except in Montreal, where Jews were second only to Francophone Canadians." This partially explains why a higher percentage of non-Jewish Anglophones than Jewish Anglophones departed Montreal over the next 30 years. ; second, some French-Quebecers simply did not trust the Jews, regardless of their efforts to adapt to the French language. Claude Ryan wrote that:

French Canadians have observed that Jews speak French more than the English. In the legal profession, for example, practically all the members of Jewish background speak French. But French Canadians believe that they do this because of self-interest rather than any genuine interest in French Canadians.

In 1977, in an attempt to finally assure equality for Francophones in Montreal's Anglophone-controlled economy, the Quebec government, under its first Parti Québécois regime, passed Bill 101, entitled, The Charter of the French Language. The bill declared French as the sole official language of Quebec, cementing the idea that Quebec was, above anything else, a Francophone culture. The bill's passage was an enormous accomplishment for French-Quebecers, who finally could envision a Quebec where they would no longer be at a disadvantage for speaking the language of the majority.

Although significant parts of the bill were truly devoted to creating equal opportunities for both the English as well as the French, Anglophones initially perceived it as a threat to their culture. Anglophones, including Jews, feared that Bill 101, along with many of the other language reforms, would accelerate the drive towards a unilingual Quebec. As Jacob Ziegel, a professor of law at McGill University (and now the University of Toronto), responded in Montreal's Viewpoint magazine:

I think we must reject unilinguilism in any form or guise, not only because it would spell the end of our own cultural and linguistic status in this province, but also because unilingualism as a concept seems to me invalid and dangerous.

Ziegel's makes his most astute observation when he predicts "the end of [Anglophone's] cultural and linguistic status." As a result of these bills, daily life became increasingly difficult for Anglophones in Montreal: public signs had to appear in both English and French, major corporations were forced to adopt equal opportunity laws for Francophone employees, and access to English language schools was inhibited for children whose parents were not originally from the province of Quebec. According to Mark Charness, Anglophones, including Jews, began to feel unwelcome in Montreal society.

Everything had to be in French. If you received any notification from the government, it was in French. If you went to court, your lawyer had to speak French. You couldn't get a job in government, or any other French Canadian corporation if you were English. Any opportunity would go to a French speaking person, and only a "true" Frenchmen. We weren't going to pay taxes when we felt like second-class citizens…I saw no future for my children in Montreal.

For many Jews in Montreal, these new language laws were the final straw. After decades of living in cultural isolation and facing new forms of anti-Semitism in a climate of uncertain political turmoil, many Jews finally concluded that their existence in Montreal had no foreseeable future. The following three decades would see a great decline of Judaism in Montreal as many packed their bags and "took the 401 [highway] to Toronto and all points left."

THE DEPARTURE OF MONTREAL'S JEWS

The exodus of Montreal's Jews, which is estimated at around 15,000 between 1971 and 1981, began with the departure of the younger, baby boomer generation, many of whom decided to spend their college years outside the province. Many went to the nearby city of Toronto, which, over the previous ten years, had transformed itself into the new "unofficial" Jewish capital of Canada. According to Rose Jick, a professor at Northeastern University who was studying at the University of Toronto at the time, at least one out of every ten students she met were Jews who originally hailed from Montreal.

The older generations followed shortly after, typically waiting until their children had left and when their respective businesses had either been sold or had moved to Toronto. By 1991, Montreal's Jewish population had fallen from 115,000 in 1971 to 100,000, while Toronto's had skyrocketed from 88,000 to 162,000. Until this day, Montreal's Jewish population has continued to decline, as increasing numbers of Jews find fewer reasons to stay in or migrate to Montreal, especially since Canada's Jewish culture has shifted to Toronto. Between the years 1996 and 2001, 2,300 Jews relocated to Toronto, 96% of whom were originally from Montreal.

CONCLUSION

The exodus of Jews from Montreal was not triggered by one specific political movement, event, or law. Rather, a combination of factors, including the rise of the separatist Parti Quebecois, an increase in violence and anti-Semitism, and new language laws pushing towards a more Francophone Quebec, made the Jewish community of Montreal feel increasingly uncomfortable about its future in the city. Furthermore, the fact that the multicultural and predominantly Anglophone city of Toronto had become the home of Canada's largest Jewish community made the decision to leave even easier for Montreal's Jews, many of whose businesses and children had already relocated to Toronto.

Some historians have suggested that anti-Semitism did not play a role in the Jews' decision to leave Montréal, and that the language legislation was the only catalyst for their departure. They note that a higher percentage of non-Jewish Anglophones than Jewish Anglophones left the city. However, the high rate of bilingualism amongst the Jewish population makes it unlikely that they were as affected by the language laws as the non-Jewish Anglophones. Therefore, other factors must have been at work in provoking such a large number of Jews to abandon the city they had called home for nearly 200 years.

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