In this presentation to the Ottawa Historical Society, historian David C. Martin takes us back to the real beginnings of Ottawa’s Jewish community.

At the core of David’s thesis is the notion that the immigrant pioneers of Ottawa’s Jewish community ‘conserved’ and ‘adapted’ in equal measure, bringing with them the rituals and traditions of their homelands while simultaneously planting their roots in Ottawa prior to the outbreak of World War I.

Beginning with an overview of the city’s demographics during what he calls the “First Golden Age” of Jewish life in the nation’s capital (c. 1880-1914), David then turns to explore a handful of the community’s most influential personalities before examining some of the institutions they helped to build.

In 1881 there were about 20 self-identified Jews living amongst Ottawa’s 21,545 inhabitants, by 1914, that number had risen to almost 3,000. When compared to the number of Jews residing in the country at large however, it’s clear that despite significant growth, Ottawa was still not a major destination for the period’s Jewish immigrants. Both Montreal and Toronto offered these migrants a more established community, where synagogues, kosher food and Yiddish-speakers were far more accessible.

The vast majority of Jewish migrants to Canada during this period were refugees. Most had fled the Czarist Russian Empire following local pogroms. For survivors, at least for those who could manage, immigration became the best means of escape. Most of the era’s Jewish migrants arrived from Europe with very little. In their home countries, especially in Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire, economic opportunity was severely restricted. In fact, The Russian Empire established what it called the Pale of Settlement, where Jews were forced to live – keeping them outside of the major industrial and economic centres of Russia-proper. Professional jobs, including in the civil service, were essentially off-limits as were most educational opportunities.

To survive in the Pale, many Jews scratched out a living as peddlers, which usually involved the retail sale of wares or trade services and the purchase and re-selling of agricultural produce by traveling salesmen of generally humble means. Peddling was the most common occupation of Jews in the Pale – and indeed for Jewish migrants arriving in Canada. One advantage that Ottawa did offer over Montreal or Toronto was the more favourable cost of a peddling licence, and that alone may have inspired several of the period’s earliest Jewish migrants to arrive in our fair city. By 1939, approximately 43% of Ottawa's hawkers and peddlers were of Jewish descent.

With the scene set, David presents short biographies of some of the city’s earliest Jewish pioneers; those that had some of the greatest impacts on population settlement and community-building including Moses Bilsky, John Dover, Archie and Lillian Freiman, the Rev. Jacob Mirsky, and Casper Caplan.

Having familiarized our audience with some of the key players, David looks at some of the institutions that these pioneers, among others, helped to create. Synagogues like Adas Jeshurun (the city’s very first), Agudath Achim and Machzikei Hadas (which continues to thrive) are followed by others of the community’s most vital institutions like the Bank Street Cemetery, the Hebrew Benevolent Society, and the city’s then-incipient Hebrew schools.

This talk offers a comprehensive look at the roots of the Ottawa Jewish community and is surely a valuable resource for anyone interested in the subject.

You can view the full presentation on the Historical Society of Ottawa's YouTube channel.