Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to continue the debate on this private member's bill, Bill S-232, that we have been offered from the other place. The bill proposes to make the month of May Jewish heritage month.
May is a special month for my family. I have said before in the House that my kids are part Jewish. My father-in-law, who is from Singapore, is of Jewish heritage. Singapore is not an area of the world where people would think there were many Jews, and practising Jews for that matter. In his youth, he did practise many Jewish customs, but he did not realize they were Jewish at the time. His family only discovered its Jewish heritage when they came to Canada of all places and got to know their family a bit better.
May is also a special month for my family because my father-in-law was born on May 2 and my wife was born on May 2 as well. She was a special gift from my mother-in-law to my father-in-law and then to me many years later.
I thank the member for York Centre who sponsored this bill in the House. I have served with him on the foreign affairs committee. I am pleased to be able to debate this legislation because it does have special meaning to me because of my family relationship.
Many famous Jewish Albertans have made immense contributions to the province of Alberta. Many members know that I have a great love for Yiddish proverbs, so if they hold on, I do have one that I will share with them later.
We are going to be celebrating Purim very soon as well as Pesach, which are important holidays that I would encourage all Canadians to join in celebrating. People of Jewish heritage have been celebrating these holidays for thousands of years and I would encourage all Canadians to obtain a greater understanding of their deep meaning. These holidays have a very rich history and they have a very rich meaning to Jewish people.
I want to take a moment to talk about one famous Calgarian of Jewish heritage, Sheldon Chumir, who passed away on January 26, 1992. This gentleman was born in Calgary. He was a Rhodes Scholar. He was a tax lawyer, but I will not hold that against him.
Mr. Chumir founded the Calgary Civil Liberties Association. He was a tireless advocate for international human rights. He was elected as a Liberal MLA in 1986 for the provincial riding of Calgary—Buffalo. One might wonder why a Conservative MP is raising the political successes and the personality that was Sheldon Chumir. It is because he was important. He was important to Calgary.
The Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre is named after him. It is actually much more than a centre. It is a huge hospital that provides services in a downtown area of Calgary. It is well known and well respected. It carries his name because of the immense contributions he made to the city and to the province.
Mr. Chumir was one of those rare birds in Alberta politics. He was a Liberal who was re-elected, which is very rare indeed, but only once. He served in the Alberta legislature.
A large hospital bears his name and this speaks a lot to both his personal work and the work of the Jewish community to ensure that he was remembered properly and honoured for his contributions to the province.
Alberta's first permanent Jewish settlers came before Alberta even existed, in 1889, when it was just a territory. Jacob and Rachel Diamond, and there could be no more Jewish names than Jacob and Rachel, settled in Alberta.
I want to talk about the Yiddish heritage in Alberta. As I mentioned, I do have a Yiddish proverb, “Tasty is the fish from someone else's table”. In this case, the table was set by the other place, and now we have the opportunity to have this debate in the House of Commons. It is indeed tasty. I get to talk about supporters of the Yiddish language, of the Yiddish culture, who built the I.L. Peretz Institute in 1927. Calgary's first Jewish school was founded by people who cared for the Yiddish language and the Yiddish culture.
Unfortunately, after 1929, anti-Semitism was rising and during World War II a lot of Jewish people were discriminated against. There was a pervasive kind of cultural exclusion of them, both professionally and socially. This experience was not made any better by the Social Credit provincial government of the time which had some anti-Semitic members among it.
That was the experience of people around the world: governments and populations that discriminated against Jewish people who were living among them and making contributions. These were neighbours, co-workers, suppliers, and merchants, people who were building lives for themselves and who had proven themselves to be good, reliable, loyal members of the Canadian family.
The anti-Semitism and discrimination they faced is a lesson for all of us today. We must not repeat the mistakes of the past. Unfortunately, it has happened. We have heard other members say that the Jewish population in Canada, Canadians with Jewish heritage, some who practise the Jewish religion, are still victims. The number one group targeted by hate crimes, by vile anti-Semitism, is the Jewish people.
One other thing I would like to mention is that last year, in October, I visited Budapest in Hungary. I met with members of the government there. They have a coalition government. They encouraged us to visit the Dohany Street synagogue, one of the grand synagogues in Europe. It is a beautiful synagogue. I went with my wife.
It is a solemn experience but also rich in its cultural significance and because of the Holocaust. Wherever people go, the Holocaust and the Jewish experience go hand in hand. It is something that is so fundamental, so deep, in the Jewish psyche. My in-laws have talked to be about it. My wife talks to me about it. It is something I share with my kids. For the Jewish population in Asia at the time, the persecution and the anti-Semitism was not quite like what Jewish people experienced in Europe.
The two cannot be separated. Today it is something people simply have to address. When it is spoken about it, we have to pay homage to it. We have to recognize what happened in that time period.
It is a beautiful grand synagogue in Budapest. Even in a country like Hungary, we had a government official encouraging us to visit it. We were able to share a little with some of them the Jewish successes in Canada and famous Jewish individuals.
We heard the name of Irwin Cotler, a former minister of justice in this House, a man I have met. I have great respect for him. I did not always agree with his politics, of course, but I deeply respect him for his work on international human rights.
I will go back to Calgary for my last few minutes. I have been to the House of Jacob in Calgary. I have attended the service there, and I will never forget it. Being Polish, people always assume, because I was born in Poland and I speak with a slight accent, that I am Catholic. When I say that I am not Catholic, the next thing they expect me to be is Jewish, especially with the curly hair. They ask how I could not be, and I always point to my wife. My wife is actually half-Jewish, half-Chinese-Singaporean. She is actually more Jewish than I am. She knows more about Jewish cultural practices.
One never knows. The person one meets could have Jewish heritage and might be able to share a story in Hebrew. They might be able to do a Shabbat properly. My Hebrew pronunciation has never been very good. I am still practising my Yiddish pronunciation.
This bill, this opportunity we have, this table that was set by the Senate, to go back to my Yiddish proverb, is an opportunity for all of us to share among ourselves the great stories, the great personalities, and the great successes of Canadians of Jewish heritage every single May of every single year. I know for myself, I will be celebrating my father-in-law and my wife and the contributions they have made here in Canada and will continue to.
I thank the member for sponsoring the bill, and I look forward to voting for it. I encourage all members in the House to do the same.