My latest blog post for Active History, co-written with Laura Madokoro, has just gone live! In it, we talk about the difference between words and actions, specifically in relation to the MS St. Louis Apology. Here’s a sneak peek:
On November 7th, 2018, Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons and issued a formal apology to the families of passengers of the MS St. Louis as well as the entire Jewish Canadian community for the Canadian government’s decision to refuse to allow the ship to dock in 1939. As historians with expertise in these areas, both of us paid close attention to the apology. While we were pleased that to see the Prime Minister drew attention to this shameful event in our history and acknowledged the long history of antisemitism in this country, we felt that it ultimately rang hollow.
While the Prime Minister vowed to fight antisemitism and to learn from the past, the speech was short on specific details. As Trudeau noted in his apology, even today, Canadian Jews are the most frequent target of hate crimes in this country, at seventeen percent. In the wake of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, Christine Chevalier-Caron and Philippe Néméh-Nombré published a piece on Histoire Engagée, demonstrating how antisemitism is normalized in Quebec and Canada, as well as the prevailing belief that Canada was (and is) a place of refuge for those in need.
In our minds the contradiction is striking and not easily dismissed. How is it that antisemitism can be a quotidian part of life in Canada while the country is also associated with being a place of refuge? How did this fundamental contradiction come to be and what are the implications for the present and future? Part of the answer lies in the ease with which politicians can speak in morally righteous terms when apologizing for historical wrongs and the gulf that often exists between the symbolism of their words, their actions, and the lived experience of those most affected by the subject and substance of their apologies.
Check out the rest here: http://activehistory.ca/2018/11/24863/
Also, I know i said that tomorrow we were going to have a Stephanie’s monthly look at upcoming publications in Canadian history. But she’s coming down with something, so we’re going to postpone that post to next Friday. But don’t worry, everything is still on track! See you Sunday!
Jo McCutcheon is the Executive Director of the Association of Canadian Archivists and teaches part-time at the University of Ottawa, focusing on digital history, material culture, children, youth and the residential school system and settler-colonialism in records created by the federal government. She has worked as a professional researcher on her own and with a diversity of research firms for more than twenty-years. She is an active member of the Canadian Historical Association (CHA), several CHA committees and on social media sites. She also serves on several volunteer boards including Minwaashin Lodge in Ottawa. You can find her on Twitter at 
