Group Fights Anti-Semitism in Canada

Watching the news one night, Elizabeth Comper was horrified by a spate of anti-Semitic incidents in her hometown of Toronto: swastikas drawn on doors and cars, defiled gravestones, ugly graffiti.

So the 59-year-old former elementary-school teacher cornered her husband in the bathroom the next morning and insisted he do something.

As president and CEO of the Bank of Montreal, Tony Comper, 60, is one of the most influential financial leaders in North America. His wife knew he had the connections and persuasive powers to make a difference.

“I was watching as they interviewed Jewish children and I thought: Oh my gosh, how must they feel about it? And then I really thought it was important, how they felt, their fears; it was our problem too, it wasn’t just a Jewish problem,” Elizabeth Comper, a Protestant, said during an interview at the bank’s executive conference room in downtown Toronto.

That morning chat led to the recent launching of Fighting Anti-Semitism Together, Canada’s first such group of non-Jewish business leaders.

The executive vice president of B’nai Brith Canada, Frank Dimant, said the non-Jewish group gave “a sense of comfort” to the country’s nearly 350,000 Jews.

The number of anti-Semitic incidents reported to B’nai Brith’s hotline reached a record 857 last year in Canada, where numerous white supremacist, skinhead and neo-Nazi groups are active. That was a jump of 47% from 2003 and 295% from 1994.

By comparison, the Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Semitic acts in the United States increased 17% in 2004.

“My wife, Elizabeth, and I believe that, in the end, this is a crisis that must be resolved by non-Jews,” Tony Comper, a Roman Catholic, said in a speech before the Empire Club of Canada, the country’s oldest and most prestigious speakers forum.

“Non-Jews must join the battle against what has been described, sadly but accurately, as the oldest and the longest of hatreds,” he said.

The speech provoked some tears and one of the longest standing ovations ever, said the organization’s president, Bart J. Mindszenthy. “Even longer than the ovations for the Dalai Lama, Bill Gates and Ronald Reagan.”

Elizabeth Comper’s first idea was to offer a reward leading to an arrest in the incidents she had seen reported on TV. But as she and her husband talked with Jewish friends, they decided they could do more. They started calling other business leaders.

“We asked them two things,” she said, “one of which was: Would you be prepared to lend your personal name and your company’s name in visible support -- stand up and be counted? And two, would you give us $10,000 to help fund the development material?”

They signed up 21 business leaders, including John Hunkin, CEO of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and Timothy J. Hearn, chairman and president of Imperial Oil Ltd.

The government also has reacted to the rise in anti-Semitic acts. In March, it deported Ernst Zundel, a white supremacist who is author of a book called “The Hitler We Loved and Why” and who denies the Holocaust occurred.

He was sent back to his native Germany, where he faces charges of inciting hatred.

The first project undertaken by FAST is a four-part DVD series -- “Choose Your Voice” -- for use this fall in Ontario schools. It was produced in partnership with the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The video includes talks by three Holocaust survivors, a former white supremacist, a woman who witnessed the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and a black hockey player who endured racism.

In the video, a Jewish man recalls how, as a youngster, he was beaten by a bunch of thugs.

“And he’s laying there and he looks up and he sees a lady looking [down] the window at him and he says in the video: ‘I forgave the perpetrators years ago. I have never, ever been able to forgive that lady that left me, a 5-year-old, laying on the grass, just left me there,’ ” Elizabeth Comper said.

“So we’re trying to teach kids, too, that to witness it and to be silent is not proper.”