The Incredible Story Of Canadian Jews For The Last 300 Years: An Insightful Conversation With David Koffman, Associate Professor At York University

Well, the, the history of this community is actually pretty old.

Um, indeed, Jews first, first started arriving in the 1750s, possibly the 1740s, of individual Jews arriving, which was, of course, 120 years or 130 years before Canada became a country at all.

So Jews predate Canada in the place that's now Canada.

They came, um, to the British colonies, which were here and in what became the United States as well, uh, as well as other colonies in the Caribbean and all up and down the Atlantic coast.

Uh, these Jews were part of what they called an Atlantic triangular trade world, so they helped move all kinds of commodities, uh, from the European continent to the New World, and then from there to, on ships to Africa, and then from Africa back to Europe, uh, and sometimes in other directions, where they moved all sorts of goods around what was sort of the globalized world of the 18th century.

And Jews that arrived in the colonies, including the ones that would become Canada, were mostly involved in fur, uh, and the incredible fur business, um, that, uh, that, that compelled and propelled the development of Canada as a country.

So Jews were basically here from the very start, uh, of, of the, the saga that would become Canada.