Baraka Books, Montreal, 2012
368 pp., illus., $34.95 paperback
Aaron Hart — the “father of Canadian Jewry” — is not a widely recognized name, even to members of the Jewish community. While Jews have contributed significantly to Quebec’s modern history, they were only minor players in the more distant past. During French colonial times, Jews (and Protestants) were actually banned from living in New France.
Jews only began to arrive after Britain’s victory in the Seven Years War. The decision by France to abandon its old colony meant that British laws and practices could apply to the new Province of Quebec. Traders and merchants from Britain and her American colonies, mainly Protestants but also several Jews, quickly rose to importance.
Events from these early times have been described by writers such as Benjamin Sack, Irving Abella, Raymond Douville, and, more recently, Gerald Tulchinsky. But the most prolific author on Quebec’s Jews has been Denis Vaugeois, a respected public historian and political activist.
Vaugeois’s work has stressed the connections between Quebecers and other North Americans. He has also underlined the historical importance of local community identity, such as in Trois-Rivières, which was for many years Quebec’s thirdmost-important city. This was the place where Aaron Hart chose to settle.
Hart came to Trois-Rivières in 1761 after serving as a supplies commissary for British troops. He developed businesses based on fur trading, transportation, retail commerce, and land holdings. His family of eight children inherited his wealth, with later losses and gains. One son, Ezekiel, was elected in 1807 and 1808 to the Lower Canada legislative assembly, but he was prevented from taking his seat through a combination of anti-Jewish rules and French-English rivalries.
In 1832, Lower Canada became the first jurisdiction in the British Empire to adopt a law permitting Jews to sit in the legislature (nearly thirty years before Britain itself adopted such a rule). Members of the Hart family were instrumental in obtaining this liberal reform.
The descendants of Aaron Hart spread out in many directions. Some emigrated to the United States. Several became pillars of Montreal’s Jewish community and the legal profession. Many assimilated through marriages, leaving Judaism entirely. And one, David Alexander Hart, donated the Hart Trophy in 1924 to recognize the National Hockey League’s most valuable player.
For over fifty years, Denis Vaugeois has dug into extensive Hart records held in Trois-Rivières and elsewhere. He contributed four entries on the family to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and has written a general history of Jews in Quebec. This latest book draws on his lifetime’s work and is written in a highly personal style. Each chapter offers masses of detail with lavish illustrations.
Photos from the McCord Museum and other collections add social texture to archival records.
We can feel Vaugeois’s pleasure as he links history to private memoir, with some sections presented as autobiography. It is charming, but Vaugeois is also politically motivated. A former Parti Québécois minister of culture in René Lévesque’s Cabinet, he remains a strong proponent of Quebec independence. His book aims to support that political cause.
Towards its conclusion, his book turns into a manifesto. “The Canadiens,” he says, “had no prejudices against Jews.” Anti-Semitic ideas were imported from America and Britain, but in old Quebec “all doors were open to Jews, including those of the Catholic Church….” Jumping forward in time, Vaugeois criticizes “the intellectual Pierre Elliott Trudeau” for “ignorance or bad faith,” because Trudeau had argued that the Church stifled Quebec’s democratic spirit.
So, is this book a study of the Hart family or a vehicle for a nationalist mythology? Vaugeois celebrates both the family’s achievements and the assimilation of many members into the Catholic and Anglican majority. “French Canada has always been a melting pot since Champlain arrived,” he concludes. It is an image of “Quebec as a wonderful land of welcome” that Vaugeois hopes readers (and voters) will embrace.
— Victor Rabinovitch (Read bio)
Victor Rabinovitch former president of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), chair of Ottawa's Opera Lyra company, and an adjunct professor at Queen's University.