In the 1930s and 1940s, Canada’s immigration policy was modified by known anti-Semite Frederick Charles Blair. Blair’s policies led to only 5% of all Jewish refugees from Europe being granted entry to Canada compared to the 18% the United States granted entry to.
The Prime Minister at the time, William Lyon Mackenzie King, appointed Blair to the position of Director of the Immigration Branch of the Department of Mines and Resources in 1935. Under Blair’s leadership, Canada’s immigration policies toward Jews tightened.
The Prime Minister at the time, William Lyon Mackenzie King, appointed Blair to the position of Director of the Immigration Branch of the Department of Mines and Resources in 1935. Under Blair’s leadership, Canada’s immigration policies toward Jews tightened.
Blair raised the amount of money immigrants had to possess from $5,000 to $15,000, and declared that new immigrants had to be farmers. Since the majority of European Jews were urban residents, whose openly hostile governments had siezed their possessions and forbade them from taking any wealth abroad with them, these new restrictions made it nearly impossible for them to find refuge in Canada.
In a letter to a supporter of his anti-Jewish immigration policies, Blair wrote, “I suggested recently to three Jewish gentlemen with whom I am well acquainted, but it might be a very good thing if they would call a conference and have a day of humiliation and prayer, which might profitably be extended for a week or more, where they would honestly try to answer the question of why they are so unpopular almost everywhere...I often think that instead of persecution it would be far better if we more often told them frankly why many of them are unpopular. If they would divest themselves of certain of their habits I am sure they could be just as popular in Canada as our Scandinavian friends are.”
Even if Jews met the immigration requirements, they were often turned away. A notable example followed Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, when the Canadian Jewish Congress allocated funds to financially sponsor 10,000 Jewish refugees. Despite this, the Canadian government rejected their proposal.
This decision can be attributed to the widespread anti-Semitism in Canada in the 1930s. In Historian David Rome’s Clouds in the Thirties, Rome wrote, “The reluctance of the Canadian government to admit Jewish refugees in any great numbers was a fair reflection of public opinion [...] which was a strong Anglo-Saxon nativism permeated with Anti-Semitism.”
Even after the war, in 1946, when the horrors of the concentration camps had been revealed, a poll conducted by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion showed that 60% of Canadians approved of the exclusion of Jews from Canadian immigration.
This public perception translated into official government policy. In June 1939, the steamship SS St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees, was turned away by the Canadian government and forced to return to Germany to meet their death. Prime Minister King said that this crisis was not a “Canadian problem” and Blair, in a letter to O.D. Skelton, Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, wrote, “No country could open its doors wide enough to take in the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who want to leave Europe: the line must be drawn somewhere.”
In addition to his actions, Blair expressed pride for his “achievements.” In 1938, during the height of Jewish desperation to leave Nazi Germany and Europe, Blair sent a letter to Prime Minister King saying, “Pressure by Jewish people to get into Canada has never been greater than it is now, and I am glad to be able to add that after 35 years of experience here, that it has never been so carefully controlled.”
As a result of the Canadian government’s indifference and outright obstructions, Canada emerged from World War II with one of the lowest rates of Jewish immigration. Between 1933 and 1939, Canada granted entry to only 4,000 Jews, while a total of 800,000 had escaped Europe in that time. During the same period, the United States had taken in 140,000 with even Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico taking in 20-22,000 Jews each, 5 times more than Canada.
